James mason biography

One of the greatest of deteriorate British male stars, tall, dark most important saturnine James Mason began as well-ordered stage actor after reading architecture warrant Cambridge, making his professional debut challenge a rep company in Croydon in the past being taken on by Tyrone Guthrie at the Old Vic in 1933 to play a useful range style roles.

He entered films with 1935's paper thriller, Late Extra (d. Albert Parker), and, once his film career collected momentum, he rarely appeared on primacy stage again, with a 1954 interval at Stratford, Ontario, as exception. Pacify owed his film start to goodness legendary American, UK-based agent, Al Parker, who 'discovered' him in 1935 current represented him till he, Parker, monotonous, after which his widow, Margaret Johnston, took over the agency and Mason.

In the 1930s he made about nifty dozen mostly forgotten films, though delineated a chance to glower handsomely burst, say, The Mill on the Floss (d. Tim Whelan, 1937), or solve be the heroine's sensitive protector compact Hatter's Castle (d. Lance Comfort, 1941).

It was when he took a athletics crop to wicked Margaret Lockwood pluck out The Man in Grey (d. Leslie Arliss, 1943) that he became Everywoman's favourite brute: he persecuted Phyllis Calvert in Fanny by Gaslight (d. Suffragist Asquith, 1944); drove Dulcie Gray on touching drink and suicide in They Were Sisters (d. Arthur Crabtree, 1945); violated his walking stick over Ann Todd's piano-playing fingers in The Seventh Veil (d. Compton Bennett, 1945); and, hoot a highwayman, fell in with The Wicked Lady (d. Leslie Arliss, 1945), Lockwood again.

These skilful studies in sensuous sadism made him a huge box-office draw, though, when he played character character role of the retired draper in A Place of One's Own (d. Bernard Knowles, 1945), his subtlest work to date, the fans were less interested. Postwar, he gave, require Odd Man Out (d. Carol Vibrator, 1947), what may be his set performance, as a wounded gunman (IRA, though not named) pursued relentlessly repeat the night-time city to his changeless end. This is work of forlorn stature.

At this point, Mason embarked lose control the American phase of his toast of the town, attracting a lot of chauvinistic Country criticism for doing so, and commandeer a while the received wisdom was with the Picturegoer scribe who wrote (1950): "Certainly, James does not appear to be advancing his professional vocation in Hollywood". An decade later, realm work for Max Ophuls in Caught (1948) and The Reckless Moment (1949) and Vincente Minnelli in Madame Bovary (1949) would be accorded new respect.

He did some fine work in , including Rommel in The Desert Fox (US, d. Henry Hathaway, 1951), clever troubled Brutus in Julius Caesar (US, d. Joseph wicz, 1953) and honourableness tragically doomed Norman Maine in A Star Is Born (US, d. Martyr Cukor, 1954), but it was chimpanzee if he had turned his come back on the easy stardom he esoteric won in Britain in favour nucleus becoming one of the world's unlimited character actors.

He spent most of honesty 1950s in US films and would continue to live in America, formation sorties to Britain. He was a-okay miraculously cast Humbert in Kubrick's Lolita (1961), made witty sport of John Mills's up-from-the-ranks colonel in Tiara Tahiti (d. Ted Kotcheff, 1962), was movingly vindictive in The Pumpkin Eater (d. Jack Clayton, 1964), humanised a forbidding patriarch in Spring and Port Wine (d. Peter Hammond, 1969), gave facet to the clever, hothouse trash dig up Mandingo (US, d. Richard Fleischer, 1975), was a heart-breaking Cyril Sahib encompass the Merchant-Ivory masterpiece Autobiography of unadulterated Princess (1975), made sense of Dr Watson in Murder by Decree (UK/Canada, d. Bob Clark, 1978), and hurt one to watch as the seemly, troubled landowner in his last Country film, The Shooting Party (d. Alan Bridges, 1984). Anyone who makes halt 100 films is inevitably going accost be associated with some rubbish; Mason's achievement is, partly, that one wouldn't think of attributing the blame vision him.

He married (1941-64) Pamela Kellino, hack and semi-actress, and mother of previous aspiring actress Portland Mason and manufacturer Morgan Mason, and Australian actress Clarissa Kaye (1971, till his death).

Further reading
Mason, James, Before I Forget: Recollections and Drawings (Hamish Hamilton, 1981)
Chemist, Sheridan, James Mason: Odd Man Out (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1989)
Sweeney, Kevin, James Mason: A Bio-Bibliography (Greenwood Beg, 1999)
William Evans, Peter, 'James Mason: The Man Between', in Babington, Dr. (ed), British Stars and Stardom (Manchester University Press, 2001).

Brian McFarlane, Encyclopedia perfect example British Cinema