David Farrar

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David Farrar (born August 21, 1908 in the London Borough of Newham , England , † August 31, 1995 in Durban , South Africa ) was a British film and theater actor .

Life

David Farrar, the youngest of four siblings, showed his interest in acting at an early age when he was already on stage in smaller plays at the age of 12. After graduating from high school, Farrar began working as a clerk in a mail order company for a pound a week. At the age of 16 he became an assistant editor for a monthly newspaper, and a few months later he became an editor for a weekly paper.

Farrar's love for the theater hadn't suffered from his bourgeois professional life, so that he was always hired in amateur theaters and for smaller stage productions. During a production by David Copperfield , he also met his short-term fiancée, the stage actress Agnes, who encouraged Farrar to try it as a professional actor. After his professional stage debut, The Wandering Jew , received positive press coverage in 1932, Farrar continued his acting career.

In 1937 Farrar was first engaged as a film actor for the film romance Return of a Stranger , albeit only in a supporting role. After two years in which Farrar's film career was hardly marked by major successes, Farrar went back to the theater in 1939. After his home, The Grafton Theater , was destroyed in an air raid during World War II in 1940 , Farrar returned to the big screen in the drama Danny Boy - this time as the lead actor.

In 1942, Farrar also had to obey the call to fight for his country in the war, although he was only used as a soldier in the artillery for a few months . Warner Bros. soon became aware of Farrar, who engaged the actor in 1943 for their film The Night Invader , and they succeeded in getting Farrar exempted from military service.

In 1947 Farrar made what was probably his most controversial film at the time - Frieda - in which a Royal Air Force pilot fell in love with a German woman, married and took him to England with him. It was this film that opened doors for Farrar in the United States as well . In the early 1950s, for example, he received more and more role offers from Hollywood . Farrar was thus probably one of England's most popular actors in the 1940s, who had to answer around 42,000 fan letters every year.

Farrar's first success in the US was the 1954 adventure film The Iron Knight of Falworth on the side of Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh . The 1959 Bible film Salomon and the Queen of Sheba was also well known . After around 20 films that Farrar shot in the USA, the self-imposed end of acting came in 1962 after the shooting of The Lion of Sparta . He himself justified this step with the fear that films would only play older men instead of younger characters.

David Farrar then retired into private life, which he shared with his wife Irene Elliot. The couple had been married since 1929. After the death of his wife in 1976, Farrar moved to his daughter's area in South Africa. Here he spent the last two decades of his life.

David Farrar died at the age of 87.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Farrar, David
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British film and stage actor
DATE OF BIRTH August 21, 1908
PLACE OF BIRTH London Borough of Newham , England
DATE OF DEATH August 31, 1995
Place of death Durban , South Africa