Herbert Marshall

Herbert Bruff Falcon Marshall was born 23 May in 1890 in London, England. He was the only child of stage actors Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. His family included a number of highly respected actors, critics and authors, including having in his family tree Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein.

Raised primarily by three ants because his parents were on tour, Marshall would ultimately a company his parents during the summer, which resulted in a distaste for the theatre. He is reported as saying he vowed never to go on the stage.

After graduating from St. Mary's College in Essex, he started working as an accounting clerk from which he was fired. He began working as an assistant business manager for a theatre troupe, and then had a series of backstage jobs before turning to acting because, as Marshall claims, he did not know how to do anything else. He started stage work in 1911 and then was drafted to serve in

the First World War. On April 9, 1917, while in a trench, he was shot in the knee. The doctors were forced to amputate his right leg near the hip. After over a year of rehabilitation and work with a prosthetic leg, he learned to walk with only a very slight limp. However, the prosthetic limb and the phantom pain caused him discomfort for the rest of his life.

By December of 1918, he returned to the stage and performed a number of plays until 1932, but in 1927 he started his transition to movies, appearing in Mumsie, his only silent film, and then to the talkies in the 1929 movie The Letter.

He would appear in a total of 75 movies and 11 different television shows. Some of his most notable works include Alfred Hitchcock's Murder in 1930, Trouble in Paradise in 1932, Riptide in 1934, Breakfast for Two in 1937, Foreign Correspondent in 1940, The Secret Garden in 1949.