Reginald Owen, 1887-1972

Today marks the birth anniversary of British-born actor Reginald Owen, who was born on this day in 1887. Owen appeared in a few silents, but started working in earnest at MGM in the 1930s where, being under contract, he worked constantly, appearing in something like 60 movies in the 1930s. Rarely was Owen the star, however; he usually played second roles as in Petticoat Fever, from which the photo at left is taken; there, he loses Myrna Loy to Robert Montgomery. (I briefly mentioned Petticoat Fever some time back, but not a full post, and it's still not on DVD even at the Warner Archive collection. It's scheduled for early September on TCM, though.)

It is for one of Owen's starring roles that he's probably best known, that of Ebenezer Scrooge in MGM's 1938 adaptation of Dickens' A Christmas Carol. And as a point of interesting trivia, Owen played Dr. Watson in the 1932 version of Sherlock Holmes. A year later, in A Study in Scarlet, Owen would play Holmes himself.