Another Hamlet: The Mystery of Leslie Howard

Leslie Howard may be today the least known of the best known actors / movie stars of his day (1930s-1940s). Part of that lost legacy may be because he died relatively young, but part of it may also involve his life outside of Broadway and Hollywood. Before the war Howard starred in such films as The Petrified Forest and Gone with the Wind), and on stage (Hamlet). Upon his return to England he shifted his attention to the war effort, making films that celebrated the English spirit and attacked the Nazis. In one instance he introduced the Oxfordian theory about the Shakespeare authorship question into several scenes in his popular Pimpernel Smith (the Oxfordian theory of the Shakespeare authorship is that the true author was Edward de Vere, 17th Earl of Oxford). Meanwhile, Howard was also serving as a spy for his government, a spy who wound up dying a very public and yet "mysterious" death in 1943 in the only instance of a Nazi shoot-down of a civilian airliner in the whole war. His