Vanishings! Movie Star or Spy?

This documentary tells of Leslie Howard (1893-1943), an English stage and film actor who became a famous Hollywood star, perhaps best remembered for his role in Gone with the Wind (1939). Born in London as Leslie Howard Steiner to Jewish-Hungarian parents, he began an acting career in 1917. With the outbreak of WWI, he served as a junior officer, but suffered shell shock, which led him to retire and pursue his acting career in London and in New York. In 1929 he moved to Hollywood and over the next 10 years he made 22 films. From time to time he went home to his country English house and to his wife and 2 children. Following the outbreak of WWII, he directed and starred in a number of war films. In 1943 when he was returning to England from Lisbon, German Junkers shot down his aircraft. The film claims that the Germans were almost certainly out to shoot down his plane in order to kill Howard himself, one of Britain’s most outspokenly patriotic figures who were also suspected as a spy.