| Biography | Sir Donald Wolfit KBE (20 April 1902, New Balderton, Nottinghamshire, England 17 February 1968, London, England) was an English actor-manager.
Wolfit's speciality was Shakespeare. He was known especially for his performances as King Lear and Richard III as well as Oedipus, Ben Jonson's Volpone and Christopher Marlowe's Tamburlaine. His touring company performed in London during the Battle of Britain in 1940 and Wolfit staged a very successful series of abridged versions of Shakespeare's plays in London during World War II in the early afternoon for lunchtime audiences, but he was unpopular with American critics when he took the company to Broadway in 1947. He appeared at Stratford during the 1950s in his signature role of King Lear, and was invited to play Falstaff at the RSC in 1962 but turned the offer down when he discovered Paul Scofield would be playing Lear there at the same time, saying "Lear is still the brightest jewel in my crown!"
Wolfit was primarily a stage actor, although he appeared in over thirty films such as Svengali (1954) Blood of the Vampire (1958), Room at the Top (1959), Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and Becket (1964). He worked a good deal for the BBC, playing King John and Volpone on television, and Lear, Falstaff and Richard III for radio - as well as modern parts like Archie Rice in The Entertainer |