Box-Office Stars of 1939 (British)
Most popular British stars at the UK Box Office during 1939
List activity
184 views
• 0 this weekCreate a new list
List your movie, TV & celebrity picks.
10 people
- Actor
- Music Department
- Writer
Born George Hoy Booth in Wigan, Lancashire on 26 May 1904, he later took his father's stage name of George Formby. He briefly attended school where he failed to learn to read or write so was removed from formal education and sent to become a stable boy in Middleham, North Yorkshire, where he later became an apprentice jockey. In 1915 with the closure of the English racing season because of the First World War he moved to Ireland and continued as a jockey until the end of hostilities. Returning to England he raced for Lord Derby's Newmarket stables where he never won a race. Following his father's death in 1921 he gave his professional two week appearance at the Hippodrome in Lancashire where he was paid £5 a week and soon after hired to appear on the Moss Empire chain of theatres at £17 10 shillings a week. Touring around venues in Northern England his act didn't go down well resulting in bouts of unemployment. In 1923 he made two career changing decisions - he bought a ukulele and married Beryl Ingham, an Acrington, Lancashire, born champion champion clog dancer and actress who transformed his act. She insisted he appear on stage formally dressed and introduce his ukulele to his performance.. By June 1926 he'd started his recording career and from 1934 he was increasingly working in films developing into a major star by the late '30's and becoming the U.K.'s most popular and highest paid entertainer. During WWII he worked extensively for the ENSA (Entertainments National Service Association) entertaining civilians and troops and touring factories, theatres and concert halls. By 1946 it was estimated that he had performed in front of three million service personnel. After the war his career declined although he toured the commonwealth and continued to appear in variety and pantomime. His last television appearance was in December 1960, two weeks before the death of Beryl. Seven weeks after her funeral he announced his engagement to a school teacher but died in Preston three weeks later at the age of 56. He was buried in Warrington alongside his father.- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
A comedienne and singer in the British Music Halls, she was the top box-office draw and the highest paid actress in Britain in the 1930's. Her Northern, working-class girl character was a favourite during the inter-war years.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Robert Donat's pleasant voice and somewhat neutral English accent were carefully honed as a boy because he had a stammer and took elocution lessons starting at age 11 to overcome the impediment. It was not too surprising that freedom from such a vocal embarrassment was encouragement to act. His other handicap, acute asthma, did not deter him. At the age of 16 he began performing Shakespeare and other classic roles in a number of repertory and touring companies throughout Britain. In 1924 he joined Sir Frank Benson's repertory company, and later he was with the Liverpool Repertory Theater.
His work was finally noticed by Alexander Korda, who gave him a three-year film contract. Three minor films were followed by his role as Katherine Howard's lover, Thomas Culpepper, in the hit The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). Donat's style of acting, whether comic or dramatic, was usually reserved, with the subtleties of face and voice being his talents to complement the role. A top draw in Britain, he went to Hollywood for The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), but he did not care for the Hollywood scene--the fishbowl lifestyle of the movie star. "Cristo" gave him the opportunity for Captain Blood (1935), but he eventually declined. (With a nod to hindsight, it is hard to think of anyone but a fresh-faced Flynn doing the role.) Although he would have contracts with MGM, Warner Bros. and RKO through the remainder of the 1930s, he begged off many a film role or broke commitments, ostensibly because of health problems, though, along with being finicky about roles, he was also such a conscientious actor that lack of confidence sometimes stymied his forward progress.
Hollywood usually had to shoot in England if it wanted him badly enough. And that was not a problem after the box office reception given The 39 Steps (1935), the big hit for Alfred Hitchcock. There was a hint of whimsy in Donat's face that worked especially well with the sophisticated comedic elements that crept into several of his dramatic roles. His portrayal of individualist Canadian Richard Hannay--which registered with North Americans both above and below the 49th parallel--in "Steps" was the first of such popular characters. Some of Hitch's famous on-the-set practical jokes ensued on the first day of shooting "Steps." The first scene was the escape on the moors from the master spy's henchmen by Donat and Madeleine Carroll handcuffed together. Donat and Carroll had not met before this, and Hitchcock handcuffed them together hours before filming so that they could get very well acquainted. He insisted he had misplaced the key when in fact he had slipped it to a studio security officer for safekeeping.
Hitchcock attempted to land Donat for three other roles, Sabotage (1936) and Secret Agent (1936) and Rebecca (1940), but illness, commitments, and more illness, respectively, supposedly kept Donat from accepting each. Hollywood would be treated in kind, for Donat was more dedicated to stage work. Hollywood did get him for The Citadel (1938), for which he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar. He won the Oscar the next year for perhaps his best known role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939) (MGM's with Greer Garson). Since 1939 was one of the most competitive film years in Hollywood history, Donat's reward for his mild Mr. Chipping was something of a stunner. This was the year of Gone with the Wind (1939), and Clark Gable as Rhett Butler seemed a shoo-in for best actor. But there is something of a myth that since both pictures were from MGM and "Wind" had so many nominations (including best actor, actress, and picture), MGM head and strongman Louis B. Mayer used his weight to spread the wealth toward "Chips".
Unlike other British actors who came to work in America during World War II, Donat stayed in Britain. He did mostly theater but also some British films--only four--with one for Korda and one for Carol Reed. Only six more films were allotted Donat after the war and into the 1950s, all but one British productions. He starred, directed and co-wrote The Cure for Love (1949) and starred in The Magic Box (1951), a well-crafted and delightful (if a bit fictionalized) salute to the history of the British film industry. By 1955, all of Donat's acting efforts required a bottle of oxygen kept off stage and at the ready as his health continued to turn toward the worse. The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (1958), a Twentieth Century Fox production shot in the UK, was Donat's final film. His fragility was poignantly obvious on screen, and he died shortly after the film was finished. He received a posthumous Special Citation from the USA National Board of Review and was nominated for a Best Actor Golden Globe. It was a career for Robert Donat that should have gone on, yet it was filled with many notable screen memories just the same.- Actor
- Writer
- Director
William Thompson Hay was probably one of the most versatile of entertainers. He was not only a character comedian of the first rank, but was also an astronomer of high repute - he discovered the spot on the planet Saturn in 1933 - and a fully qualified air pilot; he was once an engineer. Born in Stockton-on-Tees, County Durham in 1888, he became interested in astronomy at school and carried on his research work in this direction after he had finished his nightly stage entertainments. He was first "on the air" in 1922 and his then comedy sketches of "St. Michaels School" (of which he was the headmaster) proved to be one of the most popular comedy characters on radio at that time. This character was transferred to film and became equally successful. He worked at Elstree Studios, then Gainsborough, then Ealing; the Gainsborough period was the most consistently successfully, particularly when he worked with the team of Marcel Varnel (director), Val Guest and Marriott Edgar (writers), and Moore Marriott and Graham Moffatt (supporting cast). By the time he made his first film, he was in his mid forties and his last role came less than a decade later. Between 1934 and 1943, he was a prolific and popular film comedian. He was credited on several films as a writer or co-ordinator, and was arguably the dominant 'author' of all the films in which he appeared, in that they were built around his persona and depended on the character and routines he had developed over years on the stage.- Actress
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Dame Anna Neagle, the endearingly popular British star during WWII, was born Florence Marjorie Robertson and began dancing as a professional in chorus lines at age 14. She starred with actor Jack Buchanan in the musical "Stand Up and Sing" in the West End and earned her big break when producer/director Herbert Wilcox, who had caught the show purposely to consider Buchanan for an upcoming film, was also taken (and smitten) by Anna, casting her as well in the process. Thus began one of the most exclusive and successful partnerships in the British cinema.
Under Wilcox's guidance (they married in 1943), Anna became one of the biggest and brightest celebrities of her time. Always considered an actress of limited abilities, the lovely Anna nevertheless would prove to be a sensational box-office commodity for nearly two decades. She added glamour and sophistication for war-torn London audiences and her lightweight musicals, comedies and even costumed historical dramas provided a nicely balanced escape route. The tasteful, ladylike heroines she portrayed included nurses Edith Cavell and Florence Nightingale, flyer Amy Johnson and undercover spy Odette; Nell Gwyn and Queen Victoria also fell within her grasp. She appeared in a number of frothy post-war retreads co-starring Michael Wilding that the critics turned their noses on but the audiences ate up - including They Met at Midnight (1946), Katy's Love Affair (1947), Spring in Park Lane (1948) and The Lady with a Lamp (1951). She tried to extend her fame to Hollywood and briefly appeared there in three musicals in the early 40s, but failed to make a dent. Anna's appeal faded somewhat in the late 50s and, after producing a few film efforts, retired altogether from the screen.
She returned to her theatre roots, which culminated in the long-running "Charlie Girl", a 1965 production that ran with Anna for nearly six years. She was bestowed with the honor of Dame of the British Empire in 1969 for her contributions to the theatre. Anna continued to perform after her husband's death in 1977, later developing Parkinson's disease in her final years. She died in 1986 of complications.- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Leslie Howard Steiner was born in London to Lilian (Blumberg) and Ferdinand "Frank" Steiner. His father was a Hungarian Jewish immigrant, and his English mother was of German Jewish and mostly English descent. Leslie went to Dulwich College, then worked as a bank clerk until the outbreak of World War I, when he went into the army. In 1917, diagnosed as shell-shocked, he was invalided out and advised to take up acting as therapy. In a few years, his name was famous on the stages of London and New York. He made his first movie in 1914: (The Heroine of Mons (1914)). He became known as the perfect Englishman (slim, tall, intellectual, and sensitive), a part that he played in many movies which set women to dreaming about him. His first sound movie came out in 1930: Outward Bound (1930), an adaptation of the stage play in which he starred. In Never the Twain Shall Meet (1931) and Smilin' Through (1932), he played the Englishman role to the hilt. His screen persona could perhaps best be summed up by his role as Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), a foppish society gentleman.
It was Howard who insisted that Humphrey Bogart get the role of Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), a role that Bogart had played in the stage production. As he became more successful, he also became quite picky about which roles he would do, and usually performed in only two films a year. In 1939, he played the character that will always be associated with him, that of Ashley Wilkes, the honor-bound, disillusioned intellectual Southern gentleman, in Gone with the Wind (1939).
However, war clouds were gathering over England, and he devoted all his energy on behalf of the war effort. He directed films, wrote articles and made radio broadcasts. He died in 1943, when the KLM plane he was in was shot down by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay.- Actor
- Writer
- Producer
Charles Laughton was born in Scarborough, Yorkshire, England, to Eliza (Conlon) and Robert Laughton, hotel keepers of Irish and English descent, respectively. He was educated at Stonyhurst (a highly esteemed Jesuit college in England) and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (received gold medal). His first appearance on stage was in 1926. Laughton formed own film company, Mayflower Pictures Corp., with Erich Pommer, in 1937. He became an American citizen 1950. A consummate artist, Laughton achieved great success on stage and film, with many staged readings (particularly of George Bernard Shaw) to his credit. Laughton died in Hollywood, California, aged 63.- Actor
- Writer
Gordon Harker born in 1885 in London into a well-known family of theatrical artists, he first appeared on stage in 1903. Lugubrious, shifty cockney character who starred and supported in over 60 films his first film role as Major Kent in Harold M. Shaw 'General John Regan' starring Milton Rosmer for the Stoll Film Company in 1921 he was often cast as a comical cockney crook or cop in many comedy and thrillers, he appeared in three silent films directed by Alfred Hitchcock 'The Ring' in 1927 'The Farmer's Wife' in 1928 and Champagne' in 1929 busy throughout the 1930's with some of his best, including 'Rome Express' in 1932, Boys Will Be Boys' in 1935 with Will Hay, and Michael Powell's 'The Phantom Light' in 1935, and also the 'The Frog' in 1937, he was noted for his performances as 'Inspector Hornleigh' in a trilogy of films made between 1938-40, his last appearance as Hardy in 'Left Right and Centre' in 1959 starring Ian Carmichael and Alastair Sim, also popular on radio and t.v. he died in 1967 in London age 82.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Sir Ralph Richardson was one of the greatest actors of the 20th Century English-language theater, ascending to the height of his profession in the mid-1930s when he became a star in London's West End. He became the first actor of his generation to be knighted. He became Sir Ralph in 1947, and was quickly followed by Laurence Olivier in 1948, and then by John Gielgud in 1953. Co-stars and friends, the three theatrical knights were considered the greatest English actors of their generation, primarily for their mastery of the Shakespearean canon. They occupied the height of the British acting pantheon in the post-World War II years.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Will Fyffe was born on 16 February 1885 in Dundee, Scotland, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for To the Victor (1938), The Mysterious Mr. Reeder (1939) and The Missing People (1939). He was married to Emmeline Eugenie Pooley and Lily Ann Bolton Wilcock. He died on 14 December 1947 in St. Andrews, Fife, Scotland, UK.