Note to Readers About My Leslie Howard Chronology

Note: It is very difficult to create an accurate timeline of Leslie Howard's life for the following reasons:

• Leslie Howard was a master storyteller. He began writing stories at a very young age and, according to his children, had an excellent imagination—they being the recipients of his many fantasies in the form of bedtime stories which he seemed to be able to make up on the spot. Howard also used his real life events—as I am sure all writers do—as the basis for the stories he told his friends and family and wrote about for newspapers and magazines, which means that his tales were woven together with elements of both truth and fiction. It is not always easy to tell which is which. Also, these stories were sometimes told to interviewers who reported them as fact, something I am sure amused Howard to no end. Dates get confused. Parts of his various life events are blended together to form a more interesting whole. Names are changed to protect the innocent. Howard like to embellish. It is difficult to unravel actual history from his many "stories."
• Leslie Howard was in the public eye for a relatively short time and he died a long time ago, before the internet existed. Howard did not seem interested in writing his own biography and did not keep clippings or letters. Because only a few books have been written about Leslie Howard's life, I rely on the internet for a great deal of my information. It is only the American compulsion to document everything by putting it in an archived online file that allows me to know Leslie Howard as well as I do.
• Neither of his two children included definitive dates in any of their three books about their father. I have used statements such as: "1923 found him living at..." to look for any cross reference in all the books, magazines and newspaper articles I can find to discover when the event first occurred, i.e., when did he start living there?
• Leslie Howard loved his wife and adored his children but was separated from them frequently. Also, Howard had found his soulmate in Violette Cunnington and, beginning in 1938 and through the end of 1942, Howard lived with her full-time except on weekends when he visited his family home. Howard probably would have spent the rest of his life with Cunnington had she not died six months prior to his own death. Although his wife had become resigned to Howard's frequent dalliances with other women, his relationship with Cunnington was different and I am sure this caused a strain on Howard's connection with his wife and daughter. I believe the profound grief and loss Howard felt after Violette's death added to that strain and may be the reason Howard's family was not more active in creating a lasting legacy of Howard's life.
• Leslie Howard was an intensely private man and his family may have felt that, in order to honor him, they must remain quiet about the details of his life. Also, there may be details about Howard's life that the family considered to be embarrassing for them as well and so were left out of the books they published.
• Leslie Howard was viewed as an American by his countrymen and so they didn't feel the pride needed to create a lasting legacy—there is no government sponsored tribute to him.
• Leslie Howard's death was viewed as just one more casualty of war and so his countrymen didn't demand answers to the lingering questions about his death.
• I do not live in England and so do not have access to the actual records and documents of Leslie Howard's life.
• England does not seem to value the practice of putting documents on line like we do here in the United States. This may be because it is a much smaller country in size, therefore making it easier for people to actually go to the location where the documents are housed to view them.

About the Four Main Books Written About Leslie Howard:

I believe that Leslie Ruth wrote her book, A Quite Remarkable Father (1959), directly from Leslie Howard's own writings which she may have retrieved from the magazines and newspapers they appeared in or from his original papers which may not have been dated. I am sure that she also used her mother's recollection which may not have always been accurate. Howard wrote about events years after those events actually occurred and was fuzzy about the details and the timeline, either in his mind or merely for the purposes of storytelling. Either way, Leslie Ruth does not attempt to give specific dates. I am not sure that she even felt it was important or necessary. I believe that with the exception of Leslie Howard's wife, Ruth Martin, Leslie Ruth Howard was the single person who knew Leslie Howard better than anyone else who ever lived. She may have even known her father better than his own wife because she saw him objectively—she didn’t view him through a jealous or possessive eye. She spent more time with him than anyone, including his wife, and her father depended on her for his emotional stability and wellbeing. Leslie Ruth's eyes were not closed to her father's true nature or his activities, but she was also not threatened by them. However, as a daughter who very much loved and respected her father, she did not include anything in her book, unlike her brother, that would have cast a negative shadow on her father which means that there are gaps in the chronology of his life. The only opportunity to really know the man as he truly was, his full life warts and all, was lost when Leslie Ruth died in 2013.

Leslie Howard was very close to his son, but typical of that generation, Ronald went away to school at a certain age and did not spend as much time with his father as Leslie Ruth did. Leslie Ruth became very close to her father and remained closer emotionally and in proximity as she became older. She lived with her father and mother longer than Ronald did and witnessed the effect that her father’s activities had on her mother. Leslie Ruth was able to see her father for what he was. She was obviously annoyed with her father at times, as evidenced by statements made in Ronald’s books, but in her book she remained faithful to her father’s desire for privacy. 

Ronald Howard used his sister's book to write his first book about his father, Trivial Fond Records (1982), but that was more than twenty years later. In that book, which includes Howard's actual writings that Leslie Ruth used to write her book, Ronald writes a preface to each of his father's works giving a general description of the circumstances, but Ronald does not include specific dates either. It may be that he wasn't even present as those events occurred and so has no personal memory of them. Ronald's second book, In Search of My Father (1984), was written two years later but it focuses on the details of his father's death and only gives very general information about Leslie Howard's life prior to 1939.

I do not know what was in the minds of Howard's two children when they wrote their books, but I have the feeling that Leslie Ruth's motivation was pure love for her father and probably the need for closure after his death. I think Ronald also wanted closure and in seeking it inadvertently began an investigation into the circumstances of his father's death. Unfortunately, he was frustrated by sealed records, secrets not willing to be shared, outright lies and conflicting information and opinions. The result of his research is In Search of My Father. Trivial Fond Records was Ronald's gift to a new generation who wanted to understand Leslie Howard through Howard's own writings.

I use Estel Eforgan's book, Leslie Howard: The Lost Actor, to fill in the timeline when all other resources fail; however, I have to mentally shut out all her negative opinions, inferences and conclusions. Eforgan obviously did extensive research into the events of Leslie Howard's life, but I don’t feel that she really understood him, or even liked him. When a detail is missing she seems to fill it in with her own cynical opinion.

Howard may have hurt a few people inadvertently over his lifetime, but I don't believe it was in his nature to be mean. He even told his daughter that she needed to tune out the actions of others to stay in harmony with herself and that disliking other people took too much energy. As far as his reported infidelities go, I think that his wife never forgave him for an incident that happened fairly early in their marriage when she was pregnant with their daughter and she effectively ended their marital relationship because of it. It is obvious by his writings that Howard never stopped loving his wife—and loving her deeply. However, even though the two stayed married, I think their relationship was understood by both of them to be more of a parental, business and personal partnership rather than a romantic union between man and woman. Ruth expected her husband to fulfill his obligations to her and the children. And Howard didn't merely honor those obligations, I believe he really felt them. The two never stopped caring for each other or liking or even loving each other; however, whether Howard would have stayed married to Ruth after the children had left home and gone their separate ways will never be known. If a divorce would have caused a rift between Howard and his children, I believe he would have stayed married forever.

My reasons for creating this chronology, and my entire blog for that matter, are to create a lasting legacy to the memory of Leslie Howard, a man I happen to like and respect. He was not a perfect man by any means. Howard lived life his way. He was true to himself. As one of his friends stated after his death, Howard was his own harshest critic. Why judge a man who knew and could admit to his own shortcomings? I do not judge him. I only observe. But I find in my observations that the more I see and understand Leslie Howard, the better I like the man.

Subscribe to Leslie Howard by Email • And don't forget to respond to the verification email!