Derrick De Marney

Derrick Raoul Edouard Alfred De Marney was born on 21 September 1906 in Brentford, Middlesex, England, and died on 18 February 1978. Of French and Irish ancestry, he worked throughout his career as a stage and film actor and producer. He was the son of Violet Eileen Concanen and Arthur De Marney, and a grandson of Alfred Concanen, a noted Victorian lithographer.

De Marney began appearing on the London stage in 1922 and made his first film appearances in 1928. His Broadway career spanned from 1930 to 1937, during which he appeared in The Matriarch, The Enemy, and Young Mr. Disraeli. His stage performance in the lead role of Young Mr. Disraeli, presented at the Kingsway and Piccadilly theatres in London, led directly to a long-term film contract offer from producer Alexander Korda.

His most widely recognized screen performance came in Alfred Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (1937), in which he played Robert Tisdall, a man falsely accused of murder. That same year he portrayed Benjamin Disraeli in Victoria the Great, a role he reprised in the sequel Sixty Glorious Years (1938). Following Young and Innocent, De Marney moved between leading roles and supporting parts across a range of productions. In Uncle Silas (1947) he took the title role, playing a man formerly suspected of murder who schemes against his young niece, an heiress portrayed by Jean Simmons.

After producing and starring in several self-financed films, De Marney shifted his focus predominantly back to the theatre, accepting only smaller parts in film and television. Among his later producing credits, he starred in and produced the thrillers Latin Quarter (1945), She Shall Have Murder (1950), and Meet Mr. Callaghan (1954), the last being a role he had originated on stage. He also produced and wrote No Way Back (1949), which featured his brother, the actor Terence De Marney. Together the brothers formed Concanen Productions, through which they produced wartime documentaries on the Polish Air Force, including The White Eagle and Diary of a Polish Airman, both released in 1942, as well as Leslie Howard's film The Gentle Sex (1943). De Marney also directed the documentary shorts Malta G.C. and London Scrapbook in 1942. His final screen appearance was in the horror film The Projected Man (1966).

Although De Marney maintained a home in Kensington, London, he fell ill while visiting friends in Farnham, Surrey. He died of bronchopneumonia and asthma at Frimley Park Hospital on 18 February 1978, and was buried in the family plot at West Norwood Cemetery in South London.