A great romantic idol who later proved his worth as a character actor, James Mason (1909-1984) was the No. 1 box-office attraction in his native Great Britain in the mid-1940s before heading for Hollywood and a long and distinguished career as an international star. Born in Huddersfield, England, Mason received a degree in architecture before turning to the stage. He made his movie debut in Late Extra (1935) and became a matinee idol during the early forties after his sensational performance in the gothic melodrama, The Man in Grey (1943).

Mason's dark good looks and smoothly insinuating voice lent him a sinister air that added an edge to his romantic appeal. In his British films he often played dangerous men who treated women with varying degrees of sadism - and usually left them begging for more as in They Were Sisters (1946). He fought to avoid being typecast as a handsome brute and sometimes succeeded as in the costume adventure The Wicked Lady (1946), the haunting psychological drama Thunder Rock (1942), and the offbeat ghost story A Place of One's Own (1945) but eventually grew frustrated with the British film industry.

He arrived in the U.S. in 1949 and settled at MGM, where his early roles included Flaubert in Madame Bovary (1949) and Barbara Stanwyck's faithless husband in East Side, West Side (1949). Many felt Mason's portrayal of Brutus in Julius Caesar (1953) was the outstanding performance among an all-star cast. Equally lauded was his definitive portrayal of German Field Marshal Rommel in the World War II biopic, The Desert Fox (1951).

Opposite Judy Garland in A Star Is Born (1954), Mason was unforgettable as alcoholic falling star Norman Maine. Putting his villainous side to vivid use, he stole some of Cary Grant's thunder in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest (1959). Mason considers Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962), in which he plays the middle-aged suitor of the title nymphet, to be his best film. Another outstanding example of Mason's skills at character acting came in Georgy Girl (1966), in which he plays a wealthy businessman who wants ugly duckling Lynn Redgrave as his mistress.

Though gifted with a distinctive, beautiful speaking voice, and with a range much deeper than that of a conventional leading man, Mason nevertheless had trouble finding the kind of quality roles he deserved. Nevertheless, his filmography contains several gems in addition to the others mentioned above such as his doomed IRA fugitive in Odd Man Out (1947), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), as the obsessed Captain Nemo; a fearless explorer in the 1959 film adaptation of Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth; the Harold Pinter-scripted The Pumpkin Eater (1964); Heaven Can Wait (1978), a remake of Here Comes Mr. Jordan in which he provided a droll comic turn in a supporting role; and as a murder suspect in Evil Under the Sun (1982). Mason also received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar® nomination for his role in 1982's The Verdict.

by Roger Fristoe

* Films in bold type will air on TCM