Alan Mowbray

Alan Mowbray, born Alfred Ernest Allen on 18 August 1896 in London, England, was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned Broadway, Hollywood, and early American television. He died on 25 March 1969 in Hollywood, and is interred at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

During World War I, Mowbray served in the British Army and was decorated for bravery, receiving both the Military Medal and the French Croix de Guerre. He subsequently applied for a transfer to the Royal Air Force, which was approved just six days before the Armistice, placing him in London on the day the war ended. When the RAF sought a further seven-year commitment from him, he declined.

Mowbray launched his stage career in London in 1922, working as both an actor and stage manager. He emigrated to the United States in 1923 and performed with New York stock companies before making his Broadway debut in The Sport of Kings in 1926. He went on to appear in These Modern Women and The Amorous Antic. In 1929, he wrote, directed, and starred in Dinner Is Served, though the production was not a success. His Broadway career extended over nearly four decades, concluding in 1963 when he returned to the stage in the successful comedy Enter Laughing, in which he played Marlowe, the unscrupulous mentor to the character David Kolowitz, portrayed by Alan Arkin.

Mowbray made his film debut in 1931 in God's Gift to Women, cast as a butler — a role that would define much of his screen persona. That same year he appeared in five additional pictures, including Alexander Hamilton, in which he portrayed George Washington. His clipped speech and bearing in butler roles became sufficiently recognizable that Raymond Chandler lampooned them in a pulp magazine story, and decades later Julian Fellowes referenced him by name in Gosford Park (2001). In 1935, Mowbray appeared in Becky Sharp, the first feature-length film shot in full-color Technicolor, and starred in Night Life of the Gods, based on a novel by Thorne Smith. He is perhaps most closely associated with another Thorne Smith adaptation, Topper (1937), in which he played the butler Wilkins, a role he reprised in Topper Takes a Trip (1938). Throughout the 1930s and 1940s he appeared in more than 120 films, among them the Oscar-nominated My Man Godfrey (1936), That Hamilton Woman (1941), and John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946). In 1956 alone he appeared in three major productions: The King and I, The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Around the World in 80 Days. His final film role was as Captain Norcross in A Majority of One (1961).

As film work diminished in the 1950s, Mowbray moved into television. He played the title role in the DuMont series Colonel Humphrey Flack, which aired in 1953–54 and was revived in 1958–59. During the 1954–55 season he appeared on NBC's The Mickey Rooney Show: Hey, Mulligan as Mr. Swift, the drama coach of the character Mickey Mulligan. He originated the role of Stewart Styles, a maître d' with a troubled past, in episodes of Four Star Theatre, and later reprised the character in the 1960–61 series Dante. Additional television appearances included the Maverick episode "The Misfortune Teller" (1959), in which he played a crooked astrologer opposite James Garner and Kathleen Crowley, and the 1961 series The Investigators, in which he appeared as Cranshaw.

Beyond his performing career, Mowbray was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild in 1933, personally writing a check to fund the organization's incorporation and serving as its first vice president. He was also among the founders of the Hollywood Cricket Club and the British United Services Club, a Hollywood organization for former British military personnel that convened at the Masquers Club. He was a prominent early member of the Masquers and donated to its clubhouse at 1765 N. Sycamore Street in Hollywood. Mowbray additionally cooperated with the FBI in its investigation of Japanese spy Frederick Rutland, keeping his involvement confidential for the remainder of his life.

In his personal life, Mowbray married Lorraine Carpenter in 1927. The couple had two children, including a daughter, Patricia, who married Canadian actor Douglass Dumbrille in 1960. Mowbray died of a heart attack in 1969, survived by his wife and children.