Leon Quartermaine

Leon Quartermaine (24 September 1876 – 25 June 1967) was a British stage and film actor whose career spanned from the early 1900s to the 1950s, encompassing work in both Britain and the United States. He was born in Richmond, London, and received his education at Whitgift School in Croydon, where Harold Davidson — later unfrocked as Rector of Stiffkey — was among his contemporaries. The two appeared together in a school production of the farce Sent to the Tower.

Quartermaine made his Broadway debut in 1903 and continued to appear on the New York stage through 1935. Among his Broadway roles was Laertes in Hamlet in 1904, and Malvolio in a 1930 production of Twelfth Night. In 1929 he took on the role of Lieutenant Osborne in the American premiere of R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End. His Broadway credits also included the play Escape Me Never and Art and Mrs. Bottle.

In the West End, Quartermaine appeared alongside Fay Compton in a 1921 revival of J. M. Barrie's Quality Street. He and Compton married in February 1922 and remained married until their divorce in 1942. Quartermaine had previously been married to Aimée de Burgh, and following the dissolution of his marriage to Compton, he married Barbara Wilcox, who had played Dunyasha in a 1933 Old Vic production of The Cherry Orchard — the same production in which Quartermaine appeared as Gaev.

His film work during the 1920s and 1930s included the 1936 production of As You Like It, in which he played Jaques opposite Laurence Olivier's Orlando. After the Second World War, Quartermaine joined the Royal Shakespeare Theatre for the 1949 and 1950 Stratford festivals, performing in Macbeth, Measure for Measure, and Much Ado About Nothing alongside John Gielgud, Peggy Ashcroft, and Anthony Quayle. In 1951 he appeared on BBC television as the Inquisitor in an adaptation of Shaw's Saint Joan.

Quartermaine's younger brother, Charles Quartermaine, was also an actor, though he adopted the variant spelling "Quatermaine" as his professional surname. Leon Quartermaine died on 25 June 1967, in Salisbury, Wiltshire.