Frith Banbury
{{Short description|British actor and director (1912–2008)}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2016}}
{{Use British English|date=August 2016}}
{{Infobox person
| name = Frith Banbury
| honorific_suffix= {{post-nominals|country=GBR|size=100%|MBE}}
| image =
| alt =
| caption =
| birth_name = Frederick Harold Frith Banbury
| birth_date = {{Birth date|1912|5|4|df=y}}
| birth_place = Plymouth, Devon, England
| death_date = {{Death date and age|2008|5|14|1912|5|4|df=y}}
| death_place = London, England
| occupation = Actor
Stage director
| years_active = 1933–2000
}}
Frederick Harold Frith Banbury {{post-nominals|country=GBR|MBE}} (4 May 1912 – 14 May 2008) was a British theatre actor and director.{{cite web|url=http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2bb205dd58|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20171107080839/http://www.bfi.org.uk/films-tv-people/4ce2bb205dd58|url-status=dead|archive-date=7 November 2017|title=Frith Banbury profile|accessdate=19 November 2022}}
Banbury was born in Plymouth, Devon, on 4 May 1912, the son of Rear Admiral Frederick Arthur Frith Banbury and his wife Winifred (née Fink).{{cite encyclopedia | title = BANBURY, Frith | encyclopedia = Who's Who in the Theatre | volume = 1 | page = 40 | publisher = Gale Research Company | year = 1981| issn = 0083-9833 | editor = Ian Herbert}}
While attending Stowe School, Banbury rejected his father's naval background by refusing to join the Officer Training Corps, later being registered as a conscientious objector, enabling him to continue acting throughout the Second World War.{{cite news | title = Frith Banbury | url = https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2008/may/16/theatre.culture | work = The Guardian | author = Billington, Michael | date = 16 May 2008 | accessdate = 7 February 2018}} He went on to attend Hertford College, Oxford, though he left after one year without obtaining an academic degree.{{cite web |title=Hertford College Magazine No.88 |url=https://www.hertford.ox.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/2008-No.-88-The-Hertford-College-Magazine.pdf |website=Hertford College |access-date=29 May 2023 |page=76 |date=2008}} He trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art alongside Joan Littlewood, Rachel Kempson, Robert Morley, and Peter Bull.
Banbury died on 14 May 2008, at the age of 96.{{cite news |title=Frith Banbury, Director whose 1950s reign at the Haymarket Theatre championed writers such as Robert Bolt and Rodney Ackland |url=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3941001.ece |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081012162616/http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article3941001.ece |url-status=dead |archive-date=12 October 2008 |work= The Times |date=16 May 2008 |accessdate=17 December 2009 | location=London}}
Theatrical career
Banbury made his first stage appearance on 15 June 1933, playing a walk-on part in If I Were You at the Shaftesbury Theatre. He continued to act through the 1930s and 40s, appearing at such venues as the Ambassadors Theatre, the Little Theatre, the Gate Theatre, the Apollo Theatre, and the Q Theatre.
After World War II, Banbury was invited back to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art to direct. He made his professional directing breakthrough by directing Dark Summer, a play written by fellow pacifist Wynyard Browne. Other early successes for Banbury included The Holly and the Ivy, Waters of the Moon, and The Deep Blue Sea.
The latter was one of three plays which Banbury directed on Broadway, with the other two being Flowering Cherry and The Right Honourable Gentleman.{{IBDB name|27022}} Other locations at which Banbury directed plays include the Cambridge Theatre in 1971, (Captain Brassbound's Conversion), Old Vic theatre, the Edinburgh Festival, the Chichester Festival Theatre, Paris, Dublin, South Africa, Kenya, and Australia.
Archive
The papers of Frith Banbury were purchased by the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin in the 1990s as part of their extensive holdings of contemporary British theatre. The collection opened to the public in 1996. The archive consists of over sixty boxes of scripts, correspondence, posters, programs, photographs, publicity clippings and scrapbooks, reviews, and financial records pertaining to his career from 1926-1995.{{Cite web|url=http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00158|title=Frederick Harold Frith Banbury: A Preliminary Inventory of His Papers at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center|website=norman.hrc.utexas.edu|access-date=2016-05-30}} The Ransom Center also holds a collection of material relating to the 1952 American production of Terence Rattigan's The Deep Blue Sea, which was directed by Banbury.[http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00464 The Ransom Center], norman.hrc.utexas.edu. Accessed 19 November 2022.
Filmography
=Film=
| class="wikitable sortable" |
| Year
! Title ! Role ! Notes |
|---|
| 1938
| Peter Thropp | TV film |
| 1943
| The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp | Baby-Face Fitzroy | |
| 1948
| Dress Designer | Uncredited |
| rowspan="2"|1949
| Gold-Spectacled Young Man | Uncredited |
| The Huggetts Abroad
| French Doctor | |
References
{{Reflist}}
External links
- [http://norman.hrc.utexas.edu/fasearch/findingAid.cfm?eadid=00158 Frith Banbury Papers] at the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin
- {{IMDb name|0051580}}
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Banbury, Frith}}
Category:Alumni of Hertford College, Oxford
Category:Alumni of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art
Category:British conscientious objectors
Category:English male stage actors
Category:English theatre directors
Category:Male actors from Plymouth, Devon