logo
livingroom

decorative bar

biographies


corner Last update of this page: November 5th 2017 corner
Laurence Harvey
(October 1, 1928 - November 25, 1973) Lithuania - U.K.

Laurence Harvey

Actor

separator

Laurence Harvey was born Zvi Mosheh Skikne in Joniskis, Lithuania, to Ella (née Zotnickaita) and Ber Skikne. His family was Jewish. The youngest of three brothers, he emigrated with his family, to South Africa in 1934, and settled in Johannesburg. The teenager joined the South African army during World War II, and was assigned to the entertainment unit. His unit served in Egypt and Italy, and after the war the future Laurence Harvey returned to South Africa and began a career as an actor.

He moved to London after winning a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. He then did his apprenticeship in regional theatre, moving to Manchester in the 1940s. He reportedly supported himself as a hustler.

His film debut came in House of Darkness (1948), and he was soon signed by Associated British Studios. But its distributor British Lion thought someone named Larry Skikne (as he was then known) was not commercially viable. Accounts vary as to how the actor acquired his stage name of Laurence Harvey.

Laurence HarveyHarvey was cast as Romeo in Giulietta and Romeo (1954). Despite his icy portrayal of the great romantic hero Romeo, Harvey attracted enough attention in Hollywood to be brought over by Warner Bros. and given a lead role in King Richard and the Crusaders (1954).

After making three flops in a row, Harvey began a brief reign as the Jack the Lad of British cinema with the great success of Room at the Top (1959). That film and Look Back in Anger (1959), which was also released that year, inaugurated the "kitchen sink" school of British cinema that revolutionized the country's film industry in the 1960s.

Although he could not know it then, Harvey had reached the zenith of his career. In 1962 he won the Best Actor prize at the Munich film festival in 1962 for his role in The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962).

As it was, the next (and last) decade of Harvey's screen life was a disappointment, with the actor relegated to less and less prestigious pictures and international co-productions that needed a "star" name. In the 1970s, Harvey became largely irrelevant as a player in the motion picture industry. His luck had run out.

In his account of being Frank Sinatra's valet, Mr. S: My Life with Frank Sinatra (2003), George Jacobs writes that Harvey often made passes at him while visiting Sinatra. According to Jacobs, Sinatra was aware of Harvey's sexuality. In his autobiography Close Up (2004), British actor John Fraser claimed Harvey was gay and that his long-term lover was Harvey's manager James Woolf, who had cast Harvey in several of the films he produced in the 1950s.

A heavy smoker and drinker, Harvey died from stomach cancer in Hampstead, London at the age of 45.

separator

Sources: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://www.imdb.com/

Click on the letter H to go back to the list of names

corner © Matt & Andrej Koymasky, 1997 - 2017 corner