IT will be 100 years on Friday since James Mason was born in Croft House, Marsh. He was acknowledged as one of the greatest screen actors of his generation.
Wouldn’t it be appropriate if Huddersfield University marked the memory of one of this town’s famous sons by naming one of their buildings or drama rooms after him?
Particularly as Patrick Stewart, another wonderful actor, is Chancellor and Professor of Performing Arts there?
Mason was educated at Marlborough College and Cambridge, gave up a planned career as an architect for acting and joined the Old Vic in London. He made his first film in 1933 and completed his last shortly before his death in Switzerland in 1984.
He made more than 100 films, was nominated for an Oscar - but never won - three times. When he heard his childhood home was being demolished, he rescued two stone lions from the front gate and had them shipped to the garden of his home in Vevey, Switzerland.
James Mason Court in Marsh is named in his honour. But wouldn’t it be better to have something more fitting to remember him by, in the drama department of Huddersfield University?
