Australians in Hollywood : Biographical Notes

O. P. Heggie
O.P. Heggie (1879-1936) made his stage debut at Adelaide 's Theatre Royal in 1899. His London debut came in 1906; in 1914 a panel of English critics hailed him as “one of the six actors to whom the public must look for the future of the English stage.” His portrayal of Sherlock Holmes drew an admiring letter from Conan Doyle himself. This postcard was one of a series publicising Heggie's 1915 season on Broadway with the English actor Harley Granville-Barker and Barker's wife Lillah McCarthy. Heggie's first film was Trelawny of the Wells (1928). With the advent of sound in 1927, Hollywood was in need of skilled character actors, and in 1929 Heggie settled there to make The Letter (1929), The Mysterious Dr Fu Manchu (1930), Devotion (1931), The Count of Monte Cristo (1934), Midnight (1934) with a young Bogart, and Anne of Green Gables (1934). He is best remembered as the blind hermit in The Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a part parodied by Gene Hackman in Young Frankenstein (1974).

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