Leslie Howard

The clerk who fled the trenches

Leslie Howard Steiner never wanted to be the center of attention. In 1914 he worked as a bank clerk in London, spending his days counting other people's money without much conviction. The Great War pulled him out of the office and sent him to the front as a cavalry officer. But the roar of bombs in France gave him a war neurosis that sent him home early.

Doctors recommended theater as therapy to help him recover his speech and confidence. That medical prescription ended up launching one of the most magnetic presences in Anglo-American cinema. Howard didn't act so much as project an intellectual vulnerability that Hollywood didn't know how to manufacture.

In 1933 he received his first Academy Award nomination for Berkeley Square. That film cemented his image as a man out of step with his time.

The industry quickly typecast him in roles as a dreamer or a principled aristocrat. But he preferred to work behind the camera or pull the strings of production. Despite his fragile appearance, Howard was a relentless negotiator who knew the value of his contract well.

Ashley Wilkes's blackmail

Hardly anyone remembers that Howard agreed to take part in Gone with the Wind purely for commercial reasons. David O. Selznick wanted him for the role of Ashley Wilkes, and the actor turned it down several times because he felt too old for the character. Howard was 45 years old and was supposed to play a young plantation owner from the American South.

And he agreed only on one condition.

Selznick had to promise him he could produce his next film, titled Intermezzo, in 1939. Howard hated the script for the Southern epic and refused to learn his lines. During filming he spent his time reading history books and complaining about the tight costumes he was forced to wear.

Despite his reluctance, the public devoured it. The film was released in December 1939 and made him a universal face against his own will. But for him that job was only the necessary toll to finance his own film projects in Europe.

He never got to see the final cut of the film in a movie theater.

Secret mission over the Bay of Biscay

When World War II broke out, Howard left the luxury of California to return to England. He wanted to help the war effort and began shooting propaganda documentaries and directing films that would boost the morale of civilians. In 1942 he directed and starred in Pimpernel Smith to ridicule the Nazi regime.

On June 1, 1943, flight 777 of the BOAC airline took off from Lisbon bound for Bristol. German spies believed Winston Churchill was on board because Howard's representative looked like him. Eight Luftwaffe Junkers fighters intercepted the civilian plane over the sea.

There were no survivors.

The plane crashed into the sea with 17 people on board, and the wreckage was never recovered. Some historians suggest Howard carried out intelligence work for the British government during his trips to Spain and Portugal. His premature death at the age of 50 cut short a career that was already moving more toward directing than pure acting. The official report on the shootdown closed with a brief note on the loss of the aircraft in a war zone.