Ernest Thesiger

Ernest Frederic Graham Thesiger, CBE (15 January 1879 – 14 January 1961) was an English stage and film actor. He is noted for his performance as Doctor Septimus Pretorius in James Whale's film Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Early life Third of the four children of Hon. Sir Edward Peirson Thesiger (1842–1928), KCB, Clerk Assistant to Parliament, and Georgina Mary, daughter of William Bruce Stopford Sackville, of Drayton House, Thrapston, Northamptonshire, of the family of the Earl of Courtown, and grandson of the 1st Lord Chelmsford, Thesiger was born in London, England. He was the first cousin once removed of the explorer and author Wilfred Thesiger (1910–2003), and the nephew of the 2nd Lord Chelmsford. Thesiger attended Marlborough College and the Slade School of Art with aspirations of becoming a painter, but quickly switched to drama, making his professional debut in a production of Colonel Smith in 1909. He also processed with the Men's League for Women's Suffrage at the mass rally in 1909. After the outbreak of World War I, on 31 August 1914, he volunteered with the British Army's Territorial Force, enlisting into the 2nd Battalion of the 9th London Regiment (Queen Victoria's Rifles), as Rifleman No.2546 at its Regimental Headquarters in London's West End. After training in England for three months, he was sent to the Western Front in late 1914 with the Q.V.R.'s 1st Battalion.