Ronald Colman

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Ronald Colman (né Roland James)
Image:Ronald Colman.jpg Ronald Colman in Lost Horizon.
Birth name	Ronald Charles Colman
Born	February 9 1891 Richmond, Surrey, England, UK
Died	May 19 1958, age 67 Santa Barbara, California
Awards Academy Awards Best Actor 1947 A Double Life

Ronald Colman (February 9 1891 – May 19 1958) was an Oscar-winning English actor. Born in Richmond, Surrey, England, Colman discovered acting while at school. He intended to attend Cambridge University to study engineering, but his father's death put an end to that. He served in World War I, where he was seriously wounded at the Battle of Messines.

Following the war, he began to appear on the London stage. In 1922, he appeared on Broadway in the hit play La Tendresse. Director Henry King saw him, and cast him in the 1923 film, The White Sister, opposite Lillian Gish. He became a very popular silent film star in both romantic and adventure films. He successfully made the transition to "talkies" because of his elegant and sonorous speaking voice. His first major talkie success was in 1930, when he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for two roles — Condemned and Bulldog Drummond. He appeared in The Prisoner of Zenda and Lost Horizon in 1937, If I Were King in 1938, and The Talk of the Town in 1941. He won the Best Actor Oscar in 1948 for A Double Life.

Beginning in 1945, Colman made many guest appearances on The Jack Benny Program on radio, alongside his wife, Benita Hume (1906-1967). Their comedy work as Benny's next-door neighbors led to their own radio comedy The Halls of Ivy from 1950 to 1952, and then on television from 1954 to 1955. They had one daughter, Juliet.

Ronald Colman died on 19 May, 1958, aged 67, from a lung infection in Santa Barbara, California and was interred in the Santa Barbara Cemetery.

He has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures at 6801 Hollywood Blvd. and one for television at 1625 Vine Street.

Hollywood actor Christopher Walken, whose original first name was Ronald, was named after Ronald Colman.

Academy Awards and Nominations

• 1947 Won for A Double Life
• 1943 Nominated for Random Harvest
• 1930 Nominated for Bulldog Drummond
• 1930 Nominated for Condemned

Awards
Preceded by Fredric March for The Best Years of Our Lives	Academy Award for Best Actor 1947 for A Double Life	Succeeded by Laurence Olivier for Hamlet

Filmography