 Between 1934 and 1947 he appeared in various leading roles "ranging from Tony Pirelli in Edgar Wallace's gangster drama "On the Spot" and Stephen Cass in Mary Hayley Bell's horror thriller "Duet for Two Hands" to Romeo, Prince Hal and an intense Hamlet in a production which he also directed for the Old Vic company in Liverpool..."

Glenville's directorial debut on Broadway was Terence Rattigan's "The Browning Version" in 1949, which starred Maurice Evans.Other notable productions which followed included "The Innocents" (1950), the stage adaptation of Henry James' "The Turn of the Screw", Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", which starred Douglass Watson, Jack Hawkins and marked the Broadway debut of Olivia de Havilland (1951),Rattigan's "Separate Tables" (1954) and Georges Feydeau's "Hotel Paradiso" (1957).Glenville directed the Bridget Boland play "The Prisoner" at the Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh in March 1954 and then at the Globe Theatre in London, starring Alec Guinness.