Esmond Knight

Esmond Penington Knight (4 May 1906 – 23 February 1987) was an English actor whose stage and film career spanned more than half a century. Born in East Sheen, Surrey, the third son of Francis and Bertha Knight, he was educated at Willington Preparatory School in Putney and subsequently at Westminster School. His father worked in the family cigar import business.

Knight established himself on the stage during the 1920s, appearing at Pax Robertson's Salon in London in The Wild Duck (1925) and completing a full season at the Old Vic in 1926, which included a production of Everyman. He also worked with a Children's Theatre company in London in 1928. By 1930, he had secured a role in John Gielgud's production of Hamlet at the Queen's Theatre, London, playing Rosencrantz alongside Gielgud and Donald Wolfit. His film work during this period included Romany Love (1931), in which he played a gypsy character, and a lead role as Johann Strauss in Alfred Hitchcock's Waltzes from Vienna (1934). For The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Knight and his uncle C. W. R. Knight trained the falcons used in the hunting scenes. He subsequently traveled to Germany to appear in Black Roses (1935), a film about a Finnish anti-communist that was shot in English, German, and French versions.

After the outbreak of World War II, Knight appeared in Powell and Pressburger's Contraband (1940) before pursuing a naval commission. He was accepted for naval training in late 1940 and appointed, with the rank of Sub-lieutenant in the RNVR, to the battleship HMS Prince of Wales. On 24 May 1941, during the Battle of the Denmark Strait, Knight witnessed the sinking of HMS Hood before being struck in the face by fragments from the ship's superstructure following a shell fired by the German battleship Bismarck. The injury cost him his left eye and severely damaged his right, leaving him totally blind for two years.

Despite his blindness, Knight continued working, dictating an autobiography titled Seeking the Bubble (Hutchinson & Co., 1943) to his secretary, Annabella Cloudsley, and performing in radio productions. He appeared on film in Powell and Pressburger's The Silver Fleet (1943), playing a Nazi villain while still completely without sight. In 1943, a course of treatments administered by Dr. Vincent Nesfield restored partial sight to his remaining eye. The recovery enabled Knight to take on more substantial roles, including the village idiot and the Seven Sisters Soldier in Powell and Pressburger's A Canterbury Tale (1944), for which he also provided a Chaucer voice-over. His return to mainstream prominence came with his casting as Fluellen in Laurence Olivier's film adaptation of Henry V (1944).

Knight continued his association with both Olivier and Powell and Pressburger throughout the late 1940s and into the 1950s. He appeared in Olivier's Shakespearean films Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955), and in Powell and Pressburger's Black Narcissus (1947) and The Red Shoes (1948). He also starred in Jean Renoir's The River (1951). On stage, he completed a full season with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford-upon-Avon in 1948–1949, and appeared in Caesar and Cleopatra at St James's Theatre, London, in 1951, alongside Laurence Olivier, Vivien Leigh, and Peter Cushing.

In 1953, Knight made his Broadway appearance in New York, performing in The Emperor's New Clothes at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre alongside Lee J. Cobb. The production corresponds to the Broadway credit listed under the title Clothes for that year.

Knight's later career included the role of John Leach, captain of HMS Prince of Wales, in the film Sink the Bismarck! (1960) — the same vessel aboard which he had been blinded nearly two decades earlier. That same year he played Jack Cade in the BBC Shakespeare series An Age of Kings. He starred as Professor Ernest Reinhart in the British science fiction television series A for Andromeda (1961), alongside Patricia Kneale and Peter Halliday. In 1957, he was the subject of a This Is Your Life episode, surprised by Eamonn Andrews at the King's Theatre in Hammersmith, London. His stage work continued into the 1970s and 1980s, encompassing a one-man show, Agincourt – The Archer's Tale, at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester (1973), productions of The Family Reunion (1973 and 1979) and Crime and Punishment (1978) at the same venue, and Moby-Dick at the Royal Exchange with Brian Cox (1983–1984). In Richard Lester's Robin and Marian (1976), Knight played a blind old man who defies Richard I of England, removing his glass eye for the role.

Knight married actress Frances Clare in 1929, and the couple had a daughter, actress Rosalind Knight. He later married actress Nora Swinburne in 1946, and the two remained together until his death. Knight died of a heart attack in London on 23 February 1987.