George Groves The Movie Sound Pioneer

George Groves was indirectly related to Herbert Mundin, 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. Tragically Herbert’s Hollywood career was cut short in 1939 by his death in a California car crash.

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 Part 2.) Shortly after Thomas’s death, his widow Jane and ten-year-old daughter Clara returned to Sutton 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 September 18th 1897 at the age of 36 became William Mundin's fourth wife.

50-year-old William was a somewhat nomadic Primitive Methodist home missionary, who had also been a farm labourer, and 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. 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 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's birth.

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 was 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 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. Above are two stills featuring Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie. One of Herbert’s 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. The stage comic adapted to film so well that he transferred to the Fox Studios in Hollywood and made fifty-six pictures in total in just nine years.

Herbert's first Hollywood film of note was Chandu the Magician, based on a popular radio show and which was released in September 1932. Béla Lugosi starred as Roxor, a maniac intent on world domination and who kidnaps a scientist who is working on a deadly death ray capable of destroying a whole city. In late 1932 Herbert made Cavalcade based on Noël Coward's successful Drury Lane play. The film dramatised English life from New Year's Eve 1899 until 1933 and won three Oscars for Best Director, Picture and Art Direction and did much for Mundin's reputation. Herbert put in a straight performance of a butler who became a pub landlord and drank away the profits. Probably his best-known roles were as Herbert Henry Rawlins in Tarzan Escapes (1936) and as Much the Miller's Son in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), which starred Errol Flynn.

Herbert was a character actor, known as the "scene stealer", as he would often take the limelight away from the film's more illustrious acting talent. 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! Sadly his short but prolific career was tragically cut short on a California highway in 1939 at the age of just 40.

Herbert's father William returned to the north-west of England 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 with his third wife Mary. The St Albans branch of the Church of England Temperance Society placed a stone at the foot of William's grave to record their "grateful memory of 31 years devoted work". 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. Jane is buried in a separate grave in St Helens Cemetery (section 3, grave number 357) along with Thomas Groves, Clara Smith and Patricia Elizabeth Smith. Thanks to Barry Fletcher and the late 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.