Leo Britt
About forty screen appearances across four decades, on both sides of the Atlantic, and almost all of them small. Leo Ernest Britt (1908 to 1979) was a British-American character actor working from 1933 to 1975, and his credits read like a list of jobs rather than a career: Sir Bertram, Sir Robert, Dr. Benton, Planter Chisholm, General Scarlett, an elder master, a German general in a staff car.
That list is the point. Britt was hired for a specific commodity, an educated English voice attached to a man with rank, and studios on both continents needed a steady supply of them. He is the doctor explaining the science in The Magnetic Monster (1953), the knight at court in The Court Jester (1955) and The Black Shield of Falworth (1954), the plantation man in Elephant Walk (1954), the cavalry general in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968).
He is best remembered, though, for standing in a drawing room and telling a story. In Alfred Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder he is billed simply as the Storyteller, a guest at a party, and that is the credit people still come looking for. It has outlasted the leads of several films in which he had a much larger part, which is roughly how character acting works.
Movies (8)
TV (1)
Where to start with Leo Britt
The famous credit is Dial M for Murder, and it is the right place to begin even though he is barely in it. Hitchcock's near single-set thriller is superb, and knowing which guest is Leo Britt is the kind of detail that makes an old film feel properly populated.
The Court Jester is the most enjoyable film on the list by some distance, a Danny Kaye comedy whose script still runs faster than almost anything made since. The Charge of the Light Brigade is Tony Richardson's cold, angry account of the Crimean disaster and gives him a real part as General Scarlett. The Magnetic Monster is 1950s science fiction of the men-in-labs school, Elephant Walk is glossy plantation melodrama, and The Black Shield of Falworth is Technicolor knights and nonsense. The Dirty Dozen and Colditz are the war credits, the first uncredited, the second British television doing what it did best.