Herbert Marshall

Biography: Herbert Marshall

British actor Herbert Marshall was born to a theatrical family, but initially had no intentions of a stage career himself. After graduating from St. Mary's College in Harrow, Marshall became an accounting clerk, turning to acting only when his job failed to interest him. With an equal lack of enthusiasm, Marshall joined a stock company in Brighton, making his stage debut in 1911; he ascended to stardom two years later in the evergreen stage farce, Brewster's Millions. Enlisting in the British Expeditionary Forces during World War I, Marshall was severely wounded and his leg was amputated. While this might normally have signalled the end of a theatrical career, Marshall was outfitted with a prosthesis and determined to make something of himself as an actor; he played a vast array of roles, his physical handicap slowing him down not one iota. In tandem with his first wife, actress Edna Best, Marshall worked on stage in a series of domestic comedies and dramas, then entered motion pictures with Mumsie (1927). His first talking film was the 1929 version of Somerset Maugham's The Letter, which he would eventually film twice, the first time in the role of the heroine's illicit lover, the second time (in 1940) as the cuckolded husband. With Ernst Lubitsch's frothy film Trouble in Paradise (1932), Marshall became a popular romantic lead. Easing gracefully into character parts, the actor continued working into the 1960s; he is probably best remembered for his portrayal of author Somerset Maugham in two separate films based on Maugham's works, The Moon and Sixpence (1942) and The Razor's Edge (1946). Alfred Hitchcock, who'd directed Marshall twice in films, showed the actor to good advantage on the Hitchcock TV series of the 1950s, casting Marshall in one episode as a washed-up matinee idol who wins a stage role on the basis of a totally fabricated life story. Marshall hardly needed to embroider on his real story of his life: he was married five times, and despite his gentlemanly demeanor managed to make occasional headlines thanks to his rambunctious social activities. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide less

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Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962)
Cast: Peter Lorre Cedric Hardwicke Herbert Marshall Irwin Allen Mike Mazurki
Tags: Adventure Comedy Action Adventure Comedy Historical Film
Length: 101min
With Five Weeks in a Balloon, 20th Century-Fox hoped to cash on the success of the studio's earlier Jules Verne adaptation Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1959). The plot is set in motion when 19th-century explorer Fergusson (Sir Cedric Hardwicke)...
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The List of Adrian Messenger (1963)
Cast: George C. Scott John Huston Kirk Douglas Burt Lancaster Tony Curtis
Tags: Detective Film Ensemble Film Mystery
Length: 98min
Adrian Messenger (John Merivale) asks his friend, British colonel Anthony Gethryn (George C. Scott), to check on the whereabouts of the eleven men named on a written list. Not long afterward, the plane on which Messenger is travelling is deliberately...
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The Weapon (1957)
Cast: Herbert Marshall Val Guest Steve Cochran Lizabeth Scott Nicole Maurey
Tags: Crime Thriller Drama Crime Thriller
Length: 80min
The Weapon is a loose grouping of elements first seen in the 1951 British melodrama The Yellow Balloon. Jon Whitely plays a young London boy who finds a loaded gun in a blitzed-out building. He fires, accidentally shooting a playmate. Believing he's...
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The Fly (1958)
Cast: Vincent Price Kathleen Freeman Herbert Marshall James Clavell David Hedison
Tags: Science Fiction Sci-Fi Horror Creature Film Horror
Length: 94min
Wealthy Helene Delambre (Patricia Owens) is discovered late at night in the factory owned by her husband Andre (David Hedison). Helene stands beside a huge metal press, which has crushed the head and arm of her husband. Held for murder, the...
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The Black Shield of Falworth (1954)
Cast: Tony Curtis Janet Leigh Herbert Marshall Rudolph Maté Bud Westmore
Tags: Romantic Adventure Costume Adventure Period Film Adventure
Length: 98min
Tony Curtis always seemed a little uncomfortable in costume epics, but this trait serves him well in Black Shield of Falworth. Based on the robust novel -Men of Iron by Howard Pyle, the film casts Curtis as Miles, the son of a disgraced knight....
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The Virgin Queen (1955)
Cast: Bette Davis Herbert Marshall Dan O'Herlihy Perc Westmore Franz Waxman
Tags: Period Film Biopic Historical Film
Length: 92min
Having previously portrayed England's Queen Elizabeth I in 1939's The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, Bette Davis reprises the role in the Technicolor-and-Cinescope costumer The Virgin Queen. Harry Brown and Mindret Lord's screenplay proposes...
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Portrait in Smoke (1956)
Cast: Herbert Marshall Ken Hughes Malcolm Arnold David Kossoff Arlene Dahl
Tags: Drama Crime
Length: 94min
Wicked as They Come stars Arlene Dahl as Kathy Allen, whose sour attitude on life has been formed by a sexual assault in her childhood. Rising out of the shabbiness of the Lower East Side, Kathy ruthlessly climbs the social and financial ladder by...
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Stage Struck (1957)
Cast: Henry Fonda Joan Greenwood Sidney Lumet Christopher Plummer Herbert Marshall
Tags: Showbiz Drama Drama
Length: 95min
This remake of Zoe Akins' Morning Glory stars Susan Strasberg as Eva Lovelace, the role that won Katharine Hepburn her first Oscar back in 1933. Fresh from the midwest, the starry-eyed Eva arrives in New York, convinced that she has what it takes to...
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Gog (1954)
Cast: Herbert Marshall Ivan Tors William Schallert Philip Van Zandt Richard Egan
Tags: Detective Film Sci-Fi Action Mystery Science Fiction
Length: 82min
When two scientists at a top-secret government installation devoted to space research are killed -- in their own test chamber, seemingly by an experiment gone awry -- Dr. David Sheppard (Richard Egan) is sent out from Washington to investigate....
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Riders to the Stars (1954)
Cast: Herbert Marshall Richard Carlson William Lundigan Ivan Tors Dawn Addams
Tags: Space Adventure Science Fiction
Length: 80min
In this vintage sci-fi adventure, a team of scientists is studying meteors and is baffled by how and why they are often destroyed when they enter the Earth's atmosphere. In a desire to better understand this process, three astronauts with a background...
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Herbert Marshall

Biography: Herbert Marshall

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