Programming Note

[Leslie Howard and Bette Davis
in The Petrified Forest, 1936]

The Petrified Forest to air on TCM on Friday, July 15, at 8:30 AM PST [Please check your local listings]

Leslie Howard and Humphrey Bogart reprise their roles from the stage play in which they appeared from January 7, 1935, through June 6, 1935, at the Broadhurst Theatre in NYC. Leslie Howard and Gilbert Miller produced the play in association with Arthur Hopkins. It ran for 197 performances. This two-act play was written by Robert E. Sherwood and adapted for the screen by Delmer Daves and Charles Kenyon.

The film marks a turning point in the career of Humphrey Bogart who had become very discouraged and told friends that if he didn't make it in Hollywood this time he was through. Thanks to the insistence of Leslie Howard, Bogart was offered the role of Duke Mantee, Bogart being so grateful he named his daughter after Mr. Howard. Howard had already had this honor bestowed on him once before when his friend William Gargan named his son after Howard in gratitude for jump starting his career.

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Leslie Howard, The Early Years - Part Five

Leslie Ruth Howard, Leslie Howard's daughter, recounts in her book, A Quite Remarkable Father, that Leslie and Ruth then spent some time together at Mayfield, in Sussex. Leslie's regiment had moved there in preparation to deploy to France for the buildup prior to the Battle of the Somme. Ms Howard states that her father shipped out to France and was there for a time, returning at least once on leave. She remembers in detail a story told to her of how her grandmother, while walking down a London street with her mother and not expecting her father back from the Front, heard a voice call out to Ruth. Turning to look, her grandmother saw a khaki figure covered in mud and told her daughter-in-law, "I think that soldier called to you, Ruth dear." Ruth recognized Leslie and ran to him (much like Melanie runs to Ashley in Gone With The Wind) and embraced him while crying out, "Oh darling! Never mind my suit–thank God you're home!"

Ms Howard goes on to state that after returning to France, it seems Leslie's nerves gave out and Leslie was sent home with "a case of severe shell shock." According to Estel Eforgan in her book, Leslie relinquished his commission on May 18, 1916, having no record of ever seeing action in France. She states that "from the few records that are left, April and May 1916 were relatively quiet times." However, one of the largest and longest battles, the Battle of Verdun, was being waged in northeastern France and since Ms Eforgan can produce no record at all it may be possible the records are incomplete and that Mr. Howard saw action there. Leslie Ruth must have remembered her father's service in WWI based on stories she heard from her family and it is hard for me to imagine her parents and her grandmother fabricating a story of Leslie's war service for the benefit of a child. She later recounted that her father suffered from night terrors especially when traveling in sleeping compartments on trains because of his experience during the war. We will never know for sure. However, because his life was eventually cut short by the German Luftwaffe during WWII, what does it matter? He fought in the war, even if as a civilian, and he died because of it.

Although Leslie and Ruth were living with his family during his recovery, Leslie knew that he must find a way to support the two of them if he wanted to be independent of his father. Ruth was working for the War Office but her pay would not support the two of them. Frank wanted him to return to clerking for Cox, but that suggestion fell on deaf ears. Lilian suggested Leslie try the theatre, she was convinced his future lay there, and so Leslie knocked on the doors of agent after agent after agent day after day after day until finally he knocked on the door of Mr. Ackerman May.

[Leslie Howard, 1924]

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Leslie Howard, The Early Years - Part Four

It seems that the army didn't really know what to do with a calvary regiment in a war being fought in the trenches, so Leslie's unit continued training for an additional ten months in an idyllic little town in the English countryside. It was here that he met Ruth Evelyn Martin, aged 21.

Leslie was actually engaged at the time to a young woman approved of by his father, Frank. When Leslie would write to "Buzz," as she was called, Ruth made sure to include little notes describing the care she was taking of Leslie. It seems Buzz relayed her concerns about Leslie's "caregiver" to his father and when Leslie failed to show up at home for a scheduled visit with the family, and Buzz, in March, 1916, Frank made a trip to Colchester to find out what was going on. When Frank voiced his disapproval to Leslie and told him to end his relationship with Ruth, Leslie announced that it was too late, Leslie and Ruth had been married that morning at St. Mary at the Walls Church. It seems that Ruth had not consulted her parents either. But there was nothing any of them could do. Leslie and Ruth had chosen their path and it was one they would travel together for the next 27 years, until his death.

[Leslie Howard Steiner,
Second Lieutenant, c. 1915]

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Leslie Howard, The Early Years - Part Three

Leslie Howard had been interested in writing from a very early age. His mother encouraged him by making a small "den" for him in their attic. Leslie spent hours working on his plays, one of which was performed at his school for Christmas, in Latin mind you. His stories appeared in The Penny Weekly and various other magazines. His parents argued for hours over this activity, with his mother as supporter and his father seeing it as a waste of his time.

Howard either decided to leave school or his father withdrew him, but either way, he left Dulwich College and records show he took a job as a junior clerk in the purser's office of a steamboat running on the Thames River. Apparently, he wasn't there long, if at all, because within a short time he is listed as a clerk at Cox and Co.'s bank, a job his father arranged for him. During this time his mother continued to encourage him to write plays. The two of them, along with a couple of friends, had formed their own production company, the Upper Norwood Dramatic Club, based out of their house. The Club held several public performances during the years leading up to WWI. Several of the plays were written by and starred Leslie along with his mother, Lilian, and even his younger sister, Dorice.

People who remember Leslie at this time report that he was reserved with strangers but very confident and companionable amongst friends, which may have been a result of his elegant good looks. An actress he worked with remembered him as a "fresh-faced boy with a charming smile." [from Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor by Estel Eforgan]

Leslie was still working at the bank when the war started and like many young men of his time was caught up by the romance and glamour of it all. Leslie was not suited for banking. He had difficulty making the books balance and it was all just so monotonous. What better way to escape than by joining the army. After his initial training, Howard was accepted as a second lieutenant in the Northamptonshire Imperial Yeomanry, a mounted territorial regiment. Little did he know then that war was neither romantic nor glamorous.

[Leslie Howard Steiner in uniform, c. 1915]

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Leslie Howard, The Early Years - Part Two

The Steiners were no longer looked upon with as much disfavor by Lilian's family as they had been initially and they were helped to buy the house next door on Jasper Road, Upper Norwood. However, the Blumbergs expected the family to fit in with their society so Ferdinand changed his name to Frank Stainer and all Germanic influences had to be eradicated. (Leslie Howard's military records show him as Leslie Steiner. Apparently, the name change was only cosmetic.) Leslie was no longer allowed to speak German and any lapse would result in the cancellation of treats. His uncle even went so far as to make him eat mustard on toast if he forgot and let a German word escape. Leslie remembered later that he became shy and withdrawn at that time.

The Stainer's house was large and comfortable and looked out over London and was just around the corner from the Crystal Palace, which must have provided hours of amusement for Leslie and his siblings. Leslie started school at Belvedere House in 1904 and seemed to have a talent for writing. It was here that one of his plays was performed for visiting parents during Christmas.

His next school, Alleyn's, was not so comfortable, though, and Leslie didn't seem to fit in. One of his reports called him "a shuffler, little power, little energy, no morals." There is some speculation that this view of Howard may have stemmed from his German name and accent. Germans were not in favor at the time. Of course, we will never know.

[Leslie Howard Steiner, c. 1915]

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Leslie Howard, The Early Years - Part One

Howard was born Leslie Howard Steiner April 3, 1893, in Forest Hill, London, to Ferdinand and Lilian Steiner (née Blumberg). Lilian's first ancestor in England, Leslie's great grandfather, Ludwig Alexander Blumberg, emigrated to England from Courland in Russia in 1834. The family's language and culture was Germanic and their religion, Jewish. However, once Ludwig arrived in London, he jettisoned his religion and changed his name to Louis so as to fit in with "respectable" society. He was very successful at importing luxury goods, so successful in fact that he was the first resident of a newly built mansion at 20 Kensington Palace Gardens, now owned by the Sultan of Brunei.

One of his six children was Charles Blumberg who married Mary Elizabeth Roworth in 1868. Her father was in the printing business and his name is mentioned in Jane Austen's letters. Charles and Mary lived in Upper Norwood, known for its associations to the arts, and they had frequent presentations at their home. This is where their daughter, Lilian, met her future husband, Ferdinand Steiner. Ferdinand was only 28 and Lilian's parents did not approve of him. Apparently, he was too "old country" Jewish and German. But Lilian won out and the two were married in the West London Synagogue in 1891. Ferdinand, apparently following the lead of Lilian's grandfather on how to be successful, immediately let his membership in the synagogue lapse.

Leslie was born about a year and a half later. When Leslie was just 5 years old, his father moved the family to Vienna in an attempt to give them the experience of the cultural and intellectual brilliance happening there. This is when Leslie learned to speak German. However, because Jews still needed the protection and support of other Jews, and the Steiners were not part of that group, they did not have a proper place in any society and the family was forced back to England in 1903 when Leslie was 10 years old.

[Leslie Howard, c. 1895]

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