Herbert Marshall, born Herbert Brough Falcon Marshall, in London, England, (May 23, 1890 - January 22, 1966) was a popular English cinema and theatre actor. His parents were Percy F. Marshall and Ethel May Turner. He graduated from St. Mary's College in Harrow and worked for a time as an accounting clerk. Marshall overcame the loss of a leg during the Great War (World War I), where he served in the London Scottish Regiment (blank">http://www.londonscottishregt.org) with fellow actors _Basil Rathbone, Ronald Colman, and Claude Rains to enjoy a long career.

His stage debut took place in 1911, and he entered motion pictures with Mumsie (1927). Initially he played romantic leads and later character roles. The suave actor spent many years playing romantic leads opposite such stars as Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich and Bette Davis, and starring in such classics as The Little Foxes, Trouble in Paradise and The Razor's Edge. He was married five times, including marriages to the actresses Edna Best, with whom he appeared in The Calendar, Michael and Mary and The Faithful Heart, and Boots Mallory to whom he was married from 1947 until her death in 1958.

Herbert Marshall had trained to become a chartered accountant, but his interest turned to the stage. Having lost a leg while serving in World War I, he was rehabilitated with a wooden leg. This did not stop him making good the stage vocation. He used a very deliberate square-shouldered and guided walk - largely unnoticeable - to cover up the limp. He spent 20 years in distinguished stage work in London before films. He almost made the transition from stage directly to sound movies but for his only silent film, Mumsie (1927) which was a British production. He had a wonderful mellow baritone British accent which he rolled out with a minimum of mouth movement and a nonchalant ease that stood out as unique. His rather blasé demeanor could take on various nuances - without overt emotion - to fit any role he played, whether sophisticated comedy or drama - and the accent fit just as well. He filled the range from romantic lead-with several sympathetic strangers thrown in - dignified military officer or doctor to various degrees of villainy - his unemotional delivery meshing with the cold, impassive criminal character. He was almost 40 when he appeared in his first Hollywood sound picture Letter, The (1929), a worthwhile comparison (but for the primitive sound recording) with the more famous second version (Letter, The (1940)) with Bette Davis. Marshall is the murder victim in 1929 and the betrayed husband in 1940. He was heavily in demand in the 1930s, sometimes in five or six pictures a year. Perhaps his best suave comedic role was in Trouble in Paradise (1932), the first non-musical sound comedy by producer/director Ernst Lubitsch - to some Lubitsch's greatest film. That same year Marshall did one of his most warmly human romantic roles in the marvelously erotic Blonde Venus (1932) with the captivating early Marlene Dietrich. Through the 1940s the roles were of a more character variety but substantial. He was deviously subtle as the pre-World War II peace leader actually working against peace for a veiled foreign power (Germany) in Foreign Correspondent (1940), an early Alfred Hitchcock (I) Hollywood film and definitely under-rated adventure/thriller. Who could forget Marshall's small but standout performance as Scott Chavez, who at the beginning of Duel in the Sun (1946) - with that Marshall nonchalance - calmly shoots his cantina entertainer Indian wife for her cheating ways? By the 1950s Marshall was doing fewer movies, but still a variety. His voice was perfect to lend credence to some early sci-fi classics: Riders to the Stars (1954) and Gog (1954) and the Fly, The (1958). But he was also busy re-honing his considerable stage skills with the various early TV playhouse programs. He also fitted comfortably into episodic TV into the 1960s which included a rare 1963 five part run on "77 Sunset Strip" (1958), one of several popular early PI offerings of Warner Bros., in which he played a priest. All told, Herbert Marshall graced close on 100 movie and TV roles with an aplomb that remains a rich legacy.