Bobby Henrey | |
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 Bobby Henrey, Ralph Richardson and Michèle Morgan in The Fallen Idol | |
| Born | 26 June 1939 |
| Occupation(s) | Actor (later an accountant and chaplain) [1] |
| Years active | 1948-1951 |
Robert "Bobby" Henrey (born 26 June 1939) is an Anglo-French former child actor best known for his role as the son of the French ambassador to London in the classic 1948 English film The Fallen Idol , directed by Carol Reed.
Henrey was the son of Robert Selby Henrey – grandson of Sir Coutts Lindsay, 2nd Baronet – and the memoirist Madeleine Gal. [2] Gal would go on to write about her son's film career in two of her many volumes of memoirs, the 1948 A Film Star in Belgrave Square and the 1950 A Journey To Vienna.
He went on to study at Downside School and Oxford University, where he obtained a degree in language and literature.
At age 25, Henrey moved to the United States, eventually settling in Greenwich, Connecticut. He and his wife Lisette Talbert had a son, Edward, a graphic artist and illustrator, and a daughter, Dominique, who died from a food allergy at the age of 18, [3] having suffered all her life from poor health. [4]
Robert Henrey's autobiography, Through Grown-up Eyes: Living with Childhood Fame, was published by Polperro Heritage Press in September 2013. [5] Henrey was interviewed on BBC Radio 4's The Film Programme in December 2015 where he discussed the impact that The Fallen Idol had on his childhood and adult life.
Henrey was cast in The Fallen Idol based on a photograph of him which appeared on the dustjacket of his father's book A Village in Piccadilly. [6] Studio head of London Films Alexander Korda passed on the photograph to director Carol Reed, who thought it exactly matched his vision of the character, Philippe, even though the photo had actually been taken in 1942 and showed Henrey when he was three years old. Henrey's parents agreed to let him make the film and a screen test was arranged. But at the time, Henrey, by that time eight years of age, was on holiday at his grandmother's farm in Normandy. So Korda sent a plane over to France to pick him up and fly him to London for the test. Carol Reed liked him at once, especially his liquid French accent, which the part called for. Reed sat down for the first of many talks with Henrey and never saw another child. Henrey was paid £1,000 for his role, with a stipulation that if the film took more than ten weeks to make, he would be paid an extra £100 for every additional week. Because the film took eight months to make, a long time for that era, due to Reed's exacting standards, Henrey eventually earned £5,000. When the film was released, the critics were very impressed with Henrey's performance in the film, with one calling him the greatest kid since Jackie Coogan and Henrey became a star overnight. On the strength of his performance in the film, Henrey was signed to a £30,000 contract by Sir Alexander Korda to make four more films for his company between 1948 and 1952, only one of which, The Wonder Kid , was ever made. This was filmed in late 1949 - early 1950, but not released until 1952. However, it was not a great success, influencing his family's belief that he should return to education. [7]
Henrey worked for several years as a tax consulting partner at PriceWaterhouseCoopers in New York City until his retirement in 1997.
Henrey was ordained as a deacon in 1984 and went on to serve as an interfaith chaplain at Greenwich Hospital after his certification in 2001.
The Third Man is a 1949 British film noir directed by Carol Reed, written by Graham Greene and starring Joseph Cotten, Alida Valli, Orson Welles, and Trevor Howard. Set in postwar Vienna, the film centres on American Holly Martins (Cotten), who arrives in the city to accept a job with his friend Harry Lime (Welles), only to learn that Lime has died. Viewing his death as suspicious, Martins decides to stay in Vienna and investigate the matter.
Friedrich Robert Donat was an English actor. He is best remembered for his roles in Alfred Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935) and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), winning for the latter the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Sir Reginald Carey "Rex" Harrison was an English actor. Harrison began his career on the stage in 1924. He made his West End debut in 1936 appearing in the Terence Rattigan play French Without Tears, in what was his breakthrough role. He won his first Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for his performance as Henry VIII in the Broadway play Anne of the Thousand Days in 1949. He returned to Broadway portraying Professor Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady (1956) where he won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical.
Sir Carol Reed was an English film director and producer, best known for Odd Man Out (1947), The Fallen Idol (1948), The Third Man (1949), and Oliver! (1968), for which he was awarded the Academy Award for Best Director.
Sir Alexander Korda was a Hungarian–born British film director, producer and screenwriter, who founded his own film production studios and film distribution company.
Mervyn Ian Guy Hamilton, DSC was an English film director. He directed 22 films from the 1950s to the 1980s, including four James Bond films.
Michèle Morgan was a French film actress, who was a leading lady for three decades in both French cinema and Hollywood features. She is considered to have been one of the great French actresses of the 20th century. Morgan was the inaugural winner of the Best Actress Award at the Cannes Film Festival. In 1992, she was given an honorary César Award for her contributions to French cinema.
Sonia Dresdel was an English actress, whose career ran between the 1940s and 1970s.
Sir John Woolf and his brother James Woolf were British film producers. John and James founded the production companies Romulus Films and Remus Films, which were active during the 1950s and 1960s, and the distribution company Independent Film Distributors, which was active 1950–59 and handled the UK distribution of films such as The African Queen and Gift Horse, as well as several films made by their two production companies.
The Fallen Idol is a 1948 British mystery thriller film directed by Carol Reed, and starring Ralph Richardson, Bobby Henrey, Michèle Morgan, and Denis O'Dea. Its plot follows the young son of a diplomat in London, who comes to suspect that his family's butler, whom he idolises, has committed a murder. It is based on the 1936 short story "The Basement Room", by Graham Greene.
Geoffrey Keen was an English actor who appeared in supporting roles in many films. He is well known for playing British Defence Minister Sir Frederick Gray in the James Bond films.
A Kid For Two Farthings is a 1955 film, directed by Carol Reed. The screenplay was adapted by Wolf Mankowitz from his 1953 novel of the same name. The title is a reference to the traditional Passover song, "Chad Gadya", which begins "One little goat which my father bought for two zuzim". At the end of the film, Mr. Kandinsky softly sings fragments of an English translation of the song.
Oswald Eduard Hafenrichter was an Austrian-British film editor with more than seventy feature film credits. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Film Editing for The Third Man (1949). He has been called "one of the most important foreign editors to have worked in Britain."
An Ideal Husband, also known as Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband, is a 1947 British comedy film adaptation of the 1895 play by Oscar Wilde. It was made by London Film Productions and distributed by British Lion Films (UK) and Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation (USA). It was produced and directed by Alexander Korda from a screenplay by Lajos Bíró from Wilde's play. The music score was by Arthur Benjamin, the cinematography by Georges Périnal, the editing by Oswald Hafenrichter and the costume design by Cecil Beaton. This was Korda's last completed film as a director, although he continued producing films into the next decade.
Outcast of the Islands is a 1951 British adventure drama film directed by Carol Reed based on Joseph Conrad's 1896 novel An Outcast of the Islands. The film features Trevor Howard, Ralph Richardson, Robert Morley and Wendy Hiller.
Our Man in Havana is a 1959 British spy comedy film shot in CinemaScope, directed and produced by Carol Reed, and starring Alec Guinness, Burl Ives, Maureen O'Hara, Ralph Richardson, Noël Coward and Ernie Kovacs. The film is adapted from the 1958 novel Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene. The film takes the action of the novel and gives it a more comedic touch. The movie marks Reed's third collaboration with Greene.
The Young Mr. Pitt is a 1942 British biographical film of the life of William Pitt the Younger and in particular his struggle against revolutionary France and Napoleon. It was directed by Carol Reed and stars Robert Donat, Robert Morley, Phyllis Calvert and John Mills. Made in black-and-white, it was produced by Edward Black and Maurice Ostrer for the British subsidiary of 20th Century Fox.
Edward Black was a British film producer, best known for being head of production at Gainsborough Studios in the late 1930s and early 1940s, during which time he oversaw production of the Gainsborough melodramas. He also produced such classic films as The Lady Vanishes (1938). Black has been called "one of the unsung heroes of the British film industry" and "one of the greatest figures in British film history, the maker of stars like Margaret Lockwood, James Mason, John Mills and Stewart Granger. He was also one of the very few producers whose films, over a considerable period, made money." In 1946 Mason called Black "the one good production executive" that J. Arthur Rank had. Frank Launder called Black "a great showman and yet he had a great feeling for scripts and spent more time on them than anyone I have ever known. His experimental films used to come off as successful as his others."
Madeleine Mathilde Henrey was a French-born writer. She wrote over 30 books, mainly of an autobiographical nature, that enjoyed considerable fame in post-war Britain and established rural lid-off-a-small-town titles as a genre.
Walter Percy Day O.B.E. (1878–1965) was a British painter best remembered for his work as a matte artist and special effects technician in the film industry. Professional names include W. Percy Day; Percy Day; "Pop" or "Poppa" Day, owing to his collaboration with sons Arthur George Day (1909–1952) draughtsman, Thomas Sydney Day (1912–1985), stills photographer and cameraman, and stepson, Peter Ellenshaw, who also worked in this field.
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