Donat, Robert

Donat, Robert (1905-1958), British actor of stage and screen. He was born Friedrich Robert Donath in Withington, Manchester, the son of a Polish-born civil engineer, and educated at Manchester’s Central High School for Boys. To correct a childhood stammer he was sent to an elocutionist, and after making his first stage appearance aged 16, Donat became a member of Sir Frank Benson’s Shakespearean company in 1924. In 1929 he joined the Cambridge Festival Theatre, under Sir Tyrone Guthrie, where he played leading roles in the works of William Shakespeare, Euripides, and Luigi Pirandello. After establishing himself on the London stage, Donat was offered a three-year contract by Sir Alexander Korda and began appearing in films, most notably in the role of Thomas Culpeper in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), the popularity of which led to his being cast as Edmond Dantes in the 1934 Hollywood film The Count of Monte Cristo. The United States did not agree with Donat, however, and he returned to Britain to resume his stage career, most memorably in 1933 in A Sleeping Clergyman by James Bridie, at the Malvern Festival and in the West End.

Despite his aversion to Hollywood, Donat’s film career flourished in the 1930s, with charismatic performances as Richard Hannay in the Hitchcock thriller The 39 Steps (1935), a Scottish ghost and his descendant in the comedy The Ghost Goes West (1935), an Englishman caught up in the Russian Revolution in Knight Without Armour (1937), alongside Marlene Dietrich, and a principled young doctor in The Citadel (1938), which brought an Academy Award nomination. He went one better in 1939, winning the Best Actor Oscar for his performance as the endearing schoolmaster Mr Chipping in Goodbye, Mr Chips, adapted from the novel by James Hilton.

During World War II, Donat starred as the statesman William Pitt in The Young Mr Pitt (1942), and staged plays at the Westminster Theatre, including a successful long-running revival of An Ideal Husband (1943-1944) by Oscar Wilde. The post-war era saw him star as Benedick in Much Ado about Nothing (1946) at the Aldwych Theatre, and as the famous barrister Sir Robert Morton who defends Ronnie Winslow in the 1948 film of The Winslow Boy by Sir Terence Rattigan. Donat had long suffered from acute asthma, and in the 1950s his health declined, hampering his career. His final stage performance was at the Old Vic in 1953 as Becket in Murder in the Cathedral by T. S. Eliot. In 1958 he was taken ill during the filming of The Inn of the Sixth Happiness, and died soon afterwards from a stroke.