Formerly worked as a bank clerk. Indeed, his perpetually serious, usually bespectacled countenance and often pompous or reproving manner, made for ideal casting as stuffy bank managers, politicians and apoplectic businessmen -- both in straight drama or as comic foil to the likes of Norman Wisdom. Started out on screen after being cast by Alfred Hitchcock in three of his early films, beginning with
Juno and the Paycock (1929). Noted for his turn as Major Grigsby in
The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1936).