Leslie Howard (actor) - Film Career

Film Career

In 1920 Howard and his friend Adrian Brunel founded the short-lived company Minerva Films in London; Howard was producer and actor, and Brunel the story editor. Early films include four written by A. A. Milne, including The Bump, starring C. Aubrey Smith; Twice Two; Five Pound Reward; and Bookworms. Some of these films survive in the archives of the British Film Institute.

Following his move to Hollywood, Howard often played stiff-upper-lipped Englishmen. He appeared in the film version of Outward Bound (1930), though in a different role than the one he portrayed on Broadway. He starred in the film version of Berkeley Square (1933), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. He played the title character in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) and later Professor Henry Higgins in the film version of George Bernard Shaw's play Pygmalion (1938), which earned him another Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. (In 1956, after Howard's death, Lerner and Loewe set Pygmalion to music in My Fair Lady. Rex Harrison played Higgins on Broadway and in the 1964 motion picture. Harrison once quipped to writer Earl Wilson, "Actually, my dear fellow, I play Leslie doing Higgins.")

Howard co-starred with Bette Davis in The Petrified Forest (1936) and reportedly insisted that Humphrey Bogart appear in the film as gangster Duke Mantee. It proved to be Bogart's break-out role. Howard and Bogart had previously appeared in the play together on Broadway and became lifelong friends; Bogart and Lauren Bacall later named their daughter "Leslie Howard Bogart" after him.

Howard had earlier co-starred with Davis in the film adaptation of W. Somerset Maugham's book Of Human Bondage (1934) and later in the romantic comedy It's Love I'm After (1937) (also co-starring Olivia de Havilland). Howard starred with Ingrid Bergman in Intermezzo (1939) and Norma Shearer in a film version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1936).

Howard is perhaps best remembered for his role as Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind (1939), but he was uncomfortable with Hollywood and returned to England to help with the Second World War effort. He starred in a number of Second World War films including 49th Parallel (1941), "Pimpernel" Smith (1941), and The First of the Few (1942, known in the U.S. as Spitfire), the latter two of which he also directed and co-produced. His friend and The First of the Few co-star, David Niven said Howard was "...not what he seemed. He had the kind of distraught air that would make people want to mother him. Actually, he was about as naïve as General Motors. Busy little brain, always going."

In 1944, after his death, British exhibitors voted him the second most popular local star at the box office.