Lionel Atwill

 

Atwill was born on 1 March 1885 in Croydon, London, England. He studied architecture before his stage debut at the Garrick Theatre, London, in 1904.^[1]

 

He became a star in Broadway theatre by 1918 and made his screen debut in 1919.^[2] His Broadway credits include The Lodger (1916), The Silent Witness (1930), Fioretta (1928), The Outsider (1924), Napoleon (1927), The Thief (1926), Slaves All (1926), Beau Gallant (1925), Caesar and Cleopatra (1924), The Outsider (1923), The Comedian (1922), The Grand Duke (1921), Deburau (1920), Tiger! Tiger! (1918), Another Man's Shoes (1918), A Doll's House (1917), Hedda Gabler (1917), The Wild Duck (1917), The Indestructible Wife (1917), L'elevation (1917), and Eve's Daughter (1917).^[3]

He acted on the stage in Australia and then became involved in U.S. horror films in the 1930s, including leading roles in Doctor X (1932), The Vampire Bat, Murders in the Zoo and Mystery of the Wax Museum (all 1933), and perhaps most memorably as the one-armed Inspector Krogh in Son of Frankenstein (1939), ^[1] a role famously parodied by Kenneth Mars in Mel Brooks' 1974 satire Young Frankenstein. He appeared in four subsequent Universal Frankenstein films as well as many other of the studio's beloved chillers.

His other roles include a romantic lead opposite Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's The Devil Is a Woman (1935), a crooked insurance investigator in The Wrong Road (1937) for RKO, Dr. James Mortimer in 20th Century Fox's film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), and Professor Moriarty in the Universal Studios film Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1943).^[1] He also had a rare comedy role in Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 classic To Be or Not to Be and that same year menaced Abbott and Costello in Pardon My Sarong.

 

 

Atwill married four times. His first wife was Phyllis Relph; the couple married in 1913 and divorced in 1919. In 1941, their son John Arthur Atwill (born 1914) was killed in action at age 26.^[4] Atwill married the actress Elsie Mackay in 1920. He married Louise Cromwell Brooks in 1930 after her divorce from General of the Army Douglas MacArthur; they divorced in 1943.^[5] Atwill married Paula Pruter in 1944, and their marriage continued until his death.^[1] Their son, Lionel Anthony Atwill, is a retired writer.

In 1942, Atwill was indicted for perjury by a jury investigating the 1941 proceeding of a grand jury relative to the alleged occurrence of a sex orgy at his home. He was given five years probation, but Hollywood producers and other executives blacklisted him for minor criminal activity. He made small film appearances afterward.^[6][7]

Atwill died on 22 April 1946, as a result of lung cancer^[8] and pneumonia at his home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles.^[1]

• Mank, Gregory William (1998). Hollywood's Maddest Doctors. A Biography of Lionel Atwill, Colin Clive and George Zucco. Baltimore: Midnight Marquee Press. ISBN 978-1887664226.
• Smith, Ronald L. (2010). Horror stars on radio, The broadcast histories of 29 chilling Hollywood voices. Jefferson NC: McFarland. ISBN 978-0786445257.
• Pitts, Michael R. (9 January 2002). Horror Film Stars (3rd ed.). Jefferson NC: McFarland. ISBN 978-0786410521.
• Stuart, Ray; Banasiewicz, Czeslaw Z. (1965). Immortals of the Screen. New York: Bonanza Books. ASIN B000OGH3S2.
• Twomey, Alfred E.; McClure, Arthur F. (1969). The Versatiles, A Study of Supporting Character Actors and Actresses in the American Motion Picture, 1930-1955. South Brunswick NJ: A.S. Barnes & Company. ISBN 978-0498067921.

 

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Lionel Atwill.

• Lionel Atwill at IMDb
• Lionel Atwill at the Internet Broadway Database