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Arnold Ridley aka Private Godfrey of Dads Army
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[This short profile of the actor and playwright Arnold Ridley first appeared in a piece by Mark Bristow titled 'Seven British Actors Who Served during the Great War'. It appeared in Firestep Vol.7. No.1 The Western Front Association London Branch magazine, all volumes of which are available for access by members using their member login]. Arnold…
Lieutenant Philip St John Basil Rathbone aka Sherlock Holmes
/world-war-i-articles/lieutenant-philip-st-john-basil-rathbone-aka-sherlock-holmes/
[This short profile of the stage, film and later TV actor Basil Rathbone first appeared in a piece by Mark Bristow as 'Seven British actors who served during the Great War'. It appeared in Firestep Vol.7. No.1 The Western Front Association London Branch magazine, all volumes of which are available for access by members using their member login]. W…
Ronald Colman : London Scottish, British Stage Actor, Broadway, Film Actor, Radio and TV Star
[This short profile of the actor Ronald Coleman first appeared in a piece by Mark Bristow titled 'Seven British Actors Who Served during the Great War' in Firestep Vol.7. No.1 The Western Front Association London Branch magazine, all volumes of which are available for access by members using their member login]. On 31 October 1914 the London Sco…
John Laurie : Shakespearean actor and Private Fraser in the BBC's Dads Army
/world-war-i-articles/john-laurie-shakespearean-actor-and-private-fraser-in-the-bbcs-dads-army/
John Laurie was born 25 March 1897 in Dumfries and was destined to be an architect before the Great War intervened. He admitted that he never expected to survive the conflict; in fact, he was invalided out of the service and became a sergeant-of-arms at the Tower of London. In 1919 John Laurie’s passion for Shakespeare inspired him to become an …
Mervyn Johns, First World War RFC Pilot and film actor
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Mervyn Johns was born on 18 February 1899 at Pembroke. He was a medical student at a London Hospital before the war, then enlisted into the Royal Flying Corps and became a pilot. He later recalled the demands that repeated combat patrolling made upon the young and inexperienced pilots and observers. He declared “I don’t think there was a single…
Robert ‘Bobbie’ Loraine M.C. : Actor-Airman
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The once-renowned Robert ‘Bobbie’ Lorraine is now an obscure figure. Born on 14 January 1876 in New Brighton, Merseyside, he was known in his heyday as the ‘Actor-Airman’. He became a matinee idol before gaining his Royal Aero Club pilot’s certification in 1910 at the age of thirty five. The first man to land an aircraft on the Isle of Wight in …
Victor McLaglen : prize fighter, Middlesex Regiment, Oscar winning actor of the silent era and talkies
The life story of Victor McLaglen reads like a film script. Victor was born on 11 December 1883 in the genteel English town of Tunbridge Wells, the son of the Right Reverend Andrew McLaglen, a Protestant clergyman and former Bishop of Claremont in South Africa. The oldest of eight brothers, he likely developed a certain streak of toughness, a po…