Background
Howard was born Leslie Howard Steiner to a British mother, Lilian (née Blumberg), and a Hungarian Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, in Forest Hill, London.
(Pelvic Liberation includes detailed explanations of key y...)
Pelvic Liberation includes detailed explanations of key yoga postures and breathing practices designed to awaken and heal the female pelvis, a system that Leslie calls Pelvic Floor Yoga. In addition to explaining practical yoga techniques that will heal body and mind, Pelvic Liberation will take you through eye-opening reflections to help you overcome cultural and historical influences that have impaired every woman's health. Leslie brings thoughtfulness, a dash of humor, and a therapeutic focus to a subject that can be difficult and overwhelming. This book is a shout-out to normalize the conversation about pelvic health and improve a woman's knowledge and awareness of her pelvis. Every woman, yoga instructor, and women's health professional will benefit from this richly informative book.
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(Leslie Howard's career as a Hollywood star and his ambiti...)
Leslie Howard's career as a Hollywood star and his ambitions for the British film industry were well known. He contributed substantially to cinema history, having been featured in Gone With the Wind, The Scarlet Pimpernel, Pygmalion, and others. But, behind his charm was a perceptive and determined man. An ambivalent identity and a penetrating intelligence gave him the confidence to try to influence world opinion at the time of the Second World War. His work at that time is now almost unknown and startlingly unexpected. Howard made efforts to discover exactly what was happening in Nazi Germany and Austria, and what was intended. He struggled with the establishment back in England to get the British film industry restarted in 1940, and he aimed to use it to promote democratic values and unity. Howard worked secretly and alone to develop British propaganda in the US, and to help the SOE and the Free French in Britain. He became a well-loved figurehead in Britain's darkest days, and Churchill made effective use of his charismatic personality to sway neutral countries at crucial times during the battle. This book - now available in paperback - follows Leslie Howard's life by using original material from archives and libraries, personal narratives, newspaper and magazine accounts of the time, and, most of all, Howard's own voice to tell his story through his own humorous and pointed articles in The New Yorker and Vanity Fair, as well as his autobiographical war time radio broadcasts at the BBC. *** "The book is an impressive tribute to Leslie Howard as an actor, as an advocate for the British film industry and as a British patriot." - Morton I. Teicher, Palm Beach Jewish Journal - Central, March 27, 2013; The Buffalo Jewish Review, April 5, 2013
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(On 1 June 1943 Flight 777, a Douglas DC-3, en route from ...)
On 1 June 1943 Flight 777, a Douglas DC-3, en route from Lisbon to Britain, was shot down over the Bay of Biscay by German aircraft. Among the dead was the actor Leslie Howard, who had returned from Hollywood to England to help the British war effort. Also on board was Howard's tax adviser, Alfred Chenhalls, who smoked cigars and looked remarkably like Winston Churchill. Did the Germans believe that Churchill was on board Flight 777? Other aircraft flying that route went unmolested by the Luftwaffe in spite of the German air presence over the Bay of Biscay. These flights were operated by Dutch crews flying aircraft of KLM, which were on charter to BOAC, and it was an experience Dutch crew that was lost that day. Ian Colvin carried out an exhaustive investigation into the incident, including interviewing former Luftwaffe personnel and this book, first published in 1957, is the result of his endeavors.
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(Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a...)
Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a Greek mythological character. It was first presented on stage to the public in 1912. Professor of phonetics Henry Higgins makes a bet that he can train a bedraggled Cockney flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, to pass for a duchess at an ambassador's garden party by teaching her to assume a veneer of gentility, the most important element of which, he believes, is impeccable speech. The play is a sharp lampoon of the rigid British class system of the day and a commentary on women's independence. In ancient Greek mythology, Pygmalion fell in love with one of his sculptures, which then came to life. The general idea of that myth was a popular subject for Victorian era English playwrights, including one of Shaw's influences, W. S. Gilbert, who wrote a successful play based on the story called Pygmalion and Galatea first presented in 1871. Shaw also would have been familiar with the burlesque version, Galatea, or Pygmalion Reversed. Shaw's play has been adapted numerous times, most notably as the musical My Fair Lady and the film of that name.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1503290905/?tag=2022091-20
(During the Battle of France, the handful of RAF squadrons...)
During the Battle of France, the handful of RAF squadrons were heavily engaged. The Luftwaffe commenced raids over England and during July, German aircraft were harrying shipping in the Channel. Many of the RAF aircrews experiencing combat for the first time survived as the 'first of the few' to participate in the forthcoming defense of Britain - the Battle of Britain. This volume covers the story of the RAF fighting in France in June 1940; the author's earlier publication entitled Twelve Days in May, covered the period 10-21 May. This account excludes the epic story of the fighting over Dunkirk during the evacuation, 27 May-4 June, which has been adequately covered elsewhere, but otherwise continues the story of RAF and Luftwaffe operations up to the eve of the 'official' start of Battle of Britain, 10 July
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Howard was born Leslie Howard Steiner to a British mother, Lilian (née Blumberg), and a Hungarian Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, in Forest Hill, London.
Howard was educated at Alleyn's School, London. Like many others around the time of the First World War, the family Anglicised its name, in this case to "Stainer," although Howard's name remained Steiner in official documents, such as his military records. He worked as a bank clerk before enlisting at the outbreak of the Great War. He served in the British Army as a subaltern in the Northamptonshire Yeomanry but suffered shell shock, which led to his relinquishing his commission with effect from 19 May 1916. Despite this, both of Howard's children later believed he had served in France during the summer of that year.
Obtaining a commission in the Twentieth Hussars, he married the daughter of a regular army officer shortly before being sent to France. In 1917 he was invalided out of the army, having suffered severe shell shock on the western front.
After his recovery, he decided to attempt a stage career. Parts in touring companies soon led to his first London appearance in The Freaks. Howard’s roles increased in importance and in 1920 he accepted an offer to appear in New York for the American impresario Gilbert Miller. The play in question, Just Suppose, was a success and marked the beginning of a profitable decade for Howard, who supplemented his Broadway stardom with forays across the Atlantic to London’s West End. Major plays of this period in which he starred included "Aren't We All", "Outward Bound", "Her Cardboard Lover", and "Berkeley Square".
Quite early in his British career, Howard had had his first film experience when he founded Minerva Films with Adrian Brunei. Howard appeared in a few films but it was not until 1930 that his screen career truly began. The 1930s were as rich in film parts for Howard as the 1920s had been for him on stage. He starred in "Of Human Bondage", which brought Bette Davis to prominence, and in Ingrid Bergman’s first American film, Intermezzo. When his Broadway hit, "The Petrified Forest", was to be filmed, Howard directly assisted in the birth of a new star by agreeing to make an appearance in the movie on the condition that Humphrey Bogart was retained to recreate his stage role as a gangster.
Howard’s British films were no less illustrious, including the enormously popular, The Scarlet Pimpernel and Pygmalion. None of his other films could compare with "Gone With the Wind", the last of his American films to be released, in which he played Ashley Wilkes.
After 1939, all Howard’s film work was done in Britain and connected to the war effort. Particularly notable was "Pimpernel Smith", a contemporary updating of "The Scarlet Pimpernel", with the Nazis as the new villains, which. Howard directed and produced in addition to playing a starring role.
During the war, Howard was intensely involved in the propaganda campaign on behalf of the Allies and in 1943 agreed to goon a lecture tour of Spain and Portugal under the auspices of the British Council. It was while returning from Lisbon that his plane, a clearly marked civilian aircraft, was shot down by German fighters. Among the theories advanced to explain this exceptional attack on a commercial flight is one that holds that the Nazis thought Winston Churchill was on board.
(Pelvic Liberation includes detailed explanations of key y...)
(On 1 June 1943 Flight 777, a Douglas DC-3, en route from ...)
(Leslie Howard's career as a Hollywood star and his ambiti...)
(Pygmalion is a play by George Bernard Shaw, named after a...)
(During the Battle of France, the handful of RAF squadrons...)
Lilian had been brought up as a Christian, but she was of partial Jewish ancestry—her paternal grandfather Ludwig Blumberg, a Jewish merchant originally from East Prussia, had married into the English upper middle classes.
LESLIE HOWARD IN A WARTIME BROADCAST TO THE U.S.
Most of you. I’m sure, will know what I mean when I speak of the curious elation which comes from sharing in a high and mysterious destiny. The destiny of Britain we can not know for certain, but we can guess at it and pray for it, and work towards it as we find ourselves singled out of all the nations in the world for the rare honor of fighting alone against the h uge and ruthless forces of tyranny.
In his Hollywood films, he came to epitomize not only the essence of Britishness, but also an infinitely rarer commodity, a screen hero whose intellect matched his charm and good looks.
Howard married Ruth Evelyn Martin (1895-1980) in March, 1916, and they had two children, Ronald "Winkie" and Leslie Ruth "Doodie." His son Ronald Howard (1918–1996) became an actor and played the title role in the television series Sherlock Holmes (1954).
Arthur, Howard's younger brother, was also an actor, primarily in British comedies. A sister, Irene, was a costume designer and later a casting director for MGM. Another sister, Doris (aka Dorice) Stainer, founded a small school, Hurst Lodge School, in Sunningdale, Berkshire, England, in 1945 and remained its headmistress until the 1970s.
Howard met and fell in love with Violette Cunnington in 1938 while working on the film Pygmalion. Cunnington was secretary to Gabriel Pascal who was producing the film. Cunnington became Howard's secretary and lover and the two travelled to the United States, living together while Howard was filming Gone with the Wind (1939) and Intermezzo: A Love Story (1939). Howard's wife and daughter joined him in Hollywood before production ended on the two films, making Howard's arrangement with Cunnington somewhat uncomfortable for everyone. Howard left the United States for the last time with his wife and daughter in August, 1939. Cunnington soon followed. She later appeared in two of Howard's films, "Pimpernel" Smith (1941) and The First of the Few (1942), in minor roles under the stage name of Suzanne Clair. Cunnington, in her early 30s, died in 1942 of pneumonia, just six months before Howard's death. Howard was distraught over her death. In his will, Howard had left her his Beverly Hills house.