Murray Kinnell

Murray Kinnell (24 July 1889 – 11 August 1954) was a British-born American actor who built a career across the English and American stages before transitioning to film. Born in Sydenham, London, then part of Kent, he was the second of three sons of John Kinnell, a Scottish-born engineer, and Rose Taylor of Surrey. He received his education at Seaford College in Sussex and later at Mill Hill School in London.

Kinnell began his stage career in 1907 with the troupe of Florence Glossop-Harris. His earliest documented credits date to 1909 with the company of Allan Wilkie, and by 1911 he had joined the company of Frank Cellier, the husband of Florence Glossop-Harris. During this period he performed in both Hamlet and The Merchant of Venice on English stages. In 1912 he crossed the Atlantic with a touring company performing Pomander Walk in the United States and Canada. The following year he joined the Annie Russell Old English Comedy Company, appearing throughout the eastern United States in She Stoops to Conquer, The Rivals, and The School for Scandal. When that tour concluded in Philadelphia in April 1914, Kinnell married the tour's ingenue, Henrietta Goodwin.

His Broadway career began in late November 1914 when Edward Sheldon's The Garden of Paradise, produced by Liebler and Company, opened at the Park Theatre in Manhattan. Kinnell played two roles in this production based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid, though the show bankrupted its producer and closed on December 8, 1914, after barely two weeks. He then returned to England, performing Shakespeare with the F. R. Benson company from late 1915 through early April 1916.

Kinnell enlisted in the London Scottish in January 1916 and was taken up for training in April of that year. He served as a lieutenant with the 2/14th Battalion, seeing action in France, Salonika, and Palestine as part of the 60th Division. His military service lasted three years, ending in 1919. Following his discharge, he appeared in a production of The Merchant of Venice at the Court Theatre in London that ran from October 1919 through February 1920, and also performed in single productions for the Stage Society and the Phoenix Society beginning in January 1920. Later that year he joined the St. James Theater company for the English debut of The Jest, a three-month tour that also included his wife in the cast. He subsequently performed a wide repertoire of Shakespeare with the Henry Baynton company from June 1921 through November 1922, followed by a role in Oliver Cromwell, written and produced by John Drinkwater and starring Henry Ainley.

In September 1923, E. H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe brought Kinnell and three other English actors to the United States for their final Shakespeare tour. The tour opened with Cymbeline on October 2, 1923, at the Jolson Theatre, and Kinnell remained with the company's repertoire of Shakespeare plays in New York and on tour until March 1924, when he departed to appear in a drama based on the book Simon Called Peter. After a brief return to England for a July 1924 production of The Dream Kiss, Kinnell was cast in the Broadway production of Hassan in September 1924. Based on the verses of James Elroy Flecker and featuring incidental music by Frederick Delius, the large-scale spectacle employed some 200 performers but closed after only 16 performances. Kinnell was singled out for praise among the cast. In February 1925 he appeared in a revival of William Congreve's The Way of the World.

Beginning in March 1925, Kinnell served for the first time as the leading man of an acting troupe, heading the All-English stock company at the Orpheum in Montreal under the direction of Leo G. Carroll, with Betty Murray as the female lead. His tenure there ran through May 1925. That fall he joined the road company of Old English, a play by John Galsworthy starring George Arliss, in which his wife Henrietta Goodwin also appeared. Kinnell played a blackmailing solicitor, his first role as an outright villain, and the part earned him his first published interview. The tour ran with a hiatus through May 1927, during which Kinnell performed in The Lovers with the Phoenix Players in summer 1926.

George Arliss again engaged Kinnell for his next major production, a staging of The Merchant of Venice produced by Winthrop Ames, in which Kinnell played Bassanio to Arliss's Shylock, with Peggy Wood as Portia. After a tryout in New Haven, Connecticut, the production opened on Broadway, where it ran for eight weeks before embarking on an East Coast tour that closed in May 1928. Kinnell then joined the Scarborough Stock Company for a six-week season beginning in late June 1928.

In December 1928, Kinnell took a leading role in The Sign of the Leopard, the first Edgar Wallace play produced in the United States, which had been known as The Squeaker in the United Kingdom. The production, described as a crime play or melodrama, preceded its Broadway opening with tryouts in Brooklyn and Philadelphia but failed to impress New York critics. Kinnell subsequently took over the male lead in the touring company for the Broadway production of Young Love, which starred Dorothy Gish.

His first known radio performance came in July 1929 with an NBC broadcast of The Importance of Being Earnest. In early 1930 he appeared in a tryout for a play by Harry Wagstaff Gribble based on incidents from three centuries-old plays about Elizabeth and Essex, starring Thais Lawton and Hugh Buckler in the title roles. The production reached Broadway under the title The Royal Virgin, where The New York Times found it competent but unremarkable. Kinnell's Broadway career spanned 1914 to 1930.

Beginning in 1930, Kinnell shifted his focus to film, appearing in 71 pictures between the pre-code era and 1937, frequently cast as smooth, gentlemanly, though morally questionable characters. He later served the Screen Actors Guild in several capacities over a period of 16 years. He died on 11 August 1954.