 The young performer's first exposure to the stage came at the age of six, when he played a bear in his mother's 1921 revival of "The Tempest" at the Aldwych Theatre in London and continued through his childhood years, as exemplified by his portrayal, at eleven-and-a-half, of Lieutenant Spicer in a January 1927 juvenile production of "Quality Street".Taking as his stage name the famous surname from his mother's side of the family, he spent a year studying drama at the Old Vic where, in his words, he "played spear carriers and said 'Hail Caesar!