Word: gielgud
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...appearance of a new Hamlet on the boards of an English-speaking theatre is traditionally the signal for drama critics to begin behaving like racehorse handicappers. For when an actor goes as Prince to Elsinore he invites comparison with the past performances of flashy favorites. Last week able John Gielgud appeared on Broadway in Guthrie McClintic's Hamlet. True to tradition, play-reviewers threw down their programs, rushed to their form books to weigh Mr. Gielgud's worth against every Hamlet from Barrymore, Forbes-Robertson and Irving to Booth and Burbadge. Consensus seemed to be that next month...
...John Gielgud, a sensitive and intelligent Englishman of 32 with a nose the size of a hockey puck, was seen in the U. S. last spring as the hero of a not very exciting British film melodrama called Secret Agent. Long before that, however, London had grown accustomed to acclaiming his Hamlets. He has appeared in four separate productions between 1929 and 1936. Many who witnessed the cast of his nighted colour in Manhattan last week had no difficulty in understanding Gielgud's popularity in the role. The size of Actor Gielgud's features, ludicrous when magnified...
Those who favored lustier interpretations of the part were frankly disappointed at Gielgud's refusal or inability to scale the dramaturgic heights in the grand manner. Those who preferred the new school of low-key interpretation considered that Actor Gielgud admirably analyzed his own fluid impersonation of the world's best-known literary case of frustration when in Scene II Hamlet informs the Queen: 'Tis not alone my inky cloak...
...melodrama, Alfred Hitchcock (Thirty-Nine Steps, The Man Who Knew Too Much), Secret Agent is a first-rate sample of his knack of achieving speed by never hurrying, horror by concentrating on the prosaic. Its most irritating flaw is the old-fashioned tag shot of the faces of Gielgud and Carroll, at once clumsy and unnecessary...
...personage produced by Secret Agent. The picture also affords U. S. audiences a glimpse of the young actor who is currently London's favorite Hamlet. An elegantly slim young man upon whose emaciated face a formidable nose between gimlet eyes suggests the front of a streamlined car, John Gielgud is the 32-year-old great-nephew of the late great Ellen Terry. A product of Westminster, Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and several years of British stock, he made his reputation in successive appearances as Romeo, Hamlet and King Lear at London's Old Vic Theatre, branched...