Some people have become Hollywood stars by first showing their talents on Broadway (that list includes everyone from Fred Astaire to Matthew Broderick), others have made the leap into films thanks to music (Sinatra, Elvis, J.Lo), others by modeling (Lauren Bacall, Elizabeth Hurley) and 101 other routes, be it by looking good while sitting at a soda fountain (Lana Turner) or lifting a barbell (Mr. Schwarzenegger). Our Star for August 21st, David Niven, made it into the movies by his wits. He was such a funny, entertaining fellow to be around, directors began to hire him just because he was such good company on a film set.

Scottish-born and the descendent of a long line of military men, Niven at age 25 drifted to Hollywood in the 1930s, a time when being dapper, charming and elegantly droll was an enormous social asset, second only to owning a tuxedo and looking good while in it. He began in films as an extra, and in a flash, his twinkling humor earned him invitations to Hollywood's best dinner soirees and, once there, those connections helped him land bigger acting roles - because stars like Errol Flynn and Merle Oberon and directors such as William Wyler and H. C. Potter enjoyed having Niven around to make them laugh. He kept everyone amused and charmed forever after, while also becoming a consummate actor and first-rate leading man, and this month we have the films to prove it. We'll be showing 14 Niven films in all, including two with Flynn from early in Niven's career (1936's The Charge of the Light Brigade and 1938's The Dawn Patrol), but unfortunately, not the film for which he won an Oscar® 20 years later (Separate Tables, which Niven always claimed would have been better had Laurence Olivier or Alec Guinness played the role instead) or the classic with his own favorite Niven performance, as Phileas Fogg in Michael Todd's 1956 Around the World in 80 Days.

But you'll have a chance to see Niven in several dramas (Dodsworth, The Real Glory, a few swashbucklers (The Prisoner of Zenda, The King's Thief) and even a comedy or two (Bachelor Mother, Please Don't Eat the Daisies) but the accent is on his doing what he did best: playing likeable rogues with more than a touch of class. One in particular he thought might become his signature role. When filming began on 1964's The Pink Panther, which we'll be showing on December 27, Niven was the star, no question. Further, both he and director Blake Edwards envisioned Niven's role of a jewel thief named Sir Charles Lytton as a potential franchise, the first of what might be a series of films focused on Niven's character. ("I saw it doing for me what The Thin Man did for Bill Powell," he said later.) Who knew that Peter Sellers as an inept, wacky police inspector named Clouseau would end up stealing the film and launching his own Clouseau franchise? "Ah, you live and learn," said Niven, philosophically. "Still, I think I've done pretty well for someone whose face is a cross between two pounds of halibut and an explosion in an old clothes closet."

by Robert Osborne