Montagu Love

Montagu Love
Born	(1877-03-15)15 March 1877 Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, United Kingdom
Died	17 May 1943(1943-05-17) (aged 66) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Other names	Harry Montague Love
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1914–1943
Spouse(s)	Marjorie Hollis (1929-1943) (his death) Gertrude Love (1908-1928) (divorced)

Montagu Love (15 March 1877 – 17 May 1943), also known as Montague Love, was an English screen, stage and vaudeville actor.

Life

Born Harry Montague Love in Portsmouth, Hampshire. Educated in Great Britain, Love began his career as an artist and military correspondent with his first important job as a London newspaper cartoonist. Love honed basic stage talents in London, and in 1913 sailed to the U.S. with a road-company production of Cyril Maude's Grumpy.

Usually Love was cast in heartless villain roles. In the 1920s, he played opposite Rudolph Valentino in The Son of the Sheik, opposite John Barrymore in Don Juan, and appeared with Lillian Gish in 1928's The Wind. He also portrayed 'Colonel Ibbetson' in Forever (1921), the silent film version of Peter Ibbetson. Love was one of the most successful villains in silent films.

One of Love's first sound films was the part-talkie The Mysterious Island co-starring Lionel Barrymore. In 1937, he played Henry VIII in the first talking film version of Mark Twain's The Prince and the Pauper, with Errol Flynn. Love played the bigoted Bishop of the Black Canons in The Adventures of Robin Hood, starring Flynn, too. However, he also played gruff authoritarian figures, such as Monsieur Cavaignac, who, contrary to history, demands the resignation of those responsible for the Dreyfus coverup, in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), as well as Don Alejandro de la Vega, whose son appears to be a fop but is actually Zorro, in the 1940 version of The Mark of Zorro, starring Tyrone Power.

In 1941, he played a doctor in Shining Victory, which also starred James Stephenson, Geraldine Fitzgerald and Donald Crisp. In 1939's Gunga Din, it is Montagu Love who reads the final stanza of Rudyard Kipling's original poem over the body of the slain Din.

Love's last film, Devotion, was released three years after his death aged 66 in 1943. He was interred at Chapel of the Pines Crematory.

Partial filmography

Rasputin, the Black Monk (1917)

The Guardian (1917)

Cardinal Mercier was the working title for The Cross Bearer (1918)

• The Face in the Moonlight (1915)
• The Gilded Cage (1916)
• The Guardian (1917)
• The Cross Bearer (1918)
• The World and His Wife (1920)
• The Case of Becky (1921)
• Forever (1921)
• The Leopardess (1923)
• Little Old New York (1923)
• The Eternal City (1923)
• Restless Wives (1924)
• Sinners in Heaven (1924)
• The Mad Marriage (1925)
• Son of the Sheik (1926)
• Don Juan (1926)
• Hands Up! (1926)
• The Social Highwayman (1926)
• Rose of the Golden West (1927)
• Jesse James (1927)
• The Hawk's Nest (1928)
• The Noose (1928)
• The Wind (1928)
• The Haunted House (1928)
• Her Private Life (1929)
• The Last Warning (1929)
• The Divine Lady (1929)
• Bulldog Drummond (1929)
• The Mysterious Island (1929)
• Inside the Lines (1930)
• Outward Bound (1930)
• The Lion and the Lamb (1930)
• Alexander Hamilton (1931)
• Vanity Fair (1932)
• The Riding Tornado (1932)
• His Double Life (1933)
• Limehouse Blues (1934)
• Clive of India (1935)
• The Crusades (1935)
• The White Angel (1936)
• The Prince and the Pauper (1937)
• Parnell (1937)
• The Life of Emile Zola (1937)
• The Prisoner of Zenda (1937)
• Adventure's End (1937)
• Tovarich (1937)
• The Buccaneer (1938)
• The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938)
• The Fighting Devil Dogs (1938), twelve-chapter serial
• If I Were King (1938)
• Gunga Din (1939)
• Juarez (1939)
• Rulers of the Sea (1939)
• Sons of Liberty (1939), short
• The Man in the Iron Mask (1939)
• We Are Not Alone (1939)
• Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet (1940)
• The Sea Hawk (1940)
• Private Affairs (1940)
• All This, and Heaven Too (1940)
• The Lone Wolf Strikes (1940)
• A Dispatch from Reuter's (1940)
• North West Mounted Police (1940)
• The Mark of Zorro (1940) - Don Alejandro Vega
• The Son of Monte Cristo (1940)
• The Devil and Miss Jones (1941)
• Shining Victory (1941)
• Lady for a Night (1942)
• Sherlock Holmes and the Voice of Terror (1942)
• Tennessee Johnson (1942)
• The Constant Nymph (1943)
• Devotion (1946)

External links

• Montagu Love at IMDb
• Silent Ladies & Gents
• Montagu Love at the Internet Broadway Database
• Montagu Love at Find a Grave
• Montagu Love at Virtual History