Happy birthday to dashing leading man Ronald Colman (9 February 1891–19 May 1958), whose distinctive speaking voice I first encountered via skunk vizier True Blue Odie O. Cologne in the Saturday morning cartoon, “King Leonardo and His Short Subjects.”
Colman served in the London Scottish Regiment in World War I, sharing regimental duties with future stars Basil Rathbone, Herbert Marshall, and Claude Rains (a quartet about which I once remarked, “I bet no one else in that regiment ever got laid”).
While probably best known for his role as Sydney Carton (above) in A Tale of Two Cities (most people probably know his version of the closing speech, regardless of whether they realize its his voice)—or perhaps as Rudolf Rassendyl in The Prisoner of Zenda, in which he had to struggle to keep from all his scenes being stolen by Douglas Fairbanks jr—he also shone in any number of less widely-known films, such as Random Harvest, The Light That Failed, Lost Horizon, Clive of India, A Double Life (for which he won an Oscar), and the odd hybrid of social drama and screwball comedy that is The Talk of the Town.
Given his beautiful voice, it’s odd to realize how tremendously successful a career he had in silent film…
