A tall, debonair, immaculately-groomed British leading man best known for his pipe-smoking chaps, actor John Loder (ne John Muir Lowe), the son of a British general, first served in Gallipoli in WWI and was a German prisoner of war at one point. Upon his release he actually stayed there in order to run a pickle factory. An interest in acting ...
[from the 1940s] Why is it that I'm not able to get the roles they give Clark Gable? They always say, "You have no name. But when you have one, come again." By that time I'll be old and stiff, A kind of poor man's Aubrey Smith.
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Fact
1
He and his How Green Was My Valley (1941), Confirm or Deny (1941) and Gentleman Jim (1942) co-star Arthur Shields fought on opposite sides of the Easter Rising of 1916: Loder was a second lieutenant in the British Army while Shields fought with the Irish republicans. Furthermore, Loder was the son of General William Lowe, the British officer to whom Pádraig Pearse surrendered on April 29, 1916. Shields played Pearse in The Plough and the Stars (1936).
John (Loder) Lowe, a serving British officer who was in Dublin at the time of the 1916 Rising but was not directly involved in the fighting, did not take the surrender. He accompanied his father, General Lowe, to witness Patrick Pearse surrender to the general. This took place not in front of the General Post Office, Dublin, but at the corner of Parnell Street and Moore Street. There is a photograph which shows the historic moment - Pearse, accompanied by the nurse who carried the ceasefire order to the various rebel outposts in the city, facing General Lowe and his son, John (Loder).
4
Educated at Eton and at the Royal Military College. He served with the 15th Hussars as a second lieutenant in Gallipoli.
5
Maternal grandfather was Sicilian, but became a British subject as his family did not accept his marriage to his younger sisters' British governess (Loder's grandmother).
6
Attended the prestigious Eton college. Once wore his old Etonian tie at a Hollywood party and told one of the inquiring guests that he was wearing it because he liked the way it matched with his suit. The host then had to explain to the indignant guest that although Loder was a Hollywood star, he did in fact attend Eton college.
7
His father, General Lowe, was the British officer to whom Patrick Pearse, the mystical Catholic zealot and lead rebel of the Irish 1916 Rising in Dublin, surrendered, according to Colm Connolly who wrote a superlative book about Michael Collins.
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