Paintings: G1092

Ernest Milton

Oil on canvas

Milton, Ernest

Gabain, Ethel

c 1930

height (frame): 81cm
height (canvas): 74.7cm
width (canvas): 61cm

E. GABAIN

Purchased from a Ms Ellen Sheean in 2009. Ellen Sheean was the neice of Jean Forbes-Robertson, who acted with Ernest Milton in a performance of 'Romeo and Juliet'. Ellen herself acted with Ernest Milton in his later years.

Ernest Milton (1890-1974) was an American actor who settled in Britain and was considered one of the greatest Shakespearian actors of the 20th century. Though his portrait by Ethel Gabain appears in the Cocktail bar, he was never a member of the Garrick club. He was proposed in 1945 by the theatre director A. B. Horne and seconded by Robert Speaight, but the application was rejected. The reasons for his blackballing are unknown. Ernest Milton married the author Naomi Royd-Smith (1875-1964) in 1926 and they both converted to Roman Catholicism in 1942. In 1929 Ernest Milton enjoyed one of the biggest successes of his career. He was given the role of Rupert Cadell in Patrick Hamilton’s thriller Rope. The play opened in April 1929 at the Ambassador’s Theatre, directed by Reginald Denham.The play centers on a pair of young wealthy undergraduates who are obsessed with their intellectual superiority and decide to commit a “perfect murder”, a crime that is motiveless and therefore impossible to detect. The pair, Wyndham Brandon and Charles Granillo, murder their sporty but dim friend, Ronald Kentley, then invite family and friends to supper, serving food on the chest that contains their friend’s body. The character of Rupert Cadell, a war wounded poet and teacher to the murderous pair, acts as the center piece for the play’s moral argument, as he pieces together the terrible crime that has been committed by his former students. The play was hugely successful when it opened, and it ran for 100 performances and then transferred, with Ernest Milton, under a new title ‘The Rope’s End’ to Broadway to the Theatre Masque (now called the John Golden Theatre). Ten years later Milton reprised the role when the play was broadcast by the BBC. It is thought that this portrait by Ethel Gabain dates to circa 1936 when Milton was in a film called 'It's Love Again', where he wears a similar dinner jacket, white tie and waistcoat.