Martyn Green

Martyn Green, born William Martin Green on 22 April 1899 in Shepherd's Bush, London, was an English actor and singer who built his reputation as the principal comedian of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company before establishing a second career in America that included Broadway appearances spanning 1934 to 1971. He died on 8 February 1975.

Green was the third of four children born to William Green, a tenor concert singer who served as his son's first singing teacher, and Sarah Ann, née Martin. Both parents were originally from Bolton, Lancashire. Green received his formal education at Latymer Upper School, but left school following the death of his elder brother Alexander and was apprenticed to a draper in Wigan from 1914 to 1915. After two underage enlistment attempts, he eventually entered military service, became an army drummer, and fought in France during World War I. In 1918 he sustained a shrapnel wound to his left leg and was discharged the following year.

His stage career began in Nottingham in early 1919, when he appeared in the chorus of A Southern Maid. That same year he toured in Edwardian musical comedies for the George Edwardes Company, then under the management of Robert Evett, before earning a scholarship to the Royal College of Music, where he studied singing with Gustave Garcia and elocution with Cairns James, a former D'Oyly Carte singer. He left the Royal College in 1921 and made his London debut at the London Palladium in Thirty Minutes of Melody in September of that year. A provincial tour followed in which he played Paul Petrov, the romantic lead in the operetta Sybil, performing under the name W. Martyn-Green before settling on the simpler Martyn Green.

Green joined D'Oyly Carte's second touring company late in 1922, making his first appearance there as Luiz in The Gondoliers. He was made understudy to the company's principal comic baritone in July 1923 and gradually accumulated a range of smaller roles, including Antonio in The Gondoliers, the Associate and Counsel in Trial by Jury, Mr. Cox in Cox and Box, and Pish-Tush in The Mikado. In 1925 he was promoted to the main repertory company as understudy to the long-serving leading comedian Henry Lytton, regularly playing Cox, the Associate, Major Murgatroyd in Patience, and Luiz, while filling in for Lytton across the full range of patter roles during the 1928–30 seasons. He also sang the part of Mr. Cox in a 1929 BBC radio broadcast.

When Lytton was injured in a 1931 car accident — the same accident in which D'Oyly Carte principal contralto Bertha Lewis received fatal injuries — Green assumed all nine of Lytton's patter roles for approximately two months. Two of those roles, Major-General Stanley in The Pirates of Penzance and Robin Oakapple in Ruddigore, were permanently assigned to Green in 1932. Lytton's retirement in 1934 elevated Green to principal comedian of the company, a position in which he performed all the celebrated Gilbert and Sullivan comic roles, among them Sir Joseph Porter in H.M.S. Pinafore, Bunthorne in Patience, the Lord Chancellor in Iolanthe, Ko-Ko in The Mikado, Jack Point in The Yeomen of the Guard, and the Duke of Plaza-Toro in The Gondoliers. He added John Wellington Wells in The Sorcerer to his repertoire when the company revived that work in 1938, and in 1939 he appeared as Ko-Ko in the film version of The Mikado, directed by Victor Schertzinger.

At the outbreak of World War II in September 1939, the British government ordered theatres to close and Rupert D'Oyly Carte terminated all performer contracts. Green secured an engagement with producer Charles B. Cochran to appear in the Noel Gay revue Lights Up at the Savoy Theatre. He subsequently toured variety halls with Sylvia Cecil in an act called Words with Music, which incorporated Gilbert and Sullivan songs. In 1941 he joined the Royal Air Force, serving as an instructor and administrator in Canada, California, and India until 1945. He returned to D'Oyly Carte in 1946 as principal comedian for a further five years, during which time he recorded most of the Gilbert and Sullivan patter roles in the earliest D'Oyly Carte recordings of several operas.

Green left D'Oyly Carte for the final time in 1951 and relocated to New York City, where he pursued a career in Broadway productions, television, recordings, and film. His Broadway work included starring in Canterbury Tales and appearing in The Incomparable Max, Charley's Aunt, and White Liars, among other productions. In 1959, his left leg was crushed in a garage elevator accident and was amputated below the knee. Using a prosthetic limb, Green returned to acting and directing. His film work in this later period included roles in A Lovely Way to Die in 1968 and The Iceman Cometh in 1973, and he continued to perform until the end of his life.