Philip Merivale

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Philip Merivale (born November 2, 1886 in Manickpur , British India , † March 12, 1946 in Los Angeles , California ) was a British stage actor who came to Hollywood towards the end of his life , where he often played authority figures.

Life

Philip Merivale was born in India to British parents. Around 1900 he began his acting career in the British theater. Both in London and on Broadway , Merivale was a popular actor at a young age, who played leading roles and for whom pieces were even written in part. Between 1910 and 1944, the black-haired actor starred in over 30 plays on Broadway, including several classic Shakespeare productions and the US premiere of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion . In 1934 his first wife Viva Birkett died in London at the age of 47 and they had four children together. Among the children was the future film and television actor John Merivale . In 1937 he married the British actress Gladys Cooper , a marriage that lasted until his death.

Both Gladys Cooper and Philip Merivale had sparse appearances in films until 1940, but that year they moved to Hollywood together. While his wife starred in Rebecca and Miss Kitty , among others , Merivale starred in 1941 as the father of Gene Raymond in Alfred Hitchcock's screwball comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith . In the years that followed, up to his death, Merivale embodied mostly dignified and mostly good-natured authority figures. He had one of his few villain roles as a power-hungry nobleman in the Laurel and Hardy film The Body Cooks of His Majesty (1944), where he tries to kill his teenage nephew - the king - but which always fails due to the clumsiness of the comedian duo. Shortly before his death, Merivale played a judge and father of Loretta Young's main character in Orson Welles ' film noir The Stranger's Trail (1946) .

Before The Stranger's Trail and his last film, Sister Kenny, hit theaters, Philip Merivale died of heart disease at the age of 59.

Filmography

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Viva Birkett. Internet Movie Database , accessed June 10, 2015 .
personal data
SURNAME Merivale, Philip
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British stage actor
DATE OF BIRTH November 2, 1886
PLACE OF BIRTH Manickpur , British India
DATE OF DEATH March 12, 1946
Place of death Los Angeles , California