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Murray Kinnell (24 July 1889 – 11 August 1954) was a British-born American actor, recognized for playing smooth, gentlemanly, although rather shady characters. He began acting on the English stage in 1907, toured in the United States from 1912 through 1914, then returned to England where he served in the British Army during World War I.UK, British Army World War I Service Records, 1914-1920 for Murray Kinnell, retrieved from Ancestry.com After the war, he emigrated to the US. He appeared in 71 films between the Hays Code era of 1930 and 1937. He later served the Screen Actors Guild in several positions for 16 years.
Kinnell next appears in 1912 with a touring company playing Pomander Walk in the US and Canada. The following year he joined the Annie Russell Old English Comedy Company, playing throughout the eastern US in She Stoops to Conquer, The Rivals, and The School for Scandal. The tour wound up its run in Philadelphia during April 1914. Kinnell used the time off to marry the tour's ingenue, Henrietta Goodwin.Murray Kinnell in the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. Marriage Index, 1885-1951, retrieved from Ancestry.com
Edward Sheldon's The Garden of Paradise, produced by Liebler & Company, opened in late November 1914 at the Park Theatre in Manhattan. Kinnell played two roles in this visual extravaganza based on Hans Christian Andersen's The Little Mermaid. However the production bankrupted Liebler & Company, and the receiver shut the play down on December 8, 1914, after a little more than two weeks.
Kinnell then returned to England, where he performed Shakespeare with the F. R. Benson company from late 1915 thru early April 1916.
Following military service, Kinnell next appeared in a production of The Merchant of Venice at the Court Theatre in London that ran from October 1919 through February 1920. Beginning in January 1920 he also did single performances in other plays for the experimental Stage Society and the revivalist Phoenix Society.
Later that year Kinnell joined the St. James Theater company in the English debut of The Jest, a three-month tour that also included his wife in the cast. However, by January 1921, Kinnell was "at liberty", according to his theatrical card in The Daily Telegraph. While his wife returned to America for a role in a Broadway production, Kinnell joined the Henry Baynton company and performed a large reperatoire of drastically pruned Shakespeare from June 1921 thru November 1922. It played well in the more provincial towns but London critics were quite severe over the cuts. Kinnell then did an original play Oliver Cromwell, written and produced by John Drinkwater and starring Henry Ainley.
Kinnell returned to England where he next performed during July 1924 in an original work by Joshua Jordan called The Dream Kiss, described as "a farce of somnambulism". It hardly seemed worth the trip, for he was next cast during September 1924 in the Broadway production of Hassan, based on the verses of James Elroy Flecker. This spectacle dispensed with tryouts due to its massive scale (some 200 performers including 60 principals and 70 dancers), perhaps relying on the success the production had in London the previous year. Despite incidental music by Frederick Delius the show closed after just 16 performances, with only Kinnell drawing praise among the cast. February 1925 saw him in a revival of William Congreve's The Way of the World.
The Old English tour took a four-month hiatus in late May 1926, while Arliss vacationed in England. Kinnell's time off was spent performing in The Lovers with the Phoenix PlayersThis actors' society did tryouts of new plays at a small converted theater in Woodstock, New York. The rural area had no electricity at the time, so the troupe used kerosene footlights. in summer 1926. Arliss returned from England in September 1926, and the Old English tour resumed playing, reaching Los Angeles in December 1926, then winding up the long tour at Philadelphia during May 1927.
Arliss kept Kinnell with him on his next major engagement, playing Bassiano to Arliss' Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, with Peggy Wood as Portia. The Winthrop Ames production had a week-long tryout at New Haven, Connecticut, before premiering on Broadway. Brooks Atkinson pronounced it as workmanlike but without spirit,Atkinson misspelled Kinnell's surname twice in the review. and thought Arliss had turned Shylock into a gentleman. The production closed on Broadway after eight weeks, and immediately began touring the East Coast. The tour closed in May 1928 and Kinnell joined the Scarborough Stock Company for a six-week season starting in late June.
The first Edgar Wallace play produced in the US was The Sign of the Leopard, which had been called The Squeaker in the UK. Kinnell had a leading role in this, starting with tryouts in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, before going to Broadway in December 1928. Described as a crime play or a melodrama, it failed to impress New York critics. After it closed, Kinnell took over the male lead in the touring company for the Broadway production of Young Love that starred Dorothy Gish.
Kinnell's first-known radio performance came in July 1929 with an NBC broadcast of The Importance of Being Earnest. His next known acting credit did not occur until late February 1930, when he appeared in a tryout for Elizabeth and Essex by Harry Wagstaff Gribble. This compilation of incidents from three centuries-old plays starred Thais Lawton and Hugh Buckler in the title roles. Renamed to The Royal Virgin on Broadway, The New York Times found it competent but dull, saying: "...the best performing of the play was Murray Kinnell's crafty, serpentine portrayal of Cecil".
Kinnell told an interviewer after completing his first film that he much preferred it to stage acting. However, he went on the stage in Los Angeles, playing the lead in The Infinite Shoeblack during November 1930 to acclaim from local reviewers. The following month, his second film, The Princess and the Plumber, opened in Los Angeles.
By February 1931 he was mentioned as cast as Metz for The Secret Six. April 1931 saw the release of both that film and The Public Enemy, in which Kinnell played the two-timing petty-larceny hood Putty Nose. The latter earned Kinnell praise from the drama critic of The Los Angeles Times: "Murray Kinnell, in his few appearances on the screen, gains a place for himself among the best character actors in Hollywood".
The following month he left Los Angeles for Honolulu for filming The Black Camel. His derelict artist turned beachcomber, shown openly living with a Hawaiian woman, was the most interesting character in that early Charlie Chan film, released in July 1931.
After playing three well-received and memorable roles in the first six months of 1931, the remaining movies Kinnel did that year provided him far less attention and enthusiasm from reviewers.
April 1932 saw the release of Grand Hotel, an instant success with the critics. Kinnell's small feature bit didn't even merit a mention by reviewers in this ensemble effort with seven major stars. That same month The Mouthpiece was released, another film in which Kinnell had a bit part as a butler.
Kinnell did another George Arliss film called A Successful Calamity in September 1932.
A film that Kinnell made in 1933 would take years before being allowed in some theaters. Damaged Lives was a docudrama about venereal disease; Kinnell and Jason Robards played doctors that help afflicted patients.
Arliss, who had left Warners for the new 20th Century Fox studio, cast Kinnell as one of the brothers in The House of Rothschild, released in March 1934. Kinnell also did two more Charlie Chan films that year: Charlie Chan's Courage, in which he was the first victim, and Charlie Chan in London, where he played a seemingly sinister butler with an unexpected secret.
He finished 1934 with the December release of Anne of Green Gables.
Hoping to repeat the success of The House of Rothschild, 20th Century Fox mounted another historical tale around an English company in Lloyd's of London, released in November 1936. Kinnell played Rev. Nelson, the father of Lord Nelson, in a film that one reviewer said "lacks the powerful punch which the first conveyed".
Kinnell's last two films were an uncredited bit in Parnell, and a major part in the Grade B mystery, Think Fast, Mr. Moto, both released in summer 1937.
SAG officials appointed him in 1939 to be the Guild's representative for arbitration hearings with the Motion Picture Producers (MPP) over contract disputes. Besides arbitration, he also worked with the producers on limiting the numbers of screen extras handled by Central Casting to favor those with most experience.
During 1943 Kinnell was again appointed as arbitrator in a dispute involving a pay hike demanded by SAG for over 5000 extras, stand-ins, stuntmen, body doubles, and singers. During April 1944 he testified in a National Labor Relations Board hearing that for screen extras there were "too many people competing for too little work and all could not hope to make a living at that type of work".
By 1949 Kinnell was the agency administrator for SAG, responsible for relations between independent screen actors outside the studio system and the talent agencies that represented them. Kinnell oversaw the negotiations for a ten-year agreement between SAG and talent management that would control the terms under which actors could be signed.
On 11 August 1954, Kinnell died at his home in Santa Barbara, California.
Kinnell married Henrietta Goodwin in Philadelphia on April 14, 1914. She was a stage actress, born in Tacoma, Washington, but raised in the Washington, D.C. area. They had one son, Peter Kinnell, who was born in June 1916 while they resided in the UK. He did not join his parents in America until August 1925.
According to newspaper accounts, Kinnell habitually wore a monocle in private life, and once told an interviewer "I became an actor because I didn't know any better". He was an excellent amateur fencer, and an active member of the Hollywood Cricket Club. Kinnell and his son Peter were part of the traveling Hollywood team that took on and beat a Vancouver eleven at a Cricket Jubilee in British Columbia.
He was also a chess player; in the aftermath of World War II he and other British ex-pat veterans in Hollywood would visit Birmingham Hospital regularly to play disabled US veterans.
| 1909 | The Sleigh Bells | Christian | Bath Theatre Royal | His first known credit, with the Allan Wilkie repertory company. |
| The Two Orphans of Paris | Marquis de Presles | Hanley Theatre Royal | ||
| 1911 | Hamlet | Laertes | Royal County TheatreThis was at Kingston upon Thames in the UK. | This was a company headed by Frank Cellier. |
| The Merchant of Venice | Bassanio | Theatre Royal | Cellier's touring company had female leads played by his wife, Florence Glossop-Harris. | |
| 1912 | Pomander Walk | Basil Pringle | Touring Company | Kinnell played a violinist at No 3 Pomander Walk. |
| 1913 | She Stoops to Conquer | George Hastings | Touring Company | This was with the Annie Russell Old English Comedy Company. |
| The Rivals | Faulkland | Touring Company | This was still with the Annie Russell company. | |
| The School for Scandal | Joseph Surface | Touring Company | This was still with the Annie Russell company. | |
| 1914 | The Garden of Paradise | Jasper/Captain of Guard | Park Theatre | The costly production had mermaids "swimming" thru the air over the stage. |
| 1915 | The Merchant of Venice | Lorenzo | Prince of Wales TheatreThis was in Birmingham, England. | This was with the F. R. Benson Shakespeare company. |
| A Midsummer Night's Dream | Oberon | Court Theatre | Another F. R. Benson performance. | |
| 1916 | MacBeth | Malcolm | King's Theatre | Also in this week-long run was Basil Rathbone as MacDuff. |
| Henry V | Theatre Royal | |||
| Hamlet | Horatio | Touring Company | This was performed in alteration with other F. R. Benson Shakespeare plays. | |
| The Taming of the Shrew | Lucentio | Theatre Royal | ||
| As You Like It | Orlando de Boys | Theatre Royal | This was Kinnell's last performance with the F. R. Benson troupe. | |
| 1919 | The Merchant of Venice | Court Theatre | This long-running production starred Maurice Moscovich and Mary Grey, with Miles Malleson, George Hayes, Edith Evans, and Cathleen Nesbitt. | |
| 1920 | Joan of Memories | Richard Tirrell | Shaftesbury Theatre | Three-act experimental comedy by Willson Disher was produced by the Stage Society for a single performance. |
| Marriage à la mode | Leonidas | Lyric Theatre | Mounted by the revivalist Phoenix Society for a two-day engagement. | |
| The Fair Maid of the West | Mr. Spencer | Lyric Theatre | Another Phoenix Society revival, and not well received. | |
| The Jest | Touring Company | The St. James Theater company production starred Henry Ainley, with Claude Rains and Kinnell's wife, Henrietta Goodwin. | ||
| 1921 1922 | As You Like It | Orlando / Jacques | Touring Company | Kinnell portrayed Orlando with Henry Baynton's Shakespeare company in 1921, but when Baynton's Jacques came in for repeated criticism they switched parts the following year. |
| The Merchant of Venice | Bassiano | Touring Company | ||
| Antony and Cleopatra | Octavius Caesar | Touring Company | ||
| Julius Caesar | Brutus | Touring Company | ||
| The Taming of the Shrew | Lucentio | Touring Company | ||
| Romeo and Juliet | Mercutio | Touring Company | ||
| Hamlet | Horatio | Touring Company | ||
| King Lear | Earl of Kent | Touring Company | ||
| The School for Scandal | Joseph Surface | Touring Company | ||
| 1923 | Oliver Cromwell | Seth Tanner | Touring Company | Written and produced by John Drinkwater, it starred Henry Ainley in title role. |
| The Faithful Shepherdess | Thenot | Shaftesbury Theatre | Another two-performances revival by the Phoenix Society, mounted while Kinnell was still touring in Oliver Cromwell. | |
| Cymbeline | Guiderius | Jolson's Theatre | This marks Kinnell's return to the US stage with the company of E. H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe. | |
| The Taming of the Shrew | Tranio | Jolson's Theatre Touring Company | ||
| Twelfth Night | Sebastian | Jolson's Theatre Touring Company | ||
| The Merchant of Venice | Lorenzo | Jolson's Theatre Touring Company | ||
| Hamlet | Jolson's Theatre Touring Company | |||
| Romeo and Juliet | Benvolio | Jolson's Theatre Touring Company | Sothern and Marlowe, at 64 and 58 respectively, played the titlular teenage roles. | |
| 1924 | Simon Called Peter | Stamford TheatreThis was in Stamford, Connecticut. | This was a tryout run. | |
| The Dream Kiss | Wimbledon Theatre | Farce in three acts by Joshua Jordan was described by reviewer as "a wearisome crudity". | ||
| Hassan | Ishak | Knickerbocker Theatre | Spectacle based on James Elroy Flecker verses lasted only two weeks on Broadway. | |
| 1925 | The Way of the World | Fainall | Princess Theatre | Revival started out in Greenwich Village then moved to the theater district. |
| Ann | Orpheum TheatreThis was in Montreal, Canada. | Kinnell became leading man of the All-English stock company with this three-act comedy by Lechmere Worrall. | ||
| Clothes and the Woman | Eric Thrale | Orpheum Theatre | Romantic stock comedy was later made into a 1937 British film. | |
| Spring Cleaning | Orpheum Theatre | |||
| The Dover Road | Leonard | Orpheum Theatre | ||
| The Naughty Wife | Orpheum Theatre | |||
| Old English | Charles Ventnor | Touring Company | National touring company for the Broadway production starring George Arliss ran from September 1925 thru May 1927. | |
| 1926 | The Lovers | Woodstock TheatreA converted assembly hall seating 150 in Woodstock, New York. | Carlo Goldoni comedy, staged by Ethel Griffies. With Edward Cooper, Rose Hobart, Theodore St. John, Philip Leigh, Harold Moulton, Anne Walters. | |
| 1927 | The Constant Wife | Mortimer Durham | Touring Company | This production starred Ethel Barrymore and C. Aubrey Smith, with Frank Conroy, Verree Teasdale, Cora Witherspoon, Jeanette Sherwin, Alice John, and Thomas A. Braidon. |
| 1928 | The Merchant of Venice | Bassanio | Shubert Theatre Broadhurst Theatre Touring Company | Arliss played Shylock, with Peggy Wood as Portia, Spring Byington as Nerissa, and Leonard Willey as Antonio. |
| Captain Applejack | Ambrose Applejohn | Beechwood TheatreThis was in Scarborough, New York. | Summer stock with the Scarborough Stock company. | |
| Smudge | Beechwood Theatre | A debut drama by Douglas Murray. Starred Charlotte Walker and Douglas Wood, with Sherling Oliver, Flora Sheffield, and Hugh Rennie. | ||
| The Giftee | Beechwood Theatre | A new drama by Percival Wilde, staged and produced by Hamilton MacFadden. | ||
| Frail Emma | Admiral Nelson | Cass TheatreThis was in Detroit, Michigan. | Original comedy by Genevieve Thompson Smith, starred Kinnell and Selena Royle as Emma, Lady Hamilton. | |
| The Sign of the Leopard | Sutton | Majestic Theatre National Theatre | Mystery by Edgar Wallace, originally produced in the UK as The Squeaker. | |
| 1929 | Young Love | Peter Bird | Touring Company | Kinnell replaced lead James Rennie for the Broadway production road company. |
| 1930 | Elizabeth and Essex | Lord Burleigh | Shubert Playhouse Booth Theatre | Between tryout in Wilmington, Delaware and Broadway debut the play was renamed to The Royal Virgin. |
| The Infinite Shoeblack | Andrew Berwick | Music Box | Los Angeles Civic Repertory production of play by Norman MacOwen starred Kinnell and Olive Meehan. | |
| + Film (by year of first release) | |||
| 1930 | Old English | Charles Ventnor | Warner Brothers Vitaphone film premiered August 21, 1930 at the Warner's Theatre in Hollywood. Both Kinnell and his wife Henrietta Goodwin reprised their stage roles in this George Arliss star turn. |
| The Princess and the Plumber | Lord Worthing | Film premiered on December 18, 1930, at Loew's Hollywood Theater. | |
| 1931 | The Secret Six | Metz - the Dummy | The first of two gangster roles for Kinnell that premiered in April 1931. |
| The Public Enemy | Putty Nose | Kinnell's second gangster role also debuted in April 1931. | |
| The Black Camel | Archie Smith | An unusual role for Kinnell as a derelict one-time gentleman; the film opened in July 1931. | |
| Honor of the Family | Captain Elek | A now-lost film, it premiered in October 1931. | |
| Reckless Living | Alf | Racetrack melodrama involving gamblers competing for a young woman. | |
| The Guilty Generation | Jerry | Racketeering melodrama; Kinnell is uncredited but listed in newspaper reviews. | |
| The Deceiver | Breckinridge | Critics panned this trite mystery on the backstage murder of a treacherous star. Kinnell played a suave detective. | |
| Under Eighteen | Peterson (Butler) | Romantic comedy about a teenager's disillusionment with her older sister's marriage. | |
| 1932 | The Menace | Carr | Based on the Edgar Wallace 1927 novel The Feathered Serpent. |
| Freaks | Freakshow Barker | Uncredited | |
| The Beast of the City | Judge | Uncredited | |
| The Man Who Played God | King's Aide | Kinnell had recommended Bette Davis to George Arliss for this film. | |
| The Expert | Smitty (the Fence) | Uncredited | |
| Are You Listening? | Carson | ||
| Grand Hotel | Schweimann | ||
| The Mouthpiece | Thompson (Day's Butler) | ||
| While Paris Sleeps | Escaping Prisoner | Uncredited | |
| The Purchase Price | Spike Forgan | Kinnell plays a nightclub owner's henchman. | |
| The Painted Woman | Collins | ||
| A Successful Calamity | Alfred Curtis, The Broker | Kinnell is George Arliss business rival. | |
| Secrets of the French Police | Bertillon | One reviewer considered this more of a horror film than a mystery or crime drama. | |
| Rasputin and the Empress | Professor Kropotkin | Uncredited | |
| The Match King | Nyberg | ||
| 1933 | Today We Live | Padre | Uncredited |
| Zoo in Budapest | Garbosh | ||
| Damaged Lives | Dr. Vincent Leonard | A controversial film about venereal disease, censors kept it out of New York City until 1937. | |
| Voltaire | Emile (Voltaire's Servant) | ||
| The Avenger | Cormack | ||
| The Solitaire Man | Inspector Harris | Uncredited | |
| I Loved a Woman | Davenport | ||
| Ann Vickers | Dr. Slenk (Copperhead Gap Warden) | ||
| From Headquarters | Horton | ||
| If I Were Free | Dr. Clairbourne | Uncredited | |
| The Women in His Life | 1st Defendant | Uncredited | |
| I Am Suzanne | Luigi Malatini | ||
| 1934 | The House of Rothschild | James Rothschild | Though he'd changed studios, Arliss continued to cast Kinnell whenever he could. |
| Affairs of a Gentleman | Fletcher | "No man is a hero to his valet", as Kinnell's character in this murder mystery could testify. | |
| Murder in Trinidad | Colonel Bruce Cassell | Nigel Bruce is a detective tasked by Kinnell to uncover diamond smuggling in Trinidad. | |
| Such Women Are Dangerous | Jan Paris | ||
| Charlie Chan's Courage | Martin Thorne | Kinnell is the first victim this time out. | |
| Hat, Coat and Glove | The Judge | Courtroom drama about a middle-aged attorney defending his wife's young lover. | |
| Charlie Chan in London | Phillips | Kinnell as yet another butler, though this time with an unexpected flourish. | |
| Anne of Green Gables | Mr. Phillips | Kinnell plays a teacher in this popular sentimental story. | |
| The Silver Streak | Doctor Flynn | Uncredited | |
| 1935 | Charlie Chan in Paris | Henri Latouche | Kinnell is one-half of a villainous duo that almost does in Charlie Chan and son. |
| Cardinal Richelieu | Duke of Lorraine | ||
| Mad Love | Charles | Though supposedly uncredited, Kinnell's name and theater owner character are in newspaper reviews for this improbable horror story. | |
| The Three Musketeers | Bernajou | ||
| The Last Days of Pompeii | Simon (Judean Peasant) | ||
| Rendezvous | de Segroff | ||
| Fighting Youth | Dean James Churchill | Kinnell plays a college dean in this Red Scare gridiron tale. | |
| Kind Lady | Doctor | ||
| The Great Impersonation | Seaman | ||
| Captain Blood | Court Clerk | Uncredited | |
| 1936 | The Witness Chair | Defense Attorney Conrick | |
| One Rainy Afternoon | Theatre Manager | ||
| Mary of Scotland | Judge | ||
| The Big Game | Dean of Men | Uncredited | |
| 15 Maiden Lane | Fingers | Uncredited | |
| Make Way for a Lady | Doctor Barnes | ||
| Lloyd's of London | Rev. Nelson | Kinnell plays the father of Lord Nelson in this historical picture. | |
| Four Days' Wonder | Morris | ||
| Winterset | Prof. Dean Liggett | Uncredited | |
| 1937 | Outcast | Anthony 'Tony' Stevens | Kinnell plays the father of a local girl in love with the outcast physician. |
| The Soldier and the Lady | Peasant | Uncredited | |
| The Prince and the Pauper | Hugo | Kinnell was an excellent fencer, but his vagabond character is overmatched by Bobby Mauch's Edward VI. | |
| Captains Courageous | Minister | Uncredited | |
| Parnell | Sir Richard Webster | Uncredited | |
| Think Fast, Mr. Moto | Joseph B. Wilkie | A major part in a Grade B film was Kinnell's last film role. | |
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