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The Herbert Mundin / George Groves
Family Connection

The link with "the scene stealer" - the 1930s character actor

George Groves was indirectly related to Herbert Mundin, (pictured left), another Hollywood son of St.Helens, who appeared in 56 films during the 1930s including Mutiny on The Bounty in 1935 with Charles Laughton and The Adventures of Robin Hood in 1938 with Errol Flynn. His Hollywood career was cut short by his death in a car accident in 1939 in California.

The connection between the families was Jane Groves, who was the widow of Thomas Groves. He was George's great-uncle who originally owned the Duke Street barber's and who died in bizarre circumstances in November 1895. (See George in St.Helens Pt2). Shortly after his death, his widow Jane and ten year-old daughter Clara returned to Sutton Junction in St.Helens where Jane had been brought up. (Although her place of birth was Holywell in Flintshire). She then moved to 44 Mill Street only a few hundred yards away from the Duke Street barber's shop and on the 18th September 1897 at the age of 36 became 50 year-old William Mundin’s fourth wife.

William was a somewhat nomadic, Primitive Methodist home missionary who had also been a farm labourer and who was a great advocate of the temperance movement. In the 1891 census he is listed as living at Runcorn near Widnes with third wife Mary. Upon her death on September 27th, 1895 at the age of 30, he moved to St.Helens and lived with Jane and Clara at 206 Windleshaw Road in Dentons Green (pictured right, photographed in 2006).

On 21st August 1898, Jane gave birth to a son they named Herbert Thomas. William Mundin is believed to have had as many as 19 children with his four wives - many of them dying at birth or in infancy - but Herbert was the only child he had with Jane.  William Mundin is only listed in one edition of the electoral register (1898-99) as living in Windleshaw Road. He also seemingly owned or resided at properties in College Street, North Road, Oxford Street and Hardshaw Street, but is not listed at any of these addresses in successive registers. The family almost certainly left St.Helens within months of Herbert being born.

Indeed in the 1901 census they are listed as living in St.Albans in Hertfordshire, although erroneously identified within online census data as bearing the surname Mundie. The census enumerator’s handwriting left a lot to be desired and two year-old Herbert Thomas Mundin is identified as Herlar T. Mundie. (Great-nephew Derek Mundin is responsible for the detective work in uncovering this). The census data does reveal that the family lived at St.Helens Villa, Paxton Road in St.Albans. William and Jane apparently named their house after the town where they first met and where their son Herbert was born.

Herbert attended the prestigious St.Albans Grammar School where Stephen Hawking and Sir Tim Rice would study some years later. He served in WW1 as a wireless operator on minesweepers and during the 1920s performed on the stage in Britain at the London Palladium, Alhambra and the Coliseum.

Herbert first travelled to America on December 18th, 1923 for a series of theatrical engagements in New York, just 17 days after George Groves sailed from Liverpool to the 'Big Apple'. However, Herbert was by then based in London and so sailed from Southampton on the SS Aquitania. In the ship’s passenger manifest Herbert describes himself as 5’7” tall with a fair complexion, brown hair, blue eyes and bearing a scar over his left eye. His big break as an actor was in Charlot’s Revue when it appeared on Broadway in 1925 (pictured above left with Gertrude Lawrence). One of his roles in the production was as a barber. Perhaps his mother was able to give him some pointers! During the late 1920s Herbert developed a reputation as a top British music-hall comedian and actor and was often top of the bill.

In 1930, after working in Australia, Herbert received a contract with the Fox movie studio and made several 'quota quickie' films at Twickenham with Harry Cohen. Herbert adapted to film so successfully that he transferred to the Fox studios in Hollywood and made fifty-six pictures in total in just nine years. Probably his best known role was as Much the Miller's Son (pictured right) in The Adventures of Robin Hood of 1938 which starred Errol Flynn. He was a character actor, known as the “scene stealer" who would often take the limelight away from the more illustrious acting talent that he played opposite in his short but prolific career which was tragically cut short on a California highway in 1939 at the age of just 40.

These stars included Clark Gable, Lucille Ball, Johnny Weissmuller, Basil Rathbone, Lionel Barrymore, Shirley Temple, Bela Lugosi and Spencer Tracy. He often added a comedic touch to films and is said to have specialised in older roles through his bulbous nose and short, penguin-like frame!

Herbert’s father William, returned to the north-west just before his death on the 10th April 1924 at the age of 77. He lived at 66 Fitzherbert Street in Warrington and is buried in St.Helens Cemetery (section 6, grave number 544) with his third wife Mary. The St.Albans branch of the Church of England Temperance Society have placed a stone at the foot of William’s grave to record their "grateful memory of 31 years devoted work".

The Mundin family grave in St.Helens Cemetery

His widow Jane (the great-aunt of George Groves) lived to the ripe old age of 84, dying in Wallasey on the Wirral in 1946. Her place of burial is presently unknown.

William Mundin in 1921. He was the very first probation officer in Hertfordshire.

Herbert's great-nephew, Barry Fletcher, has conducted his own research into Herbert's background which was published by the Lancashire Evening Telegraph and St.Helens Star in 1998. You can read it HERE. If you would like to contact Barry - especially if you believe you are related to Herbert Mundin - click HERE. Alternatively, use this website's contact details at the foot of this page (or Contact Form).

Herbert's IMDB filmography can be accessed HERE. Thanks to Barry Fletcher and Derek Mundin for their research contributions to this page. Other research sources include St.Helens Local History & Archives Library, St.Helens Cemetery Office, Statue of Liberty - Ellis Island Foundation and Hertfordshire Countryside magazine.

    
More pictures of St.Helens-born Herbert Mundin who made 56 films in the 1930s

A WEBSITE TRIBUTE TO HERBERT MUNDIN CONTAINING DOZENS OF RARE PICTURES WILL BE ONLINE IN LATE 2008

NEXT PAGE - GEORGE GROVES AT BELL LABS AND THE VITAGRAPH STUDIOS IN NEW YORK (1923-26)

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