Background
Edmund Gwenn was born on 26 September 1877 in London, City of London, United Kingdom.
Edmund Gwenn was born on 26 September 1877 in London, City of London, United Kingdom.
Gwenn had been on the stage since 1900, a fact that glowed out of his Pickwick face. He made very few films before sound elicited that monotonous articulateness: Unmarried (20, Rex Wilson); as Hornblower, the part he had created onstage, in The Shin Game (20. Bernard Doxat-Pratt); How He Lied to Her Husband (31, Cecil Lewis); as Hornblower again in The Skin Game (31, Alfred Hitchcock); Hindle Wakes (31, Victor Saville); Money for Nothing (32, Monty Banks); Frail Women (32, Maurice Elvey); Condemned to Death (32, Walter Forde); Love on Wheels (32, Saville); Tell Me Tonight (32, Anatole Litvak); as Jess Oakroyd in The Good Companions (33, Saville); Cash (33. Zoltán Korda); Early to Bed (33, Ludwig Berger); 1 Was a Spy (33, Saville); Channel Crossing (33, Milton Rosmer); Smithy (33, George King); Marooned (33, Leslie Hiscott); Friday the 13th (33, Saville); as Johann Strauss in Waltzes from Vienna (33, Hitchcock); The Admiral’s Secret (34. Guy Newald); Java Head (34, T. Walter Reuben); Father and Son (34, Banks); and Spring in the Air (34, W. Victor Hanbury).
He then went to America for his first film there, The Bishop Misbehaves (35, E. A. Dupont). For the next few years, he worked in both countries: Sylvia Scarlett (35, George Cukor); Laburnum Grove (36, Carol Reed); Anthony Adverse (36, Mervyn Le Roy); The Walking Dead (36, Michael Curtiz); Pameil (37, (ohn M. Stahl); South Riding (38, Saville): A Yank at Oxford (38, Jack Conway); Penny Paradise (38, Reed); Cheer Boys, Cheer (39, Forde); An Englishman’s Home (39, George Dewhurst).
Thereafter he settled in America and became a “lovable” character actor: as the butler in The Earl of Chicago (40, Richard Thorpe, but produced by Victor Saville); indisputably an MGM Mr. Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (40, Robert Z. Leonard); Foreign Correspondent (40, Hitchcock); The Devil and Miss Jones (41, Sam Wood); Cheers for Miss Bishop (41. Tay Garnett); Charley's Aunt (41, Archie Mayo); A Yank at Eton (42, Norman Taurog); showing that a dog’s best friend is someone wiio will talk to it in Lassie Come Home (43, Fred M. Wilcox); Between Two Worlds (44, Edward A. Blatt); The Keys of the Kingdom (44, Stahl); Of Human Bondage (46, Edmund Gould- ing); Undercurrent (46, Vincente Minnelli); an Oscar as Father Christmas in Miracle on 34th Street (47, George Seaton); Life with Father (47, Michael Curtiz); Hills of Home (48, Wilcox); a forger with a true heart in Mister SS0 (50, Colliding); Peking Express (51, William Dieterle); Pretty Baby (52, Bretaigne Windust); Something for the Birds (52, Robert Wise); Les Miserables (52, Lewis Milestone); The Bigamist (53, Ida Lupino); as a professor who tries to talk to giant ants in Them (54, Gordon Douglas); as the Captain in The Trouble with Harry (55, Hitchcock); and Calabuch(56, Luis Garcia Berlanga).