Early years Richardson was born in
Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the third son and youngest child of Arthur Richardson and his wife Lydia () on 19 December 1902. Arthur Richardson had been senior art master at
Cheltenham Ladies' College from 1893. In 1907 the family split up; there was no divorce or formal separation, but the two elder boys, Christopher and Ambrose, remained with their father and Lydia left them, taking Ralph with her. The ostensible cause of the couple's separation was a row over Lydia's choice of wallpaper for her husband's study. According to John Miller's biography, whatever underlying causes there may have been are unknown. There does not seem to have been a religious element, although Arthur was a dedicated
Quaker, whose first two sons were brought up in that faith, whereas Lydia was a devout convert to
Roman Catholicism, in which she raised Ralph. Mother and son had a variety of homes, the first of which was a bungalow converted from two railway carriages in
Shoreham-by-Sea on the south coast of England. Lydia wanted Richardson to become a priest. In 1919, aged sixteen, Richardson took a post as office boy with the Brighton branch of the
Liverpool Victoria insurance company. His paternal grandmother died and left him £500, which, he later said, transformed his life. He resigned from the office post, just in time to avoid being dismissed, and enrolled at the
Brighton School of Art. His studies there convinced him that he lacked creativity, and that his drawing skills were not good enough. He was still unsure what to do, when he saw
Sir Frank Benson as
Hamlet in a touring production. He was thrilled, and felt at once that he must become an actor. Buttressed by what was left of the legacy from his grandmother, Richardson determined to learn to act. He paid a local theatrical manager, Frank R. Growcott, ten shillings a week to take him as a member of his company and to teach him the craft of an actor. He made his stage debut in December 1920 with Growcott's St Nicholas Players at the St Nicholas Hall, Brighton, a converted bacon factory. Richardson made his first appearance as a professional actor at the Marina Theatre,
Lowestoft, in August 1921, as Lorenzo in
The Merchant of Venice. He remained with Doran's company for most of the next two years, gradually gaining more important roles, including Banquo in
Macbeth and Mark Antony in
Julius Caesar. He left Doran in 1923 and toured in a new play,
Outward Bound by
Sutton Vane. He returned to the classics in August 1924, in
Nigel Playfair's touring production of
The Way of the World, playing Fainall. To his great happiness, the two were able to work together for most of 1925, both being engaged by
Sir Barry Jackson of the
Birmingham Repertory Theatre for a touring production of ''
The Farmer's Wife''. From December of that year they were members of the main repertory company in Birmingham. Through Jackson's chief director, the veteran taskmaster
H. K. Ayliff, Richardson "absorbed the influence of older contemporaries like
Gerald du Maurier,
Charles Hawtrey and
Mrs Patrick Campbell." Hewitt was seen as a rising star but Richardson's talents were not yet so apparent; he was allotted supporting roles such as Lane in
The Importance of Being Earnest and Albert Prossor in ''
Hobson's Choice''. He then toured for three months in
Eden Phillpotts's comedy
Devonshire Cream with Jackson's company led by
Cedric Hardwicke. When Phillpotts's next comedy,
Yellow Sands, was to be mounted at the
Haymarket Theatre in the
West End, Richardson and his wife were both cast in good roles. The play opened in November 1926 and ran until September 1928; with 610 performances it was the longest London run of Richardson's entire career. During the run Muriel Hewitt began to show early symptoms of
encephalitis lethargica, a progressive and ultimately fatal illness. in 1936, near the beginning of her long professional association with Richardson Richardson left the run of
Yellow Sands in March 1928 and rejoined Ayliff, playing Pygmalion in
Back to Methuselah at the
Royal Court Theatre; also in the cast was a former colleague from the Birmingham Repertory,
Laurence Olivier. The critics began to notice Richardson and he gained some favourable reviews. As Tranio in Ayliff's modern-dress production of
The Taming of the Shrew, Richardson played the character as a breezy
cockney, winning praise for turning a usually dreary role into something richly entertaining. Ashcroft's notices were laudatory, while Richardson's were mixed; they admired each other and worked together frequently during the next four decades.
Old Vic, 1930–32 (photographed in 2012) In 1930 Richardson, with some misgivings, accepted an invitation to join
The Old Vic company. The theatre, in an unfashionable location south of the
Thames, had offered inexpensive tickets for opera and drama under its proprietor
Lilian Baylis since 1912. Its profile had been raised considerably by Baylis's producer,
Harcourt Williams, who in 1929 persuaded the young West End star
John Gielgud to lead the drama company. For the following season Williams wanted Richardson to join, with a view to succeeding Gielgud from 1931 to 1932. Richardson agreed, though he was not sure of his own suitability for a mainly Shakespearean repertoire, and was not enthusiastic about working with Gielgud: "I found his clothes extravagant, I found his conversation flippant. He was the New Young Man of his time and I didn't like him." Among Richardson's other parts in his first Old Vic season, Enobarbus in
Antony and Cleopatra gained particularly good notices.
The Morning Post commented that it placed him in the first rank of Shakespearean actors. During the summer break between the Old Vic 1930–31 and 1931–32 seasons, Richardson played at the
Malvern Festival, under the direction of his old Birmingham director, Ayliff. As his wife's condition worsened he needed to pay for more and more nursing; she was looked after in a succession of hospitals and care homes. Succeeding Gielgud as leading man at the Old Vic, Richardson had a varied season, in which there were conspicuous successes interspersed with critical failures.
James Agate was not convinced by him as the domineering
Petruchio in
The Taming of the Shrew; in
Julius Caesar the whole cast received tepid reviews. In
Othello Richardson divided the critics. He emphasised the plausible charm of the murderous
Iago to a degree that Agate thought "very good Richardson, but indifferent Shakespeare", whereas
The Times said, "He never stalked or hissed like a plain villain, and, in fact, we have seldom seen a man smile and smile and be a villain so adequately." His biggest success of the season was as
Bottom in ''
A Midsummer Night's Dream''. Both Agate and Darlington commented on how the actor transformed the character from the bumbling workman to the magically changed creature on whom
Titania dotes. Agate wrote that most of those who had played the part hitherto "seem to have thought Bottom, with the ass's head on, was the same Bottom, only funnier. Shakespeare says he was 'translated', and Mr Richardson translated him." With
Sybil Thorndike as a guest star and Richardson as Ralph,
The Knight of the Burning Pestle was a hit with audiences and critics, as was a revival of
Twelfth Night, with
Edith Evans as Viola and Richardson again playing Sir Toby, finishing the season to renewed praise.
West End and Broadway Richardson returned to the Malvern Festival in August 1932. He was in four plays, the last of which,
Bernard Shaw's
Too True to Be Good, transferred to the
New Theatre in London the following month. The play was not liked by audiences and ran for only forty-seven performances, but Richardson, in Agate's phrase, "ran away with the piece", and established himself as a West End star. In 1933 he had his first speaking part in a film, playing the villain, Nigel Hartley, in
The Ghoul, which starred Cedric Hardwicke and
Boris Karloff. The following year he was cast in his first starring role in a film, as the hero in
The Return of Bulldog Drummond. , leading lady in Richardson's
Broadway debut Over the next two years Richardson appeared in six plays in London ranging from
Peter Pan (as Mr Darling and Captain Hook) to
Cornelius, an allegorical play written for and dedicated to him by
J.B.Priestley.
Cornelius ran for two months; this was less than expected, and left Richardson with a gap in engagements in the second half of 1935. He filled it by accepting an invitation from
Katharine Cornell and
Guthrie McClintic to play Mercutio in their production of
Romeo and Juliet on a US tour and on
Broadway. Romeo was played by
Maurice Evans and Juliet by Cornell. Richardson's performance greatly impressed American critics, and Cornell invited him to return to New York to co-star with her in
Macbeth and
Antony and Cleopatra, though nothing came of this. The producer was
Alexander Korda; the two men formed a long and mutually beneficial friendship. Richardson later said of Korda, "Though not so very much older than I am, I regarded him in a way as a father, and to me he was as generous as a prince." In May 1936 Richardson and Olivier jointly directed and starred in a new piece by Priestley,
Bees on the Boatdeck. Both actors won excellent notices, but the play, an allegory of Britain's decline, did not attract the public. It closed after four weeks, the last in a succession of West End productions in which Richardson appeared to much acclaim but which were box-office failures. In August of the same year he finally had a long-running star part, the title role in
Barré Lyndon's
comedy thriller,
The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse, which played for 492 performances, closing in October 1937. After a short run in
The Silent Knight, described by Miller as "a Hungarian fantasy in rhymed verse set in the fifteenth century", Richardson returned to the Old Vic for the 1937–38 season, playing Bottom once again and switching parts in
Othello, playing the title role, with Olivier as Iago. The director,
Tyrone Guthrie, wanted to experiment with the theory that Iago's villainy is driven by suppressed homosexual love for Othello. Olivier was willing to co-operate, but Richardson was not; audiences and most critics failed to spot the supposed motivation of Olivier's Iago, and Richardson's Othello seemed underpowered. O'Connor believes that Richardson did not succeed with Othello or Macbeth because of the characters' single-minded "blind driving passion – too extreme, too inhuman", which was incomprehensible and alien to him. It was for the same reason, in O'Connor's view, that he never attempted the title roles in
Hamlet or
King Lear. Richardson made his television debut in January 1939, reprising his 1936 stage role of the chief engineer in
Bees on the Boatdeck. His last stage part in the 1930s was Robert Johnson, an
Everyman figure, in Priestley's
Johnson Over Jordan directed by
Basil Dean. It was an experimental piece, using music (by
Benjamin Britten) and dance as well as dialogue, and was another production in which Richardson was widely praised but that did not prosper at the box-office. After it closed, in May 1939, he did not act on stage for more than five years.
Second World War At the outbreak of war Richardson joined the
Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a
sub-lieutenant pilot. He had taken flying lessons during the 1930s and had logged 200 hours of flying time, but, though a notoriously reckless driver, he admitted to being a timid pilot. He rose to the rank of
lieutenant-commander. His work was mostly routine administration, probably because of "the large number of planes which seemed to fall to pieces under his control", through which he acquired the nickname "
Pranger" Richardson. In 1942, on his way to visit his wife at the cottage where she was cared for by a devoted couple, Richardson crashed his motor-bike and was in hospital for several weeks. Kit was at that point mobile enough to visit him, but later in the year her condition worsened and in October she died. He was intensely lonely, though the camaraderie of naval life was some comfort. The marriage brought him lifelong happiness and a son, Charles (1945–98), who became a television stage manager. and made one short film and three full-length ones, including
The Silver Fleet, in which he played a Dutch Resistance hero, and
The Volunteer, a propaganda film in which he appeared as himself. It was finally agreed that the third member would be the stage director
John Burrell. The Old Vic governors approached the Royal Navy to secure the release of Richardson and Olivier; the
Sea Lords consented, with, as Olivier put it, "a speediness and lack of reluctance which was positively hurtful."
Old Vic, 1944–47 The triumvirate secured the New Theatre for their first season and recruited a company. Thorndike was joined by, among others, Harcourt Williams,
Joyce Redman and
Margaret Leighton. It was agreed to open with a repertory of four plays:
Peer Gynt,
Arms and the Man,
Richard III and
Uncle Vanya. Richardson's roles were Peer, Bluntschli, Richmond and Vanya; Olivier played the Button Moulder, Sergius, Richard and Astrov. The first three productions met with acclaim from reviewers and audiences;
Uncle Vanya had a mixed reception.
The Times thought Olivier's Astrov "a most distinguished portrait" and Richardson's Vanya "the perfect compound of absurdity and pathos". Agate, on the other hand, commented, Floored for life, sir, and jolly miserable' is what
Uncle Vanya takes three acts to say. And I just cannot believe in Mr Richardson wallowing in misery: his voice is the wrong colour." In 1945 the company toured Germany, where they were seen by many thousands of Allied servicemen; they also appeared at the
Comédie-Française theatre in Paris, the first foreign company to be given that honour. The critic
Harold Hobson wrote that Richardson and Olivier quickly "made the Old Vic the most famous theatre in the Anglo-Saxon world." , Richardson's co-director of the Old Vic, photographed in 1972 The second season, in 1945, featured two double-bills. The first consisted of
Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2. Olivier played the warrior Hotspur in the first and the doddering Justice Shallow in the second. He received good notices, but by general consent the production belonged to Richardson as Falstaff. Agate wrote, "He had everything the part wants – the exuberance, the mischief, the gusto.... Here is something better than virtuosity in character-acting – the spirit of the part shining through the actor." As a teenager, the director
Peter Hall saw the production; he said fifty years later, "Of the performances I've seen in my life I'm gladdest I saw that." In the second double bill it was Olivier who dominated, in the title roles of
Oedipus Rex and
The Critic. Richardson took the supporting role of Tiresias in the first, and the silent, cameo part of Lord Burleigh in the second. After the London season the company played both the double-bills and
Uncle Vanya in a six-week season on Broadway. The third, and final, season under the triumvirate was in 1946–47. Olivier played King Lear, and Richardson,
Cyrano de Bergerac. Olivier would have preferred the roles to be cast the other way about, but Richardson did not wish to attempt Lear. Richardson's other roles in the season were Inspector Goole in
An Inspector Calls, Face in
The Alchemist and John of Gaunt in
Richard II, which he directed, with
Alec Guinness in the title role. During the run of
Cyrano, Richardson was
knighted in the
1947 New Year Honours, to Olivier's undisguised envy. The younger man received the accolade six months later, by which time the days of the triumvirate were numbered. The high profile of the two star actors did not endear them to the new chairman of the Old Vic governors,
Lord Esher. He had ambitions to be the first head of the National Theatre and had no intention of letting actors run it. He was encouraged by Guthrie, who, having instigated the appointment of Richardson and Olivier, had come to resent their knighthoods and international fame. Esher terminated their contracts while both were out of the country, and they and Burrell were said to have "resigned". Looking back in 1971,
Bernard Levin wrote that the Old Vic company of 1944 to 1947 "was probably the most illustrious that has ever been assembled in this country".
The Times said that the triumvirate's years were the greatest in the Old Vic's history; After his final Old Vic season he made two films in quick succession for Korda. The first,
Anna Karenina, with
Vivien Leigh, was an expensive failure, although Richardson's notices in the role of Karenin were excellent. The second,
The Fallen Idol, had notable commercial and critical success, and won awards in Europe and America. It remained one of Richardson's favourites of his films. In Miller's words, "
Carol Reed's sensitive direction drew faultless performances not just from Ralph as Baines (the butler and mistakenly suspected murderer), but also from
Michèle Morgan as his mistress,
Sonia Dresdel as his cold-hearted wife, and especially from
Bobby Henrey as the distraught boy, Philippe." films gave him the opportunity to reach an international audience. Unlike some of his theatre colleagues, he was never condescending about film work. He admitted that film could be "a cage for an actor, but a cage in which they sometimes put a little gold", but he did not regard filming as merely a means of subsidising his much less profitable stage work. He said, "I've never been one of those chaps who scoff at films. I think they're a marvellous medium, and are to the stage what engravings are to painting. The theatre may give you big chances, but the cinema teaches you the details of craftsmanship."
The Fallen Idol was followed by Richardson's first
Hollywood part. He played Dr Sloper, the overprotective father of
Olivia de Havilland in
The Heiress, based on
Henry James's novel
Washington Square. The film did not prosper at the box-office despite good reviews, an
Academy Award for Best Actress for Havilland, and nominations for the director (
William Wyler) and Richardson. , with whom Richardson frequently co-starred
The Heiress had been a Broadway play before it was a film. Richardson so liked his part that he decided to play it in the West End, with Ashcroft as Sloper's daughter Catherine. The piece was to open in February 1949 at Richardson's favourite theatre, the Haymarket. Rehearsals were chaotic. Burrell, whom Richardson had asked to direct, was not up to the task – possibly, Miller speculates, because of nervous exhaustion from the recent traumas at the Old Vic. With only a week to go before the first performance, the producer,
Binkie Beaumont, asked him to stand down, and Gielgud was recruited in his place. Matters improved astonishingly;{{#tag:ref|Richardson and Ashcroft left the cast in January 1950, and were replaced for the rest of the run by
Godfrey Tearle and
Wendy Hiller. After one long run in
The Heiress, Richardson appeared in another,
R.C.Sherriff's
Home at Seven, in 1950. He played an amnesiac bank clerk who fears he may have committed murder. He later recreated the part in a radio broadcast, and in
a film version, which was his sole venture into direction for the screen. Once he had played himself into a role in a long run, Richardson felt able to work during the daytime in films, and made two others in the early 1950s beside the film of the Sherriff piece:
Outcast of the Islands, directed by Carol Reed, and
David Lean's
The Sound Barrier, released in 1951 and 1952 respectively. He did not attempt Chekhov again for more than a quarter of a century. In the second production of the festival his Macbeth, directed by Gielgud, was generally considered a failure. He was thought unconvincingly villainous; the influential young critic
Kenneth Tynan professed himself "unmoved to the point of paralysis", though blaming the director more than the star. Richardson's third and final role in the Stratford season,
Volpone in
Ben Jonson's play, received much better, but not ecstatic, notices. He did not play at Stratford again. During this period, Richardson played
Dr Watson in an American/BBC radio co-production of
Sherlock Holmes stories, with Gielgud as Holmes and
Orson Welles as the evil Professor Moriarty. These recordings were later released commercially on disc. In late 1954 and early 1955 Richardson and his wife toured Australia together with Sybil Thorndike and her husband,
Lewis Casson, playing
Terence Rattigan's plays
The Sleeping Prince and
Separate Tables. The following year he worked with Olivier again, playing Buckingham to Olivier's Richard in the
1955 film of
Richard III. Richardson turned down the role of Estragon in Peter Hall's premiere of the English language version of
Samuel Beckett's
Waiting for Godot in 1955, and later reproached himself for missing the chance to be in "the greatest play of my generation". He had consulted Gielgud, who dismissed the piece as rubbish, and even after discussing the play with the author, Richardson could not understand the play or the character. Richardson's
Timon of Athens in his 1956 return to the Old Vic was well received, as was his Broadway appearance in
The Waltz of the Toreadors for which he was nominated for a
Tony Award in 1957. He concluded the 1950s with two contrasting West End successes,
Robert Bolt's
Flowering Cherry, and
Graham Greene's
The Complaisant Lover. The former, a sad piece about a failed and deluded insurance manager, ran for 435 performances in 1957–58; Richardson co-starred with three leading ladies in succession: Celia Johnson, Wendy Hiller and his wife. Greene's comedy was a surprise hit, running for 402 performances from June 1959. Throughout rehearsals the cast treated the love-triangle theme as one of despair, and were astonished to find themselves playing to continual laughter. During the run, Richardson worked by day on another Greene work, the film
Our Man in Havana. Alec Guinness, who played the main role, noted "the object-lesson in upstaging in the last scene between Richardson and
Noël Coward", faithfully captured by the director, Carol Reed.
1960s '' (1962) Richardson began the 1960s with a failure.
Enid Bagnold's play
The Last Joke was savaged by the critics ("a meaningless jumble of pretentious whimsy" was one description). His only reason for playing in the piece was the chance of acting with Gielgud, but both men quickly regretted their involvement. Richardson then went to the US to appear in
Sidney Lumet's
film adaptation of ''
Long Day's Journey into Night'', alongside
Katharine Hepburn. Richardson was jointly awarded the
Cannes Film Festival's
Best Actor prize with his co-stars
Jason Robards Jr and
Dean Stockwell. Richardson's next stage role was in a starry revival of
The School for Scandal, as Sir Peter Teazle, directed by Gielgud in 1962. The production was taken on a North American tour, in which Gielgud joined the cast as, he said, "the oldest Joseph Surface in the business". A revival of
Six Characters in Search of an Author in 1963 was judged by the critic
Sheridan Morley to have been a high-point of the actor's work in the 1960s. In 1967 he again played Shylock; this was the last time he acted in a Shakespeare play on stage. Interspersed with his stage plays, Richardson made thirteen cinema films during the decade. On screen he played historical figures including
Sir Edward Carson (
Oscar Wilde, 1960),
W.E.Gladstone (
Khartoum, 1966) and
Sir Edward Grey (
Oh! What a Lovely War, 1969). He was scrupulous about historical accuracy in his portrayals, and researched eras and characters in great detail before filming. Occasionally his precision was greater than directors wished, as when, in
Khartoum, he insisted on wearing a small black finger-stall because the real Gladstone had worn one following an injury. After a role playing a disabled tycoon and
Sean Connery's uncle in
Woman of Straw, in 1965 he played Alexander Gromeko in Lean's
Doctor Zhivago, an exceptionally successful film at the box office, which, together with
The Wrong Box and
Khartoum, earned him a BAFTA nomination for best leading actor in 1966. Olivier was by now running the
National Theatre, temporarily based at the Old Vic, but showed little desire to recruit his former colleague for any of the company's productions. In 1964 Richardson was the voice of
General Haig in the twenty-six-part BBC documentary series
The Great War. In 1967 he played
Lord Emsworth on BBC television in dramatisations of
PGWodehouse's Blandings Castle stories, with his wife playing Emsworth's bossy sister Constance, and
Stanley Holloway as the butler, Beach. He was nervous about acting in a television series: "I'm sixty-four and that's a bit old to be taking on a new medium." The performances divided critical opinion.
The Times thought the stars "a sheer delight... situation comedy is joy in their hands". The reviewers in
The Guardian and
The Observer thought the three too theatrical to be effective on the small screen. For television he recorded studio versions of two plays in which he had appeared on stage:
Johnson Over Jordan (1965) and
Twelfth Night (1968). During the decade, Richardson made numerous sound recordings. For the
Caedmon Audio label he re-created his role as
Cyrano de Bergerac opposite
Anna Massey as Roxane, and played the title role in a complete recording of
Julius Caesar, with a cast that included
Anthony Quayle as Brutus,
John Mills as Cassius and
Alan Bates as Antony. Other Caedmon recordings were
Measure for Measure,
The School for Scandal and ''No Man's Land
. Richardson also recorded some English Romantic poetry, including The Rime of the Ancient Mariner'' and poems by
Keats and
Shelley for the label. For
Decca Records Richardson recorded the narration for
Prokofiev's
Peter and the Wolf, and for
RCA the superscriptions for
Vaughan Williams's
Sinfonia antartica – both with the
London Symphony Orchestra, the Prokofiev conducted by
Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Vaughan Williams by
André Previn. Richardson's last stage role of the decade was in 1969, as Dr Rance in
What the Butler Saw by
Joe Orton. It was a conspicuous failure. The public hated the play and made the fact vociferously clear at the first night.
1970–74 In 1970 Richardson was with Gielgud at the Royal Court in David Storey's
Home. The play is set in the gardens of a nursing home for mental patients, though this is not clear at first. The two elderly men converse in a desultory way, are joined and briefly enlivened by two more extrovert female patients, are slightly scared by another male patient, and are then left together, conversing even more emptily. The
Punch critic, Jeremy Kingston wrote: The play transferred to the West End and then to Broadway. In
The New York Times Clive Barnes wrote, "The two men, bleakly examining the little nothingness of their lives, are John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson giving two of the greatest performances of two careers that have been among the glories of the English-speaking theater." The original cast recorded the play for television in 1972. Some critics felt the play was too slight for its two stars, but Harold Hobson thought Richardson found unsuspected depths in the character of the ostensibly phlegmatic General Boothroyd. The play was a hit with the public, and when Ashcroft left after four months, Celia Johnson took over until May 1973, when Richardson handed over to
Andrew Cruickshank in the West End. Richardson afterwards toured the play in Australia and Canada with his wife as co-star. An Australian critic wrote, "The play is a vehicle for Sir Ralph... but the real driver is Lady Richardson." Richardson's film roles of the early 1970s ranged from the bogus medium Mr Benton in
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971), the Crypt Keeper in
Tales from the Crypt (1972) and dual roles in
Lindsay Anderson's O Lucky Man to the Caterpillar in ''
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland'' (1972) and Dr Rank in
Ibsen's ''
A Doll's House (1973). In The Observer'',
George Melly wrote, "As for Sir Ralph as Dr Rank, he grows from the ageing elegant cynic of his first appearance (it's even a pleasure to watch him remove his top hat) to become the heroic dying stoic of his final exit without in any way forcing the pace." In 1973 Richardson received a BAFTA nomination for his performance of
George IV in
Lady Caroline Lamb, in which Olivier appeared as
Wellington. , author of ''
No Man's Land''; he later played Hirst, the role created by Richardson Richardson continued his long stage association with Gielgud in
Harold Pinter's ''
No Man's Land (1975) directed by Hall at the National. Gielgud played Spooner, a down-at-heel sponger and opportunist, and Richardson was Hirst, a prosperous but isolated and vulnerable author. There is both comedy and pain in the piece: the critic Michael Coveney called their performance "the funniest double-act in town", The production was a critical and box-office success, and played at the Old Vic, in the West End, at the Lyttelton Theatre in the new National Theatre complex, on Broadway and on television, over a period of three years. He returned to the National, and to Chekhov, in 1978 as the aged retainer Firs in The Cherry Orchard''. The notices for the production were mixed; those for Richardson's next West End play were uniformly dreadful. This was ''Alice's Boys'', a spy and murder piece generally agreed to be preposterous. A legend, possibly apocryphal, grew that during the short run Richardson walked to the front of the stage one night and asked, "Is there a doctor in the house?" A doctor stood up, and Richardson sadly said to him, "Doctor, isn't this a terrible play?" After this débâcle the rest of Richardson's stage career was at the National, with one late exception. The last toured in North America after the London run. Films in which Richardson appeared in the later 1970s and early 1980s include
Rollerball (1975),
The Man in the Iron Mask (1977),
Dragonslayer (1981) in which he played a wizard and
Time Bandits (1981) in which he played the Supreme Being. For television, Richardson played
Simeon in
Jesus of Nazareth (1977), made studio recordings of ''No Man's Land
(1978) and Early Days'' (1982), Richardson's last two films were released after his death:
Give My Regards to Broad Street, with
Paul McCartney, and
Greystoke, a retelling of the
Tarzan story. In the last, Richardson played the stern old Lord Greystoke, rejuvenated in his latter days by his lost grandson, reclaimed from the wild; he was posthumously nominated for an
Academy Award. The film bears the superscription, "Dedicated to Ralph Richardson 1902–1983 – In Loving Memory" Both
Punch and
The New York Times found his performance "mesmerising". After the London run the piece was scheduled to go on tour in October. Just before that, Richardson suffered a series of strokes, from which he died on 10 October, at the age of eighty. ==Character and reputation==