Romulus films
Harvey's career gained a boost when he appeared in Women of Twilight (1952); this was made by Romulus Films run by brothers John and James Woolf, who signed Harvey to a long-term contract. James Woolf in particular was a big admirer of Harvey and played an important role in turning the actor into a star.
In 1953 he played Orlando on a BBC TV version of As You Like It, opposite Margaret Leighton, whom he would later marry.
Romulus put him in two ensemble films: a comedy, Innocents in Paris (1953) and a crime thriller, The Good Die Young (1954). He had an especially strong role in the latter, which was directed by Lewis Gilbert, and featured Hollywood actors such as John Ireland, Richard Basehart and Gloria Grahame, along with Leighton. This has been called his "first performance of note."
Harvey received an offer to play the juvenile male lead in the Hollywood spectacular King Richard and the Crusaders (1954), a medieval swashbuckler for Warner Bros starring Rex Harrison, Virginia Mayo and George Sanders. It was a box-office disappointment, although Harvey's performance was well received.
Harvey played Romeo in Renato Castellani's adaptation of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1954), narrated by John Gielgud. His performance was generally not well received. According to a contemporary interview, he turned down an offer to appear in Helen of Troy (1955) to act at Stratford-upon-Avon, where he again performed in Romeo and Juliet, this time on stage.
Romulus gave Harvey another excellent chance when he was cast as the writer Christopher Isherwood in I Am A Camera (1955), with Julie Harris as Sally Bowles. He and Leighton starred in an adaptation of A Month in the Country for ITV Play of the Week (1955). He made his Broadway debut in 1955 in the play Island of Goats, a flop that closed after one week, though his performance won him a 1956 Theatre World Award. While in the US he appeared on TV in an episode of The Alcoa Hour called The Small Servant , co-starring Diane Cilento.
Zoltan Korda used him as one of the soldiers in Storm Over the Nile (1955), a remake of The Four Feathers (1939), playing the part taken by Ralph Richardson in the 1939 version. It was popular in Britain as was the comedy Three Men in a Boat (1956), made for Romulus under the direction of Ken Annakin.
Harvey appeared in The Bet for ITV Television Playhouse (1956) then did another for Romulus, After the Ball (1957), a biopic of Vesta Tilley, in which Harvey played Walter de Frece. He followed it with The Truth About Women (1958), a comedy directed by Muriel Box for Beaconsfield Productions.
Harvey returned to Broadway in 1957 to appear alongside Julie Harris, Pamela Brown and Colleen Dewhurst in William Wycherley's The Country Wife (a production he had originally starred in at London's Royal Court Theatre).
For Romulus, Harvey starred in The Silent Enemy (1958), with his old friend Sid James, a biopic of war hero Lionel Crabb.
