Remembering James Whitmore On His Birthday

[The Next Voice You Hear Trailer, 1950]

James Whitmore's (1 October 1921 - 6 February 2009) career spanned radio, stage, film and television. He is one of only a handful of performers to have won three of the four EGOT honors. His 1999 Emmy for Outstanding Guest Actor - Drama Series came for his appearance as Raymond Oz in The Practice. Whitmore won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in Battleground in 1949, probably my favorite WWII movie. He was also nominated in the same category by the Academy Awards but lost out to Walter Huston for his role in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). And Whitmore won a Tony for Best Newcomer in 1948's Command Decision.

But my absolute favorite James Whitmore performance was as Joe Smith, average man, in The Next Voice You Hear (1950) co-starring Nancy Davis, soon to be Nancy Reagan. In it, Whitmore hears a voice on the radio claiming to be God who speaks to humanity for several wonderful but terrifying days. I watch the movie at least once a year.

Happy Birthday, James Whitmore.

James Whitmore's Obituary, The New York Times, 7 February 2009

Berkeley Square

[Leslie Howard as Peter Standish in
Berkeley Square, Lyric Theatre, London]

After years of disappointments on Broadway, Leslie Howard finally had a string of successes. It had been ten years since Howard made the decision to "try" acting and he was finally seeing the rewards. Howard had received rave reviews for The Green Hat and Her Cardboard Lover and was now an actor in demand. He got his first chance to star in a purely dramatic role in Escape, touted (due to a misunderstanding) as the last play John Galsworthy would ever write.

Captured!

[Leslie Howard in Captured! 1933]

In March 1933 Leslie Howard was filming Captured! for Warner Brothers. The film co-starred Howard's friend, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Howard had met Fairbanks during the summer of 1925 when the two happened to be crossing the Atlantic aboard the RMS Majestic at the same time. Fairbanks was just fifteen years old and hadn't yet made his first film.

Programming Note

[Leslie Howard and Bette Davis in Of Human Bondage, 1934]

Of Human Bondage (1934), directed by John Cromwell and produced by Pandro S. Berman and RKO Radio Pictures, stars Leslie Howard in the finest screen performance of his career up to that time and Bette Davis in her breakout role. Of Human Bondage is based on the 1915 novel of W. Somerset Maugham, a novel which has never been out of print since

Vague Leslie

[Leslie Howard in John Galsworthy's Escape, Booth Theatre,
New York, 26 October 1927 - March 1928, 173 Performances]

By 1927 Leslie Howard had become very well known as one of Broadway's best comedic actors. But it wasn't until his appearance as Matt Denant in John Galsworthy's Escape that he was fully accepted as a dramatic actor. And his reviews were the best of his ten-year career:

"One of the fine performances of our day in the theatre is

Leslie Howard's Rules of Theatre Etiquette

[Leslie Howard as Oliver Blayds-Conway in The Truth About Blayds
by A. A. Milne, Booth Theatre, New York, March 14 to June 1922,
108 Performances]

Leslie Howard's Rules of Theatre Etiquette:

1. Don't ask the box office man if it's a good play.
2. Don't have any faith in dramatic critics, the star system, press agents, photographs in the newspapers, or articles by actors.
3. Don't try to buy tickets for a play an hour before the performance.

Real or Imagined?

[Leslie Howard with Archie Mayo
on the set of It's Love I'm After, 1937]

Leslie Howard's son, Ronald "Wink" Howard, talks about his father's shyness:

"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

My Chronology of Leslie Howard's Life

[Leslie Howard with his children, Doodie and Wink,
at their home Stowe Maries, at Dorking in Surrey c. 1939]

I have now been working on my "Chronology of Leslie Howard's Life" for months and have just made it halfway through his professional life—to 1930, where his movie career now begins. This is monumental for me. I cannot tell you how difficult it has been to put the pieces of Howard's life together in a meaningful sequence. I have outlined the reasons this is so arduous in a note which can only be viewed by clicking the link in the Chronology, or by clicking here. I am not going to rehash all those reasons in this post, but I will talk about the most primary among them.

I Know What It's Like to Be in Human Bondage, Continued

[Leslie Howard with his daughter Leslie Ruth "Doodie," c. 1926]

"He was not a great party-lover, which also endeared him to his children, and most parties, when I was small, found him sneaking up to my room like a conspirator and again dozing off on my bed. He was usually found out; someone would miss him, and my poor mother then had to play the villain and come searching for him. Suddenly, her voice would be heard

I Know What It's Like to Be in Human Bondage, Continued

[Leslie Howard with his children, Ronald and Leslie Ruth, c. 1930]

In August 1934, Gladys Hall interviewed Leslie Howard for Motion Picture Magazine. I do not know if Ms Hall realized before the interview began that Howard was at that moment so preoccupied with thoughts of his children, but she definitely knew it afterward. In one of the longest interviews Howard ever gave, he talks exclusively about his feelings on

I Know What It's Like to Be in Human Bondage

[Leslie Howard with his son and daughter, Ronald "Wink"
and Leslie Ruth "Doodie," in one of the last pictures they
took together before the start of WWII]

Following is an excerpt from an interview with Gladys Hall for Motion Picture Magazine printed in the August, 1934, issue:

I was reminded, as he talked, of a little incident Bette Davis told me about him when they were working on Of Human Bondage together. She said that Leslie was standing just off

Leslie Howard In Sing-Sing

[Leslie Howard, New York Public Library,
Billy Rose Collection, c. 1924]

On 1 January 1924 Leslie Howard began to keep a diary. Whether it was because he received a leather-bound journal for Christmas, or he had made a New Year's Resolution, or he merely wanted to keep a record of his life and the people he met, we don't know. Howard and his family were living just a block away from Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald in Great Neck, New York, at the time.

Ronald "Wink" Howard included the first six months of entries in Trivial Fond Records (1982), the book of Leslie Howard's own writings with

Not Leaving Anything to Chance

[Leslie Howard, 1924]

Excerpt from my Leslie Howard Biography:

Weeks passed, with the job at Cox's still being held open(3), when Howard finally visited the office of Ackerman May, Theatrical Agent. May, who liked the sound of Howard's voice, referred Howard to the fifth touring company of Peg O' My Heart. Howard managed to secure an audition but he wasn't taking any chances on his performance. While waiting for the day of his audition to arrive he and Ruth saw the show every night until he had every word, every move, every inflection memorized. The producer was amazed and convinced he had found a star. But in the words of Leslie Ruth Howard(6), all he really had was a "well-trained monkey." Howard was offered the part of "Jerry" at a salary of £4.4.0 per week. Fortunately, his wife, Ruth, was also hired as understudy to the ladies of the company which meant that she could also go on tour and be paid as well.(3)


(3) Fletcher, Adele Whitely. "Love In The Life Of Leslie Howard." Modern Screen, October, 1933. Dell Publishing Company, Incorporated, New Jersey.
(6) Howard, Leslie Ruth. A Quite Remarkable Father: A Biography of Leslie Howard. New York: Harcourt Brace and Co., 1959.

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Leslie Howard - His Own Man

[Leslie Howard, c. 1920s]

Roland Pertwee remembers Leslie Howard after his death in a letter to Ronald Howard, Leslie Howard's son:

"I have very tender, soft-edged memories of Leslie who, untouched by success, moved gently through life and always contrived to appear just a scrap out of focus. Unlike the majority of stars in that particular

Leslie Howard Clairvoyant, Or Just Good Businessman?

[Leslie Howard, c. 1920]

Excerpt from my Leslie Howard Biography:

Based on Leslie Howard's later success in managing his career, he would have made a fine businessman. Howard had the foresight to give up lucrative salaries as actor and instead take minimum wage to become co-producer in many of the plays in which he appeared—co-producer with half the profits and movie rights for any play that sold, and in those days, most of the talking pictures were just transplanted plays from Broadway.(3) But the idea of life as a businessman stuck at a desk in a dreary office seemed tedious and dull to Howard, and he still held firm to his dream of becoming a writer.


(3) Fletcher, Adele Whitely. "Love In The Life Of Leslie Howard." Modern Screen, October, 1933. Dell Publishing Company, Incorporated, New Jersey.

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Programming Note

[Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland in It's Love I'm After, 1937]

It's Love I'm After to air on TCM this Sunday, August 21, 7:30 AM EST, 4:30 AM PST [Please check your local listings]

If you missed the chance last month to see Leslie Howard, Bette Davis and Olivia de Havilland in this 1937 "rippling farce, brightly written and deftly directed," you have another chance this Sunday. It's Bette Davis Day on TCM.

Says Frank S. Nugent in The New York Times review of 11 November 1937: "Mr. Howard's Basil Underwood is a gem of conceit, self-delusion and calculated posturing, but he shyly confesses in every bit of character shading that there is a very human chap beneath the veneer." "This [farce] spins delightfully." "Mr. Howard and Miss Davis must give us other farces and Archie Mayo must direct them again. It's good to find a comedy with people in it instead of whimsies."

In the vernacular of today—It's funny! It's a delight! Watch it!

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Have You Missed Me?

[Leslie Howard, Billy Rose Theatre Collection,
New York Public Library, c. 1920]

Hopefully, you all have missed my posts over the last several days. I have been diligently working on the "Leslie Howard Biography" section of my blog and haven't taken the time to write any daily posts.

It is a painstaking process of taking the pieces of various books, newspaper and magazine articles, and online sources, and figuring out how they fit together. For some reason, writers don't always put dates in their pieces. I have never been able to figure out why. Also, a story may appear in one source and not in another, which requires me to find a verification source. This, too, can be difficult if the second source got their information from the first source. And some of the stories, or episodes, of Leslie Howard's life vary. I assume this is because the author has a particular point of view they want to put across. Separating fact from opinion takes time as well. I hope at the end to have one coherent biography and also a chronology of Leslie Howard's life.

I would like to solidly complete "The London Theatre Years - 1916 to 1920" before I continue my daily posts. This should be within a day or two. Please bear with me.

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Holy Hollywood

[Leslie Howard by Vandamm Studio, 1932]

By 1927 Leslie Howard had been working in New York on the Broadway stage for seven years. He had appeared in seventeen plays there and many others in his native England going back to the start of his professional career in 1916. Howard had even authored and directed some of his own productions. He was well-known in New York.

A Most Unappreciated Man

[Leslie Howard as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Wind, 1939]

Leslie Howard definitely did not want the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With The Wind (1939). Howard thought Ashley to be "a dreadful milk-sop, totally spineless and negative." He found the character "unsure and vacillating, uncertain as a moth fluttering between lamps—the done-to instead of the doing man, torn between the opposing polarities of two

William Gargan - This post is dedicated to Leslie Gargan

[Leslie Howard with good friend Bill Gargan, along
with Fred MacMurray, W. C. Fields and George Arliss]

In William Gargan's book, Why Me? An Autobiography, Gargan enjoys recounting his memories of times spent with his good friend, Leslie Howard. One of the traits Gargan found amusing about Howard was his "frugality." This trait in Howard was also noted by Howard's daughter, Leslie Ruth, in her book, A Quite Remarkable Father. Leslie Ruth tells a