Sir Charles Aubrey Smith, CBE (July 21, 1863 - December 20, 1948) was an English stage and film actor who acquired a niche as the officer-and-gentleman type. In Hollywood, he organized British actors into a cricket team and started the Hollywood Cricket Club in 1932.
SELECTED FILMOGRAPHY
The House of Rothschild (1935)
Cleopatra (1935)
The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1936)
Romeo and Juliet (1937)
Rebecca (1941)
Madame Curie (1944)
10 FUN FACTS!
C. Aubrey was awarded the CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire) in the 1938 King's Birthday Honors List and was knighted in the 1944 King's Birthday Honors List for his services to Anglo-American amity.
He played the Duke of Wellington in both The House of Rothschild (1934) and Queen of Destiny (1938).
C. Aubrey was the inspiration for the character Sir Ambrose Abercrombie in Evelyn Waugh's satire of Hollywood The Loved One.
He was also the brother-in-law of playwright/novelist Cosmo Hamilton, who married Aubrey's sister.
Around Hollywood, Sir Aubrey was perhaps best known as team captain of the Hollywood Cricket Club. In fact, the club's home field and clubhouse in Los Angeles' Griffith Park was named for Sir Aubrey in 1933.
C. Aubrey was also the inspiration for the character Commander McBragg on the animated series, Tennessee Tuxedo and His Tales (1963).
His nickname was "Round The Corner" which came from his favorite shot in cricket. It was also the name of his house.
In the late 1880s, while he was mining for gold in South Africa, he developed pneumonia and was wrongly pronounced dead by doctors.
Ironically, he died from pneumonia at his home in Beverly Hills in 1945.
He was posthumously awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in February 1960.