Ian Hunter(1900-1975)
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Ian Hunter was born in the Kenilworth area of Cape Town, South Africa
where he spent his childhood. In his teen years he and his parents
returned to the family origins in England to live. Sometime between
that arrival and the early years of World War I, Hunter began exploring
acting. But in 1917 - and being only 17 - he joined the army to serve in
France for the year of war still remaining. Within two years he did
indeed make his stage-acting debut. Hunter would never forget that the
stage was the thing when the lure of moving making called - he would
always return through his career. With a jovial face perpetually on the
verge of smiling and a friendly and mildly English accent, Hunter had
good guy lead written all over him. He decided to sample the relatively
young British silent film industry by taking a part in
Not for Sale (1924) for British
director W.P. Kellino who had started out
writing and acting for the theater. Hunter then made his first trip to
the U.S. - Broadway, not Hollywood - because
Basil Dean, well known British actor,
director, and producer, was producing Sheridan's "The School for
Scandal" at the Knickerbocker Theater - unfortunately folding after one
performance. It was a more concerted effort with film the next year
back in Britain, again with Kellino. He then met up-and-coming mystery
and suspense director
Alfred Hitchcock in 1927. He
did Hitch's The Ring (1927) - about
the boxing game, not suspense - and stayed for the director's
When Boys Leave Home (1927). And with a few more
films into the next year he was back with Hitchcock once more for
Easy Virtue (1927), the
Noël Coward play. By late 1928 he returned
to Broadway for only a months run in the original comedy "Olympia" but
stayed on in the United States via his first connection with Hollywood. The film
was Syncopation (1929), his first
sound film and that for RKO, that is, one of the early mono efforts,
sound mix with the usual silent acting. As if restless to keep ever
cycling back and forth across the Atlantic - fairly typical of Hunter's
career - he returned to London for Dean's mono thriller
Escape! (1930). There was an interval
of fifteen films in all before Hunter returned to Hollywood and by
then he was well established as a leading man. With
The Girl from 10th Avenue (1935)
with Bette Davis, Hunter made his connection
with Warner Bros. But before settling in with them through much of the
1930s, he did three pictures in succession with another gifted and
promising British director,
Michael Powell. He then began the
films he is most remembered from Hollywood's Golden Era. Although a
small part, he is completely engaging and in command as the Duke in the
Shakespearean extravaganza of Austrian theater master
Max Reinhardt,
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935)
for Warner Bros. It marked the start of a string of nearly thirty
films for WB. Among the best remembered was his jovial King Richard in
the rollicking
The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938).
Hunter was playing the field as well - he was at Twentieth Century as
everybody's favorite father-hero - including
Shirley Temple - in the
The Little Princess (1939).
And he was the unforgettable benign guardian angel-like Cambreau in
Loew's Strange Cargo (1940) with
Clark Gable. He was staying regularly busy
in Hollywood until into 1942 when he returned to Britain to serve in
the war effort. After the war Hunter stayed on in London, making films
and doing stage work. He appeared once more on Broadway in 1948 and
made Edward, My Son (1949) for
George Cukor. Although there was some
American playhouse theater in the mid-1950s, Hunter was bound to
England, working once more for Powell in 1961 before retiring in the
middle of that decade after nearly a hundred outings before the camera.
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