Ronald Howard

Ronald Howard was an English actor and writer born on 7 April 1918 in South Norwood, London, the son of actor Leslie Howard and Ruth Evelyn (née Martin). He died on 19 December 1996 in Dorset. Howard was educated at Tonbridge School and later at Jesus College, Cambridge, after which he worked briefly as a newspaper reporter before pursuing a career in acting.

His earliest brush with film came through an uncredited bit part in Pimpernel Smith (1941), directed by and starring his father, though Howard's footage was cut before release. He built his foundational experience during the early 1940s in regional theatre and on the London stage, leading to his official screen debut in While the Sun Shines (1947). He subsequently appeared in The Queen of Spades (1949) and The Browning Version (1951), the latter the same year he made his Broadway appearance in To Dorothy, A Son.

Howard's most prominent role came in 1954, when he starred as Sherlock Holmes in a weekly television series based on Arthur Conan Doyle's characters and produced by Sheldon Reynolds. The series ran for 39 episodes, with Howard Marion-Crawford playing Watson. The production received DVD releases in the 21st century and was broadcast in the United Kingdom on the satellite channel Bonanza in 2006 and 2014, with a further repeat on Talking Pictures TV in May 2021. He also played Will Scarlet in an episode of The Adventures of Robin Hood, the British television series starring Richard Greene, a role later taken by Paul Eddington.

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Howard worked steadily in British B films, including The Curse of the Mummy's Tomb (1964), alongside guest appearances in both British and American television productions. These included Alfred Hitchcock Presents, two episodes of Boris Karloff's Thriller series in 1961, the Combat! two-part episode "What Are the Bugles Blowin' For?" in 1964, the Danger Man episode "The Traitor" in 1960, and the role of Wing Commander Hayes in the 1967 television series Cowboy in Africa with Chuck Connors and Tom Nardini. In the mid-1970s, Howard set aside his acting career to operate an art gallery.

Beyond performing, Howard worked as a writer. In the 1980s he authored In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard, a biography examining the career and death of his father, whose plane was shot down over the Bay of Biscay on 1 June 1943. Howard's research led him to conclude that the Germans deliberately targeted the aircraft, motivated in part by his father's role as a British propagandist and his meetings with local activists in Spain and Portugal. Howard argued that the order originated with Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Minister of Propaganda. The book drew on German orders issued to the Ju 88 Staffel based in France and British intelligence communiqués from the period, though Howard's conclusions remain disputed.

In his personal life, Howard married Patricia Horsman in 1941; the marriage ended in divorce in 1945. He married Jean Millar in 1946.