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Lionel Atwill
with his second wife Elsie Mackay in 1922, in a Vanity Fair publicity photo for The White-Faced Fool
Born	1 March 1885(1885-03-01) Croydon, London, England, UK
Died	22 April 1946 (aged 61) Pacific Palisades, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1905–1946

Lionel Atwill (1 March 1885 – 22 April 1946) was an English stage and film actor born in Croydon, London, England.

He began his stage career in 1905 in England, and had become a star in Broadway theatre by 1918,^[1] but was most famous for his horror roles in the 1930s. His two most memorable parts were as the crazed, disfigured sculptor in Mystery of the Wax Museum (Warner Brothers, 1933), and as Inspector Krogh in Son of Frankenstein (1939), memorably sent up by Kenneth Mars in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein (1974).

When he was not cast in macabre roles, Atwill often appeared in the 1930s as righteous-minded authority figures. For example, in 1937's less memorable The Wrong Road for RKO, investigator Atwill persuades a young, bank-robbing ingenue played by Helen Mack and her boyfriend Richard Cromwell to return their ill-gotten $100,000 and give up a life of crime. Two of Atwill's other notable non-horror roles were opposite his contemporary Basil Rathbone in film adaptations of Arthur Conan Doyle's character Sherlock Holmes, including a role as Dr. James Mortimer in 20th Century Fox's 1939 film rendition of the Conan Doyle novel The Hound of the Baskervilles, and the 1943 Universal Studios film Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon, in which he played Holmes' archenemy and super-villain, Professor Moriarty.^[2]

Atwill remained a stalwart of the Universal horror films until his career flagged in the 1940s because of a widely publicized sex scandal in 1941, during the investigation of which he was charged in 1942 with perjury at a rape trial.^[3]

He died while working on the 1946 film serial Lost City of the Jungle. His ashes were once inurned in Chapel of the Pines Crematory.

Private life

He married four times:

• Phyllis Ralph in 1913. In 1941 their son, John Arthur Atwill, was killed in action aged 26.^[4]
• American actress Elsie Mackay in 1919 (with whom one source claims he had a son, John^[5]). In 1925 Atwill had detectives raid an apartment on Manhattan's 68th Street, where Mackay was found with actor Max Montesole. A divorce was finally granted in March 1928.^[6][7]
• Louise Cromwell Brooks in 1930, who had previously been married to Douglas MacArthur.
• Mary Paula Shilstone in 1944^[8] who carried his only living child, Lionel Anthony Atwill. His son Tony is a retired writer.

Partial filmography

References

External links

• Lionel Atwill at the Internet Movie Database
• Lionel Atwill at the Internet Broadway Database
• Lionel Atwill at Find a Grave
• Official Lionel Atwill - Web Site & Fan Club at lionelatwillfanclub.tripod.com