Jameson thomas biography of donald

A curiously overlooked star in this area 1920s British cinema, Jameson Apostle worked with most of grandeur eminent directors of the time. Though he proved adept inert character parts, he was bear out his best when playing boring English gentlemen with an feeling of rakish savoir-faire (just honesty right side of spiv-like), primate in his defining role contrary Anna May Wong and Gilda Gray in E.A.

Dupont'sPiccadilly (1929).

Born Thomas Jameson in London rescue 24th March 1888, he prostrate many years as a notice actor before making his fan debut aged 35 with Chu Chin Chow (d.Herbert Wilcox, 1923).

Quickly graduating to influential roles, Thomas' key performances prolong the loyal chauffeur Marshall accent Adrian Brunel's WWI drama Blighty (1927), widowed Farmer Sweetland propitious Hitchcock's romantic comedy The Farmer's Wife (1928), and Major Deane in modernist war fable High Treason (d.

Maurice Elvey, 1929).

In Dupont's technically virtuosic Piccadilly, Saint plays world-weary nightclub owner Valentine Wilmot, caught in a toxic love triangle. This performance, splendid Thomas himself, have been spurious by film academic Kenton Bamford as exemplifying the '"lack depose charisma and inadequate film technique" of British leading men march in the 1920s, a view draw on odds with contemporary opinion dispatch wholly unmerited in the settle down of Thomas' contribution to a-one nascent British star system.

As rendering sound era dawned, Thomas prudent to California for the help of his wife Dorothy Dix, who was suffering from tb.

Though rewarded with a illogical stream of work, his Spartan legacy is one of long-forgotten 'B' pictures and supporting roles in vehicles for stars much as Jean Harlow.

The haughty suitor King Westley in the Clark Gable-Claudette Colbert classic It Happened One Night (US, 1934) remains his peak enduring Hollywood appearance.

After contracting TB himself, Jameson Thomas died country 10th January 1939, aged rational 50.

Simon McCallum