Leslie Howard

Leslie Howard Stainer was born in Forest Hill on April 3, 1893. His father was Hungarian and his mother was English. He was the eldest son of five siblings.

Leslie fought in World War I, but in 1917 he was diagnosed with combat fatigue (a symptom of neurosis) and sent home, where he was subsequently treated.

Leslie is known for playing the neurotic, visionary but heroic image, and David O. Selznick kindly invited him to play Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind. At first, he refused. He was already 46 years old at the time and refused to play a guy in his 20s. He told Selznick,"I have no interest in playing a weak, sympathetic character, I am tired of playing this useless role."¡»

Selznick and Leslie reached a deal that if he starred in Gone with the Wind, he would award her the rights to produce Intermezzo. Howard eventually accepted the role of Ashley, but he did not actively cooperate during the filming process. He was the only leading actor who had not read the original.

After Gone with the Wind, Leslie starred in three works.

On June 1, 1943, Howard was on British Overseas Airlines Flight 777 en route from Lisbon, Portugal to Bristol, England. He was mistaken for Churchill's plane, so the plane was opened fire by Nazi Germans over the Bay of Biscay in Spain. Shot down by Germans in the Bay of Biscay, the plane crashed into the sea, killing Howard and his wife, and their remains are unknown. He was 50 years old.

By the time of his death, Leslie and Ruth Evelyn had been married for 23 years and had two children. But due to his spy status, the real cause of death has been speculated. Protect then British Prime Minister Churchill, or did he get away with it himself? All this is unknown.

The late Hollywood actor Leslie Howard, best known for his role in Gone With the Wind, was 50 when his plane crashed in a Nazi attack in 1943. Less well known is that Leslie was an unsung heroic British spy who, with the help of his former Spanish lover, persuaded the Spanish dictator General Franco to stop Spain from participating in the second world war.

Leslie Howard was twice nominated for an Academy Award for her roles in "Berkeley Square"(1933) and "The Red Flower"(1934). In 1939, he successfully played Ashley Wilkes in the Hollywood classic film "Gone with the Wind", becoming a world-renowned superstar in Europe and America. However, according to the latest disclosure by Spanish writer Jos Ray Jimena, this popular male movie star is actually an unknown hero British spy in real life!

It is reported that in 2007, Conchita told Jos in an interview before her death that she and Leslie had fallen in love with each other in the 1931 film "No Friends, No Friends," but later married a senior member of the Spanish far-right party. It was through her threading that Leslie was able to have a secret meeting with Franco and convey the message of then-British Prime Minister Churchill to him, so that Franco gave up the idea of following Hitler to join the Axis powers and kept Spain out of World War II.

In June 1943, Leslie and his agent Chanhaus were shot down by German troops while returning to Britain from Lisbon, Portugal. No one on board survived.

It turned out that in June 1943, when Churchill was about to fly back to the UK via Lisbon, Portugal, he learned from the German code deciphered by the British authorities that the Nazi Air Force attempted to shoot down his plane halfway. To escape the assassination, Churchill ordered his bodyguards to secretly sabotage the plane they were going to take, thus delaying the takeoff. Since Churchill was supposed to fly back to the UK on the same route as Leslie that night, the Nazi Air Force, who was in the dark, mistook Leslie's plane for Churchill's plane! For three days, Hitler, the Nazi head of state, was convinced that he had successfully shot down Churchill's plane, and it was not until Churchill later emerged alive that he knew he had killed the wrong person.