Frith Banbury
Frederick Harold Frith Banbury MBE (4 May 1912 – 14 May 2008) was a British theatre actor and director.[1]
Frith Banbury | |
|---|---|
| Born | Frederick Harold Frith Banbury 4 May 1912 |
| Died | 14 May 2008 (aged 96) London, England |
| Occupation(s) | Actor Stage director |
| Years active | 1933–2000 |
Banbury was born in Plymouth, Devon, on 4 May 1912, the son of Rear Admiral Frederick Arthur Frith Banbury and his wife Winifred (née Fink).[2]
While attending Stowe School, Banbury rejected his father's naval background by refusing to join the Officer Training Corps, later being registered as a conscientious objector, enabling him to continue acting throughout the Second World War.[3] He went on to attend Hertford College, Oxford,[2] though he left after one year without obtaining an academic degree.[4] He trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art alongside Joan Littlewood, Rachel Kempson,[3] Robert Morley, and Peter Bull.[5]
Theatrical career
Banbury made his first stage appearance on 15 June 1933, playing a walk-on part in If I Were You at the Shaftesbury Theatre. He continued to act through the 1930s and 40s, appearing at such venues as the Ambassadors Theatre, the Little Theatre, the Gate Theatre, the Apollo Theatre, and the Q Theatre.[2]
After World War II, Banbury was invited back to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to direct. He made his professional directing breakthrough by directing Dark Summer, a play written by fellow pacifist Wynyard Browne. Other early successes for Banbury included The Holly and the Ivy, Waters of the Moon, and The Deep Blue Sea.[3]
The latter was one of three plays which Banbury directed on Broadway, with the other two being Flowering Cherry and The Right Honourable Gentleman.[6] Other locations at which Banbury directed plays include the Cambridge Theatre in 1971, (Captain Brassbound's Conversion), Old Vic theatre, the Edinburgh Festival, the Chichester Festival Theatre, Paris, Dublin, South Africa, Kenya, and Australia.[2]
Archive
The papers of Frith Banbury were purchased by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1990s as part of their extensive holdings of contemporary British theatre. The collection opened to the public in 1996. The archive consists of over sixty boxes of scripts, correspondence, posters, programs, photographs, publicity clippings and scrapbooks, reviews, and financial records pertaining to his career from 1926-1995.[7] The Ransom Center also holds a collection of material relating to the 1952 American production of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, which was directed by Banbury.[8]
Filmography
Film
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1938 | Goodness, How Sad | Peter Thropp | TV film |
| 1943 | The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp | Baby-Face Fitzroy | |
| 1948 | Bond Street | Dress Designer | Uncredited |
| 1949 | The History of Mr. Polly | Gold-Spectacled Young Man | Uncredited |
| The Huggetts Abroad | French Doctor |
References
- "Frith Banbury profile". Archived from the original on 7 November 2017. Retrieved 19 November 2022.
- Ian Herbert, ed. (1981). "BANBURY, Frith". Who's Who in the Theatre. Vol. 1. Gale Research Company. p. 40. ISSN 0083-9833.
- Billington, Michael (16 May 2008). "Frith Banbury". The Guardian. Retrieved 7 February 2018.
- "Hertford College Magazine No.88" (PDF). Hertford College. 2008. p. 76. Retrieved 29 May 2023.
- "Frith Banbury, Director whose 1950s reign at the Haymarket Theatre championed writers such as Robert Bolt and Rodney Ackland". The Times. London. 16 May 2008. Retrieved 17 December 2009.
- Frith Banbury at the Internet Broadway Database
- "Frederick Harold Frith Banbury: A Preliminary Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center". norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Retrieved 30 May 2016.
- The Ransom Center, norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Accessed 19 November 2022.