Word: richardson
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After a greeting by Dean of the Law School James Vorenberg '49, John P. Coolidge '35, Boardman Professor of Fine Arts, spoke about the building's designer. Henry H. Richardson, who graduated from the College in 1859, and his architecture, an example of which is Server Hall...
...Tynan's phrase, "like a Teddy bear snapped in a bad light by a child holding its first camera." The body was pear-shaped and the vocal tones were not; they pontificated, or quavered with sentiment. The hands rose and fluttered independently, articulating a sweetly deranged sign language. Ralph Richardson was no matinee idol?no ethereal saint like John Gielgud, whose beautiful voice could coax meaning out of a computer printout; no demon lover like Laurence Olivier, with hellfire in his eyes and the coil of sexual danger. Sir Ralph walked the earth, with sure, heavy strides. When he left...
...This weird and wonderful noise mesmerized the teenager, and he resolved to take to the stage. With no schooling in the dramatic arts, Ralph had literally to buy his way into an amateur repertory company. His audition speech drew this appraisal from the company's manager: "It's frightful, Richardson. You could never, never be any good as Falstaff." The next time Richardson slipped into the grand carcass of that role, in 1945, he was proclaimed the greatest Falstaff in living memory...
...aged, his characters turned imperious and, in spite of their power, ineffectual. In David Storey's Home (1970), John Osborne's West of Suez (1971) and Harold Pinter's No Man's Land (1975) and in the films The Heiress (1950) and Long Day's Journey into Night (1962), Richardson found his ideal role: as the haughty burgher whose tragic flaw lies in realizing too late that he is not quite a tragic figure. Though he never played Lear, the Shakespearean role that might have been written for him, Richardson found that doddering majesty as the politician in Storey...
Offstage, Richardson played another role, no less carefully calculated: the foxy grandpa, cheerfully distant, fond of his drink and his pet ferret named Eddie, ever ready to scoot away on his motorcycle or to celebrate an occasion with his special display of fireworks. As for the pyrotechnics of his craft, he was meticulous in creating them, blending an exhaustive reading of the script with acute observation of Everyman in the street. It was this creature whom Richardson embodied and alchemized into art. In finding something extraordinary in the ordinary man, in revealing his dreams and despair, Sir Ralph proved himself...