Near-blindness suffered in naval action early in WW2 scarcely disturbed Esmond Knight's progress from handsome romantic lead to solid character actor; indeed it arguably gave extra depth to roles like the Village Idiot in A Canterbury Tale (1944) - in which he also played a soldier and narrated the Chaucerian Prologue - and the Holy Man in Black Narcissus (1947). These were two of the many films he made for Michael Powell between his screen debut in 77 Park Lane (1931) and The Boy who Turned Yellow (1972); his talismanic status for Powell is confirmed by his casting as the artfully-named Pinewood director Arthur Baden in Peeping Tom (1960).
Other notable roles include the young Johann Strauss in Hitchcock's Waltzes from Vienna (1933), Fluellen in Henry V (d. Laurence Olivier, 1944), and the father, alongside his own wife Nora Swinburne, in Renoir's The River (US, 1951).
Bibliography Esmond Knight, Seeking the Bubble, 1942.
FILM & TV CREDITS
