Alan Mowbray(1896-1969)
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Alan Mowbray, the American film actor who was one of the founding
members of the Screen Actors Guild, was born Ernest Allen on August 18,
1896, in London, England, to a non-theatrical family. He served in the
British army during World War I and received the Military Medal and the
French Croix De Guerre for bravery in action. He began as a stage actor
in England, and in some accounts he gave of his life, claimed he was a
provincial actor in England before his naval service. In other
versions, he claimed he turned to acting after The Great War, as World
War I was then known, as he was broke and had no other skills.
After acting in London's West End, Mowbray came to the United States,
where he toured the country with the Theater Guild from 1923 to 1929.
On the road with the Guild, he most enjoyed acting in the plays of
Noël Coward and
George Bernard Shaw. He made his
Broadway debut in the play "Sport of Kings" at the Lyceum Theatre on
May 4, 1926. He also appeared on Broadway in "These Modern Women" in
February 1928 and in "The Amorous Antic" in December 1929.
On August 25, 1929, Mowbray's own play, "Dinner is Served," an original
comedy he wrote, directed and starred in, made its debut at the Cort
Theatre. The play was not a success, closing after just four
performances. After "The Amorous Antic," Mowbray did not appear again
on Broadway until 1963, when he was featured in "Enter Laughing," the
hit stage adaptation of Carl Reiner's novel.
His relative lack of success on Broadway during the "Roaring Twenties"
did not matter, as sound had come to Hollywood and the studios were
looking for stage actors who could appear in the talkies. Blessed with
excellent diction, and tall with a stiff posture and a patrician air,
he was ideal for character parts in sound pictures. A member of the
"stiff-upper lip" school of British acting, he was often cast as a
British, European or upper-class American gentleman, or as an
aristocrat or royalty. As he aged, roles as doctors or butlers were his
forte.
Mowbray was praised by the critics for limning George Washington in the
1931 biopic
Alexander Hamilton (1931) (he
would once again play the Father of His Country, this time in a comic
vein, in the 1945 musical
Where Do We Go from Here? (1945)).
He had a romantic lead role opposite
Miriam Hopkins in Pioneer Films'
Becky Sharp (1935), which was the first
feature film made in three-strip Technicolor.
Mowbray had the distinction of appearing in movies with three screen
Sherlock Holmeses: Clive Brook in
Sherlock Holmes (1932),
Reginald Owen in
A Study in Scarlet (1933)
and Basil Rathbone in
Terror by Night (1946). He played
the butler in the first two "Topper" films, and as a character actor
had memorable turns in two John Ford
pictures,
My Darling Clementine (1946)
and Wagon Master (1950). In the area
of typecasting, Mowbray could be counted on as a "pompous blowhard" in
such movies as
My Man Godfrey (1936), or as "the
surprise killer" in B-movie murder mysteries. One of his favorite roles
was the con man in the television series
Colonel Humphrey Flack (1953),
which ran on the Dumont network in 1953.
Mowbray occasionally was a screenwriter, but mostly concentrated on
acting. In his personal life he was a member of the Royal Geographic
Society and was active in several acting fraternities. He also was one
of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild. The Guild was
formed in 1933, in the wake of the formation of the Screen Writers
Guild, in reaction to a proposed 50% across-the-board pay cut
implemented by the studios.
Actors Equity, the theatrical actors union, had tried to organize
Hollywood after winning a contract and a closed shop on Broadway after
World War I, but it had failed. Screen actors angered over the lack of
contracts and the grueling work hours at the Hollywood studios founded
the Masquers club in 1925 in a move towards unionization. After studio
technicians won a collective bargaining agreement from the studios in
1926, MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer had
the idea of heading off collective bargaining by the "talent"
branches--the actors, writers and directors--by creating a company
union. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was created to
serve as an intermediary between the studios and the talent branches
and technicians, negotiating contract disputes. Proto-unions, such as
the original Screen Writers Guild, folded in 1927 after the creation of
the Academy.
By the announcement of the across-the-board cut in 1933, two previous
rounds of cutbacks and lay-offs caused by the Great Depression had
alienated most of the talent in Hollywood and had led to a strike by
the technicians which had closed down the studios for a day. Losing
faith in the company union that was the Academy, the talent began
organizing their own guilds. In addition to the lack of contracts for
many actors and the concerns over wages and hours, one of the new
Screen Actors Guild's grievances was that Academy membership was by
invitation-only.
In March 1933, SAG was founded by six actors:
Berton Churchill,
Charles B. Miller,
Grant Mitchell,
Ralph Morgan,
Alden Gay and
Kenneth Thomson. Three months
later Mowbray was named to SAG's board of directors. He personally
funded SAG when it was first founded. While many high-profile actors,
already signed to seven-year contracts, refused initially to join SAG,
they began to flock to the new union once the studios initiated an
anti-raiding provision in the new National Industrial Relations Act
code the industry had implemented after
Franklin D. Roosevelt
became US President and oversaw the enactment of his New Deal
legislation in the first 100 days of his administration.
The NRA code the movie industry adopted created a situation for the
talent similar to baseball's reserve clause, in which another studio
was prevented from offering a contract to an actor, writer or director
whose contract had lapsed until their old studio had finished with them
and not picked up their option. The NRA code contained a pay ceiling
for the talent and technicians, but not for executives. The talent was
further enraged when it found out that the Academy, the "company
union," had created a committee to investigate the feasibility of
long-term contracts. Long-term contracts were the only island of
stability in an industry that enhanced its profitability by cutting the
wages of its employees and by working them long hours.
At a pivotal meeting at the home of
Frank Morgan (the future "Wizard of
Oz" and the brother of first SAG president Ralph Morgan),
Eddie Cantor insisted that SAG's response
to the new code--a collective bargaining agreement--should be in the
interests of all actors, not just the already established ones. In the
three weeks after the critical meeting, SAG membership rose from
approximately 80 members to more than 4,000. Actors resigned from the
Academy en masse to join SAG.
Cantor, a friend of President Roosevelt, took the occasion of his being
invited to spend the 1933 Thanksgiving holiday with the Roosevelt
family to point out the inequities in the new code that SAG found
particularly noxious. By executive order, F.D.R. struck them down.
Finally, in 1937, after a long period of resistance, the studios
recognized SAG as a collective bargaining agent for actors. Recognition
of the Screen Writers Guild and the Screen Directors Guild eventually
followed. Mowbray's financial support, in the crucial early days of the
guild, had helped make a collective bargaining agreement for actors a
reality.
Alan Mowbray married Lorayne Carpenter in 1927, and they had two
children. He died on March 25, 1969, of a heart attack.
members of the Screen Actors Guild, was born Ernest Allen on August 18,
1896, in London, England, to a non-theatrical family. He served in the
British army during World War I and received the Military Medal and the
French Croix De Guerre for bravery in action. He began as a stage actor
in England, and in some accounts he gave of his life, claimed he was a
provincial actor in England before his naval service. In other
versions, he claimed he turned to acting after The Great War, as World
War I was then known, as he was broke and had no other skills.
After acting in London's West End, Mowbray came to the United States,
where he toured the country with the Theater Guild from 1923 to 1929.
On the road with the Guild, he most enjoyed acting in the plays of
Noël Coward and
George Bernard Shaw. He made his
Broadway debut in the play "Sport of Kings" at the Lyceum Theatre on
May 4, 1926. He also appeared on Broadway in "These Modern Women" in
February 1928 and in "The Amorous Antic" in December 1929.
On August 25, 1929, Mowbray's own play, "Dinner is Served," an original
comedy he wrote, directed and starred in, made its debut at the Cort
Theatre. The play was not a success, closing after just four
performances. After "The Amorous Antic," Mowbray did not appear again
on Broadway until 1963, when he was featured in "Enter Laughing," the
hit stage adaptation of Carl Reiner's novel.
His relative lack of success on Broadway during the "Roaring Twenties"
did not matter, as sound had come to Hollywood and the studios were
looking for stage actors who could appear in the talkies. Blessed with
excellent diction, and tall with a stiff posture and a patrician air,
he was ideal for character parts in sound pictures. A member of the
"stiff-upper lip" school of British acting, he was often cast as a
British, European or upper-class American gentleman, or as an
aristocrat or royalty. As he aged, roles as doctors or butlers were his
forte.
Mowbray was praised by the critics for limning George Washington in the
1931 biopic
Alexander Hamilton (1931) (he
would once again play the Father of His Country, this time in a comic
vein, in the 1945 musical
Where Do We Go from Here? (1945)).
He had a romantic lead role opposite
Miriam Hopkins in Pioneer Films'
Becky Sharp (1935), which was the first
feature film made in three-strip Technicolor.
Mowbray had the distinction of appearing in movies with three screen
Sherlock Holmeses: Clive Brook in
Sherlock Holmes (1932),
Reginald Owen in
A Study in Scarlet (1933)
and Basil Rathbone in
Terror by Night (1946). He played
the butler in the first two "Topper" films, and as a character actor
had memorable turns in two John Ford
pictures,
My Darling Clementine (1946)
and Wagon Master (1950). In the area
of typecasting, Mowbray could be counted on as a "pompous blowhard" in
such movies as
My Man Godfrey (1936), or as "the
surprise killer" in B-movie murder mysteries. One of his favorite roles
was the con man in the television series
Colonel Humphrey Flack (1953),
which ran on the Dumont network in 1953.
Mowbray occasionally was a screenwriter, but mostly concentrated on
acting. In his personal life he was a member of the Royal Geographic
Society and was active in several acting fraternities. He also was one
of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild. The Guild was
formed in 1933, in the wake of the formation of the Screen Writers
Guild, in reaction to a proposed 50% across-the-board pay cut
implemented by the studios.
Actors Equity, the theatrical actors union, had tried to organize
Hollywood after winning a contract and a closed shop on Broadway after
World War I, but it had failed. Screen actors angered over the lack of
contracts and the grueling work hours at the Hollywood studios founded
the Masquers club in 1925 in a move towards unionization. After studio
technicians won a collective bargaining agreement from the studios in
1926, MGM studio chief Louis B. Mayer had
the idea of heading off collective bargaining by the "talent"
branches--the actors, writers and directors--by creating a company
union. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences was created to
serve as an intermediary between the studios and the talent branches
and technicians, negotiating contract disputes. Proto-unions, such as
the original Screen Writers Guild, folded in 1927 after the creation of
the Academy.
By the announcement of the across-the-board cut in 1933, two previous
rounds of cutbacks and lay-offs caused by the Great Depression had
alienated most of the talent in Hollywood and had led to a strike by
the technicians which had closed down the studios for a day. Losing
faith in the company union that was the Academy, the talent began
organizing their own guilds. In addition to the lack of contracts for
many actors and the concerns over wages and hours, one of the new
Screen Actors Guild's grievances was that Academy membership was by
invitation-only.
In March 1933, SAG was founded by six actors:
Berton Churchill,
Charles B. Miller,
Grant Mitchell,
Ralph Morgan,
Alden Gay and
Kenneth Thomson. Three months
later Mowbray was named to SAG's board of directors. He personally
funded SAG when it was first founded. While many high-profile actors,
already signed to seven-year contracts, refused initially to join SAG,
they began to flock to the new union once the studios initiated an
anti-raiding provision in the new National Industrial Relations Act
code the industry had implemented after
Franklin D. Roosevelt
became US President and oversaw the enactment of his New Deal
legislation in the first 100 days of his administration.
The NRA code the movie industry adopted created a situation for the
talent similar to baseball's reserve clause, in which another studio
was prevented from offering a contract to an actor, writer or director
whose contract had lapsed until their old studio had finished with them
and not picked up their option. The NRA code contained a pay ceiling
for the talent and technicians, but not for executives. The talent was
further enraged when it found out that the Academy, the "company
union," had created a committee to investigate the feasibility of
long-term contracts. Long-term contracts were the only island of
stability in an industry that enhanced its profitability by cutting the
wages of its employees and by working them long hours.
At a pivotal meeting at the home of
Frank Morgan (the future "Wizard of
Oz" and the brother of first SAG president Ralph Morgan),
Eddie Cantor insisted that SAG's response
to the new code--a collective bargaining agreement--should be in the
interests of all actors, not just the already established ones. In the
three weeks after the critical meeting, SAG membership rose from
approximately 80 members to more than 4,000. Actors resigned from the
Academy en masse to join SAG.
Cantor, a friend of President Roosevelt, took the occasion of his being
invited to spend the 1933 Thanksgiving holiday with the Roosevelt
family to point out the inequities in the new code that SAG found
particularly noxious. By executive order, F.D.R. struck them down.
Finally, in 1937, after a long period of resistance, the studios
recognized SAG as a collective bargaining agent for actors. Recognition
of the Screen Writers Guild and the Screen Directors Guild eventually
followed. Mowbray's financial support, in the crucial early days of the
guild, had helped make a collective bargaining agreement for actors a
reality.
Alan Mowbray married Lorayne Carpenter in 1927, and they had two
children. He died on March 25, 1969, of a heart attack.