Background
Marshall, Herbert was born on May 23, 1890 in London, England. Son of Percy Falcon and Ethel May (Turner) Marshall.
Marshall, Herbert was born on May 23, 1890 in London, England. Son of Percy Falcon and Ethel May (Turner) Marshall.
Educated at St. Mary’s College in Harlow, England.
Mumsie (27. Herbert Wilcox) was his debut, in England, but he came to the fore opposite Jeanne Eagels in America in The Letter (29, Jean de Limur). However, for the next few years he divided his time between Hollywood and England, where his then-wife Edna Best worked. In 1930 he made his first talking picture, Hitchcocks Murder and in 1931 he made Michael and Many (Victor Saville) and went back to America to be opposite Claudette Colbert in Secrets of a Secretary (George Abbott). He followed this success with Blonde Venus (32, Josef von Sternberg) and, one of his best, immaculate but amoral in Trouble in Paradise (32, Ernst Lubitsch). Back in England, he made The Solitaire Man (33, Jack Conway) and I Was a Spy (33, Saville), but when his marriage ended he concentrated on American films: Four Frightened People (34, Cecil B. De Mille); Riptide (34, Edmund Goulding); Outcast Lady (34, Robert Z. Leonard); The Painted Veil (34, Richard Boleslavsky); The Good Fairy (35, William Wyler); The Flame Within (35, Colliding); and The Dark Angel (35, Sidney Franklin).
Marshall was slipping into character parts, but he was excellent in The Lady Consents (36, Stephen Roberts) and Forgotten Faces (36, E. A. Dupont), and as the deceived husband in Angel (37, Lubitsch). He had to engage in many dull films, where his expression sometimes suggested that his other leg had gone numb, but he usually made the most of good parts: Zaza (39, George Cukor); the husband in The Letter (40, Wyler); a suave paternal villain in Foreign Correspondent (40, Hitchcock); opposite Bette Davis in The Little Foxes (41, Wyler); in When Ladies Meet (41, Leonard); as the Maugham narrator in The Moon and Sixpence (42, Albert Lewin); in Jules Dassin's Young Ideas (43); The Enchanted Cottage (45, John Cromwell): Maugham again in The Razor's Edge (46, Goulding); the father in Duel in the Sun (46, King Vidor). he kept working, if a little less earnestly, until his death: Ivy (47, Sam Wood); The High Wall (48, Curtis Bernhardt); The Secret Garden (49, Fred M. Wilcox); The Underworld Story (50, Cy Endfield); Anne of the Indies (51, Jacques Tourneur); Something to Live For (52, George Stevens); the weak father in Angel Face (52, Otto Preminger); The Black Shield of Falworth (54, Rudolph Maté); The Virgin Queen (55, Henry Koster); Stage Struck (58, Sidney Lumet); Midnight Lace (60, David Miller); and The Third Day (65, Jack Smight).
Served in British Army, World War I. Clubs: Garrick, Green Room (London).
Marshall was forty before becoming seriously involved with the cinema. By then, he had twenty years’ stage experience in England and America, lost a leg in the First World War, but never quite shed the sobriety of early years spent apprenticed to a chartered accountant. Paramount planned to make him a great lover, but Marshall needed to move carefully in case his limp showed, and his good manners eventually reduced him to character parts.
He was always thoughtful, able enough for the most intelligent comedy, and seldom out of place: it is tempting in retrospect to think of him as Paramount house servant in tales of overheated emotion—discreet and detached. With age, his work became exaggerated, but he could still rise to worthwhile material.
Married Mollie Maitland, 1915 (divorced). Married second, Edna Best, 1928.; married 3d, Lee Russell, February 27, 1940.