Dudley Digges

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Digges, Dudley (1879–1947), character actor. The Dublin‐born performer had distinguished himself with the Irish National Players before embarking for America in 1904. Among his early appearances were roles in The Rising of the Moon (1908) opposite Mrs. Fiske, The Spitfire (1910), and The Squaw Man (1911). After playing opposite George Arliss in Disraeli (1911), Digges served as Arliss's stage manager for seven years. In 1919 he joined the newly formed Theatre Guild and quickly established himself as one of its finest character actors, remaining with the Guild for eleven years and giving nearly 3,000 performances under its aegis. The avuncular, gravel‐voiced actor's notable assignments included the cowardly, selfish Henry Clegg in Jane Clegg (1920); Boss Mangan in Heartbreak House (1920); the villainous Sparrow in Liliom (1921); the foredoomed Mr. Zero in The Adding Machine (1923); the heavenly examiner Rev. Thompson in Outward Bound (1924); the helpful Critic in The Guardsman (1924); Feodor in The Brothers Karamazov (1927); the wise Chu‐Yin in Marco Millions (1928); industrialist Andrew Undershaft in Major Barbara (1928); and the atheistic Ramsey Fife in Dynamo (1929). He also directed a number of Guild productions, including Candida (1925), Pygmalion (1927), Love Is Like That (1927), and The Doctor's Dilemma (1927). Digges scored as Gramps, who defies death's messenger, in On Borrowed Time (1938), then appeared as the rich Uncle Stanley in George Washington Slept Here (1942), and as Mr. Burgess in Candida (1942). His last appearance was as Harry Hope, owner of the seedy bar, in The Iceman Cometh (1946). Of this performance Brooks Atkinson commented, “To anyone who loves acting, Dudley Digges' performance as the tottering and irascible saloon proprietor is worth particular cherishing. Although the old man is half dead, Mr. Digges' command of the actor's art is brilliantly alive; it overflows with comic and philosophic expression.”

Digges, Dudley (1879–1947), Irish-American actor, trained for the stage by Frank J. Fay, who appeared in some early plays by Yeats, being particularly good as the Wise Man in The Hour-Glass (1903). In 1904 he went with the Abbey Theatre company to New York, and remained there until his death, making his first appearance on Broadway in 1904 in Shaw's John Bull's Other Island. For some years he acted as stage-manager for George Arliss and he then joined the Theatre Guild company, remaining with it until 1930 and being seen in most of their productions, notably Rice's The Adding Machine (1923) and O'Neill's Marco Millions (1928), and also directing, among other plays, Shaw's Candida (1925), Pygmalion (1926), and The Doctor's Dilemma (1927). His last part and one of his finest was Harry Hope in O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh (1946).