Maurice Colbourne (actor born 1894)

Maurice Dale Colbourne (24 September 1894 – 22 September 1965) was an English actor, director and playwright. He was known for a long partnership with the actor Barry Jones, frequently in plays by Bernard Shaw. The two appeared numerous times in Canadian tours and on Broadway as well as in the West End. In later years he taught at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

Colbourne was born near Cuddington, Eddisbury, Cheshire, the youngest of four sons of Henrietta Leonora Colbourne née Krabbe and her husband Louis Colbourne, a doctor. He was educated at Repton School and Oriel College, Oxford. During the First World War he was commissioned in the 3rd Royal Berkshire Regiment. In 1919 he was the first post-war president of the OUDS, directing Thomas Hardy's The Dynasts, a vast play with more than a hundred speaking roles.^[1][2]

He made his first appearance on the professional stage at the Kingsway Theatre, London, on 14 September 1920, as the Celestial Policeman in a melodrama, The Daisy. At the Royalty Theatre in November 1920 he played Lord Monkhurst in Milestones by Arnold Bennett and Edward Knoblock.^[3] From 1920 to 1923 he played juvenile lead roles with the Stratford-on-Avon Festival Company and appeared at the Kingsway in February 1922, as the Juvenile Lead in Six Characters in Search of an Author.^[2]

After playing Polixines in The Winter's Tale at the Lyric, Hammersmith in 1923 he went to the US, and made his first appearance in New York at the Garrick Theatre (for the Theatre Guild) in December 1923, as Dunois in the premiere of Bernard Shaw's Saint Joan.^[2] At the Longacre Theatre in December 1924 he played the Justice in The Mongrel; at Hampden's in 1925 he appeared as Bassanio in Walter Hampden's revival of The Merchant of Venice.^[4] In February 1926, at the same theatre, he played the Comte de Guiche in Cyrano de Bergerac.^[2]

In 1928 Colbourne joined forces with the actor Barry Jones and from 1928 to 1931 they toured Canada and the United States with a repertory mostly consisting of plays by Bernard Shaw – You Never Can Tell, John Bull's Other Island, The Philanderer, The Doctor's Dilemma, Fanny's First Play, Arms and the Man, Candida, Man and Superman, and The Apple Cart – as well as A. A. Milne's The Dover Road and Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.^[5]

With Jones, Colbourne returned to London in 1931, and they took over the running of the Ambassadors Theatre.^[6] In their opening production Colbourne directed and took the small role of Prince William in Robert E. Sherwood's comedy The Queen's Husband,^[2] in which they subsequently toured Canada. The critic in The Ottawa Journal commented that Colbourne "contents himself with the tiny part of the princeling but it is a beautifully clear cut and humorous piece of acting".^[7] After returning to London the two again presented the play at the New Theatre. They then went to Canada again, touring in two Shaw plays: The Apple Cart and Too True to Be Good. The partners, returning to London, took the Phoenix Theatre for a not greatly successful season comprising Women Kind – a comedy by Lewis Galantière and John Houseman – and then Shakespeare's As You Like It, with Colbourne as Orlando and Jones as Jacques, with Fabia Drake as Rosalind and Joyce Carey as Celia. Despite good notices the production did not prosper at the box office: Shakespeare was not popular with West End audiences.^[8]

In New York in 1934 the partners presented Women Kind, this time retitled as And Be My Love, which was even less successful than it had been in London, closing after four nights.^[9] They had better results in the US and Canada with Reunion in Vienna, which toured for three months in 1934.^[2] At the Lyric in October 1936 Colbourne directed and played Strafford in his own play, Charles the King, with Jones as Charles I. After nine further West End plays he toured with Jones in Canada, under the auspices of the British Council in 1939, presenting Charles the King, Shaw's Geneva, and James Bridie's Tobias and the Angel. They then played Geneva in New York in January 1940. Colbourne remained in the US until 1942 appearing with The Theatre Guild in another Sherwood play, There Shall be No Night New York and throughout the US until December 1942.

Colbourne and Jones returned to England in 1942; Colbourne embarked on a lecturing tour before serving as an acting temporary lieutenant, RNVR, from May 1943 to October 1945.^[2] In 1944 he was instrumental in starting and was a director of the London branch of the Stage Door Canteen.^[3] From 1945 he taught at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He and Jones shared a house in Campden Hill, London,^[10] and subsequently on Jones's native Guernsey, where Colbourne died on 22 September 1965, aged 71.^[3] Jones outlived him by sixteen years.^[11]

• Unemployment or War (1928)
• The Real Bernard Shaw (1930)
• Economic Nationalism (1933)
• The Meaning of Social Credit (1934)
• America and Britain: A Mutual Introduction (1943)

• Gaye, Freda, ed. (1961). Who's Who in the Theatre (thirteenth ed.). London: Sir Isaac Pitman and Sons. OCLC 3039406.

• Maurice Colbourne at IMDb