Personal Info
Known For
Acting
Birthdate
1889-04-13
Day of Death
1941-07-29
Place of Birth
Selby, Yorkshire, England, UK
James Stephenson
Biography
British stage actor James Stephenson made his film debut quite late in life, at the age of 49, in 1937, making four pictures that year. Warner Bros. got a glimpse of this distinguished gent and signed him to a contract where he indulged himself in urbane villainy. Proving a reliable support in such films as Boy Meets Girl (1938), You Can't Get Away with Murder (1939), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), and the classic adventure The Sea Hawk (1940), he was entrusted by director William Wyler and mega-star Bette Davis to play the sympathetic role of the family attorney Howard Joyce in The Letter (1940). It was the role of a lifetime and he didn't let them down for he earned an Oscar nomination in the process. Stephenson was soon on a roll, playing the titular sleuth in Calling Philo Vance (1940) and was first-billed in the above-average "B" movie Shining Victory (1941) when he died suddenly in 1941 of a heart attack at the rather young age of 53. Date of Death: 29 July 1941, Pacific Palisades, California (heart attack)
Filmography (37)
International Squadron
1941
Shining Victory
1941
Flight from Destiny
1941
The Letter
1940
South of Suez
1940
A Dispatch from Reuters
1940
The Sea Hawk
1940
River's End
1940
Murder in the Air
1940
Calling Philo Vance
1940Wolf of New York
1940
We Are Not Alone
1939
The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex
1939
The Monroe Doctrine
1939
