Sir Charles Aubrey Smith

Sir Charles Aubrey Smith, CBE (21 July 1863 – 20 December 1948) was an England Test cricketer who became a stage and film actor, acquiring a niche as the officer-and-gentleman type, as in the first sound version of The Prisoner of Zenda (1937).

In Hollywood, he organized British actors into a cricket team, much intriguing local spectators.

Smith was born in London, England, to Charles John Smith (1838–1928), a medical doctor, and Sarah Ann (née Clode, 1836–1922).

Smith was educated at Charterhouse School and St John's College, Cambridge. He settled in South Africa to prospect for gold in 1888–89. While there he developed pneumonia and was wrongly pronounced dead by doctors. He married Isabella Wood in 1896.

Smith began acting on the London stage in 1895.

His first major role was in The Prisoner of Zenda the following year, playing the dual lead roles of king and look-alike. Forty-one years later, he appeared in the most acclaimed film version of the novel, this time as the wise old advisor. When Raymond Massey asked him to help him understand the role of Black Michael, he answered "My dear Ray, in my time I have played every part in The Prisoner of Zenda except Princess Flavia. And I always had trouble with Black Michael!"

He made his Broadway debut as early as 1895 in The Notorious Mrs. Ebbsmith. In 1907 he appeared with Marie Doro in The Morals of Marcus, a play Doro later made into a silent film. Smith later appeared in a revival of George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion in the starring role of Henry Higgins.

Smith appeared in early films for the nascent British film industry, starring in The Bump in 1920 (written by A. A. Milne for the company Minerva Films, which was founded in 1920 by the actor Leslie Howard and his friend and story editor Adrian Brunel). Smith later went to Hollywood where he had a successful career as a character actor playing either officer or gentleman roles. He was also regarded as being the unofficial leader of the British film industry colony in Hollywood, which Sheridan Morley characterized as the Hollywood Raj, a select group of British actors who were seen to be colonizing the capital of the film business in the 1930s.

Other film stars considered to be "members" of this select group were David Niven (whom Smith treated like a son), Ronald Colman, Rex Harrison, Robert Coote, Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce (whose daughter's wedding he had attended as best man), Leslie Howard (whom Smith had known since working with him on early films in London), and Patric Knowles.

Smith expected his fellow countrymen to report for regular duty at his Hollywood Cricket Club. Anyone who refused was known to "incur his displeasure". Fiercely patriotic, Smith became openly critical of the British actors of enlistment age who did not return to fight after the outbreak of World War II in 1939. Smith loved playing on his status as Hollywood's "Englishman in Residence". His bushy eyebrows, beady eyes, handlebar moustache, and height of 6'2" made him one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood.

Smith starred alongside such screen legends as leading ladies Greta Garbo, Elizabeth Taylor, and Vivien Leigh and the actors Clark Gable, Laurence Olivier, Ronald Colman, Maurice Chevalier, and Gary Cooper.

His films include such classics as The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), The Four Feathers (1939), Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941), And Then There Were None (1945) in which he played General Mandrake, and the 1949 remake of Little Women starring Elizabeth Taylor and Janet Leigh, in which he portrayed the aged grandfather of Laurie Lawrence, (played by a young Peter Lawford), who generously gives a piano to the frail Beth March (played by Margaret O'Brien). He also appeared as the father of Maureen O'Sullivan in Tarzan the Ape Man, the first Tarzan film with Johnny Weissmüller. Smith also played a leading role as the Earl of Dorincourt in David O. Selznick's literature adaption Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936).

He appears in Dennis Wheatley's 1934 thriller, "Such Power is Dangerous", about an attempt to take over Hollywood, under the fictitious name of 'Warren Hastings Rook' (rather than Charles Aubrey Smith). Author Evelyn Waugh leaned heavily on Smith in drawing the character of Sir Ambrose Abercrombie for Waugh's 1948 satire of Hollywood The Loved One. Commander McBragg in the TV cartoon Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales is a parody of him. The cartoon character also appears in The Simpsons episode "The Seemingly Never-Ending Story".

Smith died from pneumonia at home in Beverly Hills on 20 December 20 1948, aged 85. He was survived by his wife and their daughter, Honor. His body was cremated and nine months later, in accordance with his instructions, its ashes were returned to England and interred in his mother's grave at St Leonard's churchyard in Hove, Sussex.