Eldergays, Tell Me About Trevor Howard

His shpeech wash shintillating and his shtyle was shubtle.

A shupreme theshbian!

R1 whom?

Loved him in “The Third Man.”

Elder straight man here...Trevor Howard is one of the most underrated actors of the 20th. Britain's Spencer Tracy. Every performance was believable and effortless. No pushing, no showing off, always in the moment. Not one false note. Though British, he didn't have that off-putting British stuffiness which made him much more accessible, especially to us Yanks

See him in "Outcast of the Islands" (an adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel directed by Carol Reed a couple of years after he made "The Third Man"). A great role and unforgettable performance. FWIW, it's one of Matt Dillon's favorite movies.

R4 Thanks! This is what I was looking for. He definitely seems more down to Earth than Gielgud or Olivier.

A wonderful actor. Like James Mason in a dueling thread, Howard seemed incapable of giving a bad performances even though they were quite different actors. BRIEF ENCOUNTER of course. But even very late in the game, when he was reportedly drunk most of the time - RYAN'S DAUGHTER and LUDWIG - he could be marvelous.

R7 was Trevor a drunk in the Burton/Harris/Finney sense?

R7. Don't you mean Burton/Harris/O'Toole?

I've heard no stories about Albert Finney and alcoholism.

I know people assume he was working class because his first hit was playing a masculine, hard-living, adulterous, factory worker in 'Saturday Night and Sunday Morning' but he acknowledged in interviews that he was middle class.

[quote] Was he a good stage actor?

He avoided the stage because he didn't have the ability to dominate the stage. It's easier on screen with the director and editor controlling every movement.

He had the luck to appear in two screen classics of 1940s World Culture in 'Brief Encounter' and 'Third Man'.

[quote] Every performance was believable and effortless.

Which means he was too low-key and 20th century to carry BIG films which is why he slipped into supporting roles in the 1960s.

[quote] "Outcast of the Islands" Is a fascinating failure. Carol Reed struck out to do a big international production before he had the resources to do it properly. Ralph Richardson is mesmerising and clearly outshines poor Trevor who was supposed to carry the film.

Howard was definitely overshadowed by Redgrave and Richardson.

What the bloody hell are you two - replies 10 and 11 -on about? Ridiculous prattle -" too low-key and 20th Century to carry BIG films." Does that go for Tracy and Brando? You obviously don't know anything about film acting where less is more. As to reply 11. What are you talking about? You don't know anything about characterizations. Each actor was playing a character as delineated by Ibsen, and each did exceptionally well. They were consummate actors. Ingrid too.

I'll never forget his guest spot on the Love Boat!

(Seriously though, I love him. Brief Encounter is one of my favorite movies)

He's great.

I read he was kinky and debauched and lied about turning down a knighthood because he was never offered one because he was such a freak.

His narration of the films that the British liberating forces took of the concentration camps was forceful, appropriately somber, and barely disguised revulsion.

Magnificent voice and features, aptly described as craggy.

R15 I don't know about that but Wiki reports a 2001 biography by Terence Pettigrew saying he had actually been discharged from the British Army in 1943 for mental instability and having a "psychopathic personality"

Fair enough. Who wants to be drafted to go off and kill foreigners.

Anyway he was playing a draftee in 'The Way Ahead' in the following year and an RAF pilot in 'The Way to the Stars' in the year after that.

He was in the looney film written by Bonzo Dog Band's front man Vivian Stanshall.

"The plot of Sir Henry at Rawlinson End revolves around attempts to exorcise the ghost of Humbert, the brother of drunken aristocrat Sir Henry (Trevor Howard) who was accidentally killed in a drunken duck-shooting incident whilst escaping trouserless from an illicit tryst. It transpires that Humbert's ghost will not rest until it is supplied with replacement trousers. Until then the ghost walks the corridors of Rawlinson End, often accompanied by that of Humbert's dog Gums which has repossessed its own body, now stuffed and mounted on a trolley. "

He stayed out of tabloids for sure. Probably a quiet and nice man

[quote] Fair enough. Who wants to be drafted to go off and kill foreigners.

In England, 1943? Most of the country.

Going off to fight in World War II was an extreme honor.

It wasn't until Vietnam with the draft, draft dodgers, and the draft exemptions (ministers, college students, etc.), did fighting in a war not be "honorable."

Uh, there was a draft in WW2 as well. Plenty of guys didn't sign up to until they were forced to, sometimes not even then (draft dodgers existed and so did conscientious objectors)

And the families of the British men who didn’t sign up voluntarily were publicly shamed. Men who worked in intelligence and code-breaking who were unable to divulge their domestic wartime activities were humiliated by the Kay person.

Plus conscientious objectors often attended the battlefield inn non-combat roles, they didn’t all go to prison.

Britain in the 40s is NOT like America was in the 60s.

No. Plenty of guys avoided signing up without being "shamed"

[quote] Kay person

lay person

He was terrifying in Mutiny on the Bounty. I love him in every part he played.

[quote] He stayed out of tabloids for sure

His wife Helen appeared in a few movies and impressed me (an anonymous viewer) as a sensible, capable woman.

James Mason, another subject of a recent thread, was a conscientious objector in WW II, and it caused a rift with his family.

Trevor Howard had a prominent jaw line which most men on earth would die for.

Men with prominent jaw lines are supposed to play heroes but Howard played too many failures. He went absolutely troppo in 'Outcast Of the Islands' and I seem to remember two or three Graham Greene roles which displayed Catholic moral failure and R7 remembers all those roles in the awful second half of his career when he played pathetic supporting parts as drunks and failures.

If he were alive today he would be sent to the gym in order to monetise and display his prominent jaw line and buff boobies alongside Henry Cavill and this other prominent jaw-lined beauty.

He was offered the role of the Judge in And Then There Were None (1974).

R7

[quote] when he was reportedly drunk most of the time

I wonder if Erroll was a bad influence on the younger Trevor.

[Quote] Elder straight man here...

Do you have a Google Alert set for Trevor Howard or?

R21 There's been great public amnesia about opposition to involvement in another European war.

The Selective Service Extension Act passed the House by just one vote in 1941.

And FDR promised this on October 30, 1940, at the height of his campaign for re-election: “And while I am talking to you, mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again, and again and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."

FDR made that promise before The Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.

[quote] he had actually been discharged from the British Army in 1943 for mental instability and having a "psychopathic personality"

I suspect that prevented from getting a US Working Visa.

All his co-stars were being poached by the US industry just after the war.

Harrison, Mason, Redgrave, Leo Genn, Deborah Kerr and Jean Simmons.

I was trawling through Youtube trying to find stuff on Greer Garson and I cam across a shockingly primitive TV show from 1963.

It was a potted history lesson on Benjamin Disraeli.

Trevor Howard, looking very pock-marked, struggling to do anything with childish dialogue, and over-lit cardboard sets.

That hair says late 1960s, early 1970s.

Love him! Brief Encounter is one of my all time favorite films.

[quote] Eldergays, Tell Me About Trevor Howard

Why do you preface your question with 'eldergays'?

Those videos at R11 and R63 are more accessible now than they were in the 1960s.

R23

[quote] the families of the British men who didn’t sign up voluntarily were publicly shamed

And the families of the British men who didn’t sign up voluntarily were publicly shamed

Some of that ‘publicly shaming’ arose from pulp fiction.

The three Prince of Wales feathers are a heraldic device back to the 14th century to denote strength, probity etc. and they were used military, commerce, currency and sport

But Alfred Edward Woodley Mason wrote an adventure story called ‘The Four Feathers’ in 1902 where the Prince of Wales feathers were sent to the hero Harry Feversham, reminding him of his duty in the Holy war against the Muhammudan Mahdi in Sudan .

This popular story of 1902 gave the Prince of Wales feathers a new meaning in 1914.

Vice-Admiral in the Royal Navy Charles Penrose-Fitzgerald, 1841 – 1921) was anxious about insufficient men joining the army and navy. So he organised a group of thirty women in Folkestone to distribute white feathers to men not in uniform.

It was spread by suffragettes and other women throughout the Empire who took it as their job to pin white feathers on men they saw on the streets.

I remember him being in a depressing movie with Capucine, 'The Lion' with William Holden. The whole thing radiated sadness.

He was lots of fun in the 1977 Australian sex romp Eliza Fraser. If a recall correctly he played a gay character lusting after a young John Waters (not the director).