Edmund Gwenn

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Edmund Gwenn (born Edmund John Kellaway; 26 September 1877 – 6 September 1959) was an English actor. On film, he is best remembered for his role as Kris Kringle in the Christmas film Miracle on 34th Street (1947), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the corresponding Golden Globe Award. He received a second Golden Globe and another Academy Award nomination for the comedy film Mister 880 (1950). He is also remembered for his appearances in four films directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

As a stage actor in the West End and on Broadway, he was associated with a wide range of works by modern playwrights, including Bernard Shaw, John Galsworthy and J. B. Priestley. After the Second World War, he lived in the United States, where he had a successful career in Hollywood and Broadway.

Life and career

Early years

Gwenn was born in Wandsworth, London to John and Catherine (Template:Nee Oliver) Kellaway.<ref name="ODNB">Template:Cite ODNB</ref> His brother was the actor Arthur Chesney, and his cousin was the actor Cecil Kellaway. Gwenn was educated at St. Olave's School and later at King's College London.<ref name=times>"Mr Edmund Gwenn – Versatile Character Actor", The Times, 8 September 1959, p. 13</ref> He began his acting career in the theatre in 1895, and learned his craft as a member of Willie Edouin's company, playing brash comic roles.<ref name=times/> In 1901 he married Minnie Terry, niece of Dame Ellen Terry. In the same year, he went to Australia and acted there for three years with the J. C. Williamson company.<ref name=times/> His wife accompanied him, and when Gwenn was in a production of Ben Hur that was a disastrous failure, she restored the couple's fortunes by accepting an engagement from Williamson.<ref name=tt>"Miss Minnie Terry", Table Talk, 9 October 1902, p. 10</ref> Later, the couple appeared on stage together in London in a farce called What the Butler Saw in 1905<ref>"Wyndham's Theatre", The Times, 3 August 1905, p. 8</ref> and, in 1911, when Irene Vanbrugh made her debut in variety, she chose Terry and Gwenn to join her in a short play specially written by J. M. Barrie.<ref>"The Theatres", The Times, 30 October 1911, p. 11</ref>

When he returned to London, Gwenn appeared not in low comedy but in what The Times called "a notably intellectual and even sophisticated setting" at the Court Theatre under the management of J. E. Vedrenne and Harley Granville-Barker.<ref name=times/> There, in 1905 to 1907, in the words of The Times, "he was invaluable in smaller parts [giving] every part he played its full worth", including Straker, the proletarian chauffeur to John Tanner in Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, and Drinkwater, the cockney gangster in Captain Brassbound's Conversion.<ref name=times/> He also appeared in plays by Granville-Barker and John Galsworthy, in Elizabeth Robins's suffragette drama Votes for Women<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and in works by other contemporaries. In Barrie's What Every Woman Knows (1908) in the role of the over-enthusiastic James Wylie he impressed the producer Charles Frohman, who engaged him for his repertory company at the Duke of York's Theatre.<ref name=times/> In 1912, Gwenn went into management in partnership with Hilda Trevelyan.<ref name=times/> His career was interrupted by his military service during the First World War, serving as an officer in the British Army.<ref name=times/> During the war, Gwenn's marriage broke up and was dissolved. His ex-wife remarried but remained on affectionate terms with him.<ref name=mail/>

Leading roles on stage and screen

After peace returned, Gwenn's leading roles in the West End during the 1920s included Old Bill in Bruce Bairnsfather's Old Bill, M.P. (1922); Christian Veit in Lilac Time (1922–23); the title role in A. A. Milne's The Great Broxoff (1923); Leo Swinburne in Good Luck by Seymour Hicks and Ian Hay (1923); and Hippolyte Gallipot in Lehár's Frasquita (1925).<ref>Parker, pp. xxxvi–cxxii</ref> Looking back at Gwenn's career, The Times considered, "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."<ref name=times/>

Gwenn began his film career in 1916, playing Macbeth in The Real Thing at Last, a satire of the American film industry written by Peter Pan playwright J. M. Barrie. A notable early role was a recreation of his stage character Hornblower in the 1921 Anglo-Dutch silent film of The Skin Game, which he reprised ten years later in Alfred Hitchcock's early sound version of The Skin Game. His debut in a talking picture was in an adaptation of Shaw's How He Lied to Her Husband, made at Elstree in 1931.<ref name=times/> Of Gwenn's many British film roles, The Times considered his best known to be Jess Oakroyd in The Good Companions with John Gielgud and Jessie Matthews (1933) and Radfern in Carol Reed's Laburnum Grove with Cedric Hardwicke (1936).<ref name=times/> His final British film role, as a capitalist trying to take over a family brewery in Cheer Boys Cheer (1939) is credited with being the first authentic Ealing comedy.<ref>"Screen Legends", The Observer Review, 20 December 2009</ref>

Gwenn appeared in more than eighty films, including Pride and Prejudice (1940), Cheers for Miss Bishop, Of Human Bondage and The Keys of the Kingdom. George Cukor's Sylvia Scarlett (1935) was his first appearance in a Hollywood film, as Katharine Hepburn's father. He settled in Hollywood in 1940 and became part of its British colony. He had a small role as a Cockney assassin in a Hitchcock film, Foreign Correspondent in 1940.<ref name=times/> For his Santa Claus role in Miracle on 34th Street he won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. He received a second Oscar nomination for his role in Mister 880 (1950). Near the end of his career, he played one of the main roles in Them! (1954) and in Hitchcock's The Trouble with Harry (1955).<ref name=times/> His last film role was in the Spanish satire The Rocket from Calabuch (1956), directed by Luis García Berlanga.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

On Broadway Gwenn starred in the acclaimed 1942 production of Chekhov's Three Sisters, starring Katharine Cornell (who was also the producer), Judith Anderson, and Ruth Gordon. Time proclaimed it, "a dream production by anybody's reckoning – the most glittering cast the theatre has seen, commercially, in this generation."<ref>Review, Time, details of issue and page number needed.</ref>

Later years

Gwenn remained a British subject all his life. When he first moved to Hollywood, he lived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. His home in London had been reduced to rubble during the bombings by the German Luftwaffe in the Second World War. Only the fireplace survived. What Gwenn regretted most was the loss of the memorabilia he had collected of the actor Henry Irving. Eventually, Gwenn bought a house at 617 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, which he later shared with the former Olympic athlete Rodney Soher.<ref>"Rodney Soher" Template:Webarchive, Sports Reference, retrieved 28 May 2014</ref> At the age of 78 he travelled from his home in California for a reunion with his ex-wife in London.<ref name=mail>"Veteran Edmund Gwenn Keeps a Tryst", The Daily Mail, 12 July 1956, p. 3</ref> He told a reporter, "I never married again because I was very happy with my wife. I simply stayed faithful to the memory of that happiness."<ref name=mail/>

Death

Gwenn died from pneumonia after suffering a stroke, in Woodland Hills, California, twenty days before his 82nd birthday. He was cremated, and his ashes were placed in the private vaults at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. Gwenn has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1751 Vine Street for his contribution to motion pictures.

On March 5, 2023, Gwenn's misplaced urn was located in Vault 5 of Chapel of the Pines Crematory by researcher Jessica Wahl and Hollywood Graveyard YouTube channel creator Arthur Dark. After a GoFundMe campaign was organized by Wahl and Dark with the permission of Gwenn's surviving family, Gwenn's urn was relocated to a publicly accessible niche in the Cathedral Mausoleum of Hollywood Forever Cemetery on December 3, 2023.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Filmography

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Radio appearances

Year Program Episode/source
1940 Forecast* The Lodger<ref name=twtd1>Template:Cite journal</ref>
1943 Suspense The Fountain Plays
1944 Creeps by Night The Strange Burial of Alexander Jordan
1949 Suspense Murder in Black and White
1951 Stars of Hollywood A Christmas Carol
1953 Stars over Hollywood A Christmas Carol<ref>Template:Cite journal</ref>
  • Audition program for the Suspense radio program.

See also

References

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Further reading

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