Edgar Norton

Edgar Norton
Norton in The Lady Refuses, 1931
Born	August 11, 1868 London, England
Died	February 6, 1953 (aged 84) Los Angeles, California, United States
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1916–1948

Edgar Norton (born Harry Edgar Mills; August 11, 1868 – February 6, 1953) was an English-born American character actor.

Early years

Norton was born in Islington in London, England, on August 11, 1868, as Harry Edgar Mills, one of eight children of Jane Anne née Fleming and Frederic Mills, a clerk in the Home Office department of the Civil Service.

Career

Norton was active on both stage and screen, his theater performances were on both the London and Broadway stages, and his film career spanned both the silent and "talkie" eras in Hollywood. Aged 18, he appeared as the Hare in the original production of Alice in Wonderland in London in 1886, with the production being under the guidance of Lewis Carroll, who saw the musical five times.

During his thirty-year film career, he appeared in at least ninety films. Many consider his most memorable role to be that of Poole, the butler to Dr. Jekyll in the 1931 classic, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde— a role he had been playing on-stage since 1898, opposite Richard Mansfield as Jekyll.

Personal life and death

Norton moved permanently to the United States in 1889, and was naturalised as an American citizen in 1927. He married his Detroit-born wife Lillian Mable née Hubbard in Ontario in Canada in 1890, and with her had a son, Edgar Norton Mills.

He died in the Woodland Hills section of Los Angeles in February 1953.

Filmography

(Per AFI database)