(1884-1953)

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39 Steps Baddie With The Dodgy Finger Problem!

Hard to believe but this quintissential Englishman was born in New York in 1884.

The half-brother of silent film matinee idol Conway Tearle, American actor Godfrey Tearle was raised in England, where he made his stage bow at age 9 in the company of his actor parents. Not as good-looking or charismatic as sibling Conway, Godfrey nonetheless enjoyed a longer and more rewarding career as a character player.

Having made his film debut in 1908, Tearle acted in films in both Hollywood and England, seldom getting more than ten minutes' footage but always making a strong impression.

He was the ostensibly above-reproach "landed gentry" who turned out to be the head of a spy ring in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1935) and despite his advanced years was given the leading role as a gallant RAF pilot in One of Our Aircraft is Missing (1941).

Perhaps his greatest cameo was as Professor Jordan in Hitchcock's 1935 classic The 39 Steps. The shock from appearing to be a respectable British country squire to revealing to Robert Donat that with part of his finger missing it is he who is the enemy agent, must rank as one of the great moments of shock in the history of British cinema.

Another of Sir Godfrey Tearle's best remembered roles was as Franklin D. Roosevelt in MGM's 1946 account of the Manhattan Project, The Beginning of the End. Tearle was a last minute replacement for Lionel Barrymore, whose outspoken anti-FDR stance had prompted Roosevelt's widow Eleanor to refuse Barrymore permission to portray her husband.

Alfred Hitchcock film posters both vintage and repros @ ebay.com (direct link)

One of his best 10 minutes or so cameos was as Ollbie Matthews, Bishop of Welchester, in his penultimate film, The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953), co-starring the great Stanley Holloway.

He died in June 1953. He was 68.

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