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Reginald Gardiner

 
Actor: Reginald Gardiner
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  • Born: Feb 27, 1903 in Wimbledon, Surrey, England, UK
  • Died: Jul 07, 1980 in Westwood, California
  • Occupation: Actor
  • Active: '30s-'60s
  • Major Genres: Comedy, Musical
  • Career Highlights: The Great Dictator, The Dolly Sisters, Sweet Rosie O'Grady
  • First Major Screen Credit: A Damsel in Distress (1937)

Biography

The son of an insurance man who'd aspired to appear onstage but never had the chance, British-born actor Reginald Gardiner more than made up for his dad's unrealized dreams with a career lasting 50 years. Graduating from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, Gardiner started as a straight actor but drifted into musical revues, frequently working in the company of such favorite British entertainers as Bea Lillie. His Broadway bow occurred in the 1935 play At Home Abroad, and though he'd made his film debut nearly ten years earlier in Hitchcock's silent The Lodger (1926), he suddenly became a "new" Hollywood find. Handsome enough to play romantic leads had he so chosen (he gets away with it in the 1939 Laurel and Hardy comedy Flying Deuces), Gardiner preferred the sort of kidding-on-the-square comedy he'd done in his revue days. His turn as a traffic cop who imagines himself a symphony conductor in his first American film Born to Dance (1936) was so well received that he virtually repeated the bit--this time as a butler who harbors operatic aspirations--in Damsel in Distress (1937). For most of his film career, Gardiner played suave but slightly untrustworthy British gentlemen; a break from this pattern occurred in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), in which Gardiner played a fascist military man who turns his back on dictator "Adenoid Hinkel" to cast his lot with a community of Jews. Devoting his private life to the enjoyment of classical music, rare books, painting, and monitoring the ghost that supposedly haunted his Beverly Hills home, Reginald Gardiner flourished as a stage, film and television actor into the 1960s; one of his latter-day assignments was his weekly dual role in the 1966 Phyllis Diller sitcom, Pruitts of Southampton. ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
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Reginald Gardiner

from the trailer for the film
Sweethearts (1938)
Born 27 February 1903(1903-02-27)
London, England
Died 7 July 1980 (aged 77)
Westwood, California, U.S.

Reginald Gardiner (27 February 1903 - 7 July 1980) was an English-born actor in film and television. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in Britain. He made his film debut in 1926 in the silent film The Lodger, by Alfred Hitchcock. Moving to Hollywood, he was cast in numerous roles, often as a British butler. One of his most famous roles was that of Schultz in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. Toward the end of his career, Gardiner made increasing guest appearances on the leading television sitcoms of the 1960s, including Fess Parker's ABC series, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington as the lead guest in the episode "Citizen Bellows". His last major role was alongside Phyllis Diller in ABC's The Pruitts of Southampton.

He also recorded a curious and eccentric classic called "Trains" which was regularly played on a British radio program called Children's Favourites during the 1950s. This consisted of Gardiner, sounding slightly tipsy, reciting a monologue about steam railway engines (which he claimed were 'livid beasts') and impersonating both the engines themselves and the sound of trains running on the track. This latter he famously characterised as 'diddly-dee, diddly-dum' to mimic the sound pattern as the four pairs of bogie wheels ran over joins between the lengths of track. (A sound no longer heard since welded rail joins were introduced.) "Trains" was released as a 78 and 45 by English Decca Records (F 5278) which remained on catalogue into the 1970s. At the end of the record, Gardiner signs off with "Well folks, that's all: back to the asylum."

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