After a successful theatrical career in the United Kingdom and North America, he became an in-demand Hollywood leading man, frequently appearing in romantic melodramas and occasional comedies.

(1930) and Foreign Correspondent (1940), William Wyler's The Letter (1940) and The Little Foxes (1941), Albert Lewin's The Moon and Sixpence (1942), Edmund Goulding's The Razor's Edge (1946), and Kurt Neumann's The Fly (1958).

He appeared onscreen with many of the most prominent leading ladies of Hollywood's Golden Age, including Barbara Stanwyck, Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis.

[25] "[Leopold 'Bogey' Godfrey-Turner] had a lavish joy in life, an embattled mind, keen wit, sensitive appreciations and a gallant soul...Uncle Bogey had lost his first-born son in the war...He proved to me that a man may face utter desolation without whimpering.

[34] Following the Armistice, Marshall joined Nigel Playfair's repertory troupe, appearing in Make Believe (December 1918), The Younger Generation (1919) and Abraham Lincoln (1919).

[38][39] By 1922, Marshall was making regular appearances on both sides of the Atlantic, debuting on Broadway in The Voice from the Minaret and starring in Coward's The Young Idea (with then-wife Maitland)[40][41] and The Queen Was in the Parlour.

[46] He made his first American film appearance as the lover of Jeanne Eagels's character in the first version of The Letter (1929), produced at Paramount Pictures' Astoria studios two years later.

As a Hollywood leading man, the suave, gentlemanly actor played romantic roles opposite such stars as Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Barbara Stanwyck, Katharine Hepburn, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s.

Later the same year, he played Gaston Monescu, a sophisticated thief involved in a love triangle in Ernst Lubitsch's suggestive, light comedy Trouble in Paradise (1932).

He did three films with Gertrude Michael, Till We Meet Again (1936), Forgotten Faces (1936) and Make Way for a Lady (1936), then made Girls' Dormitory (1936) with Ruth Chatterton and A Woman Rebels (1936) with Katharine Hepburn.

After making Adventure in Washington (1941) Marshall starred as maltreated, principled husband Horace Giddens in The Little Foxes, again with Davis and Wyler, which received nine Academy Award nominations including one for Best Picture.

"[54] During the Second World War, Marshall made numerous appearances on the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS), hosting The Globe Theatre[55][56] and guest-starring on Command Performance and Mail Call, among other programmes.

[62] Marshall continued to act in films through the war, increasingly as a supporting actor: When Ladies Meet (1941), Kathleen (1941) with Shirley Temple, and The Moon and Sixpence (1942) where he played a character based on W. Somerset Maugham.

His boss, dubbed "The Chief", tasked him with dealing with some of the world's most hardened, sophisticated criminals, including smugglers, murderers, black marketeers, saboteurs, kidnappers, various types of thieves, corrupt politicians and rogue scientists.

Despite his usual reluctance to discuss his own injury, he talked freely about his personal experiences in order to give these amputees tips on how to use and adjust to their new artificial limbs.

The author Patty De Roulf insisted that his story needed to be told to help injured veterans and their families and to show that "Marshall is doing one of the finest war jobs any human being can do."

When I found out I had a metal claw instead of a hand, I was completely broken...Then one day, while I was in the hospital, we were told Herbert Marshall, the film star, was coming to talk to us.

[66] After the war, Marshall worked almost exclusively as a supporting actor in films: Crack-Up (1946), a noir; The Razor's Edge (1946), playing Somerset Maugham; Duel in the Sun (1946), the epic Western; Ivy (1947), with Joan Fontaine; High Wall (1947), another noir; The Secret Garden (1949) with Margaret O'Brien at MGM; The Underworld Story (1950); Black Jack (1950), billed second to George Sanders; and Anne of the Indies (1951).

Marshall's final performances include the feature films College Confidential (1960), Midnight Lace (1960), A Fever in the Blood (1961), Five Weeks in a Balloon (1962), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963) and The Caretakers (1963).

Marshall, a soft-spoken man who was one of the pillars of the Hollywood British community,[68] was widely respected and well-liked due to his talent and professionalism,[69][70] pleasant and easygoing demeanor,[71][72] sensitivity,[73][74] gentlemanly and courteous manner,[75][76] witty sense of humour,[77][78] and his "very great personal charm".

[79] Among the actor's many friends in the British community were Edmund Goulding, Eric Blore, Ronald Colman, Clive Brook, Merle Oberon, C. Aubrey Smith, David Niven, Basil Rathbone, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Brian Aherne.

Other friends included Raymond Massey, Rod La Rocque, Vilma Bánky, Kay Francis, Mary Astor, Irving Thalberg, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Melvyn Douglas, Bette Davis and Grace Moore.

[85][86][87] In 1931, Best broke a lucrative contract with MGM and walked off the filming of The Phantom of Paris with John Gilbert in order to be with Marshall in New York, where he was performing in a play.

[96] Two years prior to their marriage, Russell's recently divorced ex-husband, songwriter Eddy Brandt, initiated an alienation of affection suit for $250,000 against Marshall, whom he accused of stealing his wife.

Sarah Marshall followed her parents and grandparents into the acting profession,[105] appearing in many of the most popular television shows of the 1960s, including Star Trek, The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, F Troop and Daniel Boone.

In the early 1930s, Marshall was commonly rumoured within Hollywood social circles to have had affairs with both his Trouble in Paradise co-stars Kay Francis and Miriam Hopkins.

She described Marshall at the time of their first meeting as "a handsome man in his early forties with a gentle face and soft brown eyes", who had "one of the most perfect musical voices I had ever heard".

Although insisting they were "madly in love," she believed that he would not demand a divorce because of his typically docile nature, reluctance to deliberately hurt people, and guilt over his separation from his young daughter.

[121] Around two months after this incident, Marshall again received substantial publicity after screenwriter John Monk Saunders (husband of actress Fay Wray) punched him in the face and knocked him to the floor at a dinner party given by director Ernst Lubitsch.

[132] In late 1965, after his final brief film appearance in the thriller The Third Day, Marshall was admitted to the Motion Picture Relief Fund Hospital for severe depression.