Wylie Watson

Wylie Watson

actor

Wylie Watson was born on Feb 06, 1889 in UK. Wylie Watson's big-screen debut came with Road House directed by Maurice Elvey in 1934, strarring Magician (uncredited). Wylie Watson is known for My Brother Jonathan directed by Harold French, Michael Denison stars as Jonathan Dakers and Dulcie Gray as Rachel Hammond. The upcoming new movie Wylie Watson plays is Happy Go Lovely which will be released on Sep 03, 1951.

Diminutive Scottish character player with trademark neatly-trimmed moustache, upturned at the ends, who began as a juvenile soprano vocalist in the late 1890's with a family variety act. At one time he performed 15 times daily at a waxworks ! Watson didn't start in films until 1929, when 'discovered' in Hollywood while on an American vacation. His stay in the U.S. was cut short, however, and after one small film role he returned to England to become one of the 'versatiles', adept at playing an assortment of archetypal Britishers, often shifty or cunning, sometimes officious, weak or hen-pecked.Without doubt, one of his best roles was that of 'Mr.Memory' in Alfred Hitchcock's Les 39 marches (1935), who claimed that he stored fifty new facts in his brain every day. Though a small part, it was acted with pathos and integral to the unfolding of the plot. Watson also gave good value for money as a small-time crook, one of Richard Attenborough's nasty little razor gang, in Le gang des tueurs (1947); and as the devious, ever manipulative storekeeper, Joseph Macroon, in Ealing's Whisky à gogo (1949). An adroitness at comedy Watson had already shown way back in the wartime educational short (warning against the dangers of ignoring blackout ordinances), Mr. Proudfoot Shows a Light (1941), where his billiard-playing antics are rudely - and to comic effect - interrupted by a German bomb.Wylie Watson retired from acting in 1952 (except for a small part in Fred Zinnemann's Les horizons sans frontières (1960)) and emigrated to Australia, where he died in May 1966.

  • Birthday

    Feb 06, 1889
  • Place of Birth

    Lanarkshire, Scotland, UK

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