Howard (Stainer), Leslie

Howard [Stainer], Leslie (1893–1943), actor. The suave, slender, handsome English‐born leading man first appeared before New York audiences as Sir Calverton Shipley in Just Suppose (1920). Thereafter, he played in New York more than in England. Best recalled among his many roles were the suicide victim Henry in the fantasy Outward Bound (1924), the loyal Napier Harpenden in The Green Hat (1925), the hired lover André Sallicel in Her Cardboard Lover (1927), the prisoner Matt Denant in Escape (1927), the time‐traveling Peter Standish in Berkeley Square (1929), the prince's valet Joseph who impersonates his master in Candle Light (1929), publisher Tom Collier in The Animal Kingdom (1932), and the disillusioned idealist Alan Squier in The Petrified Forest (1935). His last Broadway appearance was in 1936 as Hamlet. Howard also enjoyed a successful career in films before his death in a plane downed during World War II. John Mason Brown recalled him as “a player supreme as a water‐colorist but without strength for oils. Of a negative he made a positive; of diffidence, an act of caring. No one could write of him. . .without falling back on the word ‘charm,’ which he had in such easy abundance that he could turn nighttime theatregoers into matinee audiences.” Biography: A Quite Remarkable Father, Leslie Ruth Howard, 1959.