Ronald Colman Biography

 

http://themave.com/Colman

 

This touching picture is from the climactic scene from the movie, where Ronald Colman, who has taken the place of his double Charles Darnay in the tumbril, along with "the little seamstress" - played by Isabel Jewell - both awaiting their turn to be beheaded by Madame La Guillotine. Have you ever seen anyone sexier or more beautiful than this guy? Ah, what a terrible, terrible waste, chopping off that beautiful head!

Moments later, as he stands awaiting the ascent of the blade, he thinks to himself (and we hear his voice saying it), "It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest I go to than I have ever known!" (Sob.) Do you want to hear that glorious voice actually saying those deathless words??? Click on the URL below for a running of the 1930s Lux Radio Theater, with Cecil B. DeMille, offering A Tale of Two Cities, with Ronald Colman as Sidney Carton and Edna Best as Lucy Manette.

http://www.lynnpdesign.com/classicmovies/demille/lux.html

 

Ronald Charles Colman was born on February 9, 1891 in Richmond, Surrey, England. He was the fifth of six children (three daughters and three sons; the oldest son dying at age 5) born to Charles and Marjory Fraser Colman. Charles Colman was a fairly well-to-do silk importer, Marjory a homemaker of Scottish descent.

 

Young Ronald was sent to Hadley boarding school in Littlehampton. He was a quiet boy, introspective and somewhat solitary, showing courtesy and breeding far beyond his years. When Ronald was 16 his father died, putting an end to the boy's plans to attend Cambridge and become an engineer. He went to work as a shipping clerk at the British Steamship Company, at a weekly salary of 15 shillings. In a period of five years he worked his way up to bookkeeper and then accountant.

 

Not surprisingly, Colman found these years tedious, and felt very lonely, very desolate, and rather friendless. The tedium was relieved somewhat when he joined the London Scottish Regionals, an army territorial force. There he found an escape from office work, as well as new camaraderie with his fellow soldiers. He also began to take part in amateur theatricals, performing a variety of roles with the Bancroft Dramatic Society.

 

In 1914, when Colman was 23 years old, England went to war with Germany. Colman's London Scottish regiment was among the first 100,000 English soldiers sent to France to fight. Colman took part in the first Battle of Ypres and was severely wounded at the battle at Messines. The shrapnel wounds he took to his legs invalided him out of active service. In May 1915, decorated, discharged and depressed, he returned home. "When I came back to England my whole world had changed," Colman later said. I had to have a job; so did thousands of other men just like me. Jobs were hard to find. The only thing I knew anything about was amateur theatricals. So I turned to the stage. I took anything I could get and that was very little. (It is interesting to note that Colman had ruled out bookkeeping and accounting jobs altogether.)

 

Though it may not have seemed so at the time, he had just made a momentous decision, one that would change his life (and the lives of many others) forever.

 

http://themave.com/Colman