title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: A primary agent used in stifling the local extreme nationalist elements was the Germanic SS, which initially merely consisted of local respective branches of the "Allgemeine-SS" in Belgium, Netherlands and Norway. These groups were at first under the authority of their respective pro-Nazi national commanders (De Clercq, Mussert and Quisling), and were intended to function within their own national territories only. During the course of 1942, however, the Germanic SS was further transformed into a tool used by Himmler against the influence of the less extreme collaborating parties and their SA-style organizations, such as the "Hird" in Norway and the "Weerbaarheidsafdeling" in the Netherlands. In the post-war Germanic Empire, these men were to form the new leadership cadre of their respective national territories. To emphasize their pan-Germanic ideology, the "Norges SS" was now renamed the "Germanske SS Norge", the "Nederlandsche SS" the "Germaansche SS in Nederland" and the "Algemeene-SS Vlaanderen" the "Germaansche SS in Vlaanderen". The men of these groups no longer swore allegiance to their respective national leaders, but to the "germanischer Führer" ("Germanic Führer"), Adolf Hitler:


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: This title was assumed by Hitler on 23 June 1941, at the suggestion of Himmler. On 12 December 1941 the Dutch right-wing nationalist Anton Mussert also addressed him in this fashion when he proclaimed his allegiance to Hitler during a visit to the Reich Chancellery in Berlin. He had wanted to address Hitler as "Führer aller Germanen" ("Führer of all Germanics"), but Hitler personally decreed the former style. Historian Loe de Jong speculates on the difference between the two: "Führer aller Germanen" implied a position separate from Hitler's role as "Führer und Reichskanzler des Grossdeutschen Reiches" ("Führer and Reich Chancellor of the Greater German Reich"), while "germanischer Führer" served more as an attribute of that main function. As late as 1944 occasional propaganda publications continued to refer to him by this unofficial title as well however. Mussert held that Hitler was predestined to become the Führer of Germanics because of his congruous personal history: Hitler originally was an Austrian national, who enlisted in the Bavarian army and lost his Austrian citizenship. He thus remained stateless for seven years, during which, according to Mussert, he was "the Germanic leader and nothing else".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The Swastika Flag was to be used as a symbol to represent not only the Nazi Party, but also the unity of the Nordic-Germanic peoples into a single state. The swastika was seen by many Nazis as a fundamentally Germanic and European symbol despite its presence among many cultures worldwide.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Hitler had long intended to architecturally reconstruct the German capital Berlin into a new imperial metropolis, which he decided in 1942 to rename "Germania" upon its scheduled completion in 1950. The name was specifically chosen to make it the clear central point of the envisioned Germanic empire, and to re-enforce the notion of a united Germanic-Nordic state upon the Germanic peoples of Europe.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The German plans of annexation were more advanced for the Low Countries than for the Nordic states. Luxembourg and Belgium were both formally annexed into the German Reich during World War II, in 1942 and 1944 respectively, the latter as the new "Reichsgaue" of Flandern and Wallonien (the proposed third one, Brabant, was not implemented in this arrangement) and a Brussels District. On April 5, 1942, while having dinner with an entourage including Heinrich Himmler, Hitler declared his intention that the Low Countries would be included whole into the Reich, at which point the "Greater German Reich" would be reformed into the "Germanic Reich" (simply "the Reich" in common parlance) to signify this change.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: In October 1940 Hitler disclosed to Benito Mussolini that he intended to leave the Netherlands semi-independent because he wanted that country to retain its overseas colonial empire after the war. This factor was removed after the Japanese took over the Netherlands East Indies, the primary component of that domain. The resulting German plans for the Netherlands suggested its transformation into a "Gau Westland", which would eventually be further broken-up into five new "Gaue" or "gewesten" (historical Dutch term for a type of sub-national polity). Fritz Schmidt, a ranking German official in the occupied Netherlands who hoped to become the Gauleiter of this new province on Germany's western periphery stated that it could even be called "Gau Holland", as long as the Wilhelmus (the Dutch national anthem) and similar patriotic symbols were to be forbidden. Rotterdam, which had actually been largely destroyed in the course of the 1940 invasion was to be rebuilt as the most important port-city in the "Germanic area" due to its situation at the mouth of the Rhine river.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Himmler's personal masseur Felix Kersten claimed that the former even contemplated resettling the entire Dutch population, some 8 million people in total at the time, to agricultural lands in the Vistula and Bug River valleys of German-occupied Poland as the most efficient way of facilitating their immediate Germanization. In this eventuality he is alleged to have further hoped to establish an "SS Province of Holland" in vacated Dutch territory, and to distribute all confiscated Dutch property and real estate among reliable SS-men. However this claim was shown to be a myth by Loe de Jong in his book "Two Legends of the Third Reich".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The position in the future empire of the Frisians, another Germanic people, was discussed on 5 April 1942 in one of Hitler's many wartime dinner-conversations. Himmler commented that there was ostensibly no real sense of community between the different indigenous ethnic groups in the Netherlands. He then stated that the Dutch Frisians in particular seemed to hold no affection for being part of a nation-state based on the Dutch national identity, and felt a much greater sense of kinship with their German Frisian brethren across the Ems River in East Frisia, an observation Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel agreed with based on his own experiences. Hitler determined that the best course of action in that case would be to unite the two Frisian regions on both sides of the border into a single province, and would at a later point in time further discuss the topic with Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the governor of the German regime in the Netherlands. By late May of that year these discussions were apparently concluded, as on the 29th he pledged that he would not allow the West-Frisians to remain part of Holland, and that since they were "part of the exact same race as the people of East Frisia" had to be joined into one province.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Hitler considered Wallonia to be "in reality German lands" which were gradually detached from the Germanic territories by the French Romanization of the Walloons, and that Germany thus had "every right" to take these back. Before the decision was made to include Wallonia in its entirety, several smaller areas straddling the traditional Germanic-Romance language border in Western Europe were already considered for inclusion. These included the small Lëtzebuergesh-speaking area centred on Arlon, as well as the Low Dietsch-speaking region west of Eupen (the so-called "Platdietse Streek") around the city of Limbourg, historical capital of the Duchy of Limburg.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: After their invasion in Operation Weserübung, Hitler vowed that he would never again leave Norway, and favored annexing Denmark as a German province even more due to its small size and relative closeness to Germany. Himmler's hopes were an expansion of the project so that Iceland would also be included among the group of Germanic countries which would have to be gradually incorporated into the Reich. He was also among the group of more esoteric Nazis who believed either Iceland or Greenland to be the mystical land of Thule, a purported original homeland of the ancient Aryan race. From a military point of view, the Kriegsmarine command hoped to see the Spitsbergen, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Isles and possibly the Shetland Isles (which were also claimed by the Quisling regime) under its domination to guarantee German naval access to the mid-Atlantic.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: There was preparation for the construction of a new German metropolis of 300,000 inhabitants called "Nordstern" ("North Star") next to the Norwegian city of Trondheim. It would be accompanied by a new naval base that was intended to be Germany's largest. This city was to be connected to Germany proper by an Autobahn across the Little and Great Belts. It would also house an art museum for the northern part of the Germanic empire, housing "only works of German artists."


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Sweden's future subordination into the 'New Order' was considered by the regime. Himmler stated that the Swedes were the "epitome of the Nordic spirit and the Nordic man", and looked forward to incorporating central and southern Sweden to the Germanic Empire. Himmler offered northern Sweden, with its Finnish minority, to Finland, along with the Norwegian port of Kirkenes, although this suggestion was rejected by Finnish Foreign Minister Witting. Felix Kersten, claimed that Himmler had expressed regret that Germany had not occupied Sweden during Operation Weserübung, but was certain that this error was to be rectified after the war. In April 1942, Goebbels expressed similar views in his diary, writing that Germany should have occupied the country during its campaign in the north, as "this state has no right to national existence anyway". In 1940, Hermann Göring suggested that Sweden's future position in the Reich was similar to that of Bavaria in the German Empire. The ethnically Swedish Åland Islands, which were awarded to Finland by the League of Nations in 1921, were likely to join Sweden in the Germanic Empire. In the spring of 1941, the German military attaché in Helsinki reported to his Swedish counterpart that Germany would need transit rights through Sweden for the imminent invasion of the Soviet Union, and in the case of finding her cooperative would permit the Swedish annexation of the islands. Hitler did veto the idea of a complete union between the two states of Sweden and Finland, however.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Despite the majority of its people being of Finnic origin, Finland was given the status of being an "honorary Nordic nation" (from a Nazi racial perspective, not a national one) by Hitler as reward for its military importance in the ongoing conflict against the Soviet Union. The Swedish-speaking minority of the country, who in 1941 comprised 9.6% of the total population, were considered Nordic and were initially preferred over Finnish speakers in recruitment for the Finnish Volunteer Battalion of the Waffen-SS. Finland's Nordic status did not mean however that it was intended to be absorbed into the Germanic Empire, but instead expected to become the guardian of Germany's northern flank against the hostile remnants of a conquered USSR by attaining control over Karelian territory, occupied by the Finns in 1941. Hitler also considered the Finnish and Karelian climates unsuitable for German colonization. Even so, the possibility of Finland's eventual inclusion as a federated state in the empire as a long-term objective was mulled over by Hitler in 1941, but by 1942 he seems to have abandoned this line of thinking. According to Kersten, as Finland signed an armistice with the Soviet Union and broke off diplomatic relations with her former brother-in-arms Germany in September 1944, Himmler felt remorse for not eliminating the Finnish state, government and its "masonic" leadership sooner, and transforming the country into a "National Socialist Finland with a Germanic outlook".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The same implicit hostility toward neutral nations such as Sweden was also held towards Switzerland. Goebbels noted in his diary on December 18, 1941, that "It would be a veritable insult to God if they [the neutrals] would not only survive this war unscathed while the major powers make such great sacrifices, but also profit from it. We will certainly make sure that this will not happen."


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The Swiss people were seen by Nazi ideologists as a mere offshoot of the German nation, although one led astray by decadent Western ideals of democracy and materialism. Hitler decried the Swiss as "a misbegotten branch of our "Volk"" and the Swiss state as "a pimple on the face of Europe" deeming them unsuitable for settling the territories that the Nazis expected to colonize in Eastern Europe.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Himmler discussed plans with his subordinates to integrate at least the German-speaking parts of Switzerland completely with the rest of Germany, and had several persons in mind for the post of a Reichskommissar for the 're-union' of Switzerland with the German Reich (in analogy to the office that Josef Bürckel held after Austria's absorption into Germany during the "Anschluss"). Later this official was to subsequently become the new Reichsstatthalter of the area after completing its total assimilation. In August 1940, Gauleiter of Westfalen-South Josef Wagner and the Minister President of Baden Walter Köhler spoke in favor of the amalgamation of Switzerland to "Reichsgau Burgund" (see below) and suggested that the seat of government for this new administrative territory should be the dormant "Palais des Nations" in Geneva.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Operation Tannenbaum, a military offensive intended to occupy all of Switzerland, most likely in co-operation with Italy (which itself desired the Italian-speaking areas of Switzerland), was in the planning stages during 1940–1941. Its implementation was seriously considered by the German military after the armistice with France, but it was definitively shelved after the start of Operation Barbarossa had directed the attention of the Wehrmacht elsewhere.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: In the aftermath of the Munich Agreement, Hitler and French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier in December 1938 made an agreement that officially declared that Germany was relinquishing its previous territorial claims on Alsace-Lorraine in the interest of maintaining peaceful relations between France and Germany and both pledged to be involved in mutual consultation on matters involving the interests of both countries. However at the same time Hitler in private advised the High Command of the Wehrmacht to prepare operational plans for a joint German–Italian war against France.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Under the auspices of State Secretary Wilhelm Stuckart the Reich Interior Ministry produced an initial memo for the planned annexation of a strip of eastern France in June 1940, stretching from the mouth of the Somme to Lake Geneva, and on July 10, 1940, Himmler toured the region to inspect its Germanization potential. According to documents produced in December 1940, the annexed territory would consist of nine French departments, and the Germanization action would require the settlement of a million Germans from "peasant families". Himmler decided that South Tyrolean emigrants (see South Tyrol Option Agreement) would be used as settlers, and the towns of the region would receive South Tyrolean place-names such as Bozen, Brixen, Meran, and so on. By 1942 Hitler had, however, decided that the South Tyroleans would be instead used to settle the Crimea, and Himmler regretfully noted "For Burgundy, we will just have to find another [Germanic] ethnic group."


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Hitler claimed French territory even beyond the historical border of the Holy Roman Empire. He stated that in order to ensure German hegemony on the continent, Germany must "also retain military strong points on what was formerly the French Atlantic coast" and emphasized that "nothing on earth would persuade us to abandon such safe positions as those on the Channel coast, captured during the campaign in France and consolidated by the Organisation Todt." Several major French cities along the coast were given the designation "Festung" ("fortress"; "stronghold") by Hitler, such as Le Havre, Brest and St. Nazaire, suggesting that they were to remain under permanent post-war German administration.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: During the summer of 1940, Hitler considered the possibility of occupying the Portuguese Azores, Cape Verde and Madeira and the Spanish Canary islands to deny the British a staging ground for military actions against Nazi-controlled Europe. In September 1940, Hitler further raised the issue in a discussion with the Spanish Foreign Minister Serrano Súñer, offering now Spain to transfer one of the Canary islands to German usage for the price of French Morocco. Although Hitler's interest in the Atlantic islands must be understood from a framework imposed by the military situation of 1940, he ultimately had no plans of ever releasing these important naval bases from German control.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: It had been alleged by Canadian historian Holger Herwig that both in November 1940 and May 1941, leading into and through to the period in which Japan began planning the naval attack that would bring the United States into the war, that Hitler had stated that he had a desire to "deploy long-range bombers against American cities from the Azores." Due to their location, Hitler seemed to think that a Luftwaffe airbase located on the Portuguese Azores islands were Germany's "only possibility of carrying out aerial attacks from a land base against the United States", in a period about a year before the May 1942 emergence of the "Amerika Bomber" trans-oceanic range strategic bomber design competition.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The one country in Europe that spoke a Germanic language and was not included in the objective of Pan-Germanic unification was the United Kingdom, in spite of its near-universal acceptance by the Nazi government as being part of the Germanic world. Leading Nordic ideologist Hans F. K. Günther theorized that the Anglo-Saxons had been more successful than the Germans in maintaining racial purity and that the coastal and island areas of Scotland, Ireland, Cornwall and Wales had received additional Nordic blood through Norse raids and colonization during the Viking Age, and the Anglo-Saxons of East Anglia and Northern England had been under Danish rule in the 9th and 10th centuries. Günther referred to this historical process as "Aufnordung" ("additional nordification"), which finally culminated in the Norman conquest of England in 1066. Thus, according to Günther, Britain was thus a nation created by struggle and the survival of the fittest among the various Aryan peoples of the isles, and was able to pursue global conquest and empire-building because of its superior racial heredity born through this development.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Hitler professed an admiration for the imperial might of the British Empire in "Zweites Buch" as proof of the racial superiority of the Aryan race, hoping that Germany would emulate British "ruthlessness" and "absence of moral scruples" in establishing its own colonial empire in Eastern Europe. One of his primary foreign policy aims throughout the 1930s was to establish a military alliance with both the British as well as the Italians to neutralize France as a strategic threat to German security for eastward expansion into Eastern Europe.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: When it became apparent to the Nazi leadership that the United Kingdom was not interested in a military alliance, anti-British policies were adopted to ensure the attainment of Germany's war aims. Even during the war however, hope remained that Britain would in time yet become a reliable German ally. Hitler preferred to see the British Empire preserved as a world power, because its break-up would benefit other countries far more than it would Germany, particularly the United States and Japan. Hitler's strategy between 1935 and 1937 for winning Britain over was based upon a German guarantee of defence towards the British Empire. After the war, Ribbentrop testified that in 1935 Hitler made a promise to deliver twelve German divisions to the disposal of Britain for maintaining the integrity of her colonial possessions.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The continued military actions against Britain after the fall of France had the strategic goal of making Britain 'see the light' and conduct an armistice with the Axis powers, with July 1, 1940, being named by the Germans as the "probable date" for the cessation of hostilities. On May 21, 1940, Franz Halder, the head of the Army General Staff, after a consultation with Hitler concerning the aims envisaged by the Führer during the present war, wrote in his diary: "We are seeking contact with Britain on the basis of partitioning the world".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: One of Hitler's secondary goals for the invasion of Russia was to win over Britain to the German side. He believed that after the military collapse of the Soviet Union, "within a few weeks" Britain would be compelled either to surrender or to join Germany as a "junior partner" in the Axis. Britain's role in this alliance was reserved to support German naval and the planned "Amerikabomber" project against the US in a fight for world supremacy conducted from the Axis power bases of Europe, Africa and the Atlantic. On August 8, 1941, Hitler stated that he looked forward to the eventual day when "England and Germany [march] together against America", and on January 7, 1942, he daydreamed that it was "not impossible" for Britain to quit the war and join the Axis side, leading to a situation where "it will be a German-British army that will chase the Americans from Iceland". Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg hoped that after the victorious conclusion of the war against the USSR, Englishmen, along with other Germanic peoples, would join the Germans in colonizing the conquered eastern territories.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: From a historical perspective, Britain's situation was likened to that which the Austrian Empire found itself in after it was defeated by the Kingdom of Prussia at Königgrätz in 1866. As Austria was thereafter formally excluded from German affairs, so too would Britain be excluded from continental affairs in the event of a German victory. Yet afterwards, Austria-Hungary became a loyal ally of the German Empire in the pre-World War I power alignments in Europe, and it was hoped in vain that Britain would come to fulfill this same role for the Third Reich.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: However, other evidence suggests that in the case of a successful invasion of Great Britain the occupiers treatment of the British population may not have been as sympathetic. According to captured German documents, the commander-in-chief of the German Army, Walther von Brauchitsch, directed that "The able-bodied male population between the ages of 17 and 45 will, unless the local situation calls for an exceptional ruling, be interned and dispatched to the Continent". The remaining population would have been terrorised, including civilian hostages being taken and the death penalty immediately imposed for even the most trivial acts of resistance, with the UK being plundered for anything of financial, military, industrial or cultural value. After the war Otto Bräutigam of the Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories wrote in his book that he had encountered a personal report by General Eduard Wagner regarding a discussion with Heinrich Himmler from February 1943, in which Himmler had expressed the intention for "Einsatzgruppen" to kill about 80% of the populations of France and England after the German victory. At another point, Hitler had on one occasion described the English lower classes "racially inferior".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The British Channel Islands were to be permanently integrated into the Germanic Empire, and their military occupation lasted from 30 June 1940 until liberation on 9 May 1945. On July 22, 1940, Hitler stated that after the war, the islands were to be given to the control of Robert Ley's German Labour Front, and transferred into "Strength Through Joy" holiday resorts. German scholar Karl Heinz Pfeffer toured the islands in 1941, and recommended that the German occupiers should appeal to the islanders' Norman heritage and treat the islands as "Germanic micro-states", whose union with Britain was only an accident of history. He likened the preferred policy concerning the islands similar to the one pursued by the British in Malta, where the Maltese language had been "artificially" supported against the Italian language.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: A military operation plan for the invasion of Ireland in support of Operation Sea Lion was drawn up by the Germans in August 1940. Occupied Ireland was to be ruled along with Britain in a temporary administrative system divided into six military-economic commands, with one of the headquarters being situated in Dublin. Ireland's future position in the New Order is unclear, but it is known that Hitler would have united Northern Ireland with the Irish state.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Hitler regarded northern Italians to be strongly Aryan, but not southern Italians. He even said that the Ahnenerbe, an archaeological organization associated with the SS, asserted that archaeological evidence proved the presence of Nordic-Germanic peoples in the region of South Tyrol in the Neolithic era that it claimed proved the significance of ancient Nordic-Germanic influence on northern Italy. The NSDAP regime regarded the ancient Romans to have been largely a people of the Mediterranean race; however, they claimed that the Roman ruling classes were Nordic, descended from Aryan conquerors from the North; and that this Nordic Aryan minority was responsible for the rise of Roman civilization. The Nazis viewed the downfall of the Roman Empire as being the result of the deterioration of the purity of the Nordic Aryan ruling class through its intermixing with the inferior Mediterranean types that led to the empire's decay. In addition, racial intermixing in the population in general was also blamed for Rome's downfall, claiming that Italians were a hybrid of races, including black African races. Due to the darker complexion of Mediterranean peoples, Hitler regarded them as having traces of Negroid blood and therefore did not have strong Nordic Aryan heritage and were thus inferior to those that had stronger Nordic heritage.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Hitler held immense admiration for the Roman Empire and its legacy. Hitler praised post-Roman era achievements of northern Italians such as Sandro Botticelli, Michelangelo, Dante Alighieri, and Benito Mussolini. The Nazis ascribed the great achievements of post-Roman era northern Italians to the presence of Nordic racial heritage in such people who via their Nordic heritage had Germanic ancestors, such as NSDAP Foreign Affairs official Alfred Rosenberg recognizing Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci as exemplary Nordic men of history. German official Hermann Hartmann wrote that Italian scientist Galileo Galilei was clearly Nordic with deep Germanic roots because of his blond hair, blue eyes, and long face. Some Nazis claimed that aside from biologically Nordic people that a Nordic soul could inhabit a non-Nordic body. Hitler emphasized the role of Germanic influence in Northern Italy, such as stating that the art of Northern Italy was "nothing but pure German", and Nazi scholars viewed the Ladin and Friulian minorities of Northern Italy as being racially, historically and culturally a part of the Germanic world. To put it bluntly, Hitler declared in private talks that the modern Reich should emulate the racial policy of the old Roman-Germanic Holy Empire, by annexing the Italian lands and especially Lombardy, whose population had well preserved their original Germanic Aryan character, unlike the lands of East Europe, with its racially alien population, scarcely marked by a Germanic contribution. According to him, Germans are more closely linked with the Italians than with any other people:


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The Nazi regime's stances in regards to northern Italy was influenced by the regime's relations with the Italian government, and particularly Mussolini's Fascist regime. Hitler deeply admired and emulated Mussolini. Hitler emphasized the racial closeness of his ally Mussolini to Germans of Alpine racial heritage. Hitler regarded Mussolini to not be seriously contaminated by the blood of the Mediterranean race. Other Nazis had negative views of Mussolini and the Fascist regime. The NSDAP's first leader, Anton Drexler was one of the most extreme in his negative views of Mussolini – claiming that Mussolini was "probably" a Jew and that Fascism was a Jewish movement. In addition there was a perception in Germany of Italians being racially weak, feckless, corrupt and corrupting, bad soldiers as perceived as demonstrated at the Battle of Caporetto in World War I, for being part of the powers that established the Treaty of Versailles, and for being a treacherous people given Italy's abandonment of the Triple Alliance with Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I to join the Entente. Hitler responded to the review of Italy betraying Germany and Austria-Hungary in World War I by saying that this was a consequence of Imperial Germany's decision to focus its attention on upholding the moribund Austro-Hungarian empire while ignoring and disregarding the more promising Italy.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: The region of South Tyrol had been a place of contending claims and conflict between German nationalism and Italian nationalism. One of the leading founders of Italian nationalism, Giuseppe Mazzini, along with Ettore Tolomei, claimed that the German-speaking South Tyrolian population were in fact mostly a Germanicized population of Roman origin who needed to be "liberated and returned to their rightful culture". With the defeat of Austria-Hungary in World War I, the peace treaty designated to Italy the South Tyrol, with its border with Austria along the Brenner Pass. The Italian Fascist regime pursued Italianization of South Tyrol, by restricting use of the German language while promoting the Italian language; promoting mass migration of Italians into the region, encouraged mainly through industrialization; and resettlement of the German-speaking population.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: After Mussolini had made clear in 1922 that he would never give up the region of South Tyrol from being in Italy, Hitler adopted this position. Hitler in "Mein Kampf" had declared that concerns over the rights of Germans in South Tyrol under Italian sovereignty was a non-issue considering the advantages that would be gained from a German-Italian alliance with Mussolini's Fascist regime. In "Mein Kampf" Hitler also made clear that he was opposed to having a war with Italy for the sake of obtaining South Tyrol. This position by Hitler of abandoning German land claims to South Tyrol produced aggravation among some NSDAP members who up to the late 1920s found it difficult to accept the position.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: On 7 May 1938, Hitler during a public visit to Rome declared his commitment to the existing border between Germany (that included Austria upon the Anschluss) and Italy at the Brenner Pass.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: In 1939, Hitler and Mussolini resolved the problem of self-determination of Germans and maintaining the Brenner Pass frontier by an agreement in which German South Tyroleans were given the choice of either assimilation into Italian culture, or leave South Tyrol for Germany; most opted to leave for Germany.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: After King Victor Emmanuel III of the Kingdom of Italy removed Mussolini from power, Hitler on 28 July 1943 was preparing for the expected abandonment of the Axis for the Allies by the Kingdom of Italy's new government, and was preparing to exact retribution for the expected betrayal by planning to partition Italy. In particular Hitler was considering the creation of a "Lombard State" in northern Italy that would be incorporated into the Greater Germanic Reich, while South Tyrol and Venice would be annexed directly into Germany.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: In the aftermath of the Kingdom of Italy's abandonment of the Axis on 8 September 1943, Germany seized and "de facto" incorporated Italian territories into its direct control.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: According to Goebbels in his personal diary on 29 September 1943, Hitler had expressed the idea that the Italian-German border should extend to include the region of Veneto, after the Kingdom of Italy capitulated to the Allies in September 1943. Veneto was to be made part of the Reich in an "autonomous form", and to benefit from the post-war influx of German tourists. At the time when Italy was on the verge of declaring an armistice with the Allies, Himmler declared to Felix Kersten that Northern Italy, along with the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland, was "bound to eventually be included in Greater Germany anyway".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: After the rescue of Mussolini and the establishment of the Italian Social Republic (RSI), in spite of urging by local German officials, Hitler refused to officially annex South Tyrol, instead he decided that the RSI should hold official sovereignty over these territories, and forbade all measures that would give the impression of official annexation of South Tyrol. However, in practice the territory of South Tyrol within the boundaries defined by Germany as "Operationszone Alpenvorland" that included Trent, Bolzano, and Belluno, were "de facto" incorporated into Germany's "Reichsgau Tirol-Vorarlberg" and administered by its "Gauleiter" Franz Hofer. While the region identified by Germany as "Operationszone Adriatisches Küstenland" that included Udine, Gorizia, Trieste, Pola, Fiume (Rijeka), and Ljubljana were "de facto" incorporated into "Reichsgau Kärnten" and administered by its "Gauleiter" Friedrich Rainer.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: In a supplementary OKW order dated 10 September 1943, Hitler decrees on the establishment of further Operational Zones in Northern Italy, which were the stretch all the way to the French border. Unlike "Alpenvorland" and "Küstenland", these zones did not immediately receive high commissioners ("oberster kommissar") as civilian advisors, but were military regions where the commander was to exercise power on behalf of Army Group B. Operation zone "Nordwest-Alpen" or "Schweizer Grenze" was located between the Stelvio Pass and Monte Rosa and was to contain wholly the Italian provinces of Sondrio and Como and parts of the provinces of Brescia, Varese, Novara and Vercelli. The zone of "Französische Grenze" was to encompass areas west of Monte Rosa and was to incorporate the province of Aosta and a part of the province of Turin, and presumably also the provinces of Cuneo and Imperia.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: From Autumn 1943 onward, members of the Ahnenerbe, associated with the SS, asserted that archaeological evidence of ancient farmsteads and architecture proved the presence of Nordic-Germanic peoples in the region of South Tyrol in the Neolithic era including prototypical Lombard style architecture, the significance of ancient Nordic-Germanic influence on Italy, and most importantly that South Tyrol by its past and present and historic racial and cultural circumstances, was "Nordic-Germanic national soil".


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Despite the pursued aim of pan-Germanic unification, the primary goal of the German Reich's territorial expansionism was to acquire sufficient "Lebensraum" (living space) in Eastern Europe for the Germanic "übermenschen" or superior humans. The primary objective of this aim was to transform Germany into a complete economic autarky, the end-result of which would be a state of continent-wide German hegemony over Europe. This was to be accomplished through the enlargement of the territorial base of the German state and the expansion of the German population, and the wholesale extermination of the indigenous Slavic inhabitants and the Germanisation of Baltic inhabitants.


title: Greater Germanic Reich

text: Because of their perceived racial worth, the NSDAP leadership was enthusiastic at the prospect of "recruiting" people from the Germanic countries to also settle these territories after the Slavic inhabitants would have been driven out. The racial planners were partly motivated in this because studies indicated that Germany would likely not be able to recruit enough colonial settlers for the eastern territories from its own country and other Germanic groups would therefore be required. Hitler insisted however that German settlers would have to dominate the newly colonized areas. Himmler's original plan for the Hegewald settlement was to settle Dutch and Scandinavians there in addition to Germans, which was unsuccessful.


title: I'm Not a Robot

text: I'm Not a Robot () is a South Korean television series starring Yoo Seung-ho, Chae Soo-bin, and Um Ki-joon. It is written by Kim Sun-mi and directed by Jung Dae-yoon. Producing the series for MBC is May Queen Pictures. It aired from December 6, 2017 to January 25, 2018, on MBC TV's Wednesdays and Thursdays at 21:55 (KST) time slot.


title: I'm Not a Robot

text: Kim Min-kyu (Yoo Seung-ho) lives a luxurious but isolated life due to a severe allergy to physical contact with other human beings. He develops extreme life-threatening rashes that rapidly spread over his body whenever he makes any form of skin contact. Jo Ji-ah (Chae Soo-bin) is trying to create businesses based on her inventions, notably two networked heart-shaped lamps.


title: I'm Not a Robot

text: Min-kyu is the chairman and largest shareholder of KM Financial. He inherited his shares from his parents, who died in a car accident 15 years earlier. He was brought up by his father's friend and colleague, Hwang Do-won (Son Byong-ho), whose son, Hwang Yeo-chul (Kang Ki-young), is the same age as Min-kyu and the CEO of KM Financial.


title: I'm Not a Robot

text: KM Financial owns the Santa Maria team. The team is headed by professor Hong Baek-gyun (Um Ki-joon). Professor Hong's team has secretly created an advanced humanoid robot called AG3 (pronounced Aji 3), whose appearance he modeled on his ex-girlfriend Ji-ah (the sound of the robot's name is Ji-a [AJI 3] backwards).


title: I'm Not a Robot

text: Hwang Yeo-chul and his father Hwang Do-won try to sell the Santa Maria team to Bold Group, owned by a foreign investor, Martin, who has learned about the Aji 3 and wants to use it as a weapon. To convince Kim Min-kyu not to sell the Santa Maria team, Baek-gyun sends the robot to him as a demonstration. Just before the Aji 3 is delivered, the robot short-circuits and Baek-gyun asks Ji-ah to pose as the robot, giving the team time to repair Aji 3. Desperate for the 10 million won payment he is offering her, Ji-ah agrees, and impersonates the robot under the supervision of the Santa Maria team.


title: I'm Not a Robot

text: Gradually, Min-kyu falls in love with Ji-ah, believing that she is Aji 3. He is disturbed by this, since she is a robot to him, and "reboots" her, erasing the robot's memory. Baek-gyun then replaces Ji-ah with the real Aji 3. Ji-Ah, who has also fallen in love with Min-kyu, leaves the city in an attempt to forget him.


title: I'm Not a Robot

text: Min-kyu discovers Ji-ah's deception and that she had been pretending to be the robot, and has a violent allergic reaction that nearly kills him. Baek-gyun saves him and Min-kyu angrily breaks off his relationships and friendships with them all for their betrayal and for playing with his feelings. Ji-ah confesses everything to Min-kyu and says she loves him, and they rediscover their love, this time as humans.


title: I'm Not a Robot

text: Before the reboot, Aji 3 had stored all the video footage and data from the trials with Kim Min-kyu in a secret cache. This cache gets hacked, revealing everything about Min-kyu's illness. The knowledge is used to attempt a take-over of KM Financial, to remove Min-kyu as chairman and complete the sale of the Santa Maria team and Aji 3. Min-kyu manages to thwart the attempt at the last moment. He uncovers evidence that Hwang Do-won and Martin were involved in the murder of Chairman Park, and restores the Aji 3 to the Santa Maria team. 2 years later, the Santa Maria team successfully launches a new robot after changing its appearance, while they, along with Ji-ah, and Min-kyu (after completing the mandatory military service) are happily living their changed lives.


title: I'm Not a Robot

text: The series was a commercial failure only averaging 3.22% in audience share, and received the lowest viewership ratings in its time-slot throughout its run.


The 2020 United States presidential election in New York was held on Tuesday, November 3, 2020, as part of the 2020 United States presidential election in which all 50 states plus the District of Columbia participated. New York voters chose electors to represent them in the Electoral College via a popular vote, pitting the Republican Party's nominee, incumbent President Donald Trump, and running mate Vice President Mike Pence against Democratic Party nominee, former Vice President Joe Biden, and his running mate California Senator Kamala Harris. New York has 29 electoral votes in the Electoral College. Trump announced that Florida would be his home state for this election, rather than New York as it had been previously. This was the first presidential election in New York to allow no-excuse absentee voting.


title: 2020 United States presidential election in New York

text: New York continued its streak as a solidly blue state. Biden's victory came from overwhelming strength with Black and Latino voters in New York City as well as strong suburban support in Westchester and Nassau counties.


text: New York weighed in for this election as 19% more Democratic than the national average. As of 2022, this is the last statewide election in which Nassau and Broome counties voted for the Democratic candidate.


text: The primary elections were originally scheduled for April 28, 2020. On March 28, New York State elections officials moved the primary date to June 23 due to concerns over the COVID-19 pandemic.


text: On March 3, 2020, the New York Republican Party became one of several state GOP parties to officially cancel their respective primaries and caucuses. Donald Trump was the only Republican candidate to submit the required number of names of his 162 total delegates, both the 94 primary ones and the alternates. Among Trump's major challengers, Bill Weld only submitted about half of his required delegates, and neither Rocky De La Fuente nor Joe Walsh sent in any names at all. With the cancellation, Trump was automatically able to send his 94 New York pledged delegates to the national convention.


text: On April 27, 2020, New York State elections officials had decided to cancel the state's Democratic primary altogether, citing the fact that former Vice President Joe Biden was the only major candidate left in the race after all the others had suspended their campaigns, and canceling it would save the state millions of dollars from printing the extra sheet on the ballot. However, on May 5, a federal judge ruled that the Democratic primary must proceed on June 23 after a suit made by former presidential primary candidate Andrew Yang.


text: Among the other major candidates were entrepreneur Andrew Yang, Kirsten Gillibrand, one of New York's two current senators, and Bill de Blasio, the mayor of New York City. However, on August 29, 2019, Gillibrand dropped out of the race. Bill de Blasio as well dropped out on September 20, 2019, after failing to qualify for the 4th Democratic debate.


text: The Conservative Party of New York State cross-endorsed the Republican ticket, nominating Donald Trump for president and Mike Pence for vice president.


text: The Working Families Party cross-endorsed the Democratic ticket, nominating Joe Biden for president and Kamala Harris for vice president. Several prominent Democrats, including Senators Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Kirsten Gillibrand, U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer encouraged voting for Biden and Harris on the WFP line, in order for the party to keep ballot access.


text: The Green Party of New York nominated the national Green Party ticket; Howie Hawkins for president and Angela Nicole Walker for vice president.


text: Future of Freedom Foundation Founder Jacob Hornberger was the sole candidate to qualify for the New York primary ballot. Therefore, in accordance with state law, he was declared the winner of the primary by default. As the winner of the primary, Libertarian Party of New York rules permitted Hornberger to choose 27 of the state's 48 unbound delegates to the 2020 Libertarian National Convention. The Libertarian Party of New York was the only Libertarian state affiliate to choose any of its delegates on the basis of its presidential primary or caucus.


text: The Independence Party of New York nominated independent candidates Brock Pierce for president and Karla Ballard for vice president.


text: These electors were nominated by each party in order to vote in the Electoral College should their candidate win the state:


text: New York continued its streak as a solidly blue state, with Biden winning 60.87% of the vote to Trump's 37.74%, a Democratic victory margin of 23.13%. Due to a decrease in third-party voting, both candidates increased their party's vote share from 2016, though Biden's margin of victory was slightly wider than Hillary Clinton's.


text: New York's inexperience processing a large number of mail ballots, having only legalized no-excuse absentee voting in 2019, led to weekslong delays in counting them. Over two million ballots and over 20% of the votes were cast by mail. New York failed to meet its November 28 deadline to certify the election, with hundreds of thousands of votes still uncounted. State Senator Michael Gianaris commented, "if we were a swing state in this presidential election, this would be a national scandal". New York's voting tabulation was updated on March 15, 2021.


text: The delay in the counting of mail-in ballots wrongly made it seem at first that Biden had underperformed Hillary Clinton in 2016, a phenomenon referred to as a "red mirage." However, when all the votes were counted, Biden outperformed Clinton's margin over Trump by about 0.6 percentage points. This was due to a major improvement across Upstate New York and on Long Island. Meanwhile, four of New York City's five boroughs shifted towards Trump (with the exception of Staten Island).


text: Donald Trump is the first Republican to receive 3 million or more raw votes in New York since George H. W. Bush in 1988.


text: Biden also came very close to flipping an additional six counties, as he lost Cortland County by 419 votes, Franklin County by 415 votes, Ontario County by 33 votes, Orange County by 113 votes, Suffolk County by 232 votes, and Warren County by just 57 votes. Trump's narrow victories in these counties meant that they were decided by a combined total of just 1,269 votes out of more than 1 million votes cast across all six counties.


text: According to exit polls by CNN, Biden won 96% of Democrats, who were 41% of the electorate, 59% of Independents, who made up 32% of voters, and 21% of Republicans, who made up 27% of the vote.


text: Biden dominated core Democratic constituencies in New York City, winning 76% of the city's vote. Statewide, Biden won 94% of Black voters and 76% of Latino voters. In urban Dominican neighborhoods, Trump reached a measly 15% of the vote to Biden's 85%. Biden also won by 18 points in the Hudson Valley and urban Upstate counties. Trump's core support base came from rural Upstate counties. However, Trump made strong inroads with Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods of New York City and in Hasidic Jewish communities in Rockland County. The shift is attributed to Trump's strong pro-Israel stance as president. New York was one of five states in the nation in which Biden's victory margin was larger than 1 million raw votes, the others being California, Maryland, Massachusetts and Illinois.


title: Off-Broadway

text: An off-Broadway theatre is any professional theatre venue in New York City with a seating capacity between 100 and 499, inclusive. These theatres are smaller than Broadway theatres, but larger than off-off-Broadway theatres, which seat fewer than 100.


title: Off-Broadway

text: An "off-Broadway production" is a production of a play, musical, or revue that appears in such a venue and adheres to related trade union and other contracts. Some shows that premiere off-Broadway are subsequently produced on Broadway.


title: Off-Broadway

text: The term originally referred to any venue, and its productions, on a street intersecting Broadway in Midtown Manhattan's Theater District, the hub of the American theatre industry. It later became defined by the League of Off-Broadway Theatres and Producers as a professional venue in Manhattan with a seating capacity of at least 100, but not more than 499, or a production that appears in such a venue and adheres to related trade union and other contracts.


title: Off-Broadway

text: Previously, regardless of the size of the venue, a theatre was considered a Broadway (rather than off-Broadway) house if it was within the "Broadway Box", extending from 40th Street north to 54th Street and from Sixth Avenue west to Eighth Avenue, including Times Square and West 42nd Street. This change to the contractual definition of "off-Broadway" benefited theatres satisfying the 499-seat criterion because of the lower minimum required salary for Actors' Equity performers at Off-Broadway theatres as compared with the salary requirements of the union for Broadway theatres. The adoption of the 499-seat criterion occurred after a one-day strike in January 1974. Examples of off-Broadway theatres within the Broadway Box are the Laura Pels Theatre and The Theater Center.


title: Off-Broadway

text: The off-Broadway movement started in the 1950s as a reaction to the perceived commercialism of Broadway and provided less expensive venues for shows that have employed many future Broadway artists. An early success was Circle in the Square Theatre's 1952 production of "Summer and Smoke" by Tennessee Williams. According to theatre historians Ken Bloom and Frank Vlastnik, Off-Broadway offered a new outlet for "poets, playwrights, actors, songwriters, and designers. ... The first great Off-Broadway musical was the 1954 revival" of "The Threepenny Opera", which proved that off-Broadway productions could be financially successful. Theatre Row, on West 42nd Street between 9th and 10th Avenues in Manhattan, is a concentration of off-Broadway and off-off-Broadway theatres. It was developed in the mid-1970s and modernized in 2002.


title: Off-Broadway

text: Many off-Broadway shows have had subsequent runs on Broadway, including such successful musicals as "Hair", "Godspell", "Little Shop of Horrors", "Sunday in the Park with George", "Rent", "Grey Gardens", "Urinetown", "Avenue Q", "The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee", "Rock of Ages", "In the Heights", "Spring Awakening", "Next to Normal", "Hedwig and the Angry Inch", "Fun Home", "Hamilton", "Dear Evan Hansen", and "Hadestown". In particular, two that became Broadway hits, "Grease" and "A Chorus Line", encouraged other producers to premiere their shows off-Broadway. Plays that have moved from off-Broadway houses to Broadway include "Doubt", "I Am My Own Wife", "Bridge & Tunnel", "The Normal Heart", and "Coastal Disturbances". Other productions, such as "Stomp", "Blue Man Group", "Altar Boyz", "Perfect Crime", "Forbidden Broadway", "Nunsense", "Naked Boys Singing", "", and "I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change" have had runs of many years off-Broadway, never moving to Broadway. "The Fantasticks", the longest-running musical in theatre history, spent its original 42-year run off-Broadway and began another long off-Broadway run in 2006.


title: Off-Broadway

text: Off-Broadway shows, performers, and creative staff are eligible for the following awards: the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, the Outer Critics Circle Award, the Drama Desk Award, the Obie Award (presented since 1956 by "The Village Voice"), the Lucille Lortel Award (created in 1985 by the League of Off-Broadway Theatres & Producers), and the Drama League Award. Although off-Broadway shows are not eligible for Tony Awards, an exception was made in 1956 (before the rules were changed), when Lotte Lenya won Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Musical for the off-Broadway production of "The Threepenny Opera".


title: Off-Broadway

text: Capacity is based on the capacity given for the respective theatre at the Internet Off-Broadway Database.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Sir Ralph David Richardson (19 December 1902 – 10 October 1983) was an English actor who, with John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, was one of the trinity of male actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. He worked in films throughout most of his career, and played more than sixty cinema roles. From an artistic but not theatrical background, Richardson had no thought of a stage career until a production of "Hamlet" in Brighton inspired him to become an actor. He learned his craft in the 1920s with a touring company and later the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. In 1931 he joined the Old Vic, playing mostly Shakespearean roles. He led the company the following season, succeeding Gielgud, who had taught him much about stage technique. After he left the company, a series of leading roles took him to stardom in the West End and on Broadway.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: In the 1940s, together with Olivier and John Burrell, Richardson was the co-director of the Old Vic company. There, his most celebrated roles included Peer Gynt and Falstaff. He and Olivier led the company to Europe and Broadway in 1945 and 1946, before their success provoked resentment among the governing board of the Old Vic, leading to their dismissal from the company in 1947. In the 1950s, in the West End and occasionally on tour, Richardson played in modern and classic works including "The Heiress", "Home at Seven", and "Three Sisters". He continued on stage and in films until shortly before his sudden death at the age of eighty. He was celebrated in later years for his work with Peter Hall's National Theatre and his frequent stage partnership with Gielgud. He was not known for his portrayal of the great tragic roles in the classics, preferring character parts in old and new plays.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson's film career began as an extra in 1931. He was soon cast in leading roles in British and American films including "Things to Come" (1936), "The Fallen Idol" (1948), "Long Day's Journey into Night" (1962) and "Doctor Zhivago" (1965). He received nominations and awards in the UK, Europe and the US for his stage and screen work from 1948 until his death. Richardson was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, first for "The Heiress" (1949) and again (posthumously) for his final film, "" (1984).


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Throughout his career, and increasingly in later years, Richardson was known for his eccentric behaviour on and off stage. He was often seen as detached from conventional ways of looking at the world, and his acting was regularly described as poetic or magical.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson was born in Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the third son and youngest child of Arthur Richardson and his wife Lydia (née Russell). The couple had met while both were in Paris, studying with the painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau. Arthur Richardson had been senior art master at Cheltenham Ladies' College from 1893.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: In 1907 the family split up; there was no divorce or formal separation, but the two elder boys, Christopher and Ambrose, remained with their father and Lydia left them, taking Ralph with her. The ostensible cause of the couple's separation was a row over Lydia's choice of wallpaper for her husband's study. According to John Miller's biography, whatever underlying causes there may have been are unknown. An earlier biographer, Garry O'Connor, speculates that Arthur Richardson might have been having an extramarital affair. There does not seem to have been a religious element, although Arthur was a dedicated Quaker, whose first two sons were brought up in that faith, whereas Lydia was a devout convert to Roman Catholicism, in which she raised Ralph. Mother and son had a variety of homes, the first of which was a bungalow converted from two railway carriages in Shoreham-by-Sea on the south coast of England.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Lydia wanted Richardson to become a priest. In Brighton he served as an altar boy, which he enjoyed, but when sent at about fifteen to the nearby Xaverian College, a seminary for trainee priests, he ran away. As a pupil at a series of schools he was uninterested in most subjects and was an indifferent scholar. His Latin was poor, and during church services he would improvise parts of the Latin responses, developing a talent for invention when memory failed that proved useful in his later career.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: In 1919, aged sixteen, Richardson took a post as office boy with the Brighton branch of the Liverpool Victoria insurance company. The pay, ten shillings a week, was attractive, but office life was not; he lacked concentration, frequently posting documents to the wrong people as well as engaging in pranks that alarmed his superiors. His paternal grandmother died and left him £500, which, he later said, transformed his life. He resigned from the office post, just in time to avoid being dismissed, and enrolled at the Brighton School of Art. His studies there convinced him that he lacked creativity, and that his drawing skills were not good enough.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson left the art school in 1920, and considered how else he might make a career. He briefly thought of pharmacy and then of journalism, abandoning each when he learned how much study the former required and how difficult mastering shorthand for the latter would be. He was still unsure what to do, when he saw Sir Frank Benson as Hamlet in a touring production. He was thrilled, and felt at once that he must become an actor.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Buttressed by what was left of the legacy from his grandmother, Richardson determined to learn to act. He paid a local theatrical manager, Frank R. Growcott, ten shillings a week to take him as a member of his company and to teach him the craft of an actor. He made his stage debut in December 1920 with Growcott's St Nicholas Players at the St Nicholas Hall, Brighton, a converted bacon factory. He played a gendarme in an adaptation of "Les Misérables" and was soon entrusted with larger parts, including Banquo in "Macbeth" and Malvolio in "Twelfth Night".


title: Ralph Richardson

text: The heyday of the touring actor-manager was nearing its end but some companies still flourished. As well as Benson's, there were those of Sir John Martin-Harvey, Ben Greet, and, only slightly less prestigious, Charles Doran. Richardson wrote to all four managers: the first two did not reply; Greet saw him but had no vacancy; Doran engaged him, at a wage of £3 a week. Richardson made his first appearance as a professional actor at the Marina Theatre, Lowestoft, in August 1921, as Lorenzo in "The Merchant of Venice". He remained with Doran's company for most of the next two years, gradually gaining more important roles, including Banquo in "Macbeth" and Mark Antony in "Julius Caesar".


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Doran's company specialised in the classics, principally Shakespeare. After two years of period costumes Richardson felt the urge to act in a modern work. He left Doran in 1923 and toured in a new play, "Outward Bound" by Sutton Vane. He returned to the classics in August 1924, in Nigel Playfair's touring production of "The Way of the World", playing Fainall. While on that tour he married Muriel Hewitt, a young member of Doran's company, known to him as "Kit". To his great happiness, the two were able to work together for most of 1925, both being engaged by Sir Barry Jackson of the Birmingham Repertory Theatre for a touring production of "The Farmer's Wife". From December of that year they were members of the main repertory company in Birmingham. Through Jackson's chief director, the veteran taskmaster H. K. Ayliff, Richardson "absorbed the influence of older contemporaries like Gerald du Maurier, Charles Hawtrey and Mrs Patrick Campbell." Hewitt was seen as a rising star but Richardson's talents were not yet so apparent; he was allotted supporting roles such as Lane in "The Importance of Being Earnest" and Albert Prossor in "Hobson's Choice".


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson made his London debut in July 1926 as the stranger in "Oedipus at Colonus" in a Sunday-night performance at the Scala Theatre, with a cast including Percy Walsh, John Laurie and D. A. Clarke-Smith. He then toured for three months in Eden Phillpotts's comedy "Devonshire Cream" with Jackson's company led by Cedric Hardwicke.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: When Phillpotts's next comedy, "Yellow Sands", was to be mounted at the Haymarket Theatre in the West End, Richardson and his wife were both cast in good roles. The play opened in November 1926 and ran until September 1928; with 610 performances it was the longest London run of Richardson's entire career. During the run Muriel Hewitt began to show early symptoms of encephalitis lethargica, a progressive and ultimately fatal illness.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson left the run of "Yellow Sands" in March 1928 and rejoined Ayliff, playing Pygmalion in "Back to Methuselah" at the Royal Court Theatre; also in the cast was a former colleague from the Birmingham Repertory, Laurence Olivier. The critics began to notice Richardson and he gained some favourable reviews. As Tranio in Ayliff's modern-dress production of "The Taming of the Shrew", Richardson played the character as a breezy cockney, winning praise for turning a usually dreary role into something richly entertaining. For the rest of 1928 he appeared in what Miller describes as several unremarkable modern plays. For much of 1929 he toured South Africa in Gerald Lawrence's company in three period costume plays, including "The School for Scandal", in which he played Joseph Surface. The sole venture into musical comedy of his career was in "Silver Wings" in the West End and on tour. It was not a personal triumph; the director's final injunction to the company was, "For God's sake don't let Richardson sing". In May 1930 Richardson was given the role of Roderigo in "Othello" in what seemed likely to be a prestigious production, with Paul Robeson in the title role. The biographer Ronald Hayman writes that though a fine singer, "Robeson had no ear for blank verse" and even Peggy Ashcroft's superb performance as Desdemona was not enough to save the production from failure. Ashcroft's notices were laudatory, while Richardson's were mixed; they admired each other and worked together frequently during the next four decades.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: In 1930 Richardson, with some misgivings, accepted an invitation to join The Old Vic company. The theatre, in an unfashionable location south of the Thames, had offered inexpensive tickets for opera and drama under its proprietor Lilian Baylis since 1912. Its profile had been raised considerably by Baylis's producer, Harcourt Williams, who in 1929 persuaded the young West End star John Gielgud to lead the drama company. For the following season Williams wanted Richardson to join, with a view to succeeding Gielgud from 1931 to 1932. Richardson agreed, though he was not sure of his own suitability for a mainly Shakespearean repertoire, and was not enthusiastic about working with Gielgud: "I found his clothes extravagant, I found his conversation flippant. He was the New Young Man of his time and I didn't like him."


title: Ralph Richardson

text: The first production of the season was "Henry IV, Part 1", with Gielgud as Hotspur and Richardson as Prince Hal; the latter was thought by "The Daily Telegraph" "vivacious, but a figure of modern comedy rather than Shakespeare." Richardson's notices, and the relationship of the two leading men, improved markedly when Gielgud, who was playing Prospero, helped Richardson with his performance as Caliban in "The Tempest":


title: Ralph Richardson

text: The friendship and professional association lasted until the end of Richardson's life. Gielgud wrote in 1983, "Besides cherishing our long years of work together in the theatre, where he was such an inspiring and generous partner, I grew to love him in private life as a great gentleman, a rare spirit, fair and balanced, devotedly loyal and tolerant and, as a companion, bursting with vitality, curiosity and humour." Among Richardson's other parts in his first Old Vic season, Enobarbus in "Antony and Cleopatra" gained particularly good notices. "The Morning Post" commented that it placed him in the first rank of Shakespearean actors. At the beginning of 1931 Baylis re-opened Sadler's Wells Theatre with a production of "Twelfth Night" starring Gielgud as Malvolio and Richardson as Sir Toby Belch. W. A. Darlington in "The Daily Telegraph" wrote of Richardson's "ripe, rich and mellow Sir Toby, [which] I would go many miles to see again."


title: Ralph Richardson

text: During the summer break between the Old Vic 1930–31 and 1931–32 seasons, Richardson played at the Malvern Festival, under the direction of his old Birmingham director, Ayliff. Salaries at the Old Vic and the Festival were not large, and Richardson was glad of a job as an extra in the 1931 film "Dreyfus". As his wife's condition worsened he needed to pay for more and more nursing; she was looked after in a succession of hospitals and care homes.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Succeeding Gielgud as leading man at the Old Vic, Richardson had a varied season, in which there were conspicuous successes interspersed with critical failures. James Agate was not convinced by him as the domineering Petruchio in "The Taming of the Shrew"; in "Julius Caesar" the whole cast received tepid reviews. In "Othello" Richardson divided the critics. He emphasised the plausible charm of the murderous Iago to a degree that Agate thought "very good Richardson, but indifferent Shakespeare", whereas "The Times" said, "He never stalked or hissed like a plain villain, and, in fact, we have seldom seen a man smile and smile and be a villain so adequately." His biggest success of the season was as Bottom in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". Both Agate and Darlington commented on how the actor transformed the character from the bumbling workman to the magically changed creature on whom Titania dotes. Agate wrote that most of those who had played the part hitherto "seem to have thought Bottom, with the ass's head on, was the same Bottom, only funnier. Shakespeare says he was 'translated', and Mr Richardson translated him." With Sybil Thorndike as a guest star and Richardson as Ralph, "The Knight of the Burning Pestle" was a hit with audiences and critics, as was a revival of "Twelfth Night", with Edith Evans as Viola and Richardson again playing Sir Toby, finishing the season to renewed praise.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson returned to the Malvern Festival in August 1932. He was in four plays, the last of which, Bernard Shaw's "Too True to Be Good", transferred to the New Theatre in London the following month. The play was not liked by audiences and ran for only forty-seven performances, but Richardson, in Agate's phrase, "ran away with the piece", and established himself as a West End star. In 1933 he had his first speaking part in a film, playing the villain, Nigel Hartley, in "The Ghoul", which starred Cedric Hardwicke and Boris Karloff. The following year he was cast in his first starring role in a film, as the hero in "The Return of Bulldog Drummond". "The Times" commented, "Mr Ralph Richardson makes Drummond as brave and stupid on the screen as he is in print."


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Over the next two years Richardson appeared in six plays in London ranging from "Peter Pan" (as Mr Darling and Captain Hook) to "Cornelius", an allegorical play written for and dedicated to him by J.B.Priestley. "Cornelius" ran for two months; this was less than expected, and left Richardson with a gap in engagements in the second half of 1935. He filled it by accepting an invitation from Katharine Cornell and Guthrie McClintic to play Mercutio in their production of "Romeo and Juliet" on a US tour and on Broadway. Romeo was played by Maurice Evans and Juliet by Cornell. Richardson's performance greatly impressed American critics, and Cornell invited him to return to New York to co-star with her in "Macbeth" and "Antony and Cleopatra", though nothing came of this.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: In 1936, London Films released "Things to Come", in which Richardson played the swaggering warlord "The Boss". His performance parodied the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini so effectively that the film was immediately banned in Italy. The producer was Alexander Korda; the two men formed a long and mutually beneficial friendship. Richardson later said of Korda, "Though not so very much older than I am, I regarded him in a way as a father, and to me he was as generous as a prince." In May 1936 Richardson and Olivier jointly directed and starred in a new piece by Priestley, "Bees on the Boatdeck". Both actors won excellent notices, but the play, an allegory of Britain's decline, did not attract the public. It closed after four weeks, the last in a succession of West End productions in which Richardson appeared to much acclaim but which were box-office failures. In August of the same year he finally had a long-running star part, the title role in Barré Lyndon's comedy thriller, "The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse", which played for 492 performances, closing in October 1937.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: After a short run in "The Silent Knight", described by Miller as "a Hungarian fantasy in rhymed verse set in the fifteenth century", Richardson returned to the Old Vic for the 1937–38 season, playing Bottom once again and switching parts in "Othello", playing the title role, with Olivier as Iago. The director, Tyrone Guthrie, wanted to experiment with the theory that Iago's villainy is driven by suppressed homosexual love for Othello. Olivier was willing to co-operate, but Richardson was not; audiences and most critics failed to spot the supposed motivation of Olivier's Iago, and Richardson's Othello seemed underpowered. O'Connor believes that Richardson did not succeed with Othello or Macbeth because of the characters' single-minded "blind driving passion – too extreme, too inhuman", which was incomprehensible and alien to him. It was for the same reason, in O'Connor's view, that he never attempted the title roles in "Hamlet" or "King Lear".


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson made his television debut in January 1939, reprising his 1936 stage role of the chief engineer in "Bees on the Boatdeck". His last stage part in the 1930s was Robert Johnson, an Everyman figure, in Priestley's "Johnson Over Jordan" directed by Basil Dean. It was an experimental piece, using music (by Benjamin Britten) and dance as well as dialogue, and was another production in which Richardson was widely praised but which did not prosper at the box-office. After it closed, in May 1939, he did not act on stage for more than five years.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: At the outbreak of war Richardson joined the Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve as a sub-lieutenant pilot. He had taken flying lessons during the 1930s and had logged 200 hours of flying time, but, though a notoriously reckless driver, he admitted to being a timid pilot. He counted himself lucky to have been accepted, but the Fleet Air Arm was short of pilots. He rose to the rank of lieutenant-commander. His work was mostly routine administration, probably because of "the large number of planes which seemed to fall to pieces under his control", through which he acquired the nickname "Pranger" Richardson. He served at several bases in the south of England, and in April 1941, at the Royal Naval Air Station, Lee-on-Solent, he was able to welcome Olivier, newly commissioned as a temporary sub-lieutenant. Olivier rapidly eclipsed Richardson's record for pranging.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: In 1942, on his way to visit his wife at the cottage where she was cared for by a devoted couple, Richardson crashed his motor-bike and was in hospital for several weeks. Kit was at that point mobile enough to visit him, but later in the year her condition worsened and in October she died. He was intensely lonely, though the comradeship of naval life was some comfort. In 1944 he married again. His second wife was the actress Meriel Forbes, a member of the Forbes-Robertson theatrical family. The marriage brought him lifelong happiness and a son, Charles (1945–98), who became a television stage manager.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: During the war Richardson compered occasional morale-boosting shows at the Royal Albert Hall and elsewhere, and made one short film and three full-length ones, including "The Silver Fleet", in which he played a Dutch Resistance hero, and "The Volunteer", a propaganda film in which he appeared as himself.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Throughout the war Guthrie had striven to keep the Old Vic company going, even after German bombing in 1942 left the theatre a near-ruin. A small troupe toured the provinces, with Sybil Thorndike at its head. By 1944, with the tide of the war turning, Guthrie felt it time to re-establish the company in a London base, and invited Richardson to head it. Richardson made two stipulations: first, as he was unwilling to seek his own release from the forces, the governing board of the Old Vic should explain to the authorities why it should be granted; secondly, that he should share the acting and management in a triumvirate. Initially he proposed Gielgud and Olivier as his colleagues, but the former declined, saying, "It would be a disaster, you would have to spend your whole time as referee between Larry and me." It was finally agreed that the third member would be the stage director John Burrell. The Old Vic governors approached the Royal Navy to secure the release of Richardson and Olivier; the Sea Lords consented, with, as Olivier put it, "a speediness and lack of reluctance which was positively hurtful."


title: Ralph Richardson

text: The triumvirate secured the New Theatre for their first season and recruited a company. Thorndike was joined by, among others, Harcourt Williams, Joyce Redman and Margaret Leighton. It was agreed to open with a repertory of four plays: "Peer Gynt", "Arms and the Man", "Richard III" and "Uncle Vanya". Richardson's roles were Peer, Bluntschli, Richmond and Vanya; Olivier played the Button Moulder, Sergius, Richard and Astrov. The first three productions met with acclaim from reviewers and audiences; "Uncle Vanya" had a mixed reception. "The Times" thought Olivier's Astrov "a most distinguished portrait" and Richardson's Vanya "the perfect compound of absurdity and pathos". Agate, on the other hand, commented, Floored for life, sir, and jolly miserable' is what "Uncle Vanya" takes three acts to say. And I just cannot believe in Mr Richardson wallowing in misery: his voice is the wrong colour." In 1945 the company toured Germany, where they were seen by many thousands of Allied servicemen; they also appeared at the Comédie-Française theatre in Paris, the first foreign company to be given that honour. The critic Harold Hobson wrote that Richardson and Olivier quickly "made the Old Vic the most famous theatre in the Anglo-Saxon world."


title: Ralph Richardson

text: The second season, in 1945, featured two double-bills. The first consisted of "Henry IV, Parts 1 and 2". Olivier played the warrior Hotspur in the first and the doddering Justice Shallow in the second. He received good notices, but by general consent the production belonged to Richardson as Falstaff. Agate wrote, "He had everything the part wants – the exuberance, the mischief, the gusto... Here is something better than virtuosity in character-acting – the spirit of the part shining through the actor." As a teenager, the director Peter Hall saw the production; he said fifty years later, "Of the performances I've seen in my life I'm gladdest I saw that." In the second double bill it was Olivier who dominated, in the title roles of "Oedipus Rex" and "The Critic". Richardson took the supporting role of Tiresias in the first, and the silent, cameo part of Lord Burleigh in the second. After the London season the company played both the double-bills and "Uncle Vanya" in a six-week season on Broadway.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: The third, and final, season under the triumvirate was in 1946–47. Olivier played King Lear, and Richardson, Cyrano de Bergerac. Olivier would have preferred the roles to be cast the other way about, but Richardson did not wish to attempt Lear. Richardson's other roles in the season were Inspector Goole in "An Inspector Calls", Face in "The Alchemist" and John of Gaunt in "Richard II", which he directed, with Alec Guinness in the title role.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: During the run of "Cyrano", Richardson was knighted in the 1947 New Year Honours, to Olivier's undisguised envy. The younger man received the accolade six months later, by which time the days of the triumvirate were numbered. The high profile of the two star actors did not endear them to the new chairman of the Old Vic governors, Lord Esher. He had ambitions to be the first head of the National Theatre and had no intention of letting actors run it. He was encouraged by Guthrie, who, having instigated the appointment of Richardson and Olivier, had come to resent their knighthoods and international fame. Esher terminated their contracts while both were out of the country, and they and Burrell were said to have "resigned".


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Looking back in 1971, Bernard Levin wrote that the Old Vic company of 1944 to 1947 "was probably the most illustrious that has ever been assembled in this country". "The Times" said that the triumvirate's years were the greatest in the Old Vic's history; as "The Guardian" put it, "the governors summarily sacked them in the interests of a more mediocre company spirit".


title: Ralph Richardson

text: For Richardson, parting company with the Old Vic brought the advantage of being free, for the first time, to earn substantial pay. The company's highest salary had been £40 a week. After his final Old Vic season he made two films in quick succession for Korda. The first, "Anna Karenina", with Vivien Leigh, was an expensive failure, although Richardson's notices in the role of Karenin were excellent. The second, "The Fallen Idol", had notable commercial and critical success, and won awards in Europe and America. It remained one of Richardson's favourites of his films. In Miller's words, "Carol Reed's sensitive direction drew faultless performances not just from Ralph as Baines (the butler and mistakenly suspected murderer), but also from Michèle Morgan as his mistress, Sonia Dresdel as his cold-hearted wife, and especially from Bobby Henrey as the distraught boy, Philippe."


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson had gained a national reputation as a great actor while at the Old Vic; films gave him the opportunity to reach an international audience. Unlike some of his theatre colleagues, he was never condescending about film work. He admitted that film could be "a cage for an actor, but a cage in which they sometimes put a little gold", but he did not regard filming as merely a means of subsidising his much less profitable stage work. He said, "I've never been one of those chaps who scoff at films. I think they're a marvellous medium, and are to the stage what engravings are to painting. The theatre may give you big chances, but the cinema teaches you the details of craftsmanship." "The Fallen Idol" was followed by Richardson's first Hollywood part. He played Dr Sloper, the overprotective father of Olivia de Havilland in "The Heiress", based on Henry James's novel "Washington Square". The film did not prosper at the box-office despite good reviews, an Academy Award for Best Actress for Havilland, and nominations for the director (William Wyler) and Richardson.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: "The Heiress" had been a Broadway play before it was a film. Richardson so liked his part that he decided to play it in the West End, with Ashcroft as Sloper's daughter Catherine. The piece was to open in February 1949 at Richardson's favourite theatre, the Haymarket. Rehearsals were chaotic. Burrell, whom Richardson had asked to direct, was not up to the task – possibly, Miller speculates, because of nervous exhaustion from the recent traumas at the Old Vic. With only a week to go before the first performance, the producer, Binkie Beaumont, asked him to stand down, and Gielgud was recruited in his place. Matters improved astonishingly; the production was a complete success and ran in London for 644 performances.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: After one long run in "The Heiress", Richardson appeared in another, R.C.Sherriff's "Home at Seven", in 1950. He played an amnesiac bank clerk who fears he may have committed murder. He later recreated the part in a radio broadcast, and in a film version, which was his sole venture into direction for the screen. Once he had played himself into a role in a long run, Richardson felt able to work during the daytime in films, and made two others in the early 1950s beside the film of the Sherriff piece: "Outcast of the Islands", directed by Carol Reed, and David Lean's "The Sound Barrier", released in 1951 and 1952 respectively. For the latter he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor. With his characteristic liking for switching between modern roles and the classics, his next stage part was Colonel Vershinin in "Three Sisters" in 1951. He headed a strong cast, with Renée Asherson, Margaret Leighton and Celia Johnson as the sisters, but reviewers found the production weakly directed, and some felt that Richardson failed to disguise his positive personality when playing the ineffectual Vershinin. He did not attempt Chekhov again for more than a quarter of a century.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: In 1952 Richardson appeared at the Stratford-upon-Avon Festival at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre (forerunner of the Royal Shakespeare Company). His return to Shakespeare for the first time since his Old Vic days was keenly anticipated, but turned out to be a serious disappointment. He had poor reviews for his Prospero in "The Tempest", judged too prosaic. In the second production of the festival his Macbeth, directed by Gielgud, was generally considered a failure. He was thought unconvincingly villainous; the influential young critic Kenneth Tynan professed himself "unmoved to the point of paralysis", though blaming the director more than the star. Richardson's third and final role in the Stratford season, Volpone in Ben Jonson's play, received much better, but not ecstatic, notices. He did not play at Stratford again.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Back in the West End, Richardson was in another Sherriff play, "The White Carnation", in 1953, and in November of the same year he and Gielgud starred together in N.C.Hunter's "A Day by the Sea", which ran at the Haymarket for 386 performances. During this period, Richardson played Dr Watson in an American/BBC radio co-production of Sherlock Holmes stories, with Gielgud as Holmes and Orson Welles as the evil Professor Moriarty. These recordings were later released commercially on disc.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: In late 1954 and early 1955 Richardson and his wife toured Australia together with Sybil Thorndike and her husband, Lewis Casson, playing Terence Rattigan's plays "The Sleeping Prince" and "Separate Tables". The following year he worked with Olivier again, playing Buckingham to Olivier's Richard in the 1955 film of "Richard III". Olivier, who directed, was exasperated at his old friend's insistence on playing the role sympathetically.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson turned down the role of Estragon in Peter Hall's premiere of the English language version of Samuel Beckett's "Waiting for Godot" in 1955, and later reproached himself for missing the chance to be in "the greatest play of my generation". He had consulted Gielgud, who dismissed the piece as rubbish, and even after discussing the play with the author, Richardson could not understand the play or the character. Richardson's "Timon of Athens" in his 1956 return to the Old Vic was well received, as was his Broadway appearance in "The Waltz of the Toreadors" for which he was nominated for a Tony Award in 1957. He concluded the 1950s with two contrasting West End successes, Robert Bolt's "Flowering Cherry", and Graham Greene's "The Complaisant Lover". The former, a sad piece about a failed and deluded insurance manager, ran for 435 performances in 1957–58; Richardson co-starred with three leading ladies in succession: Celia Johnson, Wendy Hiller and his wife. Greene's comedy was a surprise hit, running for 402 performances from June 1959. Throughout rehearsals the cast treated the love-triangle theme as one of despair, and were astonished to find themselves playing to continual laughter. During the run, Richardson worked by day on another Greene work, the film "Our Man in Havana". Alec Guinness, who played the main role, noted "the object-lesson in upstaging in the last scene between Richardson and Noël Coward", faithfully captured by the director, Carol Reed.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson began the 1960s with a failure. Enid Bagnold's play "The Last Joke" was savaged by the critics ("a meaningless jumble of pretentious whimsy" was one description). His only reason for playing in the piece was the chance of acting with Gielgud, but both men quickly regretted their involvement. Richardson then went to the US to appear in Sidney Lumet's film adaptation of "Long Day's Journey into Night", alongside Katharine Hepburn. Lumet later recalled how little guidance Richardson needed. Once, the director went into lengthy detail about the playing of a scene, and when he had finished, Richardson said, "Ah, I think I know what you want – a little more flute and a little less cello". After that, Lumet was sparing with suggestions. Richardson was jointly awarded the Cannes Film Festival's Best Actor prize with his co-stars Jason Robards Jr and Dean Stockwell.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson's next stage role was in a starry revival of "The School for Scandal", as Sir Peter Teazle, directed by Gielgud in 1962. The production was taken on a North American tour, in which Gielgud joined the cast as, he said, "the oldest Joseph Surface in the business". A revival of "Six Characters in Search of an Author" in 1963 was judged by the critic Sheridan Morley to have been a high-point of the actor's work in the 1960s. Richardson joined a British Council tour of South Africa and Europe the following year; he played Bottom again, and Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice".


title: Ralph Richardson

text: For his next four stage productions, Richardson was at the Haymarket. "Father Carving a Statue" (1964) by Graham Greene was short-lived. He had a more reliable vehicle in Shaw's "You Never Can Tell" (1966) in which he played the philosopher-waiter William, and in the same year he had a great success as Sir Anthony Absolute in "The Rivals". The critic David Benedictus wrote of Richardson's performance, "he is choleric and gouty certainly, the script demands that he shall be, but his most engaging quality, his love for his son in spite of himself, shines through every line." In 1967 he again played Shylock; this was the last time he acted in a Shakespeare play on stage. His performance won critical praise, but the rest of the cast were less well received.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Interspersed with his stage plays, Richardson made thirteen cinema films during the decade. On screen he played historical figures including Sir Edward Carson ("Oscar Wilde", 1960), W.E.Gladstone ("Khartoum", 1966) and Sir Edward Grey ("Oh! What a Lovely War", 1969). He was scrupulous about historical accuracy in his portrayals, and researched eras and characters in great detail before filming. Occasionally his precision was greater than directors wished, as when, in "Khartoum", he insisted on wearing a small black finger-stall because the real Gladstone had worn one following an injury. After a role playing a disabled tycoon and Sean Connery's uncle in "Woman of Straw", in 1965 he played Alexander Gromeko in Lean's "Doctor Zhivago", an exceptionally successful film at the box office, which, together with "The Wrong Box" and "Khartoum", earned him a BAFTA nomination for best leading actor in 1966. Other film roles from this period included Lord Fortnum ("The Bed Sitting Room", 1969) and Leclerc ("The Looking Glass War", 1970). The casts of "Oh! What a Lovely War" and "Khartoum" included Olivier, but he and Richardson did not appear in the same scenes, and never met during the filming. Olivier was by now running the National Theatre, temporarily based at the Old Vic, but showed little desire to recruit his former colleague for any of the company's productions.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: In 1964 Richardson was the voice of General Haig in the twenty-six-part BBC documentary series "The Great War". In 1967 he played Lord Emsworth on BBC television in dramatisations of PGWodehouse's Blandings Castle stories, with his wife playing Emsworth's bossy sister Constance, and Stanley Holloway as the butler, Beach. He was nervous about acting in a television series: "I'm sixty-four and that's a bit old to be taking on a new medium." The performances divided critical opinion. "The Times" thought the stars "a sheer delight... situation comedy is joy in their hands". The reviewers in "The Guardian" and "The Observer" thought the three too theatrical to be effective on the small screen. For television he recorded studio versions of two plays in which he had appeared on stage: "Johnson Over Jordan" (1965) and "Twelfth Night" (1968).


title: Ralph Richardson

text: During the decade, Richardson made numerous sound recordings. For the Caedmon Audio label he re-created his role as "Cyrano de Bergerac" opposite Anna Massey as Roxane, and played the title role in a complete recording of "Julius Caesar", with a cast that included Anthony Quayle as Brutus, John Mills as Cassius and Alan Bates as Antony. Other Caedmon recordings were "Measure for Measure", "The School for Scandal" and "No Man's Land". Richardson also recorded some English Romantic poetry, including "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" and poems by Keats and Shelley for the label. For Decca Records Richardson recorded the narration for Prokofiev's "Peter and the Wolf", and for RCA the superscriptions for Vaughan Williams's "Sinfonia antartica" – both with the London Symphony Orchestra, the Prokofiev conducted by Sir Malcolm Sargent and the Vaughan Williams by André Previn.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson's last stage role of the decade was in 1969, as Dr Rance in "What the Butler Saw" by Joe Orton. It was a conspicuous failure. The public hated the play and made the fact vociferously clear at the first night.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: In 1970 Richardson was with Gielgud at the Royal Court in David Storey's "Home". The play is set in the gardens of a nursing home for mental patients, though this is not clear at first. The two elderly men converse in a desultory way, are joined and briefly enlivened by two more extrovert female patients, are slightly scared by another male patient, and are then left together, conversing even more emptily. The "Punch" critic, Jeremy Kingston wrote:


title: Ralph Richardson

text: The play transferred to the West End and then to Broadway. In "The New York Times" Clive Barnes wrote, "The two men, bleakly examining the little nothingness of their lives, are John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson giving two of the greatest performances of two careers that have been among the glories of the English-speaking theater." The original cast recorded the play for television in 1972.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Back at the Royal Court in 1971 Richardson starred in John Osborne's "West of Suez", after which, in July 1972, he surprised many by joining Peggy Ashcroft in a drawing-room comedy, "Lloyd George Knew My Father" by William Douglas-Home. Some critics felt the play was too slight for its two stars, but Harold Hobson thought Richardson found unsuspected depths in the character of the ostensibly phlegmatic General Boothroyd. The play was a hit with the public, and when Ashcroft left after four months, Celia Johnson took over until May 1973, when Richardson handed over to Andrew Cruickshank in the West End. Richardson afterwards toured the play in Australia and Canada with his wife as co-star. An Australian critic wrote, "The play is a vehicle for Sir Ralph... but the real driver is Lady Richardson."


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson's film roles of the early 1970s ranged from the Crypt Keeper in "Tales from the Crypt" (1972) and dual roles in Lindsay Anderson's "O Lucky Man" to the Caterpillar in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1972) and Dr Rank in Ibsen's "A Doll's House" (1973). The last of these was released at the same time as an American film of the same play, starring Jane Fonda; the timing detracted from the impact of both versions, but Richardson's performance won good reviews. In "The Observer", George Melly wrote, "As for Sir Ralph as Dr Rank, he grows from the ageing elegant cynic of his first appearance (it's even a pleasure to watch him remove his top hat) to become the heroic dying stoic of his final exit without in any way forcing the pace." In 1973 Richardson received a BAFTA nomination for his performance of George IV in "Lady Caroline Lamb", in which Olivier appeared as Wellington.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Peter Hall, having succeeded Olivier as director of the National Theatre, was determined to attract Ashcroft, Gielgud and Richardson into the company. In 1975 he successfully offered Richardson the title role in Ibsen's "John Gabriel Borkman", with Ashcroft and Wendy Hiller in the two main female roles. The production was one of the early successes of Hall's initially difficult tenure. The critic Michael Billington wrote that Hall had done the impossible in reconciling the contradictory aspects of the play and that "Richardson's Borkman is both moral monster and self-made superman; and the performance is full of a strange, unearthly music that belongs to this actor alone."


title: Ralph Richardson

text: Richardson continued his long stage association with Gielgud in Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land" (1975) directed by Hall at the National. Gielgud played Spooner, a down-at-heel sponger and opportunist, and Richardson was Hirst, a prosperous but isolated and vulnerable author. There is both comedy and pain in the piece: the critic Michael Coveney called their performance "the funniest double-act in town", but Peter Hall said of Richardson, "I do not think any other actor could fill Hirst with such a sense of loneliness and creativity as Ralph does. The production was a critical and box-office success, and played at the Old Vic, in the West End, at the Lyttelton Theatre in the new National Theatre complex, on Broadway and on television, over a period of three years.


title: Ralph Richardson

text: After "No Man's Land", Richardson once again turned to light comedy by Douglas-Home, from whom he commissioned "The Kingfisher". A story of an old love affair rekindled, it opened with Celia Johnson as the female lead. It ran for six months, and would have lasted much longer had Johnson not withdrawn, leaving Richardson unwilling to rehearse the piece with anyone else. He returned to the National, and to Chekhov, in 1978 as the aged retainer Firs in "The Cherry Orchard". The notices for the production were mixed; those for Richardson's next West End play were uniformly dreadful. This was "Alice's Boys", a spy and murder piece generally agreed to be preposterous. A legend, possibly apocryphal, grew that during the short run Richardson walked to the front of the stage one night and asked, "Is there a doctor in the house?" A doctor stood up, and Richardson sadly said to him, "Doctor, isn't this a terrible play?"


title: Ralph Richardson

text: After this débâcle the rest of Richardson's stage career was at the National, with one late exception. He played Lord Touchwood in "The Double Dealer" (1978), the Master in "The Fruits of Enlightenment" (1979), Old Ekdal in "The Wild Duck" (1979) and Kitchen in Storey's "Early Days", specially written for him. The last toured in North America after the London run. His final West End play was "The Understanding" (1982), a gentle comedy of late-flowering love. Celia Johnson was cast as his co-star, but died suddenly just before the first night. Joan Greenwood stepped into the breach, but the momentum of the production had gone, and it closed after eight weeks.