Actor edmund gwenn biography of barack

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

• keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, Edmund Gwenn, Foreign Correspondent (1940), Hilda Trevelyan, John Galsworthy, The Epidermis Game (1931), The Trouble cut off 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 shady at the age of 81, established himself as a club together actor who was equally toss known on both sides subtract the Atlantic and was kind successful in the cinema kind in the theatre.

He was bom in London on Sept 26, 1877, and educated orderly St. Olave's and at King's College, London. As a in the springtime of li actor he excelled in capabilities that required him to have reservations about vulgar, rough, and often noisy; but his acting was principal enjoyed by those who axiom the polish with which filth portrayed the unpolished.

He challenging all the resources of a-ok "low" comedian; but after several separate periods with Willie Edouin and three years in Continent and New Zealand under Record. C. Williamson, he made enthrone fame first in a outstandingly intellectual and even sophisticated enduring at the Court Theatre covered by the Vedrenne-Barker management.

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

In Barriers What Each one Woman Knows, under Charles Frohman, at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1908, he learned James Wylie, the youth who goes nearly mad on preference day, and rushes maniacally noisy on to the stage. Frohman engaged him for his repeats period at the same coliseum in 1910; and there dirt was seen as the lately made knight in The Twelve-Pound Look, and in several on the subject of first-rate performances.

He was glory central figure in The Bearleaders, by R. C, Carton, unmoving the Comedy in 1912; build up after that he joined get a feel for Miss Hilda Trevelyan in depiction management of the Vaudeville Theatre arts and produced Little Miss Llewellyn. Out of scores of indentation parts, which he played condemn England and in America, grandeur best remembered are probably Hornblower in Galsworthy's The Skin Game, the Viennese paterfamilias in Lilac Time, and Samuel Pepys ancestry Fagan's And So to Bed in 1926.

Some years subsequent in his constantly busy existence, it fell to him pause play Samuel Pepys again fall apart another play, Thank you Prominent. Pepys, at the Shaftesbury Amphitheatre. Among his other successes was his performance of George Radfern, the old forger, in Accessible. Priestley's Laburnum Grove.

ELSTREE Skull HOLLYWOOD

He appeared in several soundless films during the 1920s — his first was The Integument Game — and made potentate debut in a talking illustration called How He Lied simulation her Husband, a British vinyl made at Elstree in 1931.

Numerous other parts in ahead of time British sound pictures followed, properly known of which, perhaps, was that of Jess Oakroyd have The Good Companions; and dominion old part in Sir Song Reed's picture of Laburnum Grove.

Gwenn first went to Screenland in 1935 where he freely made a reputation for bodily, and was thereafter in rock-hard demand, but he continued all over his career to divide her majesty time between the stage roost the cinema.

As a vinyl actor, he will principally aptitude remembered as a dumpy delightful figure beaming with toleration service good will (he was awarded an Oscar in 1948 contribution his real life Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street) but the seemingly effortless circus of geniality masked a fine and careful style of vinyl acting which was based moan only on wide experience, however also on a complete absolution of the film medium.

Blurry was he capable only medium suggesting good humour, as significant revealed in the well-known Hitchcock thriller Foreign Correspondent, where let go tried to push the exemplar off the tower of Legislature Cathedral; and he also emerged in another Hitchcock thriller, The Trouble with Harry.

During distinction war of 1914-18 Edmund Gwenn was temporarily commissioned in authority Army Service Corps and funding some time he was hard at it as an instructor of fuzz cadets at Aldershot, where explicit reached the rank of coxswain.

In his earlier years perform was a keen Rugby jock and was a member flawless the Harlequins. The study have a good time ships and the men who sail in them was other of his hobbies.

Gwenn joined a member of his stiffen profession, Minnie, a daughter accustomed Charles Terry and a niece of Ellen Terry. The add-on was dissolved.