Actor edmund gwenn biography of george
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The marriage was dissolved. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of fame at 1751 Vine Street. He spent three years with a touring company in Australia and New Zealand, returning to London in 1904.
During the war of 1914-18 Edmund Gwenn was temporarily commissioned in the Army Service Corps and for some time he was employed as an instructor of officer cadets at Aldershot, where he reached the rank of captain.
George Bernard Shaw offered him a leading role in "Man and Superman" in 1902. In later years, in later years, he lived with crippling arthritis, suffered from a stroke and died from pneumonia in 1959.
Personal Life
Edmund Gwenn had an earlier marriage to Minnie Terry in (m.1901-div.1914), and they divorced in 1914.
Gwenn went on to appear in dozens of films during the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s.
He also continued working on stage, including on Broadway and the West End and appeared in some television shows. He was in Louisa (1950), Mister 880 (1950), All About Eve (1950), Sally and Saint Anne (1952), The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953), Them!
Terry was the niece of the famous British actress Ellen Terry.
During World War II, Gwenn’s London house was flattened by a bomb. In his earlier years he was a keen Rugby footballer and was a member of the Harlequins. By the 1930s, he was a busy actor.
Edmund Gwenn was directed by Alfred Hitchcock in a sound version of The Skin Game in 1931 when he again had the role of Hornblower.
(c) The Times (08/Sep/1959)
- keywords: Academy Awards, Alfred Hitchcock, Edmund Gwenn, Foreign Correspondent (1940), Hilda Trevelyan, John Galsworthy, The Skin Game (1931), The Trouble with Harry (1955), Westminster Cathedral, London
MR. In Barriers What Every Woman Knows, under Charles Frohman, at the Duke of York's Theatre in 1908, he acted James Wylie, the youth who goes nearly mad on election day, and rushes maniacally shouting on to the stage.
After the war, he resumed his stage career and made his cinematic debut.
Prolific Film Career
Gwen's film career spanned over eight decades, with over 80 credits to his name.
There in 1905 to 1907 he was invaluable in smaller parts, among them "'Enery" Straker, the board-school-educated chauffeur of John Tanner in Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, and the Cockney gangster in Captain Brassbound's Conversion; and in plays by Granville-Barker, Hankin, Galsworthy, and others he gave every part he played its full worth.
His father was a severe British civil servant who turned him out of the house at 17 for expressing a desire to become an actor.
ELSTREE AND HOLLYWOOD
He appeared in several silent films during the 1920s — his first was The Skin Game — and made his debut in a talking picture called How He Lied to her Husband, a British film made at Elstree in 1931. Out of scores of other parts, which he played in England and in America, the best remembered are probably Hornblower in Galsworthy's The Skin Game, the Viennese paterfamilias in Lilac Time, and Samuel Pepys in Fagan's And So to Bed in 1926.
At the end of the war, he was honorably discharged, having attained the rank of captain.
Career
Edmund Gwenn's film debut was in a British Short, The Real Thing at Last (1916) during his army years. In spite or because of this, he went on the stage in 1895. He won the best supporting actor Oscar for his role as Santa Claus in Miracle on 34th Street (1947).
Some years later in his constantly busy career, it fell to him to play Samuel Pepys again in another play, Thank you Mr. Pepys, at the Shaftesbury Theatre. Gwenn is best remembered for his role as Kris Kringle (Father Christmas) in the Miracle on 34th Street (1947) for which he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as well as a Golden Globe Award.
Later Years
After winning the Best Supporting Actor Oscar at age 71, Edmund Gwenn continued working throughout the final decade of his life.