Casson, Sir Lewis Thomas

Casson, Sir Lewis Thomas (1875–1969), English actor and director. He made his first professional appearance at the Royal Court Theatre under the Vedrenne and Granville-Barker management, playing mainly in Shakespeare and Shaw. In 1908 he became a member of the repertory company at the Gaiety Theatre, Manchester, which he directed, 1911–14; there he met and married Sybil Thorndike, with whom his career was later almost entirely associated. After the First World War he devoted much of his time to direction, though continuing to act occasionally, notably as Stogumber in Shaw's Saint Joan (1924), Buckingham in Henry VIII at the Old Vic (1926), professor Linden in Priestley's The Linden Tree (1947), and Sir Horace Darke in Clemence Dane's Eighty in the Shade (1959). He made his last appearance at the age of 90 in a revival of Kesselring's Arsenic and Old Lace (1966). He was a careful and painstaking director, one of his greatest assets as an actor being his clear and beautifully modulated voice.