Durable King

A creased and yellowing full-page cutting, dated 1955, from the World-Telegram and Saturday Magazine has the heading:

Durable King

After 39 Years on the Stage, Dennis Retains His Enthusiasm for a Lusty Role

Based on an interview, it was written at a time when Dennis was the “alcoholic dame-crazed Judge Sullivan in Sidney Kingsley’s Lunatics and Lovers at the Broadhurst”.

It provides a few pointers to Dennis’s early life saying that he “got his first professional role in the touring Daddy Longlegs, Gilbert Miller’s first London production”. Also, it says that Dennis was married  to Edith Wright “35 years ago”, i.e. in 1920, just before he decamped to the States.

In the article, Dennis recalls his first New York audience when with John and Ethel Barrymore (the first of John’s four wives) in Claire de Lune. Off-stage, John greeted Dennis with, “I hear you can box” and invited him to have a go at him. In a brief exchange, Dennis says he won John’s respect and friendship with a straight left.

One other piece of information to be gleaned from the article is that Dennis was, at the time, “rated the best tennis player on the rolls of the Actor’s Equity Association”!

The photograph used above comes from the cutting described in this entry.