Max Adrian
| Max Adrian | |
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Max Adrian in 1938
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| Born |
Guy Thornton Bor 1 November 1903 Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland |
| Died | 19 January 1973 (aged 69) Shamley Green, England |
| Cause of death | Heart attack |
Max Adrian (1 November 1903 – 19 January 1973) was a Northern Irish stage, film, and television actor and singer. He was a founding member of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre.
In addition to his success as a character actor in classical drama, he was known for his work as a singer and comic actor in revue and musicals, and in one-man shows about George Bernard Shaw and Gilbert and Sullivan, and in cinema and television films, notably Ken Russell's Song of Summer as the ailing composer Delius. His voice and acting style were distinctive: The Times referred to his "Osric-like elaborations of manner", and his voice "like no other heard on the English stage of his day, vestigially Irish and harshly attractive."
Adrian was born in Enniskillen, County Fermanagh, Ireland, the son of Edward Norman Cavendish Bor and Mabel Lloyd Thornton. He was educated at the Portora Royal School, Enniskillen, whose past pupils also included Oscar Wilde and Samuel Beckett.
Adrian began his career as a chorus boy at a silent moving-picture house, coming on as part of the chorus line while the reels were being changed. He made his stage debut in the chorus of Katja the Dancer in 1925. He then toured with Lady Be Good and The Blue Train. He made his West End debut in The Squall at the Globe Theatre in December 1927. After working with Tod Slaughter's company at Peterborough, he joined the weekly rep in Northampton, where he took some forty roles a year. He made further West End appearances in The Best of Both Worlds at the Players' Theatre in 1930, The Glass Wall at the Embassy Theatre in 1933, First Episode by Terence Rattigan and Philip Heimann at the Comedy Theatre in 1934 (later toured in the UK and then transferred to Broadway,This Desirable Residence at the Embassy in 1935, and England Expects, also at the Embassy in 1934. The Times described his performance in the last as "a gilded habitué of the backstairs" as outstanding.
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