Reginald Denny

Do you remember Max de Winter's friend and secretary Frank Crawley in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca? It was a small part but the dashing blue-eyed man who played it made the most of it. You'd never guess by seeing him that he had been a star 20 years before that film.

From the UK to the US

He was born in London in 1890. The son and grand-son of comedians, he appears on stage at the age of 6 in the play The Royal Family, opposite Gertrude Elliott, in the part of the young Prince Charles Ferdinand. At 16, while still taking acting courses, he decides to become a professional boxer. Championed by Lord Lonsdale, he wins a tournament in 1908.

He then spends a year in the USA to play in a musical, Quaker Girl, opposite Miss Ina Claire. On his return, he sings at the Opera of Manchester and leaves again for a tour in Australia and India.

In Rebecca with Joan Fontaine

In 1913, he gets married in Calcutta to Irene Haisman, an actress who plays with him in several plays and films, and then goes back to New York where he appears in Twin Beds, James Barrie's Rosalind with Marie Tempest, The Professor's Love Story with George Arliss, and The Great Catherine.

He spends Word War I in the Royal Flying Corps, afterwhich he is hired for the New York revue The Passing Show of 1919 at the Winter Garden. He also appears with John Barrymore in Richard III.

Screen debut

It is then that he starts appearing regularly in films: Bringing up Betty, Paying The Piper (directed by George Fitzmaurice), Disraeli (with George Arliss again!), Footlights (with Elsie Ferguson), Sherlock Homes (also with John Barrymore, a film recently restored and available on Blu-ray).

But it is in the role of Napoleon Gibbs Jr. in 39 East that he is noticed by the public and by author H.C. Witwer who offered him to star as boxer Kid Roberts in the Universal serial called The Leather Pushers, adapted from his story. Denny was a shoe-in for the role with his experience of boxing. The serial lasted 24 episodes from 1922 to 1924 and a remake was made in 1940 starring Richard Arlen (from Wings).

A star boxer

Reginald even plays the son of Kid Roberts, Elliott Beresford, in the now lost film On your Toes.

Aside from the serial, Reginald Denny is offered starring parts in features, most often related with sports: The Kentucky Derby (Cinemagazine calls him "impeccable" in it, although they find the film disappointing), Sporting Youth (he even has an accident during the shoot of this film and recovered), and occasionally other subjects like the adaptation of his favorite author Jack London's Abysmal Brute.

One of these films is called Fast and Furious, not unlike the 2001 Rob L. Cohen film The Fast and the Furious.

He also stars in many comedies, eight of which with Otis Harlan, Happy in Snow White, like Where Was I? where the disapproving father (played by Tyrone Power Sr.) of his bride-to-be hires a girl to pretend he is already married; or What Happened to Jones? where, pursued by the police for gambling, he ends up in rags in a Turkish bath on ladies night.

Reginald in a 1925 Xmas publicity picture with wife Irene Haisman and daughter Barbara

In Out All Night, he takes the place of a ship surgeon.

In Skinner's Dress Suit, another comedy, he steps in the shoes of former star Bryant Washburn who starred in a previous version of the film.

His influence is such then that he even takes the role of director on his film That's My Daddy, when the original director Fred C. Newmeyer and he have "creative differences".

The talkies

Mary Pickford and Reginald Denny

He embraces talking pictures and helps famous stars speak some of their first words. Jeannette MacDonald in Oh, for a man!, Buster Keaton in Parlor Bedroom and Bath, Mary Pickford in Kiki!
He then keeps starring parts opposite Norma Shearer, Robert Montgomery, Boris Karloff, Bette Davis, etc. But as he gets older, he gradually becomes a supporting character actor, his recurring part of Algy Longworth in the Bulldog Drummond films being an example.

By the 1940s, his most notable parts are in Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca, in Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror and in H.C. Potter's Mr. Blanding Builds His Dream House (starring Cary Grant).

Marilyn Monroe

Reginald's employee: Marilyn Monroe

He also develops a passion for model planes and radio controlled planes and launches the Radioplane company. One of his factory employee, nurse Ethel Dougherty, in April 1944 finds a job there for her daughter-in-law Norma Jeane, who gets noticed by a photographer a few months later and will soon become Marilyn Monroe.

He then focuses his career on television and ends it by a role in the acclaimed TV series Batman as King Boris and his very last role is in the Batman feature (available on Blu-ray) as Commodore Schmidlapp. Incidentally, that series is to be released this year on DVD.

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That's all for today, folks!