Miles Mander

Miles Mander

Mander in The Little Princess (1939)
Born Lionel Henry Mander
(1888-05-14)14 May 1888
Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, England, United Kingdom
Died 8 February 1946(1946-02-08) (aged 57)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Cause of death heart attack
Resting place Ocean View Burial Park, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada
Years active 1920–46
Spouse(s) Princess Prativa Devi, dau. of Maharajah Nripendra Narayan of Cooch Behar
Kathleen ('Bunty') French (1923-1946) (his death) (1 child)

Miles Mander (14 May 1888 – 8 February 1946), born Lionel Henry Mander (and sometimes credited as Luther Miles), was a well-known and versatile English character actor of the early Hollywood cinema, also a film director and producer, and a playwright and novelist.

Early life

Miles Mander was the second son of Theodore Mander, builder of Wightwick Manor, of the prominent Mander family, industrialists and public servants of Wolverhampton, Staffordshire, in the Midlands of England. He was the younger brother of Geoffrey Mander, the Liberal member of parliament. He was educated at Harrow School, Middlesex (The Grove House 1901- Easter 1903); Loretto School, Musselburgh (east of Edinburgh) and McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. But he soon broke away from the predictable mould of business and philanthropy. He was an early aviator, a captain in the Royal Army Service Corps in World War I. He spent his twenties in New Zealand farming sheep, with his uncle, Martin Mander.[1]

Film career

Miles Mander achieved success as Sir Hugh Boycott in The First Born (1928) which he directed and acted in, and which was based on his own novel and play. He was one of the British pioneers of sound film with The First Born.[2]

But Mander is better remembered for his character portrayals of oily villains, many of them English gentlemen or upper crust cads – such as Cardinal Richelieu in the musical film The Three Musketeers (1939), a spoof in which the Ritz Brothers played lackeys who substituted for the real Musketeers. In his Hollywood debut, he had portrayed King Louis XIII in the much more serious 1935 version of that same Alexandre Dumas, père classic. Other famous film credits included Wuthering Heights (1939) with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon, in which he played Mr. Lockwood, the new tenant at the Grange, who is told the story of Cathy and Heathcliff. In the English version of G.W. Pabst's Don Quixote (1933), he played the Duke who invites Don Quixote and Sancho Panza to his castle, and in the original To Be or Not to Be (1942), he was one of the two British officers to whom Robert Stack first reveals his suspicions about the treacherous Professor Siletsky (Stanley Ridges).

Personal life

Miles Mander in Youth on Parole (1937)

His first wife was an Indian, Prativa Devi, a princess of Cooch Behar, daughter of Maharaja Nripendra Narayan and Maharani Suniti Devi of Cooch Behar and paternal aunt of Gayatri Devi, Maharani of Jaipur. His second wife was Kathleen ('Bunty') French, of Sydney, Australia, with whom he had a son, Theodore. He wrote a book of memoirs and advice to him, To My Son—in Confidence (1934). He died suddenly of a heart attack at the Brown Derby restaurant in Los Angeles, aged 57.

Filmography

As actor

As director

As writer

As producer

Sources

Notes

  1. ↑ "MILES MANDER.". The West Australian (Perth: National Library of Australia). 6 November 1935. p. 19. Retrieved 19 February 2012.
  2. ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/oct/27/miles-mander-sound-films

External links

Miles Mander at Find a Grave

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