Concept

Cyril Raymond

Summary

Cyril William North Raymond MBE (13 February 1899 – 20 March 1973) was a British character actor. He maintained a stage and screen career from his teens until his retirement, caused by ill health, in the 1960s. His many stage, film and television roles include Fred Jesson, the husband of Celia Johnson's Laura Jesson in Brief Encounter (1945). Raymond was the son of Herbert Linton Raymond and his second wife, Rose ( Knowles). Herbert died in 1906 at the Grand Hotel, Broad Street, Bristol, which he and his wife ran. Raymond became a pupil at Sir Herbert Tree's Academy of Dramatic Art. He made his professional debut in 1914 at the Garrick Theatre, London, playing the Second Spanish Gentleman in Bluff King Hal. As Little Billee in Trilby he supported Tree's Svengali at His Majesty's Theatre in 1915. While still a boy actor he appeared in plays by Louis N. Parker, Edward Knoblock and Harold Brighouse. In 1916, he played a major juvenile role, Lord Deerford, in Parker's Disraeli. The Observer reported that he "played very cleverly". A film was made of the play; he repeated his role of Deerford. In 1922 Raymond married the actress Iris Hoey. They had one child, John Raymond, who became an author and critic. The couple co-starred in several West End plays in the 1920s; Raymond also worked extensively with the producer Basil Dean. He and Hoey divorced in 1936 and the following year he married the actress Gillian Lind. In the view of Raymond's obituarist in The Times it was in the mid-1930s that "he found what might be called his vocation, in contributing balanced, controlled, humorous pieces of acting as foils to more flamboyant performances by highly accomplished leading ladies". He co-starred as the spouse or partner of a range of leading ladies over the next twenty or so years, including Sybil Thorndike in Short Story (1935), Ruth Chatterton in The Constant Wife (1937 revival), Gertrude Lawrence in September Tide (1948), Edith Evans in Waters of the Moon (1953) and Yvonne Arnaud in Mrs Willie (1956).

Official source

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyril_Raymond

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