Alan Napier
| Alan Napier | |
|---|---|
Napier in 1949
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| Born |
Alan William Napier-Clavering 7 January 1903 King's Norton, Birmingham, England |
| Died | 8 August 1988 (aged 85) Santa Monica, California, US |
| Cause of death | Pneumonia |
| Resting place | Ashes scattered in the garden of his home at 17919 Porto Marina Way in Pacific Palisades, CA |
| Nationality | British |
| Education | Clifton College |
| Alma mater | Royal Academy of Dramatic Art |
| Years active | 1930–81 |
| Height | 6 ft 6 in (1.98 m) |
| Spouse(s) |
Emily Nancy Bevill Pethybridge (1899-1970) |
Emily Nancy Bevill Pethybridge (1899-1970)
Alan William Napier-Clavering (7 January 1903 – 8 August 1988), better known as Alan Napier, was an English actor. After a decade in West End theatres, he had a long film career, first, in Britain and, then, in Hollywood. Napier is best known today for portraying Alfred Pennyworth the butler in the 1960s live-action Batman television series.
Napier was the son of Claude Gerald Napier-Clavering (1869–1938) and Mary Millicent Kenrick (1871–1932), sister of Wilfred Byng Kenrick, and a first cousin once removed of Neville Chamberlain,Britain's prime minister from 1937 to 1940. He was educated at Packwood Haugh School and after graduating from Clifton College, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.
He was engaged by the Oxford Players, where he worked with the likes of John Gielgud and Robert Morley. Ironically, as Napier recalled, height played a crucial part in his securing the position and also almost losing it. J. B. Fagan had dismissed Tyrone Guthrie because he was too tall for most parts. Napier was interviewed (and accepted) as Guthrie's replacement while sitting down. Fagan realized that Napier was even taller than Guthrie when he stood up, but honoured his commitment. Napier performed for ten years (1929–1939) on the West End stage.
He made his American stage debut as the romantic lead opposite Gladys George in Lady in Waiting. Though his film career had begun in Britain in the 1930s, he had very little success before the cameras until he joined the British expatriate community in Hollywood in 1941. There he spent time with such people as James Whale, a fellow ex-Oxford Player. He appeared in such films as Random Harvest (1942), Cat People (1942), and The Uninvited (1944). In The Song of Bernadette (1943), he played the ethically questionable psychiatrist who is hired to declare Bernadette mentally ill. He also played the vicious Earl of Warwick in Joan of Arc (1948). He performed in two Shakespearean films: the Orson Welles Macbeth (1948), in which he played a priest that Welles added to the story, who spoke lines originally uttered by other characters, and MGM's Julius Caesar (1953), as Cicero.
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