- Born
- Died
- Height5′ 11″ (1.80 m)
- British playwright / director Harley Granville-Barker was born in London, England, in 1877. His schooling ended at age 13, when at the urging of his mother he entered a dramatic school / stock company at Margate. A year later he was performing on the London stage. He was writing plays at a very young age, and in 1899 had his first play produced on the London stage, "The Weather Hen". He soon joined the Stage Society as an actor and producer. In 1901 his play "The Marrying of Ann Leete" was produced on stage, to wide acclaim. In 1905 he became co-manager of The Court Theatre, He began to stage plays by authors who had a difficult time finding theaters that would showcase their works, such as Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw, and in fact Barker himself performed the lead in many of the Shaw plays they staged.
In 1907 he married Lillah McCarthy, an actress who had appeared in many of his productions, but they divorced in 1918. He then married Helen Mancheseter Gates, an American poet and novelist who later changed her professional name to Helen Granville-Barker. He decided to leave acting in 1910, but stayed in the theatrical business as a producer until 1934.
Barker is best known as a producer and director of plays by 'William Shakespare (I)', and in fact is considered by many Shakespeare devotees as the most important director of Shakespeare's plays in British theatrical history. He also translated the works of many foreign playwrights--many of them Spanish--into English, and wrote several scholarly books on drama and the theater.
He died in Paris, France, in August of 1946.- IMDb Mini Biography By: frankfob2@yahoo.com
- SpousesHelen Granville-Barker(1918 - August 31, 1946) (his death)Lillah McCarthy(1906 - 1918) (divorced)
- A highly influential director of the plays of William Shakespeare.
- In 1906, Granville-Barker met his first wife Lillah McCarthy on tour with Ben Greet's Shakespeare and Old English Touring Company in 1895 when he was 17. In Ben Greet's company, he played Paris to McCarthy's Juliet. McCarthy first appeared at The Court Theatre under Barker's co-management in "John Bull's Other Island" in 1895. Shortly thereafter, Barker played opposite McCarthy in Man and Superman (1895). They married on April 24, 1906 at the West Strand Registry Office.
- He was an English actor, director, playwright, manager, critic, and theorist.
- Granville-Barker's most notable prose work is the Prefaces to Shakespeare written from 1927 to the end of his life in 1946. Prefaces to Shakespeare was considered the first major Shakespeare study to attend to the practical matters of staging. The prefaces were published in two hardback volumes in 1946 and 1947.
- On the outbreak of the Second World War, Granville-Barker fled France for Spain before moving to the United States. In America he lectured at Harvard and was also employed by British Information Services.
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