John Abbott(1905-1996)

John was a commercial artist when he substituted for a sick friend in an amateur production. This was seen by the actress Sybil Thorndike who recognized his potential. After repertory work at Watford and Crewe, he was invited to join London's Old Vic in 1936 by Tyrone Guthrie and appeared in 'Love's Labours Lost' and 'Twelfth Night'. In 1937, he was in the production of 'Hamlet' that was performed at Elsinore with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh. He made his film debut in 1937 in The Conquest of the Air (1931) and in a early BBC television production of 'The Harmfulness of Tobacco'. At the outbreak of war, he was attached to the British Embassy in Stockholm where he was in coding and decoding. In 1941, he was in California and about to return to England when he was offered a role in The Shanghai Gesture (1941), which was the prelude to a long film career that included Mrs. Miniver (1942), Jane Eyre (1943), Madame Bovary (1949), Gigi (1958), and Gambit (1966). In 1946, he made his Broadway debut in 'He Who Gets Slapped', which was followed by 'Montsarrat' (1948) and 'The Waltz of the Toreadors' (1957), among others. He was also prolific in television work, appearing in episodes such as Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955) ("First Class Honeymoon", 1962), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964) ("The Birds and the Bees Affair", 1966), and Bewitched (1964) (as Leonardo da Vinci in "Samantha's da Vinci Dilemma", 1967).