Leslie Howard Steiner (3 April 1893 – 1 June 1943), better known as Leslie Howard, was an English actor, director, producer, and writer. He wrote many stories and articles for The New York Times, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair and was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s.
Active in both Britain and Hollywood, Howard played Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). He had roles in many other films, including Berkeley Square (1933), Of Human Bondage, The Scarlet Pimpernel (both 1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Pygmalion (1938), Intermezzo (1939), "Pimpernel" Smith (1941), and The First of the Few (1942). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Berkeley Square and Pygmalion, and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for the latter film.
Howard's Second World War activities included acting and filmmaking. He helped to make anti-German propaganda and shore up support for the Allies; two years after his death, the British Film Yearbook described Howard's work as "one of the most valuable facets of British propaganda". He was rumoured to have been involved with British or Allied Intelligence, sparking conspiracy theories regarding his death in 1943 when the Luftwaffe shot down BOAC Flight 777 over the Atlantic (off the coast of Cedeira, A Coruña), on which he was a passenger.
Howard was born Leslie Howard Steiner to a British mother, Lilian (née Blumberg), and a Hungarian Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, on 3 April 1893 in Forest Hill, London. His younger brother was actor Arthur Howard. Lilian had been raised as a Christian, but she was of partial Jewish ancestry – her paternal grandfather, Ludwig Blumberg, was a Jewish merchant who had married into the English upper-middle classes.
He received his formal education at Alleyn's School, London. Like many others at the time of the First World War, the family anglicised its name, in this case to "Stainer", although Howard's name remained Steiner in official documents, such as his military records.
Howard was a 21-year-old bank clerk in Dulwich when the First World War began; in September 1914, he voluntarily enlisted (under the name Leslie Howard Steiner) as a private with the British Army's Inns of Court Officer Training Corps in London. In February 1915, he received a commission as a subaltern with the 3/1st Northamptonshire Yeomanry, with which he trained in England until 19 May 1916, when he resigned his commission and was medically discharged from the British Army with neurasthenia.
In March 1920, Howard gave public notice in The London Gazette that he had changed his surname, and would thereafter be known by the name of Howard instead of Steiner.
Howard began his professional acting career in regional tours of the comedy plays Peg o' My Heart and Charley's Aunt in 1916–17 and on the London stage in 1917, but had his greatest theatrical success in the United States in Broadway theatre, in plays such as Aren't We All? (1923), Outward Bound (1924) and The Green Hat (1925). He became an undisputed Broadway star in Her Cardboard Lover (1927).
After his success as time traveller Peter Standish in Berkeley Square (1929), Howard launched his Hollywood film career in the film version of Outward Bound, but did not like the experience and vowed never to return to Hollywood. However, he did return, many times—later repeating the Standish role in the 1933 film version of Berkeley Square.
The stage, however, remained an important part of his career. Howard frequently juggled acting, producing, and directing duties in the Broadway productions in which he starred. Howard was also a dramatist and starred in the Broadway production of his own play Murray Hill (1927). He played Matt Denant in John Galsworthy's 1927 Broadway production Escape in which he first made his mark as a dramatic actor. His stage triumphs continued with The Animal Kingdom (1932) and The Petrified Forest (1934). He later repeated both roles in the film versions.
Howard loved to play Shakespeare, but according to producer John Houseman, he could be lazy about memorizing his lines. He first sprang to fame playing in Romeo and Juliet (1936) in the role of the leading man. During the same period, he had the misfortune to open on Broadway in Hamlet (1936), just a few weeks after John Gielgud launched a rival production of the same play that was far more successful with both critics and audiences. Howard's production, lasted for only thirty-nine performances before closing.
When the New York production was completed, Howard took the production on an extended transcontinental tour through the spring of 1937, traveling with the company, substantially recast, by chartered special train. These were Howard's final stage appearances.
The program for the Chicago engagement at the Grand Opera House lists the court ladies as Katherine Cale, Lucia Robinson, "Celeste Holmes", Shirley Zak, Mildred Pearl, Sylvia Hill, Daphne Ingarn and Allace Carroll; the third of these is the future Academy Award winner Celeste Holm, whose surname is misspelled in the program. Wesley Addy had also taken over Fortinbras.
The production toured the United States for several months. Documented engagements include the Grand Opera House, Chicago, opening Christmas night, 25 December 1936, and running through 2 January 1937; The tour reached Los Angeles, where figures from the film industry attended Howard's opening.
The hypertext pioneer Ted Nelson, son of Celeste Holm and the director Ralph Nelson, annotated a scan of the Chicago program with a note that both his parents had been in the company, that his mother was pregnant with him during the tour.
Howard was inducted into the American Theatre Hall of Fame in 1981.
In 1920, Howard suggested to his friend Adrian Brunel that they form a film production company. After Howard's initial suggestion of calling it British Comedy Films Ltd., the two eventually settled on the name Minerva Films Ltd. The company's board of directors consisted of Howard, Brunel, C. Aubrey Smith, Nigel Playfair and A. A. Milne. One of the company's investors was H. G. Wells. Although the films produced by Minerva—which were written by A. A. Milne—were well received by critics, the company was only offered £200 per film, even though it cost £1,000 to produce, and Minerva Films was short-lived.
Early films include four written by A. A. Milne, including The Bump, starring C. Aubrey Smith; Twice Two; Five Pounds Reward; and Bookworms, the latter two starring Howard. Some of these films survive in the archives of the British Film Institute.