Strolling Player: The Life and Career of Albert Finney (The History Press, 2017) by Gabriel Hershman

Excellent new biography about one of our finest actors

   Early in his career Albert Finney was hailed as the heir to Laurence Olivier. He was not the first or last to be so lauded, but Finney was never in anyone's shadow and has always ploughed his own furrow. He made a startling entry into the national consciousness with his role as Arthur Seaton in Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) which ushered in the era of the 'kitchen sink' drama. He followed that with an Oscar-nominated performance in the boisterous Tom Jones (1963), but he turned down the lead in Lawrence of Arabia and the offer of a lucrative five year Hollywood contract. Instead he chose to return to the theater. This unpredictability has been a keynote of his life. He displayed his power and range on stage in modern and Shakespearean works. His screen credits alone attest to his versatility. It is hard to imagine that the same man could play the lead roles in Scrooge, The Dresser, A Man of No Importance, Miller's Crossing et al. He gave a superlative performance as Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm. 

   Strolling Player is a wonderfully entertaining portrait of a previously overlooked actor. Author Gabriel Hershman writes with an easy, flowing style and provides a living portrait of the man and his life. His descriptions of his performances in plays and films are incisive. He also sheds light on a whole tranche of theatrical post-war history. The book will be of lasting value to students of drama particularly for its perceptive insights into the fraught years at the National Theatre in the 1970s.

   A notoriously private man, Finney was never drawn to a life of celebrity like some of his contemporaries, preferring to concentrate on his craft. Nevertheless he was a dynamic figure both on and off-stage but, as Hershman points out, he was not a hellraiser so much as a bon vivant. Finney gave instructions for his friends not to co-operate with the author - presumably his stock response to would-be biographers. Surely even he would admire the finished result which puts him into proper perspective and gives him his much deserved due.

   The author ends with a thoughtful discussion on the nature of fame and the way in which true craft such as that Finney displays is often eclipsed in the inverted value system of today's celebrity world. Hershman correctly identifies a distinct lack of interest on the part of the current generation in the greats of the recent past as much as those of the long past. This is allied to a wider deficiency of awareness of their own culture in a world in which, in Brian Cox's words, "history started five minutes ago." At a time when we are showered with the memoirs of no-account celebrities who have managed to eke out their fifteen minutes of fame into a career, it is refreshing to find a thoroughly-researched biography of a true actor who has devoted almost sixty years of working life to his art. Strolling Player is surely the definitive work on one of our finest living actors.