Leslie Howard Stainer was born to Hungarian parents in London and went to Dulwich College. After school, he worked as a bank clerk until the outbreak of World War I, when he went into the army. In 1917, diagnosed as shell-shocked, he was invalided out and advised to take up acting as therapy. In a few years his name was famous on the stages of London and New York. He became known as the perfect Englishman (slim, tall, intellectual and sensitive), a part that he played in many movies and a part women would dream about. He made his first movie in 1930, Outward Bound, an adaptation of the stage play in which he starred. In Never the Twain Shall Meet and Smilin' Through, he was playing the Englishman role to the hilt. His screen persona could, perhaps, be best summed up by his role as Sir Percy Blakeney in The Scarlet Pimpernel, a foppish member of society.

It was Howard who insisted that Humphrey Bogart get the role of Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest, a role Humphrey Bogart had played in the stage production. As he became more successful, he also became quite picky about which roles he would do and usually performed in but two films per year. In 1939, he played the character that will always be associated with him, that of Ashley Wilkes, the honour-bound disillusioned intellectual Southern gentleman in Gone with the Wind. However, war clouds were gathering over England and he devoted all his energy on behalf of the war effort. He directed films, wrote articles and made radio broadcasts. He died in 1943, when the KLM plane he was in was shot down by German fighters over the Bay of Biscay.


Died when the 1936 Douglas aircraft «Isis» he was in, with 4 crew members and 12 other passengers, KLM flight #777 of the regular line Bristol - Lisbon, was shot down by Luftwaffe fighter planes over the Bay of Biscay. Oldest of five siblings: Dorice Howard; casting director Irene Howard; Jimmy Howard; and actor Arthur Howard. Father of Leslie Ruth Dale-Harris (b. 1924). 17 years old she married Robert Dale-Harris, a chartered accountant. They lived in Toronto, Canada, with three children. In 1960 she published a biography of her father, "A Quite Remarkable Father". Humphrey Bogart was so grateful at Howard's insistence that he repeat his stage performance in the film of The Petrified Forest (1936), the role that proved to be his big break in movies, that he named his daughter Leslie in Howard's honor. In 1934, he accepted the Oscar for "Best Actor in a Leading Role" on behalf of Charles Laughton, who was not present at the awards ceremony. On board his fated plane was Quirinus Tepas (pilot), D. de Koning (second officer), Cornelis van Brugge (radio operator), Engbertus Rosevink (flight engineer); also Francis German Cowlrick (elderly engineer), Wilfrid Jacob Berthold Israel (British Secret Service agent), Gordon Thompson Maclean (British Foreign Office), Ivan James Sharp (mining engineer; specialist in tungsten), Tyrell Milmay Shervington (Lisbon manager of Shell-Mex Corporation), Kenneth Stonehouse (Washington correspondent for Reuters), Evelyn Stonehouse (wife of Kenneth Stonehouse), Cecilia Amelia Falla Paton (on way to secretarial job at a consulate in England), Rotha Violet Lettie Hutcheon (mother of Carola and Petra), Petra Hutcheon (11 years old), Carola Hutcheon (2 years old), and Alfred Tregear Chenhalls (his business manager and traveling companion).