Tom Walls on AllMovie

After working as a constable, busker (street entertainer) and jockey, English actor Tom Walls settled on a stage career in 1905. In the '20s, Walls inaugurated his long association with London's Aldwych Theatre, where he produced, directed and starred in a string of popular farces, written by Ben Travers. Non-fans of the Aldwych school may perceive that all of Travers' plays were identical, concerned as they were with upper-class twits becoming entangled with inconvenient young ladies just as all the suspicious wives and jealous husbands show up at once; but to devotees of Aldwych, Tom Walls' appearances were dearly treasured. Walls set the standard for most of his subsequent movie appearances with the 1929 filmization of the Aldwych-produced Rookery Nook, in which Walls functioned as both costar and director. He played the quintessential wealthy philanderer, while perennial costars Ralph Lynn and Robertson Hare contributed their usual well-honed bits of comic business. In his last decade, Tom Walls was cast in other directors' films in character roles, essaying a variety of twinkle-eyed old scoundrels.