Leslie Howard

Leslie Howard (born Leslie Howard Steiner, 3 April 1893 – 1 June 1943) was an English stage and film actor, director and producer. Howard also wrote many stories and articles for The New York Times, The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. Howard was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s but is probably best remembered for playing Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind (1939). Howard had movie roles in many other notable films, 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), receiving two nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Howard's Second World War activities included acting and filmmaking. He was active in anti-German propaganda and rumoured to have been involved with British or Allied Intelligence, sparking conspiracy theories regarding his death in 1943 at the hands of the German Luftwaffe when the British airliner on which he was a passenger was shot down over the Bay of Biscay.