Dame Flora McKenzie Robson, DBE 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 murderesses. Early life
Robson was born in South Shields, County Durham, of Scottish descent to a family
of six siblings. Many of her forebears were engineers, mostly in shipping. Her
father was a ship's engineer who moved from Wallsend near Newcastle to Palmers
Green in 1907 and Southgate in 1910, both in north London, and later to
Welwyn Garden City. She was educated at the Palmers Green
High School and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
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,
aged 19. In cinema she was often chosen for character roles, notably that of
Queen Elizabeth I in both Fire Over England and The Sea Hawk. At the age of
32, Robson played the Empress Elizabeth in Alexander Korda's Catherine the
Great. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for
her role as Ingrid Bergman's servant in Saratoga Trunk. That same year audiences
in the U.K. and the U.S. watched her hypnotic performance as Ftatateeta, the
nursemaid, royal confidante and assassin to Vivien Leigh's Queen Cleopatra, in
the screen adaptation of George Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra.
After the Second World War, demonstrating her range, she appeared in
Holiday Camp, the first of a series of films which featured the very ordinary
Huggett family; as Sister Philippa in Black Narcissus; as a magistrate in
Goodtime Girl; as a prospective Labour MP in Frieda; and in costume melodrama,
Saraband for Dead Lovers. Her other film roles included the Empress Dowager Cixi
in the 1963 film 55 Days at Peking, the Queen of Hearts in Alice's Adventures in
Wonderland, Livia in the abortively-attempted I, Claudius, Miss
Milchrest in Murder at the Gallop. 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, alongside a youthful John Gielgud, but her contract was not
renewed: she was told, as tactfully as possible, that they required a prettier
actress. Unable to secure any acting engagements she gave up the stage at the
age of 23 and in a disconsolate life-change she took up work as a
welfare officer in the Shredded Wheat factory in Welwyn Garden City. For four
years, Dame Flora, who would become one of the half dozen finest dramatic
actresses of her generation, continued in this twilight zone until the young
Tyrone Guthrie, due to direct a season at the new Festival Theatre, Cambridge,
asked her to join his company. It was the dramatic making of her. Her acting –
as the stepdaughter in Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an author – made
her the theatrical talk of Cambridge. She followed on to as much excited
applause with Isabella in Measure for Measure, opposite a youthful Robert
Donat, Iphigenia, Pirandello's Naked, the title role in Iphigenia, Varya in
the Cherry Orchard and finally the huge challenge of Rebecca West in Ibsen's
Rosmersholm. These performances signalled the arrival of an actress who
could either transmit emotional stress or simply hint at it, with rare power.
Never again, in a career which was a constant struggle to achieve the roles
worthy of her talents, would she have such a run of opportunities. In her
second season, though, she had few dramatic opportunities and once again
her lack of chocolate-box appeal meant that the management dispensed with her
services. Yet chance or destiny came to her rescue
in the early 1930s, when she was cast as the adulterous Abbie in Eugene O'Neill's
Desire under the Elms, a play which in that age of stage censorship was
considered too shocking to be given a public performance. In the little club
theatre, The Gate, near Charing Cross, she scored a direct hit with audiences
and critics alike. It was, though, her brief, shocking appearance as the doomed
prostitute in James Bridie's play The Anatomist that 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, opposite Charles Laughton. By the
end of it she was caught in the theatrical firmament as a star.
She acted late into life, though not on the West End stage, from which she
retired at the age of 67, latterly often for American television films, including
a lavish production of A Tale of Two Cities. She also gave performances for
British television, including The Shrimp and the Anemone. In the 1960s she
continued to act in the West End, in such plays as Ring Round the Moon, The
Importance of Being Earnest and Three Sisters.
Dame Flora's career ran down after her curious decision to leave the stage
after The Old Ladies. However she continued to act on film and television,
though the roles were often not rewarding at all. She was last briefly
seen 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.
Honours She was nominated for an Academy Award
for Best Supporting Actress as Angelique, a Haitian maid, in Saratoga
Trunk. She was created a Commander of the Order
of the British Empire in 1952, and raised to Dame Commander in 1960. She
was also the first famous name to become President of the Brighton Little
Theatre. On 4 July 1958, she received an honorary
DLitt from Durham University at a congregation in Durham Castle.
She was the subject of This Is Your Life in February 1961 when she was surprised
by Eamonn Andrews in central London. Personal life and death
Her private life was largely focused on her large family of sisters, nephews and
nieces, who used the home in Wykeham Terrace, Brighton, which she shared with
sisters, Margaret and Shela. She died in Brighton, possibly from
cancer, aged 82, although the exact cause was never revealed. She had never
been married or had any children. The two sisters, with whom she shared her
life and home, 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 their house in Wykeham Terrace, Dyke Road,
Brighton, and also one in the doorway of St. Nicholas's Church, just up the hill
from their house and of which Flora Robson was a great supporter.
There is also a plaque to commemorate the opening of the Prince Charles
Theatre by Flora Robson. In 1996, the British Film Institute
erected a plaque at number 14 Marine Gardens, location of Flora'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. Partial filmography
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
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
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
Duchess Theatre, London, 1969 Elizabeth I in Elizabeth Tudor, Queen of
England at the Edinburgh Festival, 1970 References
External links Flora Robson at the Internet Movie
Database Flora Robson at the Internet Broadway
Database Flora Robson performances in the Theatre
Archive, University of Bristol Flora Robson's appearance on This Is
Your Life