E. E. Clive
Acting
Born 1879-08-26
Died 1940-06-06
Blaenavon, Monmouthshire, Wales, UK
89 credits
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Edward Erskholme Clive was a Welsh stage actor and director who had a prolific acting career in Britain and America. He also played numerous supporting roles in Hollywood movies between 1933 and his death. E. E. Clive was born on 28 August 1879 in Blaenavon in Monmouthshire. Clive studied for a medical career, and had completed four years of medical studies at St Bartholomew's Hospital before switching his focus to acting at age 22. Touring the provinces for a decade, Clive became an expert at virtually every sort of regional dialect in the British Isles. He moved to the US in 1912, where after working in the Orpheum vaudeville circuit he set up his own stock company in Boston. By the 1920s, his company was operating in Hollywood; among his repertory players were such up-and-comers as Rosalind Russell. He also worked at the Broadway in several plays. E. E. Clive made his film debut as a village police constable in 1933's The Invisible Man with Claude Rains, then spent the next seven years showing up in wry supporting and bit parts, where he often portrayed comical versions of English stereotypes. He often played butlers, reporters, aristocrats, shopkeepers and cabbies during his short film career. Though his roles were often small, Clive was a well-known and prolific character actor of his time. Among his best-known roles was the incompetent Burgomaster in James Whale's horror classic Bride of Frankenstein (1935). He was a semi-regular as Tenny the Butler in Paramount Pictures' Bulldog Drummond B series, starring John Howard; he also played butlers in other movies like Bachelor Mother with David Niven and Ginger Rogers. In 1939, Clive appeared in The Little Princess as the lawyer Mr. Barrows, and the first two entries of the classic Sherlock Holmes series starring Basil Rathbone. One of Clive's last roles was Sir William Lucas in the 1940 literature adaption Pride and Prejudice (1940) with Laurence Olivier and Greer Garson. E. E. Clive died on 6 June 1940, of a heart ailment, in his Hollywood home. He was survived by his wife Eleanor and their child. Clive was a member of the Euclid lodge of Freemasons in Boston.
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Filmography
— top 60 of 89
Acting
59 credits
Bride of Frankenstein
The Invisible Man
Captain Blood
Pride and Prejudice
Tarzan Escapes
David Copperfield
Foreign Correspondent
Dracula's Daughter
Libeled Lady
The Hound of the Baskervilles
Camille
The Gay Divorcee
The Little Princess
The Charge of the Light Brigade
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
A Tale of Two Cities
Little Lord Fauntleroy
Bachelor Mother
Isle of Fury
Show Boat
The Earl of Chicago
The Big Parade of Comedy
Mr. Moto's Last Warning
The White Angel
3 Kids and a Queen
The Emperor's Candlesticks
The Little Minister
The Mystery of Edwin Drood
We're in the Money
Riptide
Gateway
Maid of Salem
Night Must Fall
Live, Love and Learn
It's Love I'm After
Charlie Chan in London
Lloyd's of London
Kidnapped
The Honeymoon's Over
Personal Property
Raffles
Palm Springs
Congo Maisie
One More River
Ready, Willing and Able
Kind Lady
Rose of Washington Square
Bulldog Drummond in Africa
Father Brown, Detective
Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back
Bulldog Drummond's Bride
Danger – Love at Work
Bulldog Drummond Escapes
Cain and Mabel
Love Before Breakfast
Trouble for Two
Stars Over Broadway
Beg, Borrow or Steal
Bulldog Drummond's Revenge
Other credits
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