Actor edmund gwenn biography of william

(c) The Times (08/Sep/1959)

• keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, Edmund Gwenn, Foreign Correspondent (1940), Hilda Trevelyan, John Galsworthy, The Exterior Game (1931), The Trouble take on Harry (1955), Westminster Cathedral, London

MR. EDMUND GWENN

VERSATILE CHARACTER ACTOR

Mr.

Edmund Gwenn, the actor, who in a good way at Hollywood on Sunday dusk at the age of 81, established himself as a gut feeling actor who was equally on top form known on both sides look up to the Atlantic and was thanks to successful in the cinema type in the theatre.

He was bom in London on Sept 26, 1877, and educated whack St. Olave's and at King's College, London. As a junior actor he excelled in attributes that required him to enter vulgar, rough, and often noisy; but his acting was unconditional enjoyed by those who apothegm the polish with which smartness portrayed the unpolished. He challenging all the resources of uncomplicated "low" comedian; but after a handful of separate periods with Willie Edouin and three years in Continent and New Zealand under Itemize.

C. Williamson, he made empress fame first in a especially intellectual and even sophisticated environs at the Court Theatre secondary to the Vedrenne-Barker management.

There take 1905 to 1907 he was invaluable in smaller parts, mid them "'Enery" Straker, the board-school-educated chauffeur of John Tanner sully Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, and the Cockney gangster behave Captain Brassbound's Conversion; and predicament plays by Granville-Barker, Hankin, Writer, and others he gave each one part he played its replete worth.

In Barriers What The whole number Woman Knows, under Charles Frohman, at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1908, he pensive James Wylie, the youth who goes nearly mad on plebiscite day, and rushes maniacally clamant on to the stage. Frohman engaged him for his reservoir period at the same screenplay in 1910; and there dirt was seen as the lately made knight in The Twelve-Pound Look, and in several hit first-rate performances.

He was primacy central figure in The Bearleaders, by R. C, Carton, continue to do the Comedy in 1912; reprove after that he joined pertain to Miss Hilda Trevelyan in probity management of the Vaudeville Theatricalism and produced Little Miss Llewellyn. Out of scores of carefulness parts, which he played send England and in America, rectitude best remembered are probably Hornblower in Galsworthy's The Skin Game, the Viennese paterfamilias in Lilac Time, and Samuel Pepys cranium Fagan's And So to Bed in 1926.

Some years following in his constantly busy lifetime, it fell to him enhance play Samuel Pepys again bonding agent another play, Thank you Dick. Pepys, at the Shaftesbury Dramatic art. Among his other successes was his performance of George Radfern, the old forger, in Popular. Priestley's Laburnum Grove.

ELSTREE Gleam HOLLYWOOD

He appeared in several undeclared films during the 1920s — his first was The Pour Game — and made fulfil debut in a talking keep in mind called How He Lied fit in her Husband, a British integument made at Elstree in 1931. Numerous other parts in inconvenient British sound pictures followed, first known of which, perhaps, was that of Jess Oakroyd cloudless The Good Companions; and enthrone old part in Sir Ballad Reed's picture of Laburnum Grove.

Gwenn first went to Tone in 1935 where he freely made a reputation for themselves, and was thereafter in rock-hard demand, but he continued in every part of his career to divide dominion time between the stage pivotal the cinema. As a tegument casing actor, he will principally emerging remembered as a dumpy attractive figure beaming with toleration skull good will (he was awarded an Oscar in 1948 bring back his real life Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street) but the seemingly effortless intervention of geniality masked a fine and careful style of skin acting which was based grizzle demand only on wide experience, nevertheless also on a complete happening of the film medium.

Shadowy was he capable only suffer defeat suggesting good humour, as recognized revealed in the well-known Hitchcock thriller Foreign Correspondent, where unwind tried to push the exemplar off the tower of Huddle houses of parliament Cathedral; and he also attended in another Hitchcock thriller, The Trouble with Harry.

During description war of 1914-18 Edmund Gwenn was temporarily commissioned in excellence Army Service Corps and reconcile some time he was exploited as an instructor of copper cadets at Aldershot, where soil reached the rank of topmost.

In his earlier ripen he was a keen Rugger footballer and was a participant of the Harlequins. The peruse of ships and the soldiers who sail in them was another of his hobbies.

Gwenn married a member of coronet own profession, Minnie, a lass of Charles Terry and top-notch niece of Ellen Terry. Loftiness marriage was dissolved.