Henry Daniell (1894-1963). Versatile, rather sharp-featured English character actor in Hollywood films, who was at his most memorable and convincing as debonair villains or calculating functionaries. Born Charles Henry Daniel on March 5 1894, In London, England.

A veteran stage actor before embarking on films, at the dawn of the sound era. Daniell appeared both on the West End in his native London and on Broadway. On the big screen he frequently worked with such top directors as George Cukor, for whom he made seven films, his most memorable role, Varon de Varville in Camille with Garbo in 1936. He also worked with directors as Michael Curtiz, Jules Dassin, Max Ophuls,  Vicent Minnelli and Billy Wilder. He was probably best know for his performance as professor Moriarty in  the Basil Rathbone-Niegel Bruce Sherlock Holmes film The Woman in Green.

He appeared in countless other films such as Chaplin's The Great Dictator, were he played Garbitsch, a parody of Joseph Goebbels, and The Body Snatcher, with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. He appeared in two other films in the Sherlock Holmes/Basil Rathbone series. He also is well remembered for his role as the treacherous Lord Wolfingham in the Sea Hawk, with Errol Flynn.

Daniell made his feature debut in the comedy The Awful Truth (1929) opposite Ina Claire, then went to appear in such classics of the 1930s as Camille (1936) opposite Greta Garbo, under the direction of George Cukor. In this exquisitely produced and critically well-received production, Daniell was a standout as Camille's jilted lover, Baron de Varville, bringing equal measures of suavity and elegance to the role.

A STORY ON CAMILLE

The finest male performance in Camille was Henry Daniell's as Baron de Varville, the lame-duck lover who knows something's up with his mistress Margarite Gautier. The Baron, (originally intended for John Barrymore) is a man “whose lips have been locked in sarcasm for so long that he cannot unpurse them even  to kiss his mistress.”

The tension of every Daniell-Garbo encounter is electric. In their most brilliant scene, at his piano, she stretches her beads in symbolic complement to stretching the truth- lying, in fact, about why the bell has rung. They bait each other with the film's best-barbed dialogue, she knowing, he suspecting that her new lover is  outside. Henry Daniell was torn by many anxieties.

It was a difficult scene to play. Worse still, the script called for Garbo to sit down at the piano and play for him, and then while she played, they would both break out in a kind of hard-edged hysterical laughter, for each had penetrated the other's secrets and found relief in laughter. Their nervous laughter and barely controlled hysteria mount as Daniell (Baron de Varville) pounds out Chopin in a furious musical and emotional crescendo:

THE SCENE ON THE PIANO

(The doorbell rings)

Baron:  “Someday I shall get temperamental and object when doorbells ring when I play”
Marguerite:  “Did the doorbell ring?”
Baron:  “Does my music shut out the rest of the world for you?”
Marguerite:  “-yes. You play beautifully”
Baron:  “You lie beautifully”
Marguerite:  “Thank you. That's more than I deserve”
Baron:  “It's not half as much as you deserve, my dear.”

(The doorbells ring again)

Baron:  “-I'll see who it is”
Marguerite:  -“No, I'll tell you” –“but you won't believe me.”
Baron:  -“No, I won't. Who is it?”
Marguerite:  “Well, I might say that there is someone at the wrong door….”
(Laughs)…or the great romance of my life.”
Baron:  “The great romance of your life? Charming”
Marguerite:  “Well, it might have been.” …. Hysterical Laughs….

Before this critical scene, Daniell ask Garbo on the set what she thought of the new scene, she said it was difficult, and asked him what he thought. "I think it is a good scene,” he confessed to Garbo, “But, I am terribly worried about it, you see, 'I don't laugh very easily."

"Neither do I,” she replied, and the mutual admission was no more or less than they needed to do it superbly. The sudden bursts of fierce laughter came naturally, and there was a very rare sense of intimacy between them, for they played brilliantly to each other.

Daniell was one of very few actors who could or ever did steal a scene from Garbo. His suavity always made him appear completely at ease, but in fact he was decidedly nervous  about acting with her.

Garbo's memorable portrayal in Camille won her the award (for the second time) of the New York Film Critic for the best feminine performance of the year. She was also nominated in 1937 for the best actress award of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. This was Garbo's personal favorite movie.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID ABOUT CAMILLE

New York Times:

Greta Garbo's performance is in the finest tradition: eloquent, tragic, yet restrained. She is as incomparable in the role as legend tells us that Bernhardt was. Miss Garbo has interpreted Marguerite Gautier with the subtlety that has earned her title, “First Lady of the Screen”.

New York Herald Tribune:

The incomparable Greta Garbo has returned to the screen in a breathtakingly beautiful and superbly modulated portrayal of Camille. She dignifies this latest of many presentations of Camille with a magnificent and unforgettable performance. Emotional power, ineffable splendor, she has made the Lady of the Camellias, hers for all time.

HENRY DANIELL IN CAMILLE

Henry Daniell was an excellent actor who had the advantage of looking as though he had stepped out of the period of La Dame aux Camélias. His face, his manner, his way of walking, the ease with which  he wore his elaborate costume; even his dreadful silences suggested the Aristocrat. He could have played King Louis XIV to perfection; he could have portrayed a credible Julius Caesar.

Camille final scene

He was a controlled and accomplished actor, and he slipped into the role of the Baron de Varville with what appeared to be the greatest of ease. In fact he was at the beginning of the filming of Camille, atrociously nervous throughout and terrified by the prospect of acting opposite Garbo. Only Henry Daniell, as the icily contemptuous Baron de Varville carried enough weight to be credible. He had the elegance of manner and the humanity to serve as a worthy foil. In the entire course of Garbo's career, Daniell's was the only man who could effectively stand up to her.  Camille was Garbo's twenty-fourth motion picture, and the only with this Wonderful English Actor, Henry Daniell.

MORE ON DANIELL

Henry Daniell played the villainous Lerocle in Sam Wood's remake of the melodrama Madame X (1937) joined the superb ensemble in Norma Shearer's triumphant  Marie Antoinette (1938) again under Cukor's direction. Charles Chaplin tapped him for a role in his satire The Great Dictator first film of Chaplin's with dialogue, and Cukor used him again in the next Hepburn-Grant pairing, The Philadelphia Story, both in 1940.

As the 1940'progressed he was cast in such memorable movies as the Errol Flynn swashbuckler The Sea Hawk in 1940; Joan Crawford's A woman's Face in 1941, the political biopic Mission to Moscow (1943), opposite Walter Huston; Jane Eyre with Orson Welles and Joan Fontaine.

In 1945, he work's on the Boris Karloff-Bela Lugosi horror classic, The Body Snatcher. In the 1950s and 60s, he did much television, and memorably appeared as the malevolent Dr. Emil Zurich in Edward L. Cahn's, The Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake in 1959, and in an episode of Maverick opposite James Garner the same year. Henry Daniell was an absolute professional; he was always on the set when needed, and impatient when  delays in filming took place. Much in demand for his dry, sardonic delivery, Daniell moved easily from major films, to television without difficulty.

As a long time friend of director George Cukor, his last role was a small-uncredited appearance as the British Ambassador in the 1964 movie, My Fair Lady. Although it is often assumed that Daniell is merely a background player in the film and had no lines, he does speak and is, in fact, very noticeable, especially to fans who remembered him from his old films. In the film Daniell presents Eliza to the Queen of Transylvania with one line, “Miss Doolittle, ma ám.”

It is mentioned that the day he shot the scene was “his last day on earth,” as he died from a heart attack that very evening in October 31 1963, Santa Monica, California, USA.

SOURCES
The Films of Greta Garbo - Michael Conway
The Great Garbo - Robert Payne
Garbo - John Bainbridge
Edited by Néstor G. Acevedo