George Coulouris

George Coulouris (1 October 1903 – 25 April 1989) was an English stage and film actor of Anglo-Greek origin, born in Manchester and raised in both Manchester and the nearby town of Urmston. He received his education at Manchester Grammar School before embarking on a career that would span six decades and encompass theatre, film, radio, and television on both sides of the Atlantic.

Coulouris made his professional stage debut in 1926 in a production of Henry V at the Old Vic. In 1928 and 1929 he appeared in several productions at the Cambridge Festival Theatre, among them Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape. By 1929 he had made his first Broadway appearance, in The Novice and the Duke, in which he played Friar Peter. His first Hollywood film role followed in 1933, the same year he appeared on Broadway in both The Late Christopher Bean, as Tallant, and Best Sellers, as Julian Mosca. Also in 1933, he took on the roles of Lord Burghley and Lord Erskine in Mary of Scotland, and the following year he appeared as Lieutenant Cutting in Valley Forge.

A defining relationship in Coulouris's career began in 1936 when he and Orson Welles both appeared in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's Ten Million Ghosts, in which Coulouris played Zacharey. Welles subsequently invited him to become a charter member of the Mercury Theatre. In 1936 Coulouris had also appeared on Broadway as John de Stogumber in Saint Joan. In 1937 he performed the role of Marc Antony in the Mercury Theatre's debut production, Caesar, a modern-dress staging of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar that ran through March 1938. The following year he appeared in two further Mercury productions: The Shoemaker's Holiday, in which he played the King, and Heartbreak House, in which he played Boss Mangan. He also became part of the repertory company behind CBS Radio's The Mercury Theatre on the Air and its successor, The Campbell Playhouse, which ran from 1938 to 1940.

Coulouris's most celebrated screen performance came in Orson Welles's Citizen Kane (1941), in which he played Walter Parks Thatcher, a financier modeled on J. P. Morgan. Both Coulouris and Welles received a 1941 National Board of Review Award for their work in the film. His Broadway activity continued in parallel: he played Teck de Brancovis in Watch on the Rhine, which opened in April 1941 and ran into 1942, a role he later repeated in the 1943 film adaptation. In 1943 he both directed and starred in a Broadway production of King Richard III, playing Richard, Duke of Gloucester. His film work during the 1940s included For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), Watch on the Rhine (1943), Between Two Worlds (1944), Mr. Skeffington (1944), and the role of Robert de Baudricourt opposite Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc (1948). On Broadway he also appeared in The Master Race (1944) as Von Beck, and in 1948 took roles in three productions: The Alchemist as Subtle, S.S. Glencairn as the Donkey Man, and The Insect Comedy as the Vagrant. During the 1940s he was additionally the first actor to play the title role in the Bulldog Drummond radio program on the Mutual Broadcasting System, and in 1943 he appeared in the CBS radio series Suspense in the episode "The Last Letter of Dr. Bronson" alongside Laird Cregar, followed by a 1944 episode, "Portrait without a Face."

Coulouris returned to Britain in 1950 and joined the Bristol Old Vic company for its spring season, taking on the roles of Tartuffe, Brutus, and Sir John Brute, among others. He settled first in Putney and later in Hampstead, where he lived from 1951 until his death in 1989. His subsequent stage work included the title role in King Lear at the Glasgow Citizens' Theatre in 1952, the lead role of Dr. Stockmann in An Enemy of the People at the Arts Theatre, Cambridge in 1959, Peter Flynn in Seán O'Casey's The Plough and the Stars at the Mermaid Theatre in 1962, a part in August Strindberg's The Dance of Death, and Big Daddy in Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1970. He returned to Broadway twice more: as Samuel Holt in Beekman Place in 1964, and in The Condemned of Altona in 1966, his final Broadway appearance.

His post-1950 film work included The Heart of the Matter (1953), Doctor in the House (1954), the British horror films The Man Without a Body (1957) and The Woman Eater (1958), Papillon (1973), Mahler (1974), and Murder on the Orient Express (1974). In television he appeared in episodes of Hancock's Half Hour, Danger Man, and The Prisoner, as well as the recurring role of science writer Harcourt Brown in the ABC serials Pathfinders to Mars and Pathfinders to Venus. In 1964 he appeared as Arbitan in the Doctor Who serial The Keys of Marinus. Over the course of his career he appeared in more than 80 films.

Coulouris was married to Louise Franklin from 1930 until her death in 1976, and subsequently to Elizabeth Donaldson from 1977 until his own death in 1989. He was the father of computer scientist George Coulouris and artist Mary Louise Coulouris. His legacy in the theatre was further acknowledged in Richard Linklater's 2008 film Me and Orson Welles, a period drama set around the Mercury Theatre's premiere of Caesar, in which Coulouris was portrayed by Ben Chaplin.