Sir Michael Scudamore Redgrave CBE was one of the greatest British actors of the twentieth century and it was on the stage of the Liverpool Playhouse in 1934 that he made his first professional appearance. Having left Cambridge University in 1931 he spent time working as modern languages teacher before deciding to enter the theatre full-time and coming to Liverpool in 1934 and spending two years there in repertory under director William Armstrong. During his time at the Playhouse Redgrave met the actress Rachel Kempson and they were married in 1935, a marriage that was to last half a century until his death and produce the next dynasty of Redgrave actors in Vanessa, Corin and Lynn. Throughout his two years in Liverpool he lived in rooms at 23 Falkner Street, L8, his landlady being Miss Marion Rankin. In his autobiography he recounts how he enlisted at the nearby gym of Nel Tarleton in Bold Street to improve his physique.
Redgrave described his lodgings as being "almost next door to the cathedral".
The material on his career is limitless but the best sources for his two years in Liverpool are his autobiography In My Mind's Eye [1983] and Alan Strachan's Secret Dreams: A Biography of Michael Redgrave [2004].
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