Leslie Howard Steiner

Leslie Howard Steiner, better known as Leslie Howard was born 3 April 1893. He was an English actor, director, producer, and writer. He was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s. Born to a British mother, Lilian (née Blumberg) whose grandfather was Jewish, and a Hungarian-Jewish father, Ferdinand Steiner, in Forest Hill, London. His mother, Lilian had been raised as a Christian, but no information is available on what religion Howard recognized. In 1920 he changed his name to Leslie Howard.

Active in both Britain and Hollywood, often playing the quintessential Englishman, including Berkeley Square (1933), Of Human Bondage (1934), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), The Petrified Forest (1936), Pygmalion (1938), Intermezzo (1939), "Pimpernel" Smith (1941), and The First of the Few (1942). He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for Berkeley Square and Pygmalion. In America, Howard is best known as Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). Following completion of the movie, he returned to Britain to serve his country since the war had already started.

Howard's World War II activities included acting and filmmaking. He helped to make anti-German propaganda and shore up support for the Allies. He was rumored to have been involved with British or Allied Intelligence, sparking conspiracy theories regarding his death in 1943 when the Luftwaffe shot down BOAC Flight 777 over the Atlantic (off the coast of Cedeira, A Coruña), the plane on which he was a passenger.

The circumstances, theories and myths which have grown around the shooting down of Howard's plane continue to draw interest even today. Most interesting was the news of Howard's death, published in the same issue of The Times that reported the "death" of Major William Martin, the “Man who never Was” created for the ruse involved in Operation Mincemeat.

Britain devised a trick to fool the Nazis into believing that the next allied action would be the invasion of Greece, rather than the planned invasion of Sicily. A corpse, the body of a vagrant carrying false secrets, dumped off the coast of Spain and discovered by Spanish fishermen was turned over to the government. Although, Spain was neutral during the war, the government was sympathetic to the Nazis and allowed German diplomates to examine the secret papers. The plan worked and among the British operatives who organized the mission were Lieutenant Commander Ian Fleming.