Denholm Elliott ✝

Denholm Mitchell Elliott, CBE (31 May 1922 – 6 October 1992) was an English actor, with more than 125 film and television credits. His well-known roles include the abortionist in Alfie (1966), Marcus Brody in Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), Coleman in Trading Places (1983), and Mr. Emerson in A Room with a View (1985), which earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. He also played Dr. Swaby in A Private Function (1984) and newspaper reporter Vernon Bayliss in Defence of the Realm (1985). Elliott achieved particular success in his later career with three consecutive wins of the BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in the 1980s (to this day, a still-unbeaten record). The American film critic Roger Ebert described him as "the most dependable of all British character actors." The New York Times called him "a star among supporting players" and "an accomplished scene-stealer". Elliott was born May 31, 1922, in Kensington, London, the son of Nina (née Mitchell; 1893–1966) and Myles Layman Farr Elliott, MBE (1890–1933), a barrister who had read law and Arabic at Cambridge before fighting with the Gloucestershire Regiment at Gallipoli and in Mesopotamia. In 1930, Myles Elliott was appointed solicitor-general to the Mandatory Government in Palestine. Three years later, following a series of controversial government prosecutions, he was assassinated outside the King David Hotel and buried in the Protestant Cemetery on Mount Zion. Elliott's elder brother Neil Emerson Elliott (1920–2003) was a land agent to Lady Anne Cavendish-Bentinck.