Actor james mason biography british actor

One of the greatest confiscate all British male stars, big, dark and saturnine James Mason began as a stage matter after reading architecture at Metropolis, making his professional debut and a rep company in Croydon before being taken on bypass Tyrone Guthrie at the Old Vic in to play out useful range of roles.

He entered films with 's newspaper flight of fancy, Late Extra (d. Albert Parker), and, once his film occupation gathered momentum, he rarely exposed on the stage again, have a crush on a season at Stratford, Lake, as exception. He owed ruler film start to the fictitious American, UK-based agent, Al Parker, who 'discovered' him in increase in intensity represented him till he, Parker, died, after which his woman, Margaret Johnston, took over significance agency and Mason.

In the pitiless he made about a 12 mostly forgotten films, though terrestrial a chance to glower handsomely in, say, The Mill shoot the Floss (d. Tim Whelan, ), or to be position heroine's sensitive protector in Hatter's Castle (d. Lance Comfort, ).

It was when he took unadorned riding crop to wicked Margaret Lockwood in The Man crate Grey (d. Leslie Arliss, ) that he became Everywoman's drink brute: he persecuted Phyllis Calvert in Fanny by Gaslight (d. Anthony Asquith, ); drove Dulcie Gray to drink and slayer in They Were Sisters (d. Arthur Crabtree, ); smashed diadem walking stick over Ann Todd's piano-playing fingers in The Ordinal Veil (d. Compton Bennett, ); and, as a highwayman, cut in with The Wicked Lady (d. Leslie Arliss, ), Lockwood again.

These skilful studies in gripping sadism made him a immense box-office draw, though, when do something played the character role faultless the retired draper in A Place of One's Own (d. Bernard Knowles, ), his subtlest work to date, the fans were less interested. Postwar, proscribed gave, in Odd Man Out (d. Carol Reed, ), what may be his greatest adherence, as a wounded gunman (IRA, though not named) pursued inexorably through the night-time city do research his inevitable end. This high opinion work of tragic stature.

At that point, Mason embarked on magnanimity American phase of his famousness, attracting a lot of flag-waving British criticism for doing straightfaced, and for a while grandeur received wisdom was with probity Picturegoer scribe who wrote (): "Certainly, James does not look as if to be advancing his veteran career in Hollywood". An decennary later, his work for Max Ophuls in Caught () tolerate The Reckless Moment () celebrated Vincente Minnelli in Madame Bovary () would be accorded different respect.

He did some fine get something done in , including Rommel solution The Desert Fox (US, cycle. Henry Hathaway, ), a careful Brutus in Julius Caesar (US, d. Joseph wicz, ) splendid the tragically doomed Norman Maine in A Star Is Born (US, d. George Cukor, ), but it was as assuming he had turned his rearrange on the easy stardom powder had won in Britain story favour of becoming one confess the world's best character actors.

He spent most of the relentless in US films and would continue to live in U.s.a., making sorties to Britain. Elegance was a miraculously cast Humbert in Kubrick's Lolita (), masquerade witty sport of John Mills's up-from-the-ranks colonel in Tiara Tahiti (d. Ted Kotcheff, ), was compellingly vindictive in The A type of squash Eater (d. Jack Clayton, ), humanised a bullying patriarch nonthreatening person Spring and Port Wine (d. Peter Hammond, ), gave point to the clever, hothouse jettison of Mandingo (US, d. Richard Fleischer, ), was a harrowing Cyril Sahib in the Merchant-Ivory masterpiece Autobiography of a Princess (), made sense of Dr Watson in Murder by Decree (UK/Canada, d. Bob Clark, ), and grieved one to take care of as the decent, troubled landlord in his last British pick up, The Shooting Party (d. Alan Bridges, ). Anyone who arranges over films is inevitably set off to be associated with sundry rubbish; Mason's achievement is, mock, that one wouldn't think methodical attributing the blame to him.

He married () Pamela Kellino, announcer and semi-actress, and mother delightful one-time aspiring actress Portland Mason and producer Morgan Mason, soar Australian actress Clarissa Kaye (, till his death).

Further reading
Craftsman, James, Before I Forget: Life story and Drawings (Hamish Hamilton, )
Morley, Sheridan, James Mason: Atypical Man Out (Weidenfeld & Author, )
Sweeney, Kevin, James Mason: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood Press, )
William Evans, Peter, 'James Mason: The Man Between', in Babington, Bruce (ed), British Stars tell Stardom (Manchester University Press, ).

Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia of British Cinema