Esmond Knight

Meanwhile, Esmond had already experienced the thrill of appearing on a stage before even leaving school. His resourceful mother had discovered the Pax Robertson Salon, a small repertory group consisting mainly of amateurs, based at Bedford Hall, a theatre converted from a disused chapel in Chelsea. It was run by Madge Pax Robertson and her husband, Cyril Francis Joseph Stanislaw (also known under various other names including Ivain March and Ivan Stanislaw). On February 22nd 1925, Esmond and his mother went along to hear a performance of Danuncio's play La Giaconda where they met Madge, who invited him to become an acting member of the theatre. As a result, just a few weeks later, on March 15th, Esmond made his first ever stage appearance as Arlecchino in a light comedy by Goldini's Curiosity. Miss Robertson was impressed enough by his performance to offer him a more substantial part in another production soon afterwards of Ibsen's The Wild Duck. Pax Robertson played the female lead, Hedvig, her husband was her father, and Esmond was given the role of Old Ekdal, her grandfather - no mean feat at eighteen to play an ageing drunkard! He was even mentioned in a review of the performance in The Stage magazine five days later: "Her [Hedvig's] father Hialmar Ekdal, was played with flamboyant humour by Mr Ivain March , and the drunken old grandfather was represented effectively by a promising newcomer, Mr. Esmond Knight." It was valuable practical experience, and no mean feat at eighteen to play an ageing drunkard!

[NB - In his autobiography, Seeking the Bubble, Esmond states that his first role at the Pax Robertson Salon was in The Wild Duck and his second in Curiosity. However, the list of plays and dates for that season (below left) clearly indicate that it was the other way round.]

Above Left: The 1925 Winter Season of plays presented at the Pax Robertson Salon.
Middle: The cast list for Curiosity, Esmond's first appearance on a public stage, March 15th 1925.
Right: The cast list for The Wild Duck a few weeks later on April 5th, and repeated on April 26th.
(Photos courtesy of the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Archives)

Esmond's first notice, for his part in Richard III, did not hint at his future success. Theatre critic James Agate, having praised Edith Evans and Balliol Holloway for their performances, added: "But Mr Esmond Knight, as the Marquess of Dorset, reminded us more of the football pitch than a royal palace." This was presumably a reference to his over-muscular legs. However, his athleticism did not fail to impress others, if not the critics. Ninette de Valois, who gave lessons in ballet to students at the time, saw his potential and tried to entice him, unsuccessfully, into training as a ballet dancer. As an actor Esmond must have done something right for he was invited by Lilian Baylis to return for a second season at a salary of £1 a week, this time appearing in more than a dozen plays including Dr Syn, Macbeth (playing at least four parts), King John, Twelfth Night, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and more ballet and extra parts in operas such as Carmen and Lohengrin.

When the busy 1926/27 season at the Old Vic eventually came to an end, Esmond began the sometimes arduous task of developing a career as a jobbing actor - doing the rounds of agents' offices and taking any and every opportunity that came his way to gain experience. At length he managed to find a small part in a play called The Return at the Everyman Theatre in Hampstead (with a very young Peggy Ashcroft in the cast) and then two opportunities came his way and he had to make a decision between a long tour to the West Indies and South America with Shakespearian actress Florence Glossop Harris, or the offer to join the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company. Tempting though the former was, he chose the latter, because the Birmingham company then had the reputation of being the best permanent company in the country. The play was called Yellow Sands.

The Birmingham "Rep" had been founded in 1913 by director and entrepreneur Barry Jackson who was also responsible for building the theatre which was their home. Fortunately for Esmond, with a foot in the door of this prestigious company and lots to learn, the engagement lasted a year, mostly on tour performing in cathedral towns such as Exeter, Gloucester and Lincoln. He played opposite an attractive actress called Frances Clare, two years his senior, who very soon became the focus of his romantic attention - and subsequently Mrs Esmond Knight. (Had he taken the West Indies offer they would never have met!) He later wrote:

"I had to make love to her. It was fun sitting on the upturned boat in a scene that we had together, plastered with a bronze make-up and having to say all those things to her which I hadn't quite the courage to say offstage."

During 1928 Esmond and Frances (or 'Fran' as she was more often referred to) became secretly engaged, and in the autumn they again appeared on stage together at the Gate Theatre Studio in London. The play was called Fashion (or Life In New York) by Anna Cora Mowatt, and when the production transferred to the Kingsway Theatre, Esmond stayed on at the Gate to appear in another play, To What Red Hell by Percy Robinson. The leading role in the latter was played by Frederick Peiseley whose highly vigorous performance was complemented by Esmond's calmness, a contrast that did not go unnoticed by the observant, omnipotent theatre critic James Agate: "But the performance which moved me most was that of Mr Knight who never batted an eyelid during the evening."

Unfortunately, halfway through the run of To What Red Hell Esmond developed mumps and even more unfortunately passed it on to numerous theatrical colleagues and family members, including his parents, before being confined to bed at home in Putney. It was now December and the illness created something of a dilemma for Esmond as he and Fran had made wedding plans for early in the New Year. The banns had been published but he had yet to tell his parents. So it was on Christmas Eve 1928 that he marched somewhat unceremoniously into their bedroom, where they too were confined with swollen faces, and announced his intentions out of the blue!

Having been reunited on stage in Fashion for a while at the Kingsway, the couple were soon out of work again and so they moved to more modest accommodation at 35 Manchester Street, just off Baker Street. Esmond was forced to leave Fran for a time while he travelled to Paris to join the cast of a play by Simon Gantillon called Maya at the Studio des Theatres des Champs-Elysees. The play was set in a brothel and had been banned in the UK and America; consequently it was drawing huge audiences in France. Esmond was then invited by Albert de Courville, a successful theatrical producer and occasional director, to stay on in Paris to appear in a play about the Great War called The Man I Killed.

At home in England, Fran had gained a part in a play called Nine Till Six in which she appeared with Jill Esmond who during the run married a promising young actor by the name of Laurence Olivier. When Esmond returned in the summer of 1929 he still found it difficult to find work. Depressed and rather disillusioned with the theatre, he travelled down to Sevenoaks to stay with his Uncle Chas, Captain Charles Knight, a well-known naturalist with whom he shared a passion for birds and wildlife. From there he went on to stay with a friend, Vernon Sewell, a technician in the sound department at Nettlefold film studios in Walton-On-Thames, previously the studios of pioneer film maker Cecil Hepworth and where Esmond would soon be making films himself with Michael Powell. Sewell's hobby was boats and they spent some time together on his cabin cruiser at Bosham in Chichester Harbour. While they were there, they witnessed the Supermarine S6 high-speed seaplane fly over as it won the 1929 Schneider Trophy.

Back in London, Esmond's first job was to help provide sound effects for a radio version of The Prisoner of Zenda with Denis Freeman, with whom he had worked on Fashion. Then towards the end of the year his luck changed and he found work in two plays - The Return of the Puritan at the Golders Green Hippodrome and Art and Mrs Bottle with Joan Barry at the Criterion. Like many actors, Esmond suffered from nerves before going on stage. But for him there had been an additional hurdle to overcome - a stutter from which he had suffered since childhood. He would read through his lines and anxiously look out for problem words beginning with C, P, T, or D in order to prepare to tackle the problem. He discovered that the stutter completely disappeared when he sang: "I used to make up this crazy meandering tune and learn my lines to it." Ironically, in Art and Mrs Bottle he played the part of a nervous young artist who stuttered. Acting an affliction that he normally worked hard to avoid was very difficult, an experience he later described as "absolute purgatory".

The new decade was also to consolidate the tiny foothold he had managed to achieve in the British cinema which had fared badly in the 1920s, struggling to keep up with mighty competition from Hollywood and the huge technical advances surrounding the arrival of "the talkies".