John Buckmaster

John Rodney Buckmaster, born on 18 July 1915 in Frinton-on-Sea, England, was an actor who worked on stage, in film, and on television, as well as a cabaret singer-songwriter. He was the son of actress Dame Gladys Cooper and Captain Herbert Buckmaster, the latter a Boer War veteran who founded Buck's Club and is credited with inspiring the name of the Buck's Fizz cocktail. Buckmaster's parents divorced on 12 December 1921 and maintained a close friendship afterward. He was educated at Elstree preparatory school, where he played tennis and competed in cricket and football, and later at Eton College.

One of his earliest stage appearances came at the age of eight, when he performed in J. M. Barrie's The Admirable Crichton, after which Sybil Thorndike declared him the best actor she had seen. By the time he was twenty, he had already been performing professionally for a year. In 1935, he played Georges Dupont in the English adaptation of Tovarich at the Lyric Theatre in London, where the production ran for 414 performances. That same year he appeared in George Pearson's film Checkmate, playing Mike Doyle.

Buckmaster's Broadway career spanned from 1936 to 1951. He relocated to New York in the first half of 1936 to join his mother and her partner Philip Merivale in Call It a Day, a Dodie Smith comedy in which he played the son of his mother's character. At the end of 1938, he played Lord Alfred Douglas in Norman Marshall's production of Oscar Wilde, sharing a flat in New York during this period with Robert Morley, who took the title role and later became his brother-in-law by marrying Buckmaster's sister Joan on 23 February 1940. By the summer of 1940, Buckmaster had established himself in cabaret, and when his mother attended his act in Central City, Colorado in July of that year, he was introduced from the stage as "John Buckmaster's mother," which he noted made a welcome change from being known solely as Gladys Cooper's son.

In 1946, Buckmaster appeared in a Broadway production of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, playing Lord Darlington alongside his half-sister Sally Pearson, who played Lady Agatha Carlisle, and his stepbrother Jack Merivale, who played Sir James Royston. His subsequent Broadway credits included An Inspector Calls, Caesar and Cleopatra, Getting Married, and Saint Joan. During the late 1940s and into the mid-1950s, these stage engagements were interspersed with television appearances and film work, including a screen test for the role of Caligula in The Robe in February 1953 and character roles in two episodes of the 1954 Sherlock Holmes television series starring Ronald Howard.

By the spring of 1943, Buckmaster had enlisted as a private in the United States Army Air Forces, during which time he composed a song contributed to one of the service magazines. His stepbrother Jack Merivale was simultaneously serving with the Royal Canadian Air Force, and both spent time at the family home in California while on leave. When his stepfather Philip Merivale died on 12 March 1946, Buckmaster wrote a tribute poem and left it on his mother's desk.

Earlier in his personal life, Buckmaster had been a frequent presence in gossip columns as the escort of young actresses including Vivien Leigh and Jean Gillie. Leigh later disclosed to Jack Merivale that her first affair, in August 1935 while she was married to Herbert Leigh Holman, had been with Buckmaster. Buckmaster also introduced Leigh to Laurence Olivier in the autumn of 1935 at the Savoy Grill, and the two had a further brief affair in 1953.

Buckmaster's acting career came to an end in the mid-1950s as his mental illness worsened. He was eventually confined to the Priory Hospital, where he died by suicide on 1 April 1983 at the age of sixty-seven.