1. Lionel Alfred William Atwill was an English and American stage and screen actor.
18 Facts About Lionel Atwill
1. 2.
Lionel Atwill began his acting career at the Garrick Theatre.
3.
Lionel Atwill studied architecture before his stage debut at the Garrick Theatre, London, in 1904.
4.
Lionel Atwill became a star in Broadway theatre by 1918 and made his screen debut in 1919.
5.
Lionel Atwill acted on the stage in Australia and then became involved in US horror films in the 1930s, including leading roles in Doctor X, The Vampire Bat, Murders in the Zoo and Mystery of the Wax Museum, and perhaps most memorably as the one-armed Inspector Krogh in Son of Frankenstein, a role famously parodied by Kenneth Mars in Mel Brooks' 1974 satire Young Frankenstein.
6.
Lionel Atwill appeared in four subsequent Universal Frankenstein films as well as many other of the studio's beloved chillers.
7.
Lionel Atwill's other roles include a romantic lead opposite Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's The Devil Is a Woman, a crooked insurance investigator in The Wrong Road for RKO, Dr James Mortimer in 20th Century Fox's film version of The Hound of the Baskervilles, and Professor Moriarty in the Universal Studios film Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon.
8.
Lionel Atwill had a rare comedy role in Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 classic To Be or Not to Be and that same year menaced Abbott and Costello in Pardon My Sarong.
9.
Lionel Atwill accused Hamalaine of being present at several parties at the beach home of Lionel Atwill in December and January 1940 where "indecencies" took place.
10.
Lionel Atwill testified on May 21,1941, before the grand jury and vehemently denied all accusations.
11.
Trial was set for September 28,1942, but on September 24 Lionel Atwill changed his plea to guilty.
12.
Lionel Atwill denied all charges of immoral acts, but did admit to possessing and showing lewd films to a small group of friends at his beach house.
13.
The court noted that the witnesses against Lionel Atwill were "unsavory", and that Lionel Atwill had received numerous character references from local law enforcement and important Hollywood people.
14.
Under the Hays Code of conduct for the motion picture industry, Lionel Atwill was blackballed from working.
15.
In 1941, their son John Arthur Lionel Atwill was born on 1914 and was killed in action at age 26.
16.
Lionel Atwill married Louise Cromwell Brooks in 1930 after her divorce from General of the Army Douglas MacArthur; they divorced in 1943.
17.
Lionel Atwill married Paula Pruter in 1944, and their marriage continued until his death.
18.
Lionel Atwill died on 22 April 1946, as a result of lung cancer and pneumonia at his home in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles.