CONWAY TEARLE'S END

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LXV, Issue 19805, 6 December 1938, Page 5

CONWAY TEARLE'S END

LIVED PART OF. SUICIDE

NEW YORK, Oct. G.

Conway Tearle, stage and film actor, ence a £7OO-a-week leading man, died at his modest home in County Vannuys, California, to-day. Hollywood believes he died of a broken heart.

Tearle, aged 00, half-brother of Godfrey Tearle, had been ill for two months.

He began film acting in 1910, played leading man to Irene Rich, Billie Dove, Corinne Griffith, Norma Talmadge, Virginia Valli, Pauline Frederick, Marion Davis and Irene Dunne. But he fell from star rank when the talkies came. "I Never Told" In recent years he was seldom seen in Hollywood. After looking for work for four years he went to New York in 1933, and made a come-back in the stage production of "Dinner at Eight." He took the part of Larry Renault, broken-down star, who committed suicide rather than face further humiliation. Tearle said at the time: "I never told the producers how close they were to the truth when they picked me for the part. They hit the nail right on the head. I had lived that part for four years, and I knew just how Renault felt."

Afterwards, film work came fairly frequent, but since "Romeo and Juliet," made in 1930, he has not been seen on the screen. Tearle's third wife, known on the stage at Adele Rowland, was in tears as she announced: "Conway will have only a modest funeral at Los Angeles crematorium."

Conway Tearle, born in New York, first appeared on the London stage in 1901. Three years later he went to America and acted in many New York successes.

His silent films included "The Common Law," "Bella Donna," "Dancing Mothers" and "Stella Maris."

Only once did he play in England after going to America. He appeared in a playlet called "The Valiant" at the London Palladium. The Tearle family have been on the stage since 1712. Godfrey is aged 54.