Leslie Howard (actor)
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- For other people of this name, see Leslie Howard.
| Leslie Howard | |
 in the film Of Human Bondage (1934) |
|
| Birth name | Leslie Howard Steiner |
| Born | April 3, 1893 Forest Hill, London, England, United Kingdom |
| Died | June 1, 1943 Bay of Biscay |
Leslie Howard (April 3, 1893 - June 1, 1943) was an English stage and Academy Award nominated film actor. He is best known by international audiences as Ashley Wilkes in the movie Gone with the Wind. However he was an accomplished actor whose film roles included Professor Higgins in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion (1938), The Petrified Forest (1936) and Intermezzo (1939).
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[edit] Early life
He was born Leslie Howard Steiner to a Hungarian Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, and an English Jewish mother, Lillian Blumberg, in Forest Hill, London and educated at Dulwich College, London. He worked as a bank clerk before enlisting at the outbreak of World War I. He suffered severe shell shock, which led to his return to England. He served with the Northumberland Fusiliers.
[edit] Film career
After starting as a stage actor in plays such as Aren't We All?, Howard often played stiff-upper-lipped Englishmen in films such as Berkeley Square (1933), for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Academy Award. He played The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1934 and in 1938 played Professor Higgins in Pygmalion, which earned him another Oscar nomination.
In 1936, he appeared in The Petrified Forest. It was Howard who reportedly insisted that Humphrey Bogart appear in the film as gangster Duke Mantee. They had previously appeared in the play together on Broadway and became lifelong friends; the Bogarts named their daughter Leslie after him.
The Petrified Forest was one of several films in which Howard appeared with Bette Davis. They also appeared together in the film adaptation of Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage and the 1937 romantic comedy It's Love I'm After (also starring Olivia de Havilland). Howard also starred with Ingrid Bergman, in the 1939 film Intermezzo and Norma Shearer in the 1936 film version of Romeo and Juliet .
Howard is perhaps best remembered for his role as Ashley Wilkes in the epic Gone with the Wind (1939), but he was uncomfortable with Hollywood and returned to Britain to help with the World War II war effort. He directed and starred in a number of World War II films, including The First of the Few (which he also produced and directed) and the Forty-Ninth Parallel with Laurence Olivier.
[edit] Death
Howard died in 1943 when, returning from Lisbon, he was travelling on KLM Royal Dutch Airlines/BOAC Flight 777 and the aircraft was shot down by a German Junkers Ju 88 over the Bay of Biscay.[1] It has been rumoured that Howard was engaged in secret war work at the time, and that Germany believed the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, who had been in Algiers, to be on board. Howard's manager, Alfred Chenhalls, physically resembled Churchill, while Howard was tall and thin, like Churchill's bodyguard, Walter H. Thompson. However, this story, that the Nazis thought Churchill was on board a commercial airliner in wartime, has been completely discredited. Churchill himself seems to have been to blame for the spread of it, by means of his autobiography, in which he expresses sorrow that a mistake about his activities might have cost Howard his life.
The truth, revealed in several exhaustively detailed books such as the above mentioned "Bloody Biscay" (which comes to a slightly different conclusion), "Flight 777" by Ian Colvin and "In Search of My Father" by Howard's actor son Ronald, is that the Germans were almost certainly out to shoot down the plane in order to kill Howard himself. His intelligence gathering activities (while ostensibly doing "entertainer goodwill" tours), as well as the chance to demoralize Britain with the loss of one of its most outspokenly patriotic figures, were behind the Luftwaffe attack on the plane. Ronald Howard's book, in particular, explores in great detail written German orders to the Staffel assigned to intercept the airliner, as well as communiques on the British side which verify intelligence reports of the time indicating a deliberate attack on Howard. It also makes clear that the Germans were well aware of Churchill's whereabouts at the time and were not so näive as to believe the Prime Minister of Great Britain would be traveling alone aboard an unescorted and unarmed civilian airliner when both the secrecy and air power of the British government were at his command. Howard was a staunch supporter of the British cause during the war, and he died almost certainly as direct retribution for his activities.
A synopsis of events as outlined in the above-mentioned books: Howard was traveling through Spain and Portugal, ostensibly lecturing on film, but also meeting with local propagandists and shoring up support for the Allied cause. The Germans in all probability suspected even more surreptitious activities. (German agents were active throughout Spain and Portugal, which, like Switzerland but even more accessible to Allied citizens, was a crossroads for persons from both sides of the conflict.) Ronald Howard, Leslie's son, was of the conviction that the orders to liquidate Leslie came from Goebbels, who had been ridiculed in one of Howard's films and who believed Howard to be the most dangerous propagandist in the British service. Howard was flying from Portela (Lisbon), Portugal back home to England on a KLM Royal Dutch airlines flight. This was a regularly scheduled flight and did not pass over what would commonly be referred to as a war zone. The Luftwaffe records indicate that the Staffel was sent beyond its normal patrol area to intercept and shoot down this airliner, even though this regular flight had never before been disrupted. There were about fourteen other passengers, most of them either British executives with corporate ties in Portugal, or various British government functionaries of comparatively lower echelons. There were also two or three children, the offspring of British military personnel. The DC-3 was attacked by eight German JU-88s, despite the fact that Luftwaffe patrols in the nearest normal vicinity usually consisted of single planes. According to German documents, the plane was shot down at Latitude 10.15 West, Longitude 46.07 North, some 500 miles from Bordeaux, France. (The DC-3's last radio message indicated it was being fired upon at Latitude 09.37 West, Longitude 46.54 North.) The German pilots photographed the wreckage floating in the Bay of Biscay. After the war, copies of these captured photos were sent to Howard's family.
Christopher Goss's book Bloody Biscay, however, it should be noted, quotes Oberleutnant Herbert Hintze, Staffel Führer of 14 Staffel, based in Bordeaux, France, as remarking that his Staffel shot down the DC-3 merely because the plane was recognized as an enemy aircraft, unaware that it was an unarmed civilian plane. Hintze states that his fellow Staffel pilots were angry that the Luftwaffe had not informed them of a scheduled flight between Lisbon and the UK, and that had they known, they could easily have escorted the plane to Bordeaux and captured it and all aboard. Perhaps there is reasonable middle ground between Ronald Howard's account of a deliberate Luftwaffe attempt on his father's life and Oberleutnant Hintze's claim that the German pilots themselves were not a conscious part of that attempt.
[edit] Personal life
Howard was married to Ruth Martin in 1916 and they had two children. His son Ronald also became an actor, and wrote one of the few biographies written about Leslie Howard: In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard ISBN 0-312-41161-8). Leslie Howard's younger brother, Arthur, was also an actor, primarily in British comedies.
[edit] Selected Film Roles
- A Free Soul (1931) - Dwight Winthrop, Jan's Fiancee
- Smilin' Through (1932) - Sir John Carteret
- Secrets (1933) - John Carlton
- Berkeley Square (1933) - Peter Standish
- Of Human Bondage (1934) - Philip Carey
- The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) - Sir Percy Blakeney/The Scarlet Pimpernel
- The Petrified Forest (1936) - Alan Squier
- Romeo and Juliet (1936) - Romeo
- It's Love I'm After (1937) - Basil Underwood
- Pygmalion (1938) - Professor Henry Higgins
- Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939) - Holger Brandt
- Gone with the Wind (1939) - Ashley Wilkes
- Pimpernel Smith (1941) - Professor Horatio Smith
- 49th Parallel (1941) - Philip Armstrong Scott
- The First of the Few (1942) - R.J. Mitchell
[edit] References
- ^ Goss, Christopher H. (2001). Bloody Biscay: The History of V Gruppe/Kampfgeschwader 40. Manchester: Crécy Publishing, 50-56. ISBN 0-947554-87-4.
[edit] External links
- Leslie Howard at the Internet Movie Database
- Leslie Howard biography and credits at the BFI's Screenonline
- Leslie Howard at the TCM Movie Database
- Leslie Howard at the Internet Broadway Database
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Howard, Leslie |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Steiner, Leslie Howard |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | actor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | April 3, 1893 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Forest Hill, London, England, United Kingdom |
| DATE OF DEATH | June 1, 1943 |
| PLACE OF DEATH | Bay of Biscay |
