Biography

Wrote a biography of his friend George Sanders entitled "A Dreadful Man", which contained much autobiographical information.

Had a pilot's license and owned a plane.

In 1945, he traveled to Italy, France, Holland and Germany to perform for the troops in "The Barretts of Wimpole Street".

Studied architecture following his career as a child actor but returned to the stage in 1923 in a revival of "Paddy the Next Best Thing" at the Savoy Theatre, London.

While married to Joan Fontaine, he lived on the Hollywood hilltop property where North Crescent Heights Blvd. ends, above and adjacent to Hollywood Blvd. and Laurel Canyon Blvd. The "U" plan two-story Colonial mansion faced southeast with a view of both Hollywood and downtown Los Angeles. The front four-columned front porch, with tall French doors, opened into the center foyer with a curved staircase leading upstairs to a central hall landing, with bedrooms and guest quarters left and right of the upstairs wings. On the main floor the large living space and a library room, each with fireplace, was left of the staircase. To the right of the foyer staircase was the grand dining room with a fireplace, butler's pantry, main kitchen, with servant quarters located behind the kitchen. In the open "U" courtyard was a swimming pool, with garages and chauffeur quarters as a separate backup building. The front circular concrete driveway connected to an unpaved dirt road which connected to the city-maintained asphalt North Crescent Heights Blvd. This West Hollywood neighborhood was the Beverly Hills of the 1930s-'50s with film illuminates living on the North Crescent Heights hillside estates. Lionel Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore each owned houses next to each other, with Victor Mature as their neighbor. The Greek government owned its ambassador's residence. At the foot of the hill, Gloria Swanson's Georgian columned two-story residence on Selma Ave. at North Crescent Heights Blvd. was opposite Judy Canova's residence. Veronica Lake's residence was on the west side of North Crescent Heights, on Hollywood Blvd.'s "East Sunset Strip" area overlooking "The Garden of Allah"; at the start of the fabled Sunset Blvd. Strip, where John Barrymore and Errol Flynn had their party apartment units in The Garden of Allah. At the Hollywood Blvd./Laurel Canyon "flats"area, on Hollywood Blvd., Claude Rains was neighbor to Clark Gable.

Brilliant actress though she is, surely nobody but a mother could have loved Bette Davis at the height of her career. Evidently I failed to make my admiration clear, however, because in her lively and self-revealing book, "The Lonely Life," she says I looked at her with loathing.

John Van Druten once remarked to a friend of mine, "Brian feels about homosexuals the way most people feel about ghosts; he just can't believe they exist!" and it is true, though I don't actually care what people do with their private lives so long as they do not infringe upon my own.

One just does not behave in England quite the same as one does in America and Australia, and the Australian girl on the sheep station who thought I was a stuffed shirt has had her counterpart, I fear, only too often in America.

Make-up in those days was sticks of #5 Leichner greasepaint and heavy lipstick, which we applied so thickly that we looked like clowns and could scarcely move a muscle of our faces... the whole business of silent acting seemed phony and ridiculous, entailing as it did pulling exaggerated faces while a director shouted at one through a megaphone and an orchestra played unsuitable music in the background.

Most men who become actors do so either because, like myself, they couldn't get a job at anything else or because, as I firmly believe, they are attracted by the prospect of long mornings in bed.