| Born
the son of a wool merchant in Huddersfield , Mason excelled
in school and earned a degree in architecture from Cambridge in 1931.
Having acted in several school plays, he thought he had a better shot
at earning a living as an actor rather than an architect during the Great
Depression. Mason won his first professional role in
The Rascal and made his debut in London 's
West End theater world in 1933 with Gallows Glorious .
A year after he joined London 's Old Vic theater, he made his screen debut
in Late Extra in 1935.
Mason ,
who was just under six feet tall, became Britain 's biggest screen star
a few years later with his performance as the sadistic title character
in the Gainsborough Studios melodrama The
Man in Grey (1943). He cemented his fame as the cruel romantic
leads women loved in the critically weak, but highly popular,
Gainsborough costume dramas Fanny by Gaslight (1944)
and The Wicked Lady (1945), finally achieving
international stardom for his charismatic performance as Ann
Todd 's cane-wielding mentor in the well-received The
Seventh Veil (1946).
Rather than immediately
going to Hollywood , Mason remained in England . Revealing
that he could be more than just brutal leading men in weepy potboilers,
he added an artistic as well as popular triumph to his credits with
Carol Reed 's Odd Man Out (1947).
Starring Mason as a doomed IRA leader hunted by the
police, Odd Man Out garnered international
raves, and he often cited it as his favorite among his many films.
After co-starring
in the British drama The Upturned Glass (1947),
the Masons and their 12 cats finally headed to Hollywood
(via a stint on Broadway in Bathsheba ) in
1947. Spurning a long-term studio contract, Mason became
one of Hollywood 's busiest free agents. Mason 's American
career was firmly established by his late-'40s successes, and his elegant
range helped him remain a Hollywood fixture throughout the '50s. Along
with two superb turns as wily, disillusioned German Field Marshal
Rommel in The Desert Fox (1951) and
The Desert Rats (1953), Mason also engaged
in a glorious Technicolor romance with Ava Gardner in
Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) and
played the villain in the swashbuckler The Prisoner of Zenda
(1952). Calling on his suave intelligence, Mason
starred as cool butler-turned-spy Cicero in what he
considered his best Hollywood film, Joseph L. Mankiewicz 's
smart espionage thriller 5 Fingers (1952).
The actor quickly reunited with Mankiewicz to play the
treasonous Brutus in the director's excellent Shakespeare
-adaptation Julius Caesar in 1953.
Taking a brief break
from Hollywood, Mason returned to Europe to write and
produce the British drama The Lady Possessed (1952),
co-starring his wife, and star as a Harry Lime-esque black marketer in
Carol Reed 's The Man Between (1953).
Mason stepped behind the camera as director for the
first and only time with the subsequent short film The Child
(1954), featuring his wife and daughter Portland
Mason .
Returning to Hollywood
acting, Mason garnered numerous accolades for
George Cukor 's lavish 1954 remake of A Star Is
Born . Though the drama of his co-star Judy Garland
's "comeback" and the studio's decision to re-cut the film after
its debut threatened to overshadow its content, Mason 's
sublimely controlled fury and anguish as doomed falling star Norman
Maine still brought him high praise and earned him his only Best
Actor Academy Award nomination. Whether because he never particularly
liked the film or because he wasn't a great fan of the Hollywood system,
Mason dismissed the Oscar hoopla, noting:
"They
don't mean anything unless you win one; then your salary goes up."
Following an acrimonious
divorce from Pamela and an expensive settlement in 1964,
Mason started working non-stop, segueing into mostly
supporting roles in British, American, and European productions. Despite
appearing in such dubious fare as Genghis Khan (1965)
and The Yin and Yang of Dr. Go (1971),
Mason continued to resist typecasting with his strong turn as
a lecherous friend in The Pumpkin Eater (1964),
and distinguished himself in such films as Anthony Mann 's
sword-and-sandal epic The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964)
and the adaptation of Lord Jim in 1965.
Rarely turning down
jobs even as he approached age 70, Mason joined fellow
éminence grises Laurence Olivier and Gregory
Peck in the Nazi cloning thriller The Boys From
Brazil (1978), was Dr. Watson to Christopher
Plummer 's Sherlock Holmes in Murder by
Decree (1979), and played a sinister antiquarian in the
TV vampire yarn Salem's Lot the same year.
Mason managed
to find the time to write and publish his autobiography Before
I Forget in 1981. The following year, he earned some of
the best reviews of his career -- and his final Oscar nomination for Best
Supporting Actor -- for his subtle, nuanced performance as Paul
Newman 's harsh courtroom adversary in Lumet 's
sterling legal drama The Verdict . His attitude
toward the Academy mellowed with age, and Mason attended
the Oscar ceremony for the first time. He did not, however, live to witness
the praise for what turned out to be his final major feature role, the
appropriately dignified host of The Shooting Party (1984).
Mason suffered a fatal heart attack at his Swiss home
in July 1984 at the age of 75. He was survived by his wife and two children
from his first marriage. |
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