Col Cedric Leighton

Cedric was born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland on November 25, 1927. His siblings include the four brothers and four sisters. Born in Scotland, Cedric was also a Glasgow School and England College junior. He continued his career in acting by making some television appearances and working in radio drama.

Career in Hollywood

Cedric began his career in early movies as a small part in The Cat and the Fiddle, which starred Sessue Hayakawa in the title role, and another short feature, Little Boy, which featured the same title role. His first film appearance was in starring roles in a number of horror and Western films, such as The Witch, The Phantom of the Opera, and Stage Fright.

He also appeared in several television shows such as I Love Lucy and The Outer Limits, and was even seen by Tom Cruise in a cameo role. In his final film as a major actor in the 1950s, The Lost Weekend, Cedric won an Academy Award, shared with Jimmy Stewart.

In the fifties he returned to more substantial roles in films such as The Dark Lady of the Sonoran Desert (1958), which featured a supporting role by his great-grandfather, and The Last Savage (1961), also featuring his grandfather. He had an enjoyable cameo role as a hero in the 1945 film The Major and the Minor by Oscar Micheaux. A supporting role in the first story in Errol Flynn's Tarzan, Tarzan and the Slave Girl (1953) earned Cedric another Academy Award. Even though he was not a lead actor and did not win an Academy Award, he reportedly had a very successful career.

By the late fifties Cedric had decided to turn to a more formulaic career of supporting roles in westerns and melodramas. He reunited with Hollywood star, Marlene Dietrich, in the Western film of the same name (1956), which featured his great-grandfather. The same year he appeared in another Western, the Martin Beck film, The Last Ride, and then went on to star as the villain in the highly critically acclaimed mystery-thriller The Diving Baccarat Murders (1959).