Personality

"he was very much a man of peace—a quiet, leisurely man whose very mode of life found violence abhorrent." In Search of My Father, pg. 13

"being a withdrawn, mystical sort of man." In Search of My Father, pg. 15

"I have always felt that Leslie was a man who discovered his metier, his raison d'etre, by a combination of great artistic intuition, a practical genius for seeing essentials and impeccable timing." In Search of My Father, pg. 15

"If he was neither a great actor nor showman he made up for it by high technical skill and shrewd judgement of what he could do best." In Search of My Father, pg. 15

"As far as living in Hollywood was concerned Leslie had always kept a pretty low profile, not from any innate hostility to the place, but simply because he was not a very social animal. He was rarely seen 'around and about' whether in London, New York or Hollywood and carefully avoided gatherings of large numbers of people, suffering from a genuine agoraphobia—crowds really frightened him—and having, as he admitted, no 'head for parties.' In fact, elusive as was his nature, he generally got out of Hollywood as quickly as he could, if only to the nearby desert at La Quinta where he could ride or lie about in the sun without feeling he was under inspection. It was in no sense a 'Howard exclusivity cult' but simply that he needed to escape from time to time, was basically solitary and shy and only really wanted the company of a very few intimate friends." In Search of My Father, pg. 22

"Leslie was a man torn between opposites and...if he had looked into his heart he would have seen the face of Ashley mirrored there...In his own private life he was subject to a Scarlett-Melanie syndrome of intense proportions. If he intensely needed his home and family at one moment, at another he equally intensely needed to escape from them." In Search of My Father, pg. 41

"We still expected my father to come home each weekend, as he had since the war began, and subconsciously we continued to save things to tell him. We were surrounded by his possessions, and though his touch in life had been light, it was found to be everywhere. A curious thing, for his was a quiet and detached personality; he never demanded attention and often could be in the house for hours without anyone realizing he was there. Yet, when he wasn't there and now would never be there, we missed him in every part of our lives." A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 5

"It took a great deal of provocation to irritate my father. He had developed a remarkable defense mechanism. He simply did not see what he chose not to see. Once I remarked that some people connected with a particular film he was working on struck me as rather unpleasant. He looked at me thoughtfully for a moment and then said, 'Yes, I suppose they are, but I don't really notice them.' When I replied a little tartly that he was lucky, because I found them impossible, he answered, 'It's not luck, Dood. You simply must learn to retreat inside yourself or you'll find life takes too much out of you—it's exhausting and a great waste of time to dislike people.'" A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 10

"He had built up a reputation for shyness, which he took considerable trouble to maintain. He was excused from many parties because he was supposedly too frightened of large gatherings to appear. It really rather depended on the gathering. A huge group of painters at the Royal Academy dinner delighted him, but an invitation to a fashionable New York party brought the comment: 'I did not go...I don't like brokers, Long Island society, Italian princesses, etc., and I'm sure that's what I should get.'" A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 11

"His vagueness, actual or imagined, was also a wonderful shield. For a man who was supposed to be unable to remember his own name, he was quite an able businessman. Though he always left to my mother the organization of all the nasty, dull things like tickets and passports and luggage, he made all the major family decisions himself; then, if the decision did not suit everyone, he could squeeze by on the basis that he was too vague to understand what he had done knowing that my mother could readjust the details." A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 11

"He could not see without his glasses, and if he always seemed to be without them when someone he wished to avoid appeared, he got them on fast enough when a pretty girl went by." A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 11

"Peaceful, and yet, when the need arose, capable of a biting sarcasm and a quite alarming temper." A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 12

"My father's growth is interesting partly because he never tried to overcome his weaknesses. He was in some ways quite lazy, and he found it delightfully easy to make use of his disadvantages: shyness and shortsightedness, vagueness and unpunctuality became his trademark, and he hid behind it shamelessly, sheltered from the outside world. But he seemed to have remarkable talents, and he was gentle and humorous and a splendid friend." A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 14

"...for he was basically a reflective rather than active person, a thinker rather than actor." " Trivial Fond Records, pg. 16

Leslie Ruth wrote the following in response to her father's diary entry: "Feeling particularly depressed. Part seems hopeless and ineffectual—does me very little good—another packed house."

"To understand the contradiction of this, one has first to understand the young man. He was capable of great industry, and while he was working hard he could not think too seriously about himself. Then—and Ruth learned to expect this every time—the play would settle into a routine; Leslie would relax and begin to ponder why he was doing it, how bad his health was, and how ghastly it was anyway to work in the theater at all. Ruth had a difficult job keeping him on the path between joy and despair, the common road of the majority of the world's population.

"The most significant change that took place in Leslie's personality as he grew older was the gentle submission to this comfortable grayness, the careful avoidance of the too-strong black, the too-glaring white. Whether from laziness, exhaustion, or plain common sense, he became a strong advocate of compromise and the middle-road policy. It may have seemed to his associates that this was always his maxim. Only his wife knew better, for only with her could he afford to be temperamental. He would never make a public exhibition of his feelings." 

A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 90

regarding Leslie Howard's disparaging remarks to the press about the play (The Green Hat) in which he was appearing:

"It is doubtful that these frank utterances can have been greeted with any pleasure by the management. To have Broadway's most successful play cried down by a member of its cast must have been as refreshing as falling into a lake in November, and the reaction of Michael Arlen can only have bordered on the choleric. But it did not seem to worry Leslie at all. He went on nodding and smiling sweetly at everybody, apparently blissfully unaware that he was persona non grata with his employers. This was the first statement to the press he had ever made, and he must have considered it successful, for he made similar remarks with commendable honesty but doubtful tact for the rest of his life. He got great pleasure out of potting at idols. This, as was to be expected, had a shocking effect on the idols, for he was the last person they suspected of such infamy." A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 107

regarding Leslie's habitual tardiness:

"The scene [John Galsworthy's Escape] in which she [Frieda Inescort] appeared was a bedroom in a hotel on the moors. The fugitive is discovered by the lady, hiding under her bed. As was bound to happen with vague Leslie, when the curtain went up one night on the bedroom, he was in his dressing room. Frightful sawing noises were heard off stage, as the carpenter cut a hole in the scenery so that he [Leslie] could crawl under the bed while Miss Inescort bravely shrieked her lines to the audience." A Quite Remarkable Father, pg. 144

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