John Gielgud (1904-2000) first achieved stardom as a Shakespearean actor in the 1929/30 season of the Old Vic in the role of Richard II, and his subsequent successes as Macbeth and Oberon assured him the role of Hamlet in the season's final production. At 25 the youngest actor to play the part since Master Betty, Gielgud sensitive and poetic interpretation of the role gave the Vic its greatest success to date, and the production (which included Donald Wolfit as Claudius and Martita Hunt as Gertrude) was later transferred to the West End - the first Old Vic production to make that leap. The London Times said of Gielgud's 1930 debut in the role "From the chill, ironical menace of its opening to the fierce attack of the play-scene and its terrible rage at the burying of Ophelia it achieves its argument with brilliant lucidity. Nothing is smudged or doubtful; everything is as decisive as the line in the pencil-drawing of a master." Gielgud would play the role over 500 times in six different productions, but he regarded his first assault upon it as his best.
He
returned to Hamlet in 1934 in the historic New Theatre production with Jessica
Tandy as Ophelia, Jack Hawkins as Horatio and Alec Guinness as Osric, scored
a triumph on Broadway in 1936 opposite Lillian Gish as Ophelia and Judith Anderson
(in her first Shakespearean role) as Gertrude under the direction of Guthrie
McClintic (breaking the record-setting run of John Barrymore's 1922 production),
gave the final performance at Irving's Lyceum Theatre as the Dane in 1939, and
made two farewells to the role in 1944 and 1945, as well as several radio versions
and a 1951 recording for Decca Records that is still available today. He directed
four productions of the play (in 1934, 1939, 1944, all with himself in the title
role, and the 1964 Broadway production starring Richard Burton), and played
the ghost in 1964 on Broadway (as a recorded voice), in the 1970 Hallmark Hall
of Fame television production, and in a 1994 radio presentation. He finally
gave his farewell to the play in a non-speaking cameo as Priam in Kenneth Branagh's
muddled 1996 film version at the age of 92. Sybil Thorndyke said "Those
who saw the Hamlet of John Gielgud have a memory of something hauntingly beautiful
for which to be grateful all their lives."