Meriel Forbes

Meriel Forbes, born Muriel Elsa Florence Forbes-Robertson on 13 September 1913 in Fulham, London, was an English actress who performed on stage, screen, and television across six decades. A granddaughter of Norman Forbes-Robertson and great-niece of Sir Johnston Forbes-Robertson, she was educated in Eastbourne, Brussels, and Paris before entering the profession at sixteen. Her first stage appearance came in 1929 with her father Frank Forbes-Robertson's touring company, in which she played Mrs de Hooley in Jerome K. Jerome's The Passing of the Third Floor Back.

Following a brief period with the Dundee Repertory company in 1931, Forbes made her London debut that same year as Simone D'Ostignac in Gabriel Toyne's Porcupine Point. She subsequently joined the Birmingham Repertory company before establishing herself in the West End, where she continued to appear from the 1930s through the 1970s. Her roles encompassed both modern plays and classical works, among them Julia in The Rivals at the Old Vic in 1938 and a return to the same production at the Strand in 1940. During 1940 and 1941 she served in the Voluntary Aid Detachment, an auxiliary nursing organisation.

Forbes made her film debut in 1934 in Girls, Please!, starring comic actor Sydney Howard. One of her West End roles during this period was Daisy in The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse in 1937, a production that starred Ralph Richardson. She was briefly engaged to Robert Morley in the 1930s and later had an affair with Robert Donat. In 1944 she married the widowed Richardson; the couple had one son, Charles, who became a television stage manager.

The Richardsons appeared together regularly in London and on tour throughout the UK, continental Europe, Australia, and North and South America. Among their joint productions in the late 1940s and early 1950s were the Ruritanian comedy Royal Circle in 1948, in which Forbes played Katerina Fantina, the royal mistress, and Home at Seven in 1950, in which she played the barmaid central to the plot's resolution. Richardson directed a film version of Home at Seven in 1952, with both reprising their original stage roles. Forbes also appeared in The Philadelphia Story in 1950 and The Millionairess in 1953. In 1955 she joined Richardson, Sybil Thorndike, and Lewis Casson on an extended Australian tour of Terence Rattigan's Separate Tables and The Sleeping Prince.

Forbes's Broadway career ran from 1957 to 1963. She and Richardson first appeared together on Broadway in 1957 in Jean Anouilh's The Waltz of the Toreadors. In 1962, Forbes played Lady Sneerwell opposite Richardson's Sir Peter Teazle in John Gielgud's production of The School for Scandal, a staging that moved through London, New York, and a North American tour. During Richardson's West End run in Robert Bolt's Flowering Cherry in 1958, Forbes was the third of his three successive leading ladies, following Celia Johnson and Wendy Hiller.

In 1959 Forbes took the role of the Duchess of Clausonnes in Noël Coward's Look After Lulu, alongside Vivien Leigh in the title role. Leigh's marriage to Laurence Olivier was at that time near collapse, and Forbes devoted considerable time to supporting her. In 1964 Forbes and Richardson appeared together as Titania and Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream on a British Council-sponsored tour that took in South America, Lisbon, Paris, Madrid, and Athens. In 1973 and 1974 the couple toured Australia and North America in the comedy Lloyd George Knew My Father, with Forbes in the role of Lady Boothroyd, a part previously played in the West End by Peggy Ashcroft and later by Celia Johnson.

On television, Forbes and Richardson appeared together in a 1967 BBC series based on P. G. Wodehouse's Blandings Castle stories, with Richardson as Lord Emsworth and Forbes as his domineering sister Constance. Stanley Holloway co-starred as the butler Beach. The production drew divided critical opinion: The Times praised the stars as a delight, while reviewers in The Guardian and The Observer found the three leads too theatrical for the small screen. Forbes appeared in fifteen films between 1934 and 1969, her final screen role being in Oh! What a Lovely War in 1969.

The Richardsons lived near Regent's Park. After Richardson's death in 1983, Forbes moved to Belgravia and remained an active supporter of theatrical charities. In 1994 she hosted a lunch at the Connaught Hotel to mark John Gielgud's ninetieth birthday. Her son Charles, born in 1945, predeceased her in 1998. Forbes died in London on 7 April 2000 at the age of 86.