Sybil Thorndike Filmography

Born:: October 24, 1882 in Gainsborough, England
Occupation:: Actor
Biography:: "I would rather have been a pianist than anything," admitted Sybil Thorndyke to one of her chroniclers. Even so, from her first concert at age 11 onward, Ms. Thorndyke never quite overcame her nervousness. She would later insist that it was nerves as much as anything else that caused her to suffer...Read More

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Uncle Vanya

Synopsis: This version of Chekov's classic play was recorded at the 1963 Chichester Festival. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1963
The Big Gamble

Actors: Stephen Boyd, Juliette Greco, David Wayne, Gregory Ratoff, Fernand Ledoux, Sybil Thorndike

Synopsis: This adventure melodrama concerns Vic Brennan (Stephen Boyd), who persuades his family to put up money for him to leave Dublin for the remote African town of Jebanda in order to start up a truck-hauling business. The family agrees to give Vic the money under the stipulation that his cousin Samuel (David Wayne Read More

1961
Hand in Hand

Actors: Loretta Parry, Philip Needs, John Gregson, Sybil Thorndike, Derek Sydney

Synopsis: Director Philip Leacock, praised for his handling of child actors, does another excellent job with the two young stars in this story about religious tolerance -- and intolerance. Loretta Parry is Rachel, a seven-year-old Jewish girl whose best friend and playmate Michael (Philip Needs) is exactly Read More

1960
Jet Storm

Actors: Richard Attenborough, Stanley Baker, Hermione Baddeley, Bernard Braden, Diane Cilento

Synopsis: In this airborne disaster movie, a has-been brilliant scientist plants a bomb on a transatlantic jet to exact revenge upon a passenger whom he blames for his daughter's death -- she died during a plane crash. When the booby-trap is discovered and the passengers learn the motive for the scientists' Read More

1959
Alive and Kicking

Actors: Sybil Thorndike, Kathleen Harrison, Estelle Winwood, Stanley Holloway, Joyce Carey

Synopsis: Dame Sybil Thorndike, Kathleen Harrison and Estelle Winwood, collectively representing some 200 years of British theatrical history, are top-billed in this feathery bit of whimsy. The starring trio plays three elderly residents of a nursing home, fed up with their monotonous existence. They Read More

1959
Shake Hands with the Devil

Actors: James Cagney, Don Murray, Dana Wynter, Glynis Johns, Michael Redgrave

Synopsis: Filmed on location, Shake Hands With the Devil is set in Ireland during the "troubles" of 1921. James Cagney plays a brilliant medical professor who doubles as head of the Irish Republican Army. Cagney convinces one of his more pacifistic students, Don Murray, to join the underground struggle Read More

1959
Smiley Gets a Gun

Actors: Sybil Thorndike, Chips Rafferty, Bruce Archer, Margaret Christensen

Synopsis: In this Australian children's movie, a sequel to Smiley, set in the outback, a local policeman tries to help a rambunctious scamp settle down by promising the lad a new gun if he can stay out of mischief and treat other people with respect. Smiley, the boy, does his very best, but when the locals Read More

1958
The Prince and the Showgirl

Actors: Marilyn Monroe, Laurence Olivier, Sybil Thorndike, Richard Wattis, Jeremy Spencer

Synopsis: The title of the Anglo-American The Prince and the Showgirl could well have alluded to the genuine stations in life of stars Sir Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe. Based on the Terence Rattigan play The Sleeping Prince, the film casts Olivier as Charles, prince regent of Carpathia, who is in Read More

1957
The Weak and the Wicked

Actors: Glynis Johns, John Gregson, Diana Dors, Jane Hylton, Sidney James

Synopsis: Had the women-behind-bars drama The Weak and the Wicked been made in Hollywood, the cast would probably have included the likes of Ida Lupino, Marie Windsor, Peggie Castle and Hope Emerson. Instead, the film was lensed in Britain, with Glynis Johns and Diana Dors heading the cast. Framed on a Read More

1954
Melba

Actors: Patrice Munsel, Robert Morley, John McCallum, John Justin, Alec Clunes

Synopsis: American opera and musical-comedy soprano Patrice Munsel plays the title role in this filmed biography of famed Australian diva Nellie Melba. The story begins on Nellie's father's cattle farm, where she grew up under her given name of Nelly Mitchell. While studying in Paris with the great Madame Read More

1953
The Lady with a Lamp

Actors: Anna Neagle, Michael Wilding, Sr., Gladys Young, Felix Aylmer, Sybil Thorndike, Julian D'Albie

Synopsis: British film-favorite Anna Neagle, having previously played such great historical personages as Queen Victoria and Edith Cavell, tackles the role of Florence Nightingale in Lady with the Lamp. Based on a play by Reginald Berkeley, the film traces the indefatigable Nightingale's efforts to minister Read More

1951
The Magic Box

Actors: Robert Donat, Margaret Johnston, Maria Schell, Robert Beatty, John Charlesworth, James Kenney

Synopsis: The Magic Box was the English film industry's contribution to the 1951 Festival of Britain. Its all-star cast generously forsook their usual salaries for the privilege of paying tribute to that unsung pioneer of cinema, William Friese-Greene, here played by Robert Donat. Adapted by Eric Ambler Read More

1951
Stage Fright

Actors: Jane Wyman, Marlene Dietrich, Michael Wilding, Sr., Richard Todd, Kay Walsh

Synopsis: Stage Fright toys with our notions of the dividing line between reality and artifice by being set in the London theatre world. On the lam from the police, Richard Todd takes refuge in the home of his former girlfriend, RADA student Jane Wyman. Todd has been spotted fleeing the scene of a murder Read More

1950
The Wild Heart

Actors: Jennifer Jones, David Farrar, Cyril Cusack, Esmond Knight, Sybil Thorndike, Edward Chapman

Synopsis: The brooding British romantic drama Gone to Earth is better known by its American title The Wild Heart. Filmed in England and cofinanced by David O. Selznick and Alexander Korda, the film stars Jennifer Jones (Mrs. Selznick) as Hazel Woodus, a tempestuous Welsh gypsy maid who can't seem to stay Read More

1950
The Forbidden Street

Actors: Maureen O'Hara, Dana Andrews, Sybil Thorndike, Wilfrid Hyde-White, Anthony Tancred, Fay Compton

Synopsis: The Anglo-American co-production Britannia Mews was released in the U.S. as The Affairs of Adelaide, then reissued as Forbidden Street, the title it carries today. Set in the Victoria era, the film focuses upon Adelaide (Maureen O'Hara), a young lady of good family who renounces both name and fame Read More

1949
Nicholas Nickleby

Actors: Jill Balcon, Derek Bond, Cedric Hardwicke, Sally Ann Howes, Fay Compton, Alfred Drayton, Sybil Thorndike, Cyril Fletcher, Mary Merrall

Synopsis: Though it pales in comparison to the Royal Shakespeare Company's epic staging of the original novel in the early 1980s, this compact adaptation of Dickens' Nicholas Nickleby is most entertaining on its own terms. Derek Bond plays the title character, a resourceful young Britisher forced to protect Read More

1946
Major Barbara

Actors: Wendy Hiller, Rex Harrison, Robert Morley, Robert Newton, Emlyn Williams

Synopsis: George Bernard Shaw's satiric comedy about wealth and poverty is brought to the screen with wonderful performances by Rex Harrison and Wendy Hiller. Hiller plays Major Barbara Undershaft, a major in the Salvation Army who is also a socialist and stridently attacks capitalists -- in particular her Read More

1941
Nine Days a Queen

Actors: Cedric Hardwicke, John Mills, Felix Aylmer, Leslie Perrins, Frank Cellier, Desmond Tester, Sybil Thorndike, Nova Pilbeam

Synopsis: This lush historical drama chronicles the brief reign of the late Henry VIII's successor, Lady Jane Grey. After only nine days on the throne, she was beheaded at the behest of the treacherous Mary Tudor. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1934
Hindle Wakes

Actors: Belle Chrystal, Sybil Thorndike, Edmund Gwenn, Norman McKinnel, John Stuart

Synopsis: Stanley Houghton's enduring 1912 stage play Hindle Wakes had already been twice adapted for the screen when this first talkie version was released in 1931. Belle Chrystal stars as Fanny Hawthorne, a Lancashire mill worker who gets more than she bargained for when taking her annual weekend holiday. Read More

1931
A Gentleman of Paris

Actors: Arthur Wontner, Phyllis Konstam, Vanda Greville, Hugh Williams

Synopsis: In this drama, a French judge, a womanizer when he is not upon the bench, is out on a date when he witnesses a murder. One of his ex-lovers is accused of the murder and the judge refuses to come forward. The situation becomes more outrageous when the judge is assigned to the case. He tries the Read More

1931
To What Red Hell

Synopsis: In this gritty drama, an epileptic john has a seizure and kills a hooker. His mother hides her distraught son. Meanwhile, the prostitute's boyfriend is accused and convicted for the crime. Just before he is to hang, the real killer confesses his crime. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide Read More

1929