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Hollywood film star and Broadway actor Frank Conroy, who was born in Derby in 1890

Frank Conroy's grave in New York State, shared with his wife Ruth who was eighteen years his junior

Derbyshire has been the birthplace of quite a number of actors and actresses, most of whose links with the county have been well documented, but one performer who appeared many times in Hollywood movies and Broadway shows has been largely forgotten.

His name, now little recognised outside 'movie buff' circles, is FRANK CONROY, arguably the most prolific film actor to emerge from Derbyshire.

Frank Meienberg Conroy was born in Derby on 14 October 1890 at 33 Heyworth Street, which is off Radbourne Street, not far from Ashbourne Road. His Canadian-born father Joseph was a railway inspector, and Frank was given his unusual middle name because his mother Anna had been born in Switzerland. By 1901 the family were living at 276 Burton Road, Derby.

When Frank Conroy set out to be an actor he spent three years touring with the Benson Shakespeare Company in England before emigrating to the United States a few years before the First World War when in his early twenties.

He located himself in New York City - living on West 64th Street - and began performing regularly on stage with the Washington Square Players. He then established the Greenwich Village Theatre, serving as actor, director, and producer, and in 1913 at the age of 23 he made his first Broadway appearance.

In time he took American citizenship and during the First World War served for a short period in the US Navy. He was drafted in 1917 and on his registration documents (viewable online) he incorrectly stated his birthdate in Derby as 14 October 1891, not 1890. Some time after signing up he appears to have adopted the middle name Parish, no doubt because he considered that an actor with such a Germanic-sounding name as Meienberg might be perceived in a bad light.

He continued his stage career when the conflict ended, and with the advent of the 'cinema age' he ultimately added film roles to his already significant repertoire, thus sealing his reputation as a highly successful actor on both stage and screen.

His first screen appearance was in the 1930 film The Royal family of Broadway and his last was for television in the 1961 production The Power and the Glory. Between the two dates he made upwards of 80 Hollywood film appearances and continued to appear in Broadway shows.

During his Broadway career he frequently landed what are known in the trade as 'above the title' billings - that is starring roles - but never quite made the same impact in his Hollywood movies. Nevertheless he landed some good roles and appeared alongside countless screen legends.

He worked in several of the popular Charlie Chan films and featured with Greta Garbo and Joan Crawford in Grand Hotel. One film he appeared in became a real curiosity - that was Manhattan Melodramas, in which he played the attorney to Clarke Gable's character Blackie. The film gained a rather ghoulish place in history because it was the one which arch-criminal John Dillinger watched just moments before he was shot dead by police officers.

Frank Conroy died in Paramus, New Jersey, USA, on 24 February 1964, aged 73. His simple gravestone, Lot 421, is in the Kensico Cemetery, Valhalla, Westchester County, New York State.

That his final resting place should be such a long way from his birthplace in Derby fittingly symbolises how far he had come since he entered the world in the last decade of the nineteenth century - an age when the very concept of 'movie stardom' wasn't even dreamed of.

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County:  Derbyshire

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