Search a film or person :

Herbert Marshall is a Actor and Story British born on 21 may 1890 at London (United-kingdom)

Herbert Marshall

Infos
Photos
Best films
Family
Characters
Awards

If you like this person, let us know!

Do you like this person ?

I like

I don't like

Birth name Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall
Nationality United-kingdom
Birth 21 may 1890 at London (United-kingdom)
Death 23 january 1966 (at 75 years) at Beverly Hills (USA)

Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall (23 May 1890 – 22 January 1966) was an English stage, screen and radio actor who, in spite of losing a leg during the First World War, starred in many popular and well-regarded Hollywood films in the 1930s and 1940s. After a successful theatrical career in the United Kingdom and North America, he became an in-demand Hollywood leading man, frequently appearing in romantic melodramas and occasional comedies. In his later years, he turned to character acting.

The son of actors, Marshall is best remembered for roles in Ernst Lubitsch's Trouble in Paradise (1932), Alfred Hitchcock's Murder! (1930) and Foreign Correspondent (1940), William Wyler's The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941), Albert Lewin's The Moon and Sixpence (1942), Edmund Goulding's The Razor's Edge (1946), and Kurt Neumann's The Fly (1958). He appeared onscreen with many of the most prominent leading ladies of Hollywood's Golden Age, including Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Bette Davis.

From 1944 to 1952, Marshall starred in his own radio series, The Man Called 'X'. Often praised for the quality of his voice, he made numerous radio guest appearances and hosted several shows. He performed on television as well. The actor, known for his charm, married five times and periodically appeared in gossip columns because of his sometimes turbulent private life. During the Second World War, he worked on the rehabilitation of injured troops, especially aiding amputees like himself. Marshall received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.

Biography

Marshall, a quiet-spoken man who was one of the pillars of the Hollywood British community, was widely respected and well-liked due to his talent and professionalism, pleasant and easygoing demeanor, sensitivity, gentlemanly and courteous manner, witty sense of humor, and his "very great personal charm". Among the affable actor's many friends in the British community were Edmund Goulding, Eric Blore, Ronald Colman, Clive Brook, Merle Oberon, Sir C. Aubrey Smith, David Niven, Basil Rathbone, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Brian Aherne. Other friends included Raymond Massey, Rod La Rocque, Vilma Bánky, Kay Francis, Mary Astor, Irving Thalberg, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Bette Davis and Grace Moore. Although popular and likeable, Marshall suffered from bouts of depression through much of his life. In his free time, he especially enjoyed sketching and fishing.

"His first charm is that he is a thoroughly nice, reasonable Englishman. He has a peculiarly easy, unaffected manner. He is tallish and dresses with exceptional taste and discretion. Also he gives an impression of hidden reserves, a sort of enticing withdrawal...And manners. The man has every charming trick of engaging manners known to masculinity".

—Reporter Alma Whitaker describing Marshall in The Los Angeles Times, 1932

Marriages and family
Marshall was married five times, divorced three. In 1914, he appeared with Mollie Maitland (whose real name was Hilda Lloyd Bosley) in The Headmaster; the following year, they were married. Five years later, he first appeared with Edna Best, who would become his most frequent stage co-star; they also made three films together (The Calendar, Michael and Mary and The Faithful Heart). Marshall and Best were married in November 1928, following their respective divorces (they had been cohabiting for the previous three years). In 1931, Best broke a lucrative contract with MGM and walked off the filming of The Phantom of Paris with John Gilbert in order to be with Marshall in New York, where he was performing in a play. In response to a press inquiry, he said: "I'm sorry if Hollywood is annoyed, but Edna and I happen to be in love with each other and we want to be together."

During a return trip to London in late November 1932, Marshall and a pregnant Best gave an interview in which they stated their intention to briefly return to Hollywood the following summer. They would bring a nanny to help look after their daughter. At some point, Best and young Sarah returned to London while Marshall received more film offers. They continued making trips to see each other. In late 1933, actress Phyllis Barry had tea with Marshall and Claudette Colbert after they returned from Hawaii, where they had been filming Four Frightened People. She remembered that Marshall "insisted on my talking all the time because he said I sounded just like his wife". By the time Marshall was filming Riptide in early 1934, he was reportedly drinking heavily due to his problems with Best and increased phantom pain. (Director Goulding and co-star Norma Shearer successfully convinced him to curb his consumption of alcohol.) Not long after, Goulding would introduce him to Gloria Swanson.

In 1940, after a long separation from her husband and wanting to marry someone new, Best divorced Marshall on grounds of desertion (he lived in Hollywood, while she lived in Britain). She remarried almost immediately. Twenty days later, he married actress and model Elizabeth Roberta "Lee" Russell, a sister of film star, Rosalind Russell. Two years prior to their marriage, Russell's recently divorced ex-husband, songwriter Eddy Brandt, initiated an alienation of affection suit for $250,000 against Marshall, whom he accused of stealing his wife. Brandt later told the press that he and the actor settled out of court for $10,000. Marshall publicly denied this claim. In 1947, Russell divorced him in Mexico. They parted on amiable terms. Instead of explaining the reasons for her divorce, she told the press at the time: "I will never say anything against Bart. He is one of the most charming people I have ever known."

He was married to his fourth wife, former Ziegfeld girl and actress Patricia "Boots" Mallory, from 1947 until her death in 1958. They were wed in August 1947, with Nigel Bruce acting as best man. After a sixteen-month illness, Mallory died of a throat ailment at age 45. Marshall was deeply troubled by her death and had to be hospitalised for pneumonia and pleurisy less than two months later. He married his final wife, Dee Anne Kahmann, on 25 April 1960, when he was almost 70 years old. She was a twice-divorced, 38-year-old department store buyer. They remained married until his death.

Marshall had a daughter, Sarah, by Edna Best, and another daughter, Ann, by Lee Russell. Sarah Marshall followed her parents and grandparents into the acting profession, appearing in many of the most popular television shows of the 1960s, including Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, F Troop and Daniel Boone. Herbert and Sarah Marshall acted together in a television version of J. B. Priestley's play, An Inspector Calls, in 1951. His younger daughter, Ann Marshall (often called "Annie"), worked for many years as Jack Nicholson's personal assistant. He also had at least four step-children, two from his marriage to Best and two from his marriage to Mallory. His grandson, Timothy M. Bourne, Sarah Marshall's only child, is an independent film producer. Bourne was the executive producer of the Academy Award-winning film The Blind Side (2009).

Affair with Gloria Swanson
In the early 1930s, Marshall was commonly rumoured within Hollywood social circles to have had affairs with both his Trouble in Paradise co-stars, Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins. In January 1934, Marshall, while still married to Best, began a serious affair with actress Gloria Swanson, who recounted their relationship in her memoirs, Swanson on Swanson (1980). She described Marshall at the time of their first meeting as "a handsome man in his early forties with a gentle face and soft brown eyes", who had "one of the most perfect musical voices I had ever heard". Swanson also wrote that the actor was "sweet beyond belief" and "a nice man", who "utterly charmed" her and her children. He constantly wrote her love notes, and when she was out of town, he sent her romantic telegrams almost hourly. (Many of these personal documents now reside at the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center archives, as part of the Gloria Swanson Papers.) Newspapers and film fan magazines widely discussed his affair with Swanson at the time, which he made little attempt to keep secret.

In November 1936, Swanson left him once she accepted that he would not divorce Edna Best to marry her. Although insisting they were "madly in love," she believed that he would not demand a divorce because of his typically docile nature, reluctance to deliberately hurt people, and guilt over his separation from his young daughter. "He would always turn to alcohol rather than face a painful scene," she remembered. Despite an emotional parting, near the end of her life Swanson, who was married six times, wrote: "I was never so convincingly and thoroughly loved as I was by Herbert Marshall."

A few months into their relationship, Marshall became a subject of media gossip after a confrontation at El Morocco in New York City. A photographer snapped pictures of the couple dining together. The photos were subsequently published in newspapers and magazines. When Marshall saw that Swanson was annoyed by the photographer, he "went into one of the most spectacular rages of all times," according to Modern Screen. In a syndicated column, Ed Sullivan wrote that he watched Marshall "rise violently" from his seat and chase the cameraman down the aisles between the nightclub's tables.

Around two months after this incident, Marshall again received substantial publicity after screenwriter John Monk Saunders (husband of actress Fay Wray) punched him in the face and knocked him to the floor at a dinner party given by director Ernst Lubitsch. According to a wire report, Marshall took exception to something Saunders said about Gloria Swanson. Later that night, after Marshall called Saunders a derogatory name, Saunders hit him while he was, in his own words, "seated...and looking in an opposite direction". Wray later added details unreported at the time. According to her, Marshall referred to Saunders as a "bestial bastard" after the screenwriter ogled Swanson's décolletage. Articles about the incident commonly mentioned Marshall's prosthetic leg, which had only very rarely been talked about in the press up to that point.