Anthony Hawtrey

Anthony John Hawtrey (1909–1954) was an English actor and theatre director.
He was born in Claygate, Surrey on 22 January 1909, the illegitimate son of Sir Charles Hawtrey and Olive Morris (the daughter of Florence Terry), and was educated at Bradfield College prior to studying for the stage under Bertha Moore.

From 1930 Hawtrey worked as an actor in London, on tour in South Africa, and with the Liverpool Repertory Company. In 1939 he was director of productions at the Embassy Theatre in north London, subsequently becoming director at the Swindon Repertory Company. Then in 1940–42 he directed and acted in over 40 plays at the Dundee Repertory Theatre.

Embassy Theatre

In January 1945 Hawtrey reopened the Embassy, which had been closed due to bomb damage, and under his directorship there followed a string of successful productions. From the first two years' output, 20 plays in all, he selected six for publication, in two volumes, under the title Embassy Successes, namely

• Worm's Eye View by R.F. Delderfield
• Father Malachy's Miracle adapted by Brian Doherty from the book by Bruce Marshall
• Zoo in Silesia by Richard Pollock
• National Velvet by Enid Bagnold
• Skipper Next to God by Jan de Hartog
• No Room at the Inn by Joan Temple.

Of these, Worm's Eye View and No Room at the Inn enjoyed highly successful transfers to the West End, at the Whitehall and Winter Garden theatres respectively, and also became notable films.

In 1948 a third volume of Embassy Successes comprised

• Peace Comes to Peckham by R.F. Delderfield
• Let My People Go! by Ian Hay
• Away from It All by Val Gielgud.

Further successes followed, among them the Sylvia Rayman play Women of Twilight, which proved a major hit for Hawtrey and the Embassy in 1951/52, transferring to both the Vaudeville Theatre and the Victoria Palace, also becoming a successful film.

Introducing the first two volumes of Embassy Successes, Hawtrey pointed out that "People often ask me, 'What is your policy at the Embassy?' The answer is simple. Our policy is this. To present new plays dealing with today's world - in terms of entertainment. If these plays are written by new playwrights, so much the better. I am aware that the English theatre cannot properly thrive unless there is a constant supply of fresh dramatists. At the Embassy, we shall always do everything in our power to foster this supply."

"Not the least of Mr. Hawtrey's claims to the gratitude of his audiences," wrote Val Gielgud in the third Embassy Successes book, "is his persistent refusal to be deterred from experiment by difficulties of staging which too frequently have proved fatal to the chances of a play's production in the West End." According to the actor Leslie Phillips, Hawtrey "was a charming, easy-going man with a great sense of humour and a natural instinct for popular theatre."

Screen work

In parallel with his work in theatre, Hawtrey also acted in television productions and several films, a few of which were

• Inquest (1939) (TV)
• Warn That Man (1943)
• Headline (1944)
• The Hundred Pound Window (1944)
• The World Owes Me a Living (1945)
• Latin Quarter (1945)
• The First Gentleman (1948)
• Julius Caesar (1951) (TV; as Mark Antony)

Personal life

He was married to the actress Marjorie Clark, with whom he had a son, Charles. He died in London of a heart attack on 18 October 1954.