Ralph Forbes

Ralph Forbes, born Ralph Forbes Taylor on 30 September 1904 in Wandsworth, London, was an English film and stage actor who worked in both Britain and the United States. He was the son of Ernest John Taylor and Ethel Louise Taylor, whose stage name became Mary Forbes, herself a recognized actress in film and theater. His younger sister, Dorothy Brenda Taylor, pursued acting under the name Brenda Forbes. During his school years at Denstone College in Staffordshire, Forbes sustained a football injury that left a permanent scar on his cheek.

Forbes arrived in the United States as part of a British theatrical troupe performing Havoc, a war play, which also marked the beginning of his Broadway career in 1924. That same year, while appearing onstage alongside actress Ruth Chatterton, he married her on 20 December 1924 in New York City. Forbes was 20 at the time of the marriage; Chatterton was four days from turning 32. The couple divorced in 1932. He subsequently married actress Heather Angel in Yuma, Arizona, on 29 August 1934, a union that ended in divorce on 18 July 1941. His third and final marriage was to actress Dora Sayers in 1946.

His Broadway appearances, which spanned from 1924 to 1949, included The Havoc, the play The Man With a Load of Mischief, the musical The Magnolia Lady, The Little Minister, and the play Stronger Than Love. After a film career that ran from 1926 to 1944, Forbes devoted his later years primarily to stage work. Among his final Broadway appearances was a 1948 revival of George Bernard Shaw's You Never Can Tell.

Forbes died on 31 March 1951 at Montefiore Hospital in the Bronx, New York, at the age of 46.