Herbert Mundin's Film Years (1936 - 1939) | Herbert Mundin

Herbert Mundin - The Film Years (1936 - 1939)

There were six films released in 1936 that featured Herbert Mundin. The year began with King of Burlesque premiered at the start of January starring Alice Faye, the most famous singing actress of her day. Mundin played an English impresario and Faye performed I Love To Ride The Horses On The Merry Go Round with him.

Herbert Mundin in Charlie Chan's Secret
Above left: From Charlie Chan's Secret; Above right: Herbert Mundin Twentieth Century-Fox studio portrait

Released in mid-January, Charlie Chan's Secret, featured Herbert as Baxter the bumbling butler with Warner Oland as the eponymous detective. It was the thirteenth of an astonishing forty-seven Charlie Chan movies that starred Warner Oland. Mundin, had a substantial role and featured quite inventively in the film's denouement.

Herbert's promotional 10" x 8" studio portrait (pictured above left), acquired by this website, bears this hand-written notation:

232P/3. "CHARLIE CHAN"S SECRET" - seems to provide Herbert Mundin with a strange reaction. Here's the little comedian listening in on a bit of the dialogue between scenes of "Charlie Chan's Secret," latest of the Warner Oland mystery thrillers now in production for 20th Century-Fox.

Herbert Mundin and Ronald Colman in Under Two Flags released by Twentieth-Century Fox in May, 1936
In Under Two Flags, released in May 1936, Herbert played Rake along with Ronald Colman and Claudette Colbert. This was another Frank Lloyd film. He'd directed Herbert in the Oscar-winning Cavalcade and Mutiny on the Bounty plus Hoop-La. Under Two Flags was a French Foreign Legion story which blazed the trail for Beau Geste.

In November, Tarzan Escapes, was released with the tag 'It's New! It's amazing!' 2 years to produce!. Johnny Weissmuller played Tarzan and Maureen O'Sullivan played Jane with Herbert as the usual comic relief as the adventurer Rawlins.

Herbert Mundin and Tarzan's pet chimp Cheetah in Tarzan Escapes, released in November, 1936
Herbert performed in four films in 1937, none of which are especially known today. Not that they were bad films as such. It's simply that the star talent that he played against are remembered for their roles in much bigger and better productions.

The romantic melodrama, Another Dawn, released in June, featured Errol Flynn and Kay Francis. Flynn played Colonel John Wister who ran a British outpost in the Sahara desert with Herbert as his orderly. Also released that month was the comedy romance You Can't Beat Love which starred Joan Fontaine in her third picture and Preston Foster. Herbert's character was faithful valet Jasper 'Meadows' Hives.

In romantic comedy Angel, directed by Ernst Lubitsch and released in October 1937, Mundin played Mr. Greenwood along with Marlene Dietrich, Melvyn Douglas and Herbert Marshall.

A theatre poster for Invisible Enemy, released in April 1938 and starring Alan Marshal and Tala Birell

There were four films that featured Herbert in 1938, including crime drama, Invisible Enemy. This featured lesser-known actors who were greatly outshone by the talent that appeared in Mundin's next production, The Adventures of Robin Hood. This film based on the legendary hero of Sherwood Forest was released in May and starred Errol Flynn, Olivia de Havilland, Basil Rathbone and Claude Rains.

Herbert was cast as Much the Miller's Son and it's often celebrated as his career role. He was a member of Robin's band of outlaws and his romance with Marian's lady in waiting, Bess (Una O'Connor), is seen by many as one of the film's highlights.

The Adventures of Robin Hood won three Oscars for Best Art Direction, Best Film Editing and Best Music, Original Score and was the third and final Academy Award-winning film that Herbert Mundin was associated with.

Herbert Mundin in Lord Jeff from 1938 as supervisor Bosun 'Crusty' Jelks

In Lord Jeff released in June, he was reunited with Freddie Bartholomew who he'd acted with in David Copperfield. Herbert played Bosun 'Crusty' Jelks, a supervisor at a naval school, and the film was also notable for starring seventeen-years-old Mickey Rooney.

Herbert Mundin with Pierre Watkin in Society Lawyer 1939 - this was Herbert's last film
During late 1938 and early 1939, work was thin on the ground for Herbert and he made just one film, Society Lawyer. However, he had several contracts for future pictures lined up and on March 15th, 1939 was set to start work on a Paramount production of Bulldog Drummond. On March 21st the premiere of Society Lawyer took place. In this film Herbert played Layton the butler who attended to lawyer Christopher Durant, played by Walter Pidgeon. Herbert, however, could not be in the audience to watch his own performance.

Seventeen days earlier in Van Nuys, California he had been a passenger in a car driven by his friend P. H. Waddell. The pair were planning to attend a dinner party, when a collision with a vehicle driven by John Grover took place at Woodman Avenue and Riverside Drive. The impact hurled Waddell's vehicle 120 feet to the top of an embankment, the passenger door flew open and Herbert fell from the car. He receiving a fractured skull and crushed chest and was quickly taken to Van Nuys Receiving Hospital but couldn't be saved.

Herbert's simple memorial in Inglewood Park Cemetery, Inglewood, California (Charter Oak Section, lot 117)

In England, The Adventures of Robin Hood was still being shown and in the week before Herbert's death, his sister Clara Smith had watched it at her local cinema nine times. Her mother, Jane Mundin, first heard news of her son’s death while listening to the BBC news at her home in Wallasey. She hadn't seen her son for some years and he was not a regular letter writer. However, just a week before his death she had received a letter from Herbert in which he wrote: "I am terribly busy. Don’t think I have forgotten you if I don’t write".

Clara Smith told the St.Helens Reporter:
My mother is heartbroken. She was confident he would take a rest and come home this year – she had not seen him for eight years. She saw all his pictures several times and longed to speak to him. She will not see him again – he will probably be buried at Hollywood where he achieved some of his greatest successes.
Herbert Mundin's interment took place in Inglewood Park Cemetery in California on March 8th, 1939. He was buried in a plot that had been specially consecrated as British soil, although his simple memorial bears the wrong year of birth. There were over four hundred mourners at Herbert's funeral and the 'honorary' pallbearers included Ronald Colman, Herbert Marshall, the Earl of Warwick, Andre Charlot, C. Aubrey Smith, Robert Emmett Keane and Alan Mowbray. Film director Frank Lloyd, who had directed the 'Hollywood scene stealer' in Cavalcade, Mutiny on the Bounty and Under Two Flags, also attended as did Ed Marin, director of Society Lawyer, the last film that Herbert Mundin had made. Having served in the British navy during the first world war, military ceremonies were carried out at the funeral and his memorial bears the initials 'RN'.

Herbert's close friend Leslie Hugh Fortescue-Harrison sent his heartbroken mother a flower which he had taken from his grave. In a reply from her daughter Clara, she described the family's shock at hearing the news of her brother's death over the "wireless", which she said had been a "nightmare". Her mother and young daughter Pat, Herbert's niece, had been in a "terrible state" and Pat had to be kept off school for a month while the family recovered from the shock.

Other family members still lived in St.Helens, the town of Herbert's birth. An uncle Thomas Lewis resided in Waterdale Crescent, Sutton and a second uncle Sam Lewis lived in Kiln Lane, close to where his famous nephew had been born. There was also an aunt in Rainhill, near St.Helens. Thomas Lewis told the St.Helens Reporter in their report on Herbert's death (March 10th, 1939) that his nephew had last visited the town in 1930 when he'd appeared at the Liverpool Empire in 'Open Your Eyes'. He also commented that Herbert had performed in a variety programme at a St.Helens theatre about 1923. The St.Helens Newspaper concluded their own report (March 7th, 1939) on the tragic loss by summing up Herbert's great attribute:
Facial mobility was the secret of Mr. Mundin's success. It gave expression to every shade of his thoughts. Mundin himself confessed "My face has always had the habit of 'running away' with me. I have never consciously set out to act with my face.
Herbert Mundin was only forty years old when he died but he'd lived the Hollywood dream that he so wanted. Seventy years since his passing, many viewers of old films on television or DVD still smile at his antics and remarkable facial dexterity. Not a bad legacy to leave the world!
Next Part: Mundin Press Reports

Written and researched by Stephen Wainwright with additional research by Barry Fletcher and Derek Mundin and contributions from Bob Harrison, Peter Metcalfe, Jill McManus & Philip G. Cerny

Herbert Mundin - The Hollywood Scene Stealer

An illustrated tribute to the English character actor and comedian