Edgar Norton

Edgar Norton (August 11, 1868 – February 6, 1953) was an English-born American character actor.

Edgar Norton
Norton in The Lady Refuses, 1931
Born(1868-08-11)August 11, 1868
London, England
DiedFebruary 6, 1953(1953-02-06) (aged 84)
Los Angeles, California, United States
OccupationActor
Years active1916–1948

Biography
Phoebe Carlo as Alice, Edgar Norton as Hare, Dorothy D'Alcourt as Dormouse and Sydney Harcourt as Hatter in Alice in Wonderland (1886)

He was born in Islington in London, England on August 11, 1868 as Harry Edgar Mills, one of eight children of Jane Anne née Fleming and Frederic Mills, a clerk in the Home Office department of the Civil Service.[1][2] Norton was active on both stage and screen, his theater performances were on both the London and Broadway stages,[3] and his film career spanned both the silent and "talkie" eras in Hollywood. Aged 18, he appeared as the Hare in the original production of Alice in Wonderland in London in 1886, with the production being under the guidance of Lewis Carroll, who saw the musical five times.[4] He moved permanently to the United States in 1889, and was naturalised as an American citizen in 1927. He married his Detroit-born wife Lillian Mable née Hubbard (born 1870) in Ontario in Canada in 1890, and with her had a son, Edgar Norton Mills (born Chicago, 1893).[5]

During his thirty-year film career, he appeared in at least ninety films.[6] Many consider his most memorable role to be that of Poole, the butler to Dr. Jekyll in the 1931 classic, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde— a role he had been playing on-stage since 1898, opposite Richard Mansfield as Jekyll.[7]

He died in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles in February 1953.

Filmography

(Per AFI database)[6]

References
  1. [https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/7619/images/LNDRG10_301_305-0039?pId=11511020 1871 England Census for Harry E Mills London, Islington: Ancestry.com (subscription required)]
  2. [https://www.ancestry.co.uk/imageviewer/collections/7572/images/LNDRG11_242_246-0450?pId=14217276 1881 England Census for Henry E. Mills London, Islington: Ancestry.com (subscription required)]
  3. "Edgar Norton Biography". Fandango. Archived from the original on October 22, 2014. Retrieved October 22, 2014.
  4. Cohen, Morton N. (ed.)The Selected Letters of Lewis Carroll, Palgrave (1982) Google Books, p. 163
  5. Harry Edgar Mills in the U.S., Naturalization Records, 1840-1957 (1927): Ancestry.com {{subscription{{
  6. "Edgar Norton". American Film Institute. Retrieved October 22, 2014.
  7. "Edgar Norton". AllMovie.com. Archived from the original on May 4, 2014. Retrieved October 22, 2014.
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