Baliol Holloway, forgotten Shakespearean actor

"He could act with his fingernails."

I wrote this profile in the style of an Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry as part of my MA. They were not interested in publishing it, as they only commission entries, though the number of people who have researched Holloway in any detail must be really quite small, and I’ll eat my hat if any of them have read Elizabeth Jenkins’ letters. He does have a Wikipedia page. But I haven’t added to it because ONDB formatting did not require me to footnote sources, only list them, but Wikipedia requires footnotes. Of course, if the ODNB had published this entry, Wikipedia would be happy with footnotes from there. I don’t feel inclined to re-research the whole thing just to make the footnotes, so it lives here. (This is a re-published piece from several years ago, now only available for paid subscribers.)

If anyone has any other information about Holloway, please do share it in the comments, especially if you know anything about his elusive wife, Emily.

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Baliol Blount Holloway (1883-1967), actor, known as ‘Bay’ or ‘Ba’, was born on 28 February 1883 in Brentwood, Billericay, second son of Thomas Henry Holloway (b.1833), a retired wine merchant, and only son of Emma Harriet Jordan (1853-1895). Thomas had previously married Elizabeth Stratton (1836-1880), mother of Baliol’s half-brother Wilfred Stratton Holloway (b.1873).

Holloway was a prominent classical actor between the wars. The critic J.C. Trewin said he ‘once or twice touched greatness’ and ‘probably did as much as any man for the British classical theatre.’ He was a notable Bensonian, along with Dorothy Green, with whom he starred at Stratford, during the 1920s Shakespeare revival.

Educated at Denstone College, Staffordshire, Holloway began acting aged 15, as Herman Vezin’s pupil. Linked from the start with the lavish Victorian style, his first performance was Solanio in The Merchant of Venice in 1899. Holloway subsequently worked with touring repertory companies. He joined the Benson Company in 1907 (Benson had been Vezin’s pupil), the Liverpool Repertory Theatre (1912), the Granville Barker Repertory Company at St James’s Theatre (1913), and the Savoy Theatre (1914), appearing in Androcles and the Lion. A review in Liverpool said he ‘helped the team considerably in its romantic efforts.’ His first London appearance was Jacques Barzinovsky in The Man and his Picture at the Great Queen Street Theatre. In 1914 he was in Henry V before serving ‘with the guns’.  He married Emily Baker in 1908.

After the war he was one of Frank Benson’s leading actors at Stratford, eventually playing parts in all but one of Shakespeare’s plays. Benson had acted with Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, who returned to the Shakespeare text of Richard III (ditching Cibber’s version), restored the final act of The Merchant of Venice, and produced less popular plays like Cymbeline. Benson continued this originalism with Shakespeare tours and at the Stratford festival, first established in 1879.

In 1920 Holloway joined the first permanent company at Stratford, forerunner of The Royal Shakespeare Company, directed by William Bridge-Adams, who produced Shakespeare uncut, including the first full-text Hamlet at Stratford, in a move away from star-led productions. Holloway was seen as a pillar of the Stratford Shakespeare revival. Bridge-Adams put on six plays after five weeks’ rehearsal in his first season, and Holloway was often stretched too thin, playing a dozen major parts a year. During the 1920s Holloway and Dorothy Green ‘were at the centre of an enthusiastic cult’ in Stratford. (Jenkins, Downshire Hill, p. 124)

Holloway and Evans in Measure for Measure at The Old Vic

Holloway co-starred in the 1925-26 Old Vic season that made Edith Evans a star. When Evans moved to the Old Vic, ‘Nearly everyone thought I was mad.’ Herbert Farjeon reassured her, not least because Holloway ‘makes Elizabethan plays “go along” – a wind that bellies out the sails.’ After Holloway’s death, a letter appeared in The Stage recalling a 1920s Old Vic production. Before the curtain went up, a message appeared that the lead actor was ill and Baliol Holloway, just back from America, would play the protagonist without rehearsal. 

‘Anticipation was high for a sight of our old favourite and when the curtain rose on the second scene out there stood our Baliol… the house rose with a mighty roar of applause. Feet stamped, cheers rose. After 40 years... I have never experienced such a spontaneous gesture of affection and appreciation for a favourite actor.’ (The Stage, 27 April 1967)

In 1929 he pursued his dream of a company that produced classic theatre without financial restraint. John Counsell asked Brendon Bracken to invest. Bracken replied ‘All the men I know who back plays are either mad or want whores.’ Holloway eventually got funding for a less lavish company at the New Theatre. 

The first production, Richard III, had a rocky start. The stage manager, Casper Middleton, was badly organised. The dress rehearsal was chaotic. (Counsell, p. 33-34) Despite this, the production was a huge success. Holloway’s Richard III was ‘Parallel to Mr. John Gielgud’s Hamlet… one of the most remarkable Shakespeare creations of latter years.’ (The Illustrated London News, 20 September 1930) He subsequently appeared in Restoration comedies, memorably at the Ambassador’s Theatre in 1932-33. Bridge-Adams thought Holloway re-created Restoration parts for his time. Despite this, he never achieved star status on the West End. The novelist Elizabeth Jenkins recalled ‘the gnawing misery of an actor who has a following and a well-founded confidence in his own powers, but sees the steadily ebbing tide.’ (Jenkins, Downshire Hill, p. 125)

Sinister as Richard III

Bernard Miles wrote in The Times after Holloway died, ‘he embodied Hazlitt’s dictum that the first quality of a player must be a strong spirit of enjoyment within himself.’  (He was a memorable Falstaff despite being, in Trewin’s words, a ‘taut, spare greyhound of an actor’.) That spirit was evident in his capability as a mimic, his readings of Dickens, and his bon mots, like his description of Frank Benson’s uneven performances: ‘He always gave his best performances on a Tuesday night, usually in somewhere like Peterborough.’ He said of the new Memorial Theatre in 1934, ‘On a clear day you can just about see the boiled shirts in the front row. It is like acting to Calais from the Cliffs of Dover.’