Background

Leo Grattan Carroll was born on October 25, 1886 in the village of Weedon, Northamptonshire, England; the youngest of six children born to Catherine Jane Calnan and Captain William Carroll, both Irish. Captain Carroll, whose voice and mannerisms became part of his son's professional technique, was an Ordnance officer in the British army.

Education

After attending grammar school in York, Leo was apprenticed at fifteen to a wine merchant.

Career

Attracted by performances of Gilbert and Sullivan, Leo took an amateur part in Dibdin's comic opera Liberty Hall. In July 1911, he made his professional debut at Scarborough: a walk-on in The Prisoner of Zenda. Untrained in theater, he studied professional actors in London while working as an assistant stage manager. Taking over a small part, he made his first London appearance in The Blindness of Virtue (1912). In July, he was engaged to play the juvenile lead in the American company of Rutherford and Son, making his New York debut on Christmas eve. With the outbreak of World War I, Carroll joined the British infantry, fighting in the French trenches and later at Salonica. He was posted to the Egyptian Expeditionary Force in Palestine, where, on October 30, 1916, he suffered a lung wound that hospitalized him for two years. Returning to England, he toured extensively with provincial stock companies. He was in New York in 1920 for a brief run of Hedda Gabler, and from 1921 to 1924 between tours he made ten brief London appearances acting in and directing new plays for the Repertory Theatre Players. In 1923, Carroll had a featured role in Love in Pawn, a successful West End comedy, and later that year he won a prestigious part as General Jeb Stuart in John Drinkwater's Robert E. Lee. A turning point in Carroll's career was the role of Roddy Dunton in Harry Wall's war drama Havoc (1924). Carroll had directed a theater society performance of the play the previous November and was now engaged as director of the New York company. He spent most of the rest of his professional life in the United States. Following the New York run of Havoc and an appearance as Matyas Oez in Molnar's Carnival (1924), Carroll directed an English repertory season in Montreal. On his return he played Pawnie, an amusing "elderly maiden gentleman, " in Noel Coward's The Vortex (1925) and the following year appeared in Margaret Kennedy's equally popular The Constant Nymph. In the next five years Carroll appeared in ten plays, including A. A. Milne's The Perfect Alibi; The Novice and the Duke, an adaptation of Measure for Measure with Carroll as the villain, Angelo; Shaw's Too True to Be Good; and Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida.

On October 20, 1933, Carroll opened with Laurence Olivier in The Green Bay Tree, playing the comically immaculate but sinister butler, Trump. The play brought Carroll a contract from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where in 1934 he had an almost identical part in Clarence Brown's Sadie McKee. Typecast as the polished, imperturbable Briton, he had small parts in several films, including What Every Woman Knows and The Barretts of Wimpole Street, productions that displayed Carroll's technique to advantage. In 1935 he appeared in three Broadway comedies and four films, including Clive of India with Ronald Colman. From 1936 through 1940, Carroll performed in nine Broadway plays, one of which he directed, and ten films. The productions included historical dramas, romantic comedies, classical works (notably the film Wuthering Heights in 1939, again with Olivier), sensational thrillers, even light opera. These added to Carroll's reputation as a versatile supporting actor from whom, as the New York Post critic wrote, "an intelligent performance can always be expected. " In 1940 he played in Rebecca, the first of six films with director Alfred Hitchcock--he appeared in more Hitchcock films than any other actor. In Spellbound (1945), drawing on the sinister note in Carroll's amiability, Hitchcock gave the actor his best film role as Dr. Murchison, the director of a psychiatric sanatorium. The same ambiguity lent strength to his roles as Senator Morton in Strangers on a Train (1951) and as "the Professor, " chief of counterintelligence, in North by Northwest (1959). Although he made fifteen pictures in the 1940's, Carroll's greatest success was on Broadway. Angel Street (1941) ran for three years and, as Burns Mantle predicted, made "a star of Leo G. Carroll. " As Detective Inspector Rough, he rescued the heroine from Vincent Price. In 1944 he had the title role in The Late George Apley. His lightly ironic portrayal of the proper Bostonian received unqualified praise as Carroll's best work. In later seasons he played an emotionally brutal professor in The Druid Circle (1947); the outspoken waiter in Shaw's You Never Can Tell (1948); and a match-making priest in Jenny Kissed Me (1948). In 1949 Carroll began a television career with six dramatic productions, chiefly for "Philco Television Playhouse, " playing in Walter Hampden's production of Macbeth and recreating his own stage roles. In 1951, with characteristic energy he appeared in four plays, three films, and a broadcast drama, but thereafter Carroll took fewer jobs and turned increasingly to television. From 1953 to 1955 he was popular in the Topper series, playing a staid investment banker agreeably haunted by the ghosts of a glamorous couple and their dog. He appeared in plays in San Francisco in 1953, New York in 1954, and Puerto Rico in 1959. His last stage work was a production of The Pleasure of His Company in 1961. Carroll worked regularly in pictures, notably in Molnar's The Swan (1956) and Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). On television he was a priest in "Going My Way" (1963), a series with Gene Kelly. In 1964, his career accelerated unexpectedly with a television role in "The Man from U. N. C. L. E. " Carroll became popular as Mr. Waverly, a kindlier version of the spy master he played in North by Northwest. The series ran four years and produced a sequel. Independently, in 1966 Carroll appeared in three espionage adventure movies. Versatile to the last, he made a country music picture in 1969 and ended his career on April 2, 1970, with an episode of a television police show. He died in Hollywood.

Achievements

• He was best known for his roles in several Hitchcock films, and in three television series, Topper, Going My Way, and The Man from U. N. C. L. E. . Carroll is perhaps best known for his roles in six Alfred Hitchcock films: Rebecca (1940), Suspicion (1941), Spellbound (1945), The Paradine Case (1947), Strangers on a Train (1951) and North by Northwest (1959). He appeared in more Hitchcock films than anyone other than Clare Greet (1871–1939) (who appeared in seven) and Hitchcock himself, whose cameos were a trademark. As with earlier roles, he was often cast as doctors or other authority figures (such as the spymaster "Professor" in North by Northwest). He was one of the first actors to appear in two different television series as the same character. Leo G. Carroll is mentioned in "The Rocky Horror Picture Show" opening song "Science Fiction, Double Feature".

Works

More photos

• book

  • Going My Way - The Complete Series - 30 Episodes!

    (In this charming television series remake of the OscarTM ...)

  • The Swan VHS

    (The film deals with the story of the daughter of a minor ...)

  • Topper: Volume Three

    (Following the success of the Topper movies, the well-love...)

  • TOPPER George's Old Flame VHS

    (Great movie 1953)

  • The Man from U.N.C.L.E.: The Complete Series
  • Strangers on a Train

Views

Quotations: He loved to attend plays as well as act in them, and said of his sixty-year career: "It has brought me much pleasure of the mind and heart. I owe the theatre a great deal. It owes me nothing. "

Membership

In 1933, he was a member of the Manhattan Theatre Repertory Company in the inaugural season of the Ogunquit Playhouse in Ogunquit, Maine.

Personality

As a child Leo felt extreme self-consciousness from which the stage was his escape. "I became interested in the theatre as a youngster because I never like to be me. I've always been shy it is very hard for me to walk down the aisle of a church if it is full of people. "

The austerity of his appearance, in contrast with his avuncular and slightly mischievous manner, gave him a magnetic presence.

Connections

On July 15, 1926, he married Edith Nancy de Silva, a Liverpool actress; they had one son.

Father:

William Carroll

Military

Mother:

Catherine Jane Calnan

Wife:

Edith Nancy de Silva