Kenneth Griffith

Kenneth Griffith
Griffith in the 1976 BBC production, Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.
Born	Kenneth Reginald Griffiths (1921-10-12)12 October 1921 Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales
Died	25 June 2006(2006-06-25) (aged 84) London, England
Occupation	Actor, Producer, Presenter
Years active	1937–2003
Spouse(s)	Joan Stock (?–?) (divorced) 1boy Doria Noar(?–?) (divorced) 1 girl Carol Hagar (?–?) (divorced) 2 boys and 1 girl.

Kenneth Reginald Griffith (born Griffiths; 12 October 1921 – 25 June 2006) was a Welsh actor and documentary filmmaker.

He was born in Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales. Six months after his birth his parents split up and left Tenby, leaving Griffith with his paternal grandparents, Emily and Ernest, who adopted him. A lively rugby union scrum-half, he attended the local Wesleyan Methodist chapel three times every Sunday.

Griffiths passed the 11-plus and attended Greenhill Grammar School, where he met English literature teacher Evelyn Ward, who recognised his writing and acting talent. Before Kenneth left school, his headmaster J. T. Griffith suggested that he drop the English "s" from his name (an anglicisation).

In 1937 he left school and moved to Cambridge, taking a job at an ironmonger's weighing nails. This lasted only a day and proved to be the only job he ever had outside the acting world. He approached the Cambridge Festival Theatre for work, and at the age of 16 was cast by Peter Hoare as Cinna the Poet in a modern-dress version of Julius Caesar. He became a regular jobbing repertory actor, making his West End theatre debut in 1938 with a small part in Thomas Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday.

Griffith volunteered for service with the Royal Air Force in 1939 before the outbreak of World War II. Before training in Canada, he returned to see his grandparents in Tenby, who, at his request, gave him a leather-bound copy of Hitler's book, Mein Kampf; he later explained in an interview that he wanted to understand what he was fighting against. While training in Canada, he caught scarlet fever, which resulted in his taking up stamp collecting. The first stamp he collected was the Siege of Ladysmith, South Africa.