Clements, Sir John Selby

Clements, Sir John Selby (1910–88), English actor-manager. He made his first appearance on the stage in 1930, and five years later founded the Intimate Theatre in Palmers Green, north London, where he presented over 200 plays in weekly repertory, most of which he acted in, directed, or both. It was the first theatre in London to reopen after the outbreak of war in 1939. Clements later starred in West End plays, including Priestley's They Came to a City (1943), and for a time managed the St James's Theatre, where he appeared with his second wife Kay Hammond [ Dorothy Katharine Standing] (1909–80)—already well known for such roles as Diana Lake in French without Tears (1936) and Elvira in Coward's Blithe Spirit (1941)-in Dryden's Marriage à la Mode (1946). He also managed the Phoenix Theatre, where Farquhar's The Beaux' Stratagem, with Clements as Archer and his wife as Mrs Sullen, began a record run in 1949. In 1951 they appeared as John Tanner and Ann Whitefield in a revival of Shaw's Man and Superman which Clements presented and directed. A year later they were seen in his own play The Happy Marriage, based on Jean-Bernard Luc's Le Complexe de Philémon, and he was in management at the Saville Theatre, 1955–7, where he again presented some excellent revivals of classical comedies, including Sheridan's The Rivals and Congreve's The Way of the World, in both of which he starred with his wife. He later appeared in such productions as Benn W. Levy's The Rape of the Belt (1957) which he directed, playing Heracles to his wife's Hippolyte, and Ronald Millar's The Affair (1961), The Masters (1963), and The Case in Question (1975), based on novels by C. P. Snow, also directing the last two. From 1966 to 1973 he was Director of the Chichester Festival Theatre, where his productions included Phillpotts's The Farmer's Wife, Pinero's The Magistrate, and Shaw's Heartbreak House, in which he played Shotover; he also played Macbeth, Prospero in The Tempest, and Antony in Antony and Cleopatra. He returned to Chichester in 1979 to appear in Shaw's The Devil's Disciple and Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest.