Cecil Antonio "Tony" Richardson (5 June 1928 – 14 November 1991) was an English theatre and film director and producer.

Early life[link]

Richardson was born in Shipley, Yorkshire in 1928, the son of Elsie Evans (Campion) and Clarence Albert Richardson, a chemist.^[1] He was Head Boy at Ashville College, Harrogate and attended Wadham College, Oxford, where his contemporaries included Kenneth Tynan, Lindsay Anderson and Gavin Lambert. He had the unprecedented distinction of being elected President of both the Oxford University Dramatic Society and the Experimental Theatre Club (the ETC), in addition to being theatre critic for the university magazine Isis.^[2]

Career[link]

In 1955, in his directing début,^[3] Richardson produced Jean Giraudoux's The Apollo of Bellac for Television with Denholm Elliott and Natasha Parry in the main roles.^[4]

Representative of the British "New Wave" of directors, he developed the ideas that led to the formation of the English Stage Company, along with his close friend George Goetschius and George Devine. He directed John Osborne's seminal play Look Back in Anger at the Court, writing both the theatre and playwright into British theatrical history. In the same period he directed Shakespeare in Stratford-upon-Avon. Then in 1957 he directed Laurence Olivier as Archie Rice in Osborne's The Entertainer, again at the Royal Court.

In 1959, Richardson co-founded Woodfall Films with John Osborne and producer Harry Saltzman, and, as Woodfall's debut, directed the film version of Look Back in Anger despite having no track record in making feature films (he had, however, been a pioneer in Britain's Free Cinema movement; co-directing the non-fiction short Momma Don't Allow with Karel Reisz in 1955). Richardson and Osborne eventually fell out^[5] during production of the film Charge of the Light Brigade.

In 1964 Richardson received two Academy Awards (Best Director and Best Picture) for Tom Jones (1963). The prestige that lent him led immediately to The Loved One, during which he worked with established stars such as Sir John Gielgud, Rod Steiger and Robert Morse working in Hollywood both on location and on the sound stage. In his autobiography^[6] he confesses that he did not share the general admiration of Haskell Wexler, who did double duty on the picture as producer and director of photography.

The films of Richardson's mid-career had nothing in common beyond shrewd collaborations with very talented people. His screenwriters were Jean Genet, Christopher Isherwood, Marguerite Duras, Edward Bond (adapting Vladimir Nabokov), and Edward Albee. His musical composers included Antoine Duhamel, John Addison, and Shel Silverstein. Among his acting stars were Jeanne Moreau, Orson Welles, Trevor Howard, David Hemmings, Nicol Williamson, Marianne Faithfull, Richard Burton,^[7] Anthony Hopkins, Mick Jagger, Katharine Hepburn, Paul Scofield and Judi Dench.

Stylistically, the oeuvre was highly varied. Mademoiselle was shot noir-style on location in rural France with a static camera, monochrome film stock and no music. The Charge of the Light Brigade was part epic and part animated feature. Ned Kelly was what might be called an Aussie-western. Laughter in the Dark and A Delicate Balance were psycho-dramas. Joseph Andrews was a return to the mood of Tom Jones.

In 1974 he went to Los Angeles to work on a script (never produced) with Sam Shepard, and to his own surprise took up residence there.^[8] Later that year he began work on Mahogany (1975), starring Diana Ross, but was fired by Motown head Berry Gordy shortly after production began.^[9] Gordy took over direction himself.

Richardson was to make four more major films before his death. His last, Blue Sky, was released posthumously and won a Best Actress Oscar for Jessica Lange.

Personal life[link]

Richardson was married to actress Vanessa Redgrave from 1962 until they divorced in 1967. The couple had two daughters, Natasha Richardson (1963–2009) and Joely Richardson (born 1965), both actresses. He left Redgrave for actress Jeanne Moreau,^[10] although the marriage he had anticipated never materialised. In 1972 he also had a relationship with Grizelda Grimond, the daughter of British politician Jo Grimond, who was working as secretary to Richardson's partner (actually ex-partner by that time) Oscar Lewenstein. Grizelda bore him a daughter, Katharine Grimond, on 8 January 1973.^[11]

Richardson was bisexual, but never acknowledged it publicly until after he contracted AIDS. He died of complications from AIDS in 1991.^[12][10]

Filmography[link]

• Momma Don't Allow (with Karel Reisz; 1955)
• Look Back in Anger (1958)
• The Entertainer (1960)
• Sanctuary (1961)
• A Taste of Honey (1961)
• The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner (1962)
• Tom Jones (1963)
• The Loved One (1965)
• Mademoiselle (1966)
• Red and Blue (1967)
• The Sailor from Gibraltar (1967)
• The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968)
• Laughter in the Dark (1969)
• Hamlet (1969)
• Nijinsky (unfinished film; 1970)
• Ned Kelly (1970)
• A Delicate Balance (1973)
• Dead Cert (1974)
• Mahogany (uncredited; replaced by Berry Gordy 1975)
• Joseph Andrews (1977)
• A Death in Canaan (1978)
• The Border (1982)
• The Hotel New Hampshire (1984)
• The Penalty Phase (1986)
• Beryl Markham: A Shadow on the Sun (1988)
• Women and Men: Stories of Seduction (with Frederic Raphael and Ken Russell; 1990)
• The Phantom of the Opera (1990)
• Blue Sky (1994)

See also[link]

Biography portal

• Kitchen sink realism

Bibliography[link]

• Heilpern, John (2006). John Osborne: A Patriot for Us. London: Chatto & Windus. ISBN 978-0-7011-6780-6. 

• Richardson, Tony (1993). Long Distance Runner - A memoir. London: Faber & Faber. ISBN 0-571-16852-3. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Tony Richardson at the Internet Movie Database
• BFI: Tony Richardson
• Tony Richardson at Find a Grave