William Anthony Furness, 2nd Viscount Furness

Who was William Anthony Furness, 2nd Viscount Furness?

William Anthony Furness, 2nd Viscount Furness, was a British peer.

Furness was born in Melton Mowbray, England, the only child of Marmaduke Furness, 1st Viscount Furness, and his second wife, Thelma Furness, Viscountess Furness, an American socialite. He was the grandson Christopher Furness, 1st Baron Furness, of Furness Withy Shipping, and a first cousin of the American fashion designer Gloria Vanderbilt.

Tony Furness, as he was known, was educated in England and in America and succeeded to the title in 1940 on the death of his father.

When Lord Furness came of age, he decided to enter the House of Lords and to take up his responsibilities as second viscount, rather than to live and work in America, his mother's home country. In the House he served on a series of committees and was, for many years, a mainstay of the Inter Parliamentary Union.

In addition to his parliamentary duties he also ran Furness Enterprises from his grandfather’s offices at 60 St James’s Street, which gave him easy access to his favourite clubs. In the fifties and sixties he was a theatrical producer or "angel", his preferred term, most particularly with the actor Alan Badel, with whom he ran Furndel Productions, based at the Westminster Theatre. Of these productions probably the 1959 production of Ulysses in Nighttown, directed by Burgess Meredith, which transferred from New York and ran in London and later in Paris, and James Saunders' The Ark were the most prestigious; although Furndel productions also mounted the London production of Gore Vidal’s Visit to a Small Planet. When his partnership with Alan Badel ended, he continued to work as a producer, most particularly through his financing of Jeremy Brett's Hamlet, and a memorable production of Heartbreak House at Wyndham's Theatre, with Roger Livesey as Captain Shotover.