Anthony Bushell

Anthony Arnatt Bushell (19 May 1904 – 2 April 1997) was an English actor and director born in Westerham, Kent. Educated at Magdalen College School and then Hertford College, Oxford, where he stroked the college rowing eight and belonged to the Hypocrites' Club, he subsequently trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. His stage career began under Sir Gerald du Maurier, with his theatrical debut in Sardou's Diplomacy at the Adelphi Theatre in 1924.

Bushell spent time in the United States during 1927 and 1928, touring in Her Cardboard Lover alongside Jeanne Eagels. In 1928 he appeared on Broadway in W. Somerset Maugham's The Sacred Flame, a production that proved consequential to his film career: George Arliss saw Bushell in the play and, when cast as the lead in his first talkie, the American film Disraeli (1929), recommended Bushell for the role of Disraeli's young rival Charles Deeford. Also while in New York, Bushell met American actress Zelma O'Neal, who was preparing to open in the musical Follow Thru; the two married in New York on 22 November 1928.

His Hollywood career encompassed more than a dozen films, with military roles becoming a particular specialty. He was cast in Jealousy (1929), though after shooting concluded, star Jeanne Eagels insisted that all his scenes be reshot with Fredric March. His subsequent American credits included Journey's End (1930), Three Faces East (1930) with Erich von Stroheim, Five Star Final (1931) with Edward G. Robinson, Chances (1931) with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Vanity Fair (1932) with Myrna Loy, and A Woman Commands (1932) with Pola Negri in her first sound picture.

Bushell and O'Neal relocated to London in 1932, and the couple divorced in 1935. Remaining in England, he took on more prominent roles in British productions, among them The Midshipmaid (1932) with Jessie Matthews, Boris Karloff's horror film The Ghoul (1933) in which he played the romantic lead, The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) with Leslie Howard, Dark Journey (1937) with Vivien Leigh, The Rebel Son (1938), and The Arsenal Stadium Mystery (1939), in which he played Trojans striker John Doyce, a character poisoned during a match. The Lion Has Wings (1939), a documentary-style anti-German propaganda film, also featured Bushell among a cast standing in for RAF crew members.

At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Bushell enlisted in the British Army, receiving a commission in the Welsh Guards and serving as a tank squadron commander in the Guards Armoured Division. During the war he married his second wife, Anne Pearce Serocold, daughter of Brigadier Eric P. Serocold and Beatrice Lucy Rice, daughter of Admiral Ernest Rice.

After the war, Bushell developed a sustained professional relationship with Laurence Olivier. He served as associate producer on Hamlet (1948) and as associate director on Richard III (1955) and The Prince and the Showgirl (1957), both of which Olivier directed and starred in. Colin Clark, who worked as an assistant on the latter production, recorded in his diary that Olivier valued Bushell as a trusted companion and described him as a former Guards officer whose military bearing caused many to forget he was an actor.

Bushell made his directorial debut in 1950 with The Angel with the Trumpet, an English-language version constructed from an earlier Austrian film, Der Engel mit der Posaune, with new scenes featuring British actors and dubbed minor roles; he also appeared in the film as Baron Traun, companion to Rudolf, Crown Prince of Austria. He co-directed The Long Dark Hall (1951) with Reginald Beck, and in the early 1960s directed segments of The Valiant Years, a documentary series based on the memoirs of Winston Churchill. In one scene of that production he appeared as an RAF air marshal delivering remarks originally intended for Sir Arthur Harris, standing in because illness prevented Harris from filming on the scheduled day. His television directing credits included episodes of The Third Man, The Four Just Men, Danger Man, Sir Francis Drake, The Saint, and other British series. Across his career he appeared in more than fifty films between 1929 and 1961, including the role of Colonel Breen in the BBC serial Quatermass and the Pit (1958–59).

Bushell retired in 1964 and later served as director of the Monte Carlo Golf Club. He died in Oxford on 2 April 1997 at the age of 92.