Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall (23 May 1890 – 22 January 1966) was an English actor of stage, screen, and radio. He 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, Marshall turned to character acting.
The son of actors, Marshall is best known 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 Barbara Stanwyck, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Kay Francis, Joan Crawford, Jean Arthur and Bette Davis.
From 1944 to 1952, Marshall starred in the American radio espionage 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. Known for his charm, Marshall married five times and periodically appeared in gossip columns because of his sometimes turbulent private life. A leg amputee due to injuries sustained during the First World War, he worked for the rehabilitation of injured troops, especially aiding amputees like himself, during the Second World War. Marshall received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
Marshall was born in London in 1890, as the only child of stage actors Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. Theatrical critics praised his father for his comic flair and "rich voice". In addition to acting, Percy wrote and directed some plays in which he appeared. Most popular in the 1880s and 1890s, Marshall's father retired from acting in 1922 and died on 28 December 1927 at the age of 68. Marshall later recalled: "My father was a grand actor—better than I could ever dream of being." His mother was the sister of journalist and drama critic, Leopold Godfrey-Turner (born Leopold McClintock Turner). Marshall's grandfather, Godfrey Wordsworth Turner, wrote several books and articles on art and travel. In an article about his love of the theatre, he noted that one of his uncles was an actor. Godfrey was also the grandnephew of influential businessman Edward Wollstonecraft, who was the nephew of women's rights activist and author Mary Wollstonecraft and first cousin of Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, who wrote the horror classic Frankenstein.
As a boy, Herbert's mother gave him the nickname Bart because she feared he would be known as Bertie, "a name then in vogue that she disliked". His family, friends and personal acquaintances continued to call him Bart for the rest of his life. He was also periodically referred to by his nickname in the press. While introduced by his given name, he was usually addressed as Bart on the radio. His parents gave him the middle name Brough (pronounced BRUF) after his godfather, comedic Shakespearean actor Lionel Brough.
As a child, Marshall was brought up by his three maternal aunts while his parents toured in theatrical productions. During school vacations, however, they took him with them. These early experiences initially gave him a negative view of the theatre:
I used to tour the provinces in England with my mother and father, you know, when I was a small lad. And I was often tired and cold, there seemed to me to be so much heartache and poverty and disappointment that the glamour and applause and tinsel of the theatre escaped me, quite...No, I had no reason to love the theatre...I spent most of my time trying to forget those tired faces which the footlights served only to illumine, mockingly.
After education at St Mary's College in Harlow, Essex, Marshall worked for a time as an accounting clerk. After being sacked for the slow speed of his calculations, he took a job as an assistant business manager of a theatre troupe run by a friend of his father's. He later had a series of different backstage jobs at various theatres and acting companies. When a troupe he worked for reformed, he was laid off. He then tried his hand at acting. In a 1935 interview, he claimed that he only became an actor out of necessity because he did not know how to do anything else. To another reporter, he recollected how he had initially vowed never to go on the stage.
Marshall had a long and varied stage career, appearing with Sir Nigel Playfair, Sir Gerald du Maurier, Noël Coward, Gertrude Lawrence, Edna Best (his second wife), Cathleen Nesbitt, Mabel Terry-Lewis, Marie Löhr, Madge Titheradge, Edmund Gwenn (his future film and radio co-star) and others.
While his stage debut is usually listed as The Adventure of Lady Ursula (1911), some sources place it in 1909. Furthermore, Marshall remembered playing a footman alongside Eric Blore in Robert Courtneidge's The Arcadians; his mention of Blore added an appearance in November 1910.
In 1913, Marshall made his London debut in the role of Tommy in Brewster's Millions. Actor-manager Cyril Maude was so impressed with his performance that he recruited Marshall for his U.S. and Canadian tour of Grumpy. When war was declared, the company returned to London, and the 24-year-old enlisted in the London Regiment.
Marshall served with the 14th (County of London) Battalion, London Regiment (London Scottish), in which also fellow actors Claude Rains, Cedric Hardwicke, and Basil Rathbone served. He recalled his time on the Western Front: "I knew terrific boredom. There was no drama lying in the trenches 10 months. I must have felt fear, but I don't remember it. I was too numb to recall any enterprise on my part." On 9 April 1917 he was shot in the left knee by a sniper at the Second Battle of Arras in France. After a succession of operations, doctors were forced to amputate his leg. Marshall remained hospitalised for 13 months. He later recalled in private that after his injury, he had initially over-dramatised his loss and was wrapped up in self-pity and bitterness. Before long, however, he decided he wanted to return to the theatre and learned how to walk well with a prosthetic leg in order to do so. While he was recovering at St Thomas' in London, King George V visited the hospital. When asked to pick which of the actor's legs he thought was artificial, the king chose the wrong one. Throughout his career, Marshall largely managed to hide the fact that he had a prosthetic limb, although it was occasionally reported in the press.
Marshall suffered from his war injury for the rest of his life, both from phantom pain common to amputees and from the prosthesis. One friend remembered that he kept holes in his trouser pocket so that he could inconspicuously loosen a strap on his prosthetic leg in order to ease sudden discomfort. The pain in his leg became more pronounced later in life, including bothering him on film shoots in ways noticeable to others and exacerbating his usually very slight limp.
Following the Armistice, Marshall joined Nigel Playfair's repertory troupe, appearing in Make Believe (December 1918), The Younger Generation (1919) and Abraham Lincoln (1919). In 1920, he made his first known appearance opposite Edna Best in Brown Sugar. He also appeared in John Ferguson and the Shakespearean plays The Merchant of Venice and As You Like It. Marshall recalled "Jacques in As You Like It has given me more pleasure than any part I have played". The following year, he toured North America with Australian star Marie Löhr and starred in A Safety Match in London. By 1922, Marshall was making regular appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, debuting on Broadway in The Voice from the Minaret and starring in Coward's The Young Idea (with then-wife Maitland) and The Queen Was in the Parlour. Among his other successes were Aren't We All? (1923), The Pelican (1924–25), Lavender Ladies (1925), Interference (1927–28), S.O.S. (1928) and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (1931). His greatest hits with Edna Best were the aforementioned Brown Sugar, These Charming People (1925–26), The High Road (1928–29), Michael and Mary (1930), The Swan (1930) and There's Always Juliet (1931–1932).