Mariah Gale
Michael Gambon
Romola Garai
Jimmy Gardner
William Gaskill
John Gay
Peter Geddis
Pam Gems
The General from America
Jean Genet
Michel de Ghelderode
Ghosts
John Gielgud
The Gift of the Gorgon
Alexandra Gilbreath
Peter Gill
Jean Giraudoux
Iain Glen
Robert Glenister
Jamie Glover
Julian Glover
The Glowing Manikin
God Bless
Derek Godfrey
Patrick Godfrey
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Nikolai Gogol
Golden Girls
Carlo Goldoni
Stella Gonet
Good
Buzz Goodbody
Henry Goodman
Goodnight Children Everywhere
Rupert Goold
Marius Goring
Maxim Gorky
Gordon Gostelow
Orlando Gough
The Government Inspector
Fraser Grace
Nickolas Grace
Michael Grandage
Harley Granville-Barker
Günter Grass
Trystan Gravelle
Simon Gray
Great Expectations
The Great White Hope
The Greeks
Graham Greene
Paul Greenwood
David Greig
Richard Griffiths
Trevor Griffiths
Pippa Guard
Vladimir Gubaryev
Peter Guinness
Mike Gwilym
A graduate of the pre-war Old Vic, Marius Goring worked prolifically in films without adapting his theatrical style of acting. A skilled linguist, he played Hitler on radio as part of the war effort (The Shadow of the Swastika, 1939) and subsequently became typecast as a German of one kind or another. But when given the opportunity, as in the films of Powell and Pressburger, he was memorable: his wryly humorous French fop in A Matter of Life or Death (1946) is the best example. Goring had a continental European outlook and saw theatre within a wider context of culture and society.
His father was a Home Office criminologist. His mother, a pianist, had studied under Clara Schumann. He first appeared on the stage at the age of thirteen in Cambridge (the show was called Crossings); he made his London debut as Harlequin at the Rudolph Steiner Hall (1927). He attended the universities of Frankfurt, Munich, Vienna and Paris before training under Harcourt Williams at the Old Vic school (1929-32). On graduating he went straight into the Old Vic company and made his name playing opposite Peggy Ashcroft in Romeo and Juliet (Harcourt Williams, 1933). The following year he joined Michel Saint-Denis's La Compagnie des Quinze and toured Europe performing Hamlet in French. His association with Saint-Denis, the most important of his career, continued with productions of Noah at the New (1935), The Witch of Edmonton at the Old Vic (1936) and The White Guard at the Phoenix (1938). Other significant roles, all at the Old Vic, were Feste in Twelfth Night (1937), the Chorus in the Laurence Olivier Henry V (1937) and Ariel in the John Gielgud Tempest, a show he co-directed with George Devine (1940).
At the outbreak of the war he joined the Queen's Royal Regiment but was seconded to the Foreign Office to supervise radio broadcasts to Germany (working with Dick Crossman and Hugh Greene at the BBC, he used the pseudonym Charles Richardson). In 1941 he married a refugee German actress, Lucie Mannheim. In the immediate post-war period he led a number of tours to Berlin (1947, 1949, 1950 and 1960).
In 1953 he appeared at Stratford for the first time, a rich repertory of Richard III (Glen Byam Shaw); Octavius Caesar in Antony and Cleopatra (Shaw, 1953, also European Tour, 1954); Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew (George Devine, 1953); and the Fool in the Michael Redgrave King Lear (Devine, 1953). He returned to the RSC in 1962 to play Angelo in Measure for Measure (John Blatchley, RST) and Sir Timothy Bellboys in A Penny for a Song (Colin Graham, Aldwych).
He worked constantly in the theatre during the 1970s and 80s but only Peter Shaffer's Sleuth (St Martin's, 1970-73) brought him before a wide public. He was best known for his starring roles in the television drama serials The Scarlet Pimpernel (1955) and The Expert (1968-70). He appeared in Holocaust (1978); Edward and Mrs Simpson (Waris Hussein, Thames, 1978), as George V; The Old Men at the Zoo (1983); and Cymbeline (BBC, 1983), as Sicilius Leonatus. A founding member of Equity (1929), he served as the union's vice-president from 1963-65 and again from 1975-82, and fought a battle against left-wing militants (such as the Redgraves) who were politicising Equity against the wishes of the majority. He took the union to court because it was passing resolutions in support of the Ayatollah Khomeini and Irish republicanism.
Goring's body of work in movies included Michael Powell's The Spy in Black (1939), The Red Shoes (1948) and Ill Met by Moonlight (1957); Roy Boulting's Pastor Hall (1940); Jacques Tourneur's Circle of Danger (1951); Joseph L. Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa (1954); John Guillermin's I Was Monty's Double (1958); Robert Aldrich's The Angry Hills (1959); Otto Preminger's Exodus (1960); Jack Cardiff's Girl on a Motorcycle (1968); and Peter Brook's Meetings with Remarkable Men (1979).
Education: Perse School, Cambridge; Frankfurt University; Munich University; Vienna University; Paris University; Old Vic Dramatic School
RSC: Joined 1953
Seasons: 1953 (Strat.); 1954 (European Tour); 1962 (Strat./Lond.)
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