Murray Hill

[Leslie Howard pictured in Film Weekly, September 30, 1932]

Most people remember Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes from Gone With The Wind (1939) or as Sir Percy Blakeney from The Scarlet Pimpernel (1935). What most people don't know is that Howard was also a writer and had many articles and stories published in The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The New York Times and many trade magazines. Howard's first published story appeared in The Penny Weekly when he was in his early teens. But Howard didn't limit himself to stories for magazines. He was also a playwright. Two of the first plays he produced, staged and appeared in were of his own composition: The True Artist—of which little is known—and Deception—the story of a private detective on his quest to track down stolen jewels.

So Why Act?

Leslie Howard was one of the few actors in Hollywood during the "studio system" to refuse long-term contracts. He had a specific idea of the types of pictures he wanted to make and he didn't want to be forced to do films he thought were beneath the audience. Howard took on the roles that other actors refused--roles they said the audience wouldn't understand. But Howard thought the audience was smarter than previously believed and that they wanted something different.

Howard wanted to direct. He wanted to make pictures that challenged the audience. He had written, produced and directed plays in school and on the stage in London and New York. He thought that to be a successful movie director "one should either write the story or collaborate on it." He didn't see his acting performances as accomplishments at all. But the plotting of pictures "according to scenic effects and camera angles" and seeing this through to production, that was an accomplishment. Acting was just a means to an end.

[Leslie Howard directing Spitfire, aka
The First of the Few, 1942]

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More Inward Bound

Outward Bound (1930) was Leslie Howard's first "talkie." By this time he already had an extensive background in the theatre, having authored, acted in and directed his own productions many times. He had also appeared in many silent films.

It's hard to figure out why Howard ever acted at all. He never felt himself suited to the profession and he didn't seem to enjoy the process. He once wrote:

"First of all, let me admit that I am one of those unfortunate persons to whom any kind of public appearance is an embarrassment...from the moment when...I got my first job on the stage and sheepishly daubed my face with greasepaint, I had an inner conviction that this was the most embarrassing occupation in the world. And this belief, far from being modified by experience, I find only to be intensified by the years."

His real love was writing. But he considered himself to be lazy, unable to apply himself in that solitary confinement required by the writer. His friends and family, however, asserted that he was far from lazy.

After appearing in Gone With The Wind, he returned to England somewhat disillusioned and angry. And he actually feared that England might not win the war against Germany. But Howard would do his best to see a different outcome. He worked tirelessly creating films to bolster his countrymen's spirits and determination. Howard also appeared on radio broadcasts heard in America and traveled throughout Europe attempting to bolster the support of England's allies. It was on such a trip that his civilian aircraft was shot down by Nazis over the Bay of Biscay.

Unfortunately, Howard would never be able to experience the joy that so many others felt when the enemies of peace were eventually vanquished. Ronald Howard, Leslie Howard's son, in speaking of his father's short time on earth in Leslie Howard: Trivial Fond Records said "that was his destiny, to end his life incomplete, as if on the penultimate note of an unfinished concerto."

[Leslie Howard in a publicity photo
for Outward Bound, 1930]

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