Lionel Atwill

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Elsie Mackay and Lionel Atwill in 1922, in a Vanity Fair publicity photo for The White-Faced Fool

Lionel Atwill in Mystery of the Wax Museum

Lionel Atwill (March 1, 1885 - April 22, 1946) was an English stage and film actor born in Croydon, London, England.

He began his career in theatre but was most famous for his horror roles in the 1930s. His two most memorable parts were as the crazed, disfigured sculptor in Mystery of the Wax Museum (Warner Brothers, 1933) -- a role also played by Vincent Price in the 1953 remake, House of Wax -- and as Inspector Krogh in Son of Frankenstein (1939), memorably sent up by Kenneth Mars in Mel Brooks's Young Frankenstein (1974).

When he was not cast in macabre roles, Atwill often appeared in the 1930s as righteous-minded authority figures. For example, in 1937's less memorable, but still appealing The Wrong Road for RKO, investigator Atwill persuades a young, bank-robbing ingenue played by Helen Mack and her boyfriend Richard Cromwell to return their ill-gotten $ 100,000 and give up a life of crime.

Atwill remained a stalwart of the Universal horror films until his career flagged in the 1940s because of a widely publicized sex scandal in 1943, during the investigation of which he was charged with perjury at a rape trial. The Hays Office had him blacklisted, and he later returned to the theatre. He married four times: firstly to Phyllis Ralph, secondly to actress and aviator Elsie Mackay aka Poppy Wyndham^[1], thirdly to Louise Stoltesbury/Cromwell Brooks, and finally to Mary Shilstone/Paula Pruter ^[2] who carried his only living child, Lionel Anthony Atwill. In 1941 Atwill's son, John Arthur Atwill, was killed in action.^[3] [CWGC record]. His third wife, Louise Cromwell Brooks, had previously been married to Douglas MacArthur. His brother-in-law James H. R. Cromwell was married to Delphine Dodge and to Doris Duke.