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Leslie Howard
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Leslie Howard, 50, is one of the most accomplished American show jumping riders. A member of the gold medal winning team at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics and the silver medal winning team at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, Howard's record ... boasts a 1986 World Cup Final win in Gothenburg, Sweden. To date, she has 19 Nations Cup wins and 15 wins in World Cup qualifying competitions. When she was a junior rider, Leslie won the ASPCA Maclay equitation championship. In addition to her own impressive career, Howard has mentored top riders such as Judy Garofalo, Nicole Shahinian Simpson and Molly Ashe. This is Leslie's fourth year competing at the Syracuse Invitational.
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Leslie Howard was a Hollywood and Broadway star in the 1930s and represented the best of Englishness for Americans, and on his return to Britain came to represent England's ideals for the English. Howard's English qualities come together in 'Pimpernel' Smith (1941), which he ... produced and directed. A Cambridge professor who uses archaeology as a cover for rescuing intellectuals and artists from Nazi Germany, Smith (Howard) evades his captors at the end by vanishing, quite literally, in a cloud of smoke. There is much in the film which suggests that Howard's identification with the struggle against fascism was idealistic rather than political, and when asked by an American student how he got into the racket Smith responds, 'When a man holds the view that progress and civilisation depend in every age upon the hands and brains of a few exceptional spirits it's rather hard to stand by and see them destroyed.' The film also throws light on Howard's platonic attractiveness: Smith's only love is for 'the one sublime woman', a Greek marble of Aphrodite.
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Born in Forest Hill (on 3 April 1893), Leslie Howard initially grew up in Vienna, returning to London and a Dulwich College education when his father joined a City stockbroking firm. Intending Leslie to follow in his footsteps, he secured him a job as a bank clerk, but the acting bug had already bitten thanks to his mother's fondness for amateur dramatics, and Leslie would take on her adopted maiden name as his own. He first appeared onscreen in the 1914 film The Heroine of Mons, directed by his uncle Wilfred Noy. When the First World War began shortly afterwards, Howard joined the 20th Hussars (despite the fact that he had never ridden a horse) and served on the Western Front. The Somme disaster of 1916 triggered shell-shock, and he was invalided out of the army. That same year he married and began his acting career in earnest, his matinee-idol looks helping him to success in theatres on both sides of the Atlantic.
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Though he would spend much of his career specialising in roles that conveyed a certain type of gentle, civilised Englishness, Leslie Howard not only came from immigrant stock but his first language was German. His Hungarian-Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, anglicised his name to Frank Stainer when he moved to London and married barrister's daughter Lilian Howard (née Blumberg). Though born in Forest Hill (on 3 April 1893), their son initially grew up in Vienna, returning to London and a Dulwich College education when his father joined a City stockbroking firm. Intending Leslie to follow in his footsteps, he secured him a job as a bank clerk, but the acting bug had already bitten thanks to his mother's fondness for amateur dramatics, and Leslie would take on her adopted maiden name as his own. He first appeared onscreen in the 1914 film
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For over sixty years since the death of Leslie Howard, speculation has been rampant as to the reasons why the Germans would shoot down this particular routine commercial flight over Biscay. There is a theory that the Nazis were given reason to believe that Winston Churchill was onboard. Another theory suggests that a double of Churchill was on the flight. Yet another proposes that Leslie Howard was indeed more than just a rallying voice for the war effort - that he was indeed a spy, a twentieth-century war-time Pimpernel who used his fame and talents to deliver well-aimed kicks in the teeth at the bad guys.
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Howard was always better known for his acting, enjoying triumphs in The Animal Kingdom (1932) and The Petrified Forest (1935), immortalizing both roles on film. But he had the bad timing to open in Hamlet on Broadway in 1936 just a few weeks after John Gielgud had had a resounding success in a rival production of Shakespeare’s play that was far more successful with both critics and audiences. Howard’s production lasted 39 performances in New York before it was withdrawn. It proved to be Howard’s final stage role.
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Leslie Howard