Herbert Rawlinson

Biography

Brighton’s blustery seafront delivered Herbert Rawlinson on 15 November 1885, and the boy who breathed salt air on England’s south coast would grow up breathing life into flickering celluloid. Between 1910 and the late 1940s he faced down studio spotlights, producing and performing in more than 200 silent and sound reels—memorably dodging peril in 1925’s The Flame Fighter, cracking the titular puzzle of 1919’s The Carter Case, and lending quiet strength to Bette Davis’s tragic heiress in 1939’s Dark Victory. Off-screen, three women shared his surname at different times: Loraine Abigail Long, Roberta Arnold, and Josephine Norman. The final curtain fell on 12 July 1953 in Los Angeles, where the adopted Californian succumbed to cancer, leaving behind a filmography as sprawling as the city that became his last home.