Raymond Lovell

Raymond Lovell (13 April 1900 – 1 October 1953) was a Canadian actor born in Montreal, Quebec, who built a career in British film and theatre. He is known for frequently portraying supporting characters, many of them of a pompous disposition.

Before pursuing acting, Lovell studied medicine at Cambridge University, training as a physician. He abandoned that path in the 1920s to work in the theatre. Among his stage roles, he played Henry VIII in The Queen Who Kept Her Head, based on a work by Winifred Carter, which appeared in 1934. In 1941 he took the stage in Vernon Sylvaine's Warn That Man!, and two years later reprised the same role in the 1943 film adaptation of that production. His other stage work included Jupiter Laughs by A. J. Cronin in 1941, Murder Without Crime by J. Lee Thompson from 1942 to 1943, and Intent to Murder by Leslie Sands, which ran from 1951 to 1952. In 1950 he appeared in both A Lady Mislaid by Kenneth Horne and Party Manners by Val Gielgud.

Lovell made his Broadway appearance in 1950, performing in Cry of the Peacock. His career in British films ran alongside his stage work, where he remained primarily a supporting player throughout his professional life.

In his personal life, Lovell married actress, singer, and poet Margot Ruddock, with whom he had a daughter, Simone Lovell, born in 1934. That marriage ended after Ruddock began an affair with W. B. Yeats in 1934. Lovell later married actress Tamara Desni in 1947; that marriage ended in divorce in 1951. He died on 1 October 1953.