Geoffrey Kerr

Geoffrey Kerr, born Geoffrey Kemble Grinham Keen on 26 January 1895 in London, England, was a British stage and film actor, director, and writer whose Broadway career spanned from 1920 to 1949. The son of character actor and theatrical manager Frederick Kerr and his wife Lucy Houghton Keen, née Dowson, he had a younger sister, the actor Molly Kerr. He was educated at Charterhouse School, the same institution his father had attended, and initially planned to enter the Civil Service. A school play he wrote and performed in proved sufficiently successful to redirect him toward a theatrical career.

At the outbreak of World War I, Kerr was commissioned into the Shropshire Light Infantry and served in the trenches. A contact from his pre-war theatre work arranged for him to transfer to the Royal Flying Corps, where he was wounded in a plane crash and subsequently spent the rest of the war as an aerial gunnery instructor, reaching the rank of Captain. In 1920, he made his first trip to the United States to appear on Broadway alongside his father, beginning a pattern of transatlantic travel that continued throughout the decade as he alternated between Broadway appearances and silent film work in Britain.

His Broadway debut came in Just Suppose, which opened on 1 November 1920, in which he played the role of George. Subsequent stage appearances during the 1920s included East of Suez as Harold Knox in 1922, You and I as Roderick White in 1923, The Changelings as Wicky Faber later that same year, and In His Arms as Ernest Fairleigh in 1924. He appeared as Lionel Deport in The Stork, which opened on 26 January 1925, his thirtieth birthday. In 1926, he played Jean in First Love, and in 1928 he took the role of John Ashley in The Bachelor Father, co-starring with his wife, actor June Walker, whom he had married in 1926.

Kerr also worked as a director on Broadway. He directed Ada Beats the Drum in May 1930 and staged Foolscap in January 1933, in which he also played the role of Shakespeare. London Calling, which opened in October 1930, represented a dual contribution: Kerr both wrote the book and performed the role of George Craft. Additional Broadway appearances during the early 1930s included This is New York as Joseph Gresham Jr., Collision as Dr. Gestzi, We Are No Longer Children as Jean Servin, and Domino as Cremone. His final Broadway acting credit of that period was Yellow Jack, in which he played Stackpoole from March to May 1934, after which he ended his stage acting career. He returned to Broadway once more in 1949, playing Frederic Chanler in I Know My Love, a production mounted to celebrate the silver Broadway anniversary of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, which ran from 2 November 1949 to 3 June 1950.

Kerr's film career began during the silent era, with British productions including The Profligate in 1917 and the 1919 film 12.10, in which he appeared alongside his father. Further silent credits included Torn Sails, The Great Day, and The Mirage, all in 1920, as well as Love's Boomerang and The Man from Home in 1922. A film adaptation of Just Suppose followed in 1926, in which he played Count Anton Teschy. His sound film work consisted of three American productions in 1931: Women Love Once, The Runaround, and Once a Lady, the last of which marked the end of his acting career in film.

From 1935 onward, Kerr concentrated on writing for film, stage, and eventually television. His screenplay credits include the scenario for The Ghost Goes West in 1935, René Clair's Break the News in 1938, and the wartime production Cottage to Let in 1941, adapted from his own play. He also wrote the screenplay for the period drama Jassy in 1947. A screenplay he wrote in 1936, The Tenth Man, was later adapted as a British television production in 1988. His 1947 play The Man in the Street was staged in the West End, and his play Under Your Hat was adapted for film in 1940. In the early 1950s, Kerr wrote for British television, including the 1952 television play The Monster of Killoon and an unspecified number of episodes of the 1956 series My Husband and I. He also authored a fantasy novel, Under the Influence, published in 1954, about a London bank cashier who can read minds only while drunk. He attempted to co-write a screenplay based on the novel with George S. Kaufman, though the project was never completed.

In his personal life, Kerr and June Walker had one son, John Kerr, born in 1931, who became an actor before later qualifying as a lawyer. Geoffrey and June Kerr separated in 1938 and divorced in 1943. Geoffrey Kerr died on 1 July 1971 in Aldershot, Hampshire, England, at the age of 76.