Rachel, Lady Redgrave (28 May 1910 – 24 May 2003), known primarily by her birth name as Rachel Kempson, was an English actress. She married Sir Michael Redgrave, and was the matriarch of the famous acting dynasty.

Career[link]

Kempson trained at RADA before joining the Royal Shakespeare Company. She married Michael Redgrave in 1935 and the couple appeared together many times on stage. She also appeared many times on film and television, most notably in the films The Captive Heart (1946); Tom Jones (1963); Out of Africa (1985), Uncle Vanya (1991); and the television series The Jewel in the Crown (1984). Her 1986 autobiography, Life Among the Redgraves was published by Dutton. According to Publishers Weekly, "Lady Redgrave writes with candor, wit, restraint and some sadness about her background, beginnings in the theater in 1932, marriage and motherhood, the trials of moving and the problems of being married to a handsome matinee idol."^{[1][page needed]}

Personal life[link]

Kempson was born in Dartmouth, Devon, England, the daughter of Beatrice Hamilton (née Ashwell) and Eric William Edward Kempson, who was a headmaster.^[2]

Kempson married fellow actor Michael Redgrave in 1935, and became the daughter-in-law of Roy Redgrave and Margaret Scudamore. Kempson was the mother of Vanessa, Corin (1939–2010) and Lynn Redgrave (1943–2010) and the grandmother of Joely and Natasha Richardson (1963–2009), Jemma Redgrave, Luke Redgrave, Arden Redgrave, Harvey Redgrave, Carlo Gabriel Nero, Benjamin B. Clark, Kelly B. Clark, and Annabel Lucy Clark.

In 1959 her husband was knighted, and she became, formally, Lady Redgrave. She never used this name professionally. In 2003, four days before what would have been her 93rd birthday, she died of a stroke at the home of her granddaughter, Natasha Richardson, in Millbrook, New York. Richardson died on 18 March 2009 in a skiing accident and was buried near Kempson. Kempson's youngest daughter, Lynn Redgrave was also buried in the same cemetery on 8 May 2010, near Kempson and Richardson.

Selected filmography[link]

• The Third Secret (1964)
• Little Lord Fauntleroy (1980)

References[link]

External links[link]

• Rachel Kempson at the Internet Movie Database
• Rachel Kempson at Find a Grave

This article improperly uses one or more religious texts as primary sources without referring to secondary sources that critically analyze them. Please help improve this article by adding references to reliable secondary sources, with multiple points of view.

Saint Rachel
Rachel and Jacob by William Dyce
Holy Matriarch
Born	Paddan-aram
Died	Canaan
Honored in	Judaism Islam Christianity
Major shrine	Rachel's Tomb
Feast	Roman Catholicism: 1 November[1] Orthodox Church: Sunday before Christmas

Rachel (Hebrew: רחל, Modern Raḥel Tiberian Rāḫēl, Rāḥēl ISO 259-3 Raḥel ; meaning "ewe"^[2]) as described in the Bible, is a prophet and the favorite wife of Jacob, one of the three Biblical Patriarchs, and mother of Joseph and Benjamin. She was the daughter of Laban and the younger sister of Leah, Jacob's first wife. Jacob was her first cousin, and she was the youngest niece of Rebecca.

Marriage to Jacob[link]

Rachel is first mentioned in the Bible in Genesis 29 when Jacob happens upon her as she is watering her lamb. He had traveled a great distance to find his mother's brother, Laban. Rebekah had sent him there to be safe from his furious twin brother, Esau.

During Jacob's stay, he fell in love with Rachel and agreed to work seven years for Laban in return for her hand in marriage. On the night of the wedding, the bride was veiled and Jacob did not notice that Leah, Rachel's older sister, had been substituted for Rachel. Whereas "Rachel was lovely in form and beautiful," "Leah had tender eyes"^[3]. Later Jacob confronted Laban, who excused his own deception by insisting that the older sister should marry first. He assured Jacob that after his wedding week was finished, he could take Rachel as a wife as well, and work another seven years as payment for her.

After Leah had given birth to four sons, Rachel remained unable to conceive. She became jealous of Leah and gave Jacob her maidservant, Bilhah, to be a surrogate mother for her. Bilhah gave birth to two sons that Rachel named and raised (Dan and Naphtali). Leah responds by offering her handmaid Zilpah to Jacob, and names and raises the two sons (Gad and Asher) that Zilpah bears. According to some commentaries, Bilhah and Zilpah, are actually half-sisters of Leah and Rachel.^[4]

After Leah conceived again, Rachel was finally blessed with a son, Joseph, who would become Jacob's favorite child.

Death and burial[link]

Fresco by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo of Rachel sitting on the idols.

After Joseph's birth, Jacob decided to return to the land of Canaan with his family. Fearing that Laban would deter him, he fled with his two wives, Leah and Rachel, and twelve children without informing his father-in-law. Laban chased him and accused him of stealing his idols. Indeed, Rachel had taken her father's idols, hidden them inside her camel's seat cushion, and sat upon them. Not knowing that the idols were in his wife's possession, Jacob pronounced a curse on whoever had them: "With whoever you will find your gods, he will not live" (Genesis 31:32). Laban proceeded to search the tents of Jacob and his wives, but when he came to Rachel's tent, she told her father, "Let not my lord be angered that I cannot rise up before you, for the way of women is upon me" (Genesis 31:35). Laban left her alone, but the curse Jacob had pronounced came true shortly thereafter.

Near Ephrath, Rachel went into a difficult labor with her second son, Benjamin. The midwife tells her in the middle of the birth that her child is a boy.^[5] Before she died, Rachel named her son Ben Oni ("son of my mourning"), but Jacob called him Ben Yamin (Benjamin). Rashi explains that Ben Yamin either means "son of the right" (i.e., "south"), since Benjamin was the only one of Jacob's sons born in Canaan, which is to the south of Paddan Aram; or it could mean "son of my days," as Benjamin was born in Jacob's old age.

Rachel's Tomb, near Bethlehem, 1891

Rachel was buried by Jacob on the road to Efrat, just outside Bethlehem.^[6] Today a site claimed to be Rachel's Tomb, located between Bethlehem and the Israeli settlement of Gilo, is visited by tens of thousands of visitors each year.^[7]

Rachel and Jacob by James Tissot.

Rachel's children[link]

Rachel's son, Joseph, is destined to be the leader of Israel's tribes between exile and nationhood. This role is exemplified in the Biblical story of Joseph, who prepared the way in Egypt for his family's exile there,^[8] and in the future figure of Mashiach ben Yosef (Messiah, son of Joseph), who will fight the apocalyptic Wars of Gog and Magog, preparing the way for the kingship of Mashiach ben David (Messiah, son of David) and the messianic age.^[9][10] She also had a second son named Benjamin; she died during labor with him.

Additional references in the Bible[link]

• In Jeremiah 31:15, the prophet speaks of 'Rachel weeping for her children' (KJV). This is interpreted in Judaism as Rachel crying for an end to her descendants' sufferings and exiles following the destruction by the Babylonians of the First Temple in ancient Jerusalem. According to the Midrash, Rachel spoke before God: "If I, a mere mortal, was prepared not to humiliate my sister and was willing to take a rival into my home, how could You, the eternal, compassionate God, be jealous of idols, which have no true existence, that were brought into Your home (the Temple in Jerusalem)? Will You cause my children to be exiled on this account?" God accepted her plea and promised that, eventually, the exile would end and the Jews would return to their land.^[11]

• In the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew (part of the New Testament), this reference from Jeremiah is interpreted as a prediction of the Massacre of the Innocents by Herod the Great in his attempt to kill the young Jesus. The Jeremaic prophecy is the inspiration behind the medieval dramatic cycle Ordo Rachelis, concerned with the infancy of Jesus.

• Mordechai, the hero of the Book of Esther, and Queen Esther herself, were descendants of Rachel through her son Benjamin. The Book of Esther details Mordechai's lineage as "Mordechai the son of Yair, the son of Shimi, the son of Kish, a man of the right (ish yemini)" (Esther 2:5). The designation of ish yemini refers to his membership in the Tribe of Benjamin (ben yamin, son of the right). The rabbis comment that Esther's ability to remain silent in the palace of Ahasuerus, resisting the king's pressure to reveal her ancestry, was inherited from her ancestor Rachel, who remained silent even when Laban brought out Leah to marry Jacob.

Islamic view of Rachel[link]

Rachel is revered in Islam, and while not specifically referred to in the Quran, she is known by references to her in the collection of stories known as Qisas Al-Anbiya (Tales of the Prophets or Lives of the Prophets).^[12] The story of how Jacob fell in love with Rachel is told in the Qisas Al-Anbiya, and her beauty is described. Her role as mother to Joseph and Benjamin is the central theme of these narratives on her life.^[13]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jacob and Rachel

Look up Rachel or רחל in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

References[link]

Corin William Redgrave (16 July 1939 – 6 April 2010) was an English actor and political activist.^[1][2][3]

Early life[link]

Redgrave was born in Marylebone, London, the only son and middle child of actors Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. He was educated at the independent Westminster School and at King's College, Cambridge.^[4]

Career[link]

Redgrave played a wide range of character roles on film, television and stage.

On stage, he was noted for performances by Shakespeare (such as Much Ado About Nothing, Henry IV, Part 1, Antony and Cleopatra, and The Tempest) and Noël Coward (notably a highly successful revival of A Song At Twilight co-starring his sister Vanessa Redgrave and his second wife, Kika Markham).

For his role as the prison warden Boss Whalen in the Royal National Theatre production of Tennessee Williams's Not About Nightingales, Redgrave was nominated for an Evening Standard Award, and after a successful transfer of the production to New York, his performance garnered him a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play, in 1999.2 years later he starred in the original London production of The General from America as Benedict Arnold. When the play transferred to Broadway the following season Redgrave switched roles and portrayed George Washington .

In 2005, Redgrave had just finished an engagement playing the lead in King Lear with the Royal Shakespeare Company in London when he suffered a severe heart attack. In 2008, he returned to the stage a highly praised portrayal of Oscar Wilde in the one-man-play De Profundis. In 2009, he starred in Trumbo, which opened only hours after the death of his niece, Natasha Richardson.

On screen he is best known for his roles in such acclaimed and diverse films as A Man for All Seasons (1966) as Thomas More's son-in-law; William Roper , Excalibur (1981) as the doomed Cornwall, In the Name of the Father (1993) as the corrupt lead police investigator, Persuasion and Four Weddings and a Funeral (1994) as Hamish, the fiancee of Andie MacDowell's character.

Redgrave appeared in British television programmes such as Ultraviolet, The Vice, Trial & Retribution, Shameless, Foyle's War, The Relief of Belsen and the Emmy Award-winning telefilm The Girl in the Cafe, in which he played the prime minister. He took the lead part of Sir George Grey in the 1977 New Zealand TV miniseries The Governor.

He wrote a play "Blunt Speaking" in which he performed at the Minerva Theatre (part of the Chichester Festival Theatre) between 23 July - 10 August 2002. (review The Mail on Sunday July 28, 2002)

Politics[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Redgrave was a lifelong activist in left-wing politics. With his elder sister Vanessa, he was a prominent member of the Workers' Revolutionary Party and wrote articles for the official journal of the Marxist Party.^[5] More recently, he became a defender of the interests of the Romani people.

Both Redgrave and his second wife, Kika Markham, expressed support for Viva Palestina, a humanitarian convoy, led by British MP George Galloway, attempting to break what they asserted to be the siege of the Gaza Strip.

Family[link]

Corin Redgrave was part of the third generation of a theatrical dynasty spanning four generations.

• His paternal grandparents were Roy Redgrave and Margaret Scudamore.
• His parents were Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson. He wrote a biography of his father.
• His older sister is Vanessa; his younger sister was Lynn Redgrave; through Vanessa, his nieces were Joely and Natasha Richardson and his nephew was Carlo Gabriel Nero.
• His first marriage was to Deirdre Deline Hamilton-Hill (1939–1981).^[6] They had a daughter, actress Jemma Redgrave, and a son, Luke, a camera operator and production assistant. Redgrave and Hamilton-Hill divorced in 1975.^[7]
• Redgrave had two sons, Harvey (born 1979) and Arden (born 1983) by actress Kika Markham. Redgrave and Markham married in 1985 in Wandsworth, London,^[6] and remained together until Redgrave's death.

He wrote a memoir about his strained relationship with his father titled Michael Redgrave - My Father, which incorporates passages from Michael's diaries. It was also noted for revealing his father's bisexuality.^[1]

Health problems and death[link]

Redgrave was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2000.^[8] In June 2005, he was described by his family as being in a critical but stable condition in hospital following a severe heart attack at a public meeting in Basildon, Essex.^[4] In March 2009, Redgrave returned to the London stage playing the title role in Trumbo, based on the life of the blacklisted Hollywood screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. On the opening night, Redgrave dedicated his performance to the memory of his niece Natasha Richardson who had died earlier that week in a skiing accident.

He died on 6 April 2010 in St George's Hospital,^[9] Tooting, South West London.^[10] His funeral was held on 12 April 2010 at St Paul's, Covent Garden,^[11] London.^[12]

His ex-wife Deirdre died of cancer in 1997. His sister Lynn died of breast cancer on 2 May 2010, less than a month after his death.

Select Stage Work[link]

• Henry IV Part I
• Anthony and Cleopatra
• The Seagull
• Not About Nightingales
• A Song At Twilight
• The General From America
• De Profundis
• Trumbo

Filmography[link]