Flora Robson

Dame Flora McKenzie Robson (28 March 19027 July 1984) was an English actress and star of the theatrical stage and cinema, particularly renowned for her performances in plays demanding dramatic and emotional intensity. Her range extended from queens to murderers.

Early life Flora McKenzie Robson was born on 28 March 1902 in South Shields, County Durham, daughter of David Robson (1864–1947) and Eliza Robson (née McKenzie; 1870–1953) both of Scottish descent. She had six siblings. where she won a bronze medal in 1921.

Career Her father discovered that Flora had a talent for recitation and, from the age of five, she was taken around by horse and carriage to recite, and to compete in recitations. This established a pattern that remained with her.

Robson made her stage debut in 1921. In 1934, Robson played the Empress Elizabeth in Alexander Korda's The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934). She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role as Angelique Buiton, a servant, in Saratoga Trunk (1945). The same year, audiences in the U.K. and the U.S. watched her performance as Ftatateeta, the nursemaid and royal confidante and murderer-upon-command to Vivien Leigh's Queen Cleopatra in the screen adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra (1945).

After the Second World War, demonstrating her range, she appeared in Holiday Camp (1947), the first of a series of films which featured the very ordinary Huggett family; as Sister Philippa in Black Narcissus (1947); as a magistrate in Good-Time Girl (1948); as a prospective Labour MP in Frieda (1947); and in the costume melodrama Saraband for Dead Lovers (1948). Her other film roles included the Empress Dowager Cixi in 55 Days at Peking (1963), Miss Milchrest in Murder at the Gallop (1963), the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1972), and Livia in the aborted I, Claudius in 1937.

She struggled to find a footing in the theatre after she graduated from RADA with a bronze medal since she lacked the conventional good looks which were then an absolute requisite for actresses in dramatic roles. After touring in minor parts with Ben Greet's Shakespeare company she may have played small parts for two seasons in the new repertory company at Oxford, but her contract was not renewed. Unable to secure any acting engagements, she gave up the stage at the age of 23, and she took up work as a welfare officer in the Nabisco shredded wheat factory in Welwyn Garden City. Her performance as the stepdaughter in Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author made her the theatrical talk of Cambridge. She followed with Isabella in Measure for Measure with Robert Donat, Pirandello's Naked, the title role in Iphigenia in Tauris, Varya in The Cherry Orchard, and Rebecca West in Henrik Ibsen's Rosmersholm.

In 1931, she was cast as the adulterous Abbie in Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms. Her brief, shocking appearance as the doomed prostitute in James Bridie's play The Anatomist put her firmly on the road to success. "If you are not moved by this girl's performance, then you are immovable" the Observer critic wrote. This success would lead to her famous 1933 season as leading lady at the Old Vic.

She continued her acting career late into life, though not on the West End stage, from which she retired at the age of 67, often for American television films, including a lavish production of A Tale of Two Cities (in which she played Miss Pross). She also performed for British television, including The Shrimp and the Anemone. In the 1960s, she continued to act in the West End, in Ring Round the Moon, The Importance of Being Earnest and Three Sisters, among others.

She continued to act on film and television. She was last briefly seen as a Stygian Witch in the fantasy adventure Clash of the Titans in 1981. Both the BBC and ITV made special programmes to celebrate her 80th birthday in 1982, and the BBC ran a short season of her best films.

Awards and honours She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress as Angelique Buiton, a Haitian maid, in Saratoga Trunk (1945).

She was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 1952 New Year Honours, and raised to Dame Commander (DBE) in the 1960 Birthday Honours. She was also the first famous name to become president of the Brighton Little Theatre. She has a road named after her in her birthplace of South Shields.

On 4 July 1958, she received an honorary DLitt from Durham University at a congregation in Durham Castle.

Personal life and death

Her private life was largely focused on her large family of sisters Margaret and Shela, and her nephews and nieces.

She shared a home in Wykeham Terrace, Brighton with her sisters for 8 years before she died in Brighton, aged 82, in her sleep, of cancer. She was never married and had no children. The sisters died around the same time: Shela shortly before Flora, in 1984, and Margaret on 1 February 1985.

Legacies Dame Flora Robson Avenue, built in 1962, in Simonside, South Shields, is named after her. There is a plaque on the house in Wykeham Terrace, Dyke Road, Brighton, and also one in the doorway of St Nicholas's Church, of which Flora Robson was a great supporter.

There is also a plaque to commemorate the opening of the Prince Charles Cinema (Leicester Square, London) by Flora Robson.

In 1996, the British Film Institute erected a plaque at number 14 Marine Gardens, location of Flora Robson's other home in Brighton, where she lived from 1961 to 1976.

A plaque at 40 Handside Lane in Welwyn Garden City records Flora Robson living there from 1923 to 1925.

A blue plaque sponsored by Southgate District Civic Trust and Robson's former school Palmers Green High School was unveiled at her family home from 1910 to 1921, The Lawe, 65, The Mall, Southgate, on 25 April 2010. The building was demolished in 1971 and the theatre company it housed relocated to the new University Theatre.

Filmography Year Title Role Note1931 A Gentleman of Paris Uncredited1932 Dance Pretty Lady Mrs. Raeburn 1933 One Precious Year Julia Skene 1934 The Rise of Catherine the Great Empress ElisabethThe Private Life of Don Juan Undetermined Role (scenes deleted)1937 Fire Over England Queen Elizabeth I of England Farewell Again Lucy Blair I, Claudius Livia Also in The Epic that Never Was 1939 Wuthering Heights Ellen Dean Smith Mary Smith ShortPoison Pen Mary Rider We Are Not Alone Jessica Newcome Invisible Stripes Mrs. Taylor 1940 The Sea Hawk Queen Elizabeth I1941 Bahama Passage Mrs. Ainsworth 1944 Two Thousand Women Miss Manningford 1945 Great Day Mrs. Liz Ellis Saratoga Trunk Angelique Buiton Nominated - Academy Award for Best Supporting ActressCaesar and Cleopatra Ftatateeta Dumb Dora Discovers Tobacco Short1946 The Years Between Nanny 1947 Black Narcissus Sister Philippa Frieda Nell Holiday Camp Esther Harman 1948 Good-Time Girl Miss Thorpe Saraband for Dead Lovers Countess Platen 1952 The Tall Headlines Mary Rackham 1953 Malta Story Melita Gonzar 1954 Romeo and Juliet Nurse 1957 High Tide at Noon Donna MacKenzie No Time for Tears Sister Birch 1958 The Gypsy and the Gentleman Mrs. Haggard Innocent Sinners Olivia Chesney 1959 This Is the BBC 1963 55 Days at Peking Dowager Empress Tzu-HsiMurder at the Gallop Miss Milchrest 1964 Guns at Batasi Miss Barker-Wise 1965 Young Cassidy Mrs. Cassidy Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines Mother Superior 1966 7 Women Miss Binns Eye of the Devil Countess Estell 1967 The Shuttered Room Aunt Agatha Cry in the Wind Anasthasia 1970 Fragment of Fear Lucy Dawson 1971 La grande scrofa nera La Nonna The Beast in the Cellar Joyce Ballantyne The Beloved Antigone 1972 Alice's Adventures in Wonderland Queen of Hearts1975 The Canterville Ghost Mrs. Umney TV movie1978 Les Misérables The Prioress TV movie 1980 Dominique Mrs. Davis Gauguin the Savage Sister Allandre TV movieA Tale of Two Cities Miss Pross TV movie1981 Clash of the Titans A Stygian Witch final film role

Partial television credits

Theatre performances Queen Margaret in Will Shakespeare at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London, 1921 Shakespearean repertory with Ben Greet's company, 1922 JB Fagan's company at the Oxford Playhouse, 1923 Two seasons at the Festival Theatre, Cambridge, 1929–30 Abbey Putnam in Desire Under the Elms at the Gate Theatre, London, 1931 Herodias in Salome at the Gate Theatre, London, 1931 Mary Paterson in The Anatomist at the Westminster Theatre, London, 1931 Stepdaughter in Six Characters in Search of an Author at the Westminster Theatre, London, 1932 Bianca in Othello at the St. James' Theatre, London, 1932 Olwen Peel in Dangerous Corner at the Lyric Theatre, London, 1932 Eva in For Services Rendered at the Globe Theatre, London, 1932 Ella Downey in All God's Chillun Got Wings at the Embassy Theatre, Swiss Cottage, 1933 A season at the Old Vic, London, 1933–34 Mary Read in Mary Read at His Majesty's Theatre, London 1934 Lady Catherine Brooke in Autumn at the St. Martin's Theatre, London, 1937 Ellen Creed in Ladies in Retirement at the Henry Miller's Theatre, New York, 1940 Sarah, Duchess of Malborough in Anne of England at the St. James Theatre, New York, 1941 Rhoda Meldrum in The Damask Cheek at the Playhouse Theatre, New York, 1942–43 Thérèse Raquin in Guilty at the Lyric, Hammersmith, 1944 Agnes Isit in A Man About the House at the Piccadilly Theatre, 1946 Lady Macbeth in Macbeth at the National Theatre, New York, 1948 Lady Cicely Waynflete in Captain Brassbound's Conversion at the Lyric, Hammersmith, 1948 Christine in Black Chiffon, at the Westminster Theatre, 1949 and the 48th Street Theatre, New York, 1950 Lady Catherine Brooke in Autumn at the Q Theatre, London, 1951 Paulina in The Winter's Tale at the Phoenix Theatre, London, 1951 The Return at the Duchess Theatre, London, 1953–54 Janet in The House by the Lake at the Duke of York's Theatre, London, 1956 Mrs Alving in Ghosts at the Old Vic, 1958–59 and the Prince's Theatre, London, 1959 Miss Tina in The Aspern Papers at the Queen's Theatre, London, 1959 and on tour to South Africa, 1960 Grace Rovarte in Time and Yellow Roses at the St. Martin's Theatre, London, 1961 Miss Moffatt in The Corn is Green at the Connaught Theatre, Worthing, the Flora Robson Playhouse, Newcastle upon Tyne and on tour to South Africa, 1962 Gunhild in John Gabriel Borkman at the Duchess Theatre, London, 1963 Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Flora Robson Playhouse, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1964 Hecuba in The Trojan Women at the Edinburgh Festival, 1966 Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, 1968 Mother in Ring Round the Moon at the Theatre Royal Haymarket, London, 1968 Agatha Payne in The Old Ladies at the Westminster Theatre and the Duchess Theatre, London, 1969 Elizabeth I in Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of England at the Edinburgh Festival, 1970

Sound recordings Robson can heard as Agatha in the Caedmon Records production of T.S. Elio t's The Family Reunion, as the Countess of Roussillion in Caedmon's All's Well That Ends Well, and in an anthology of spoken poetry. .