Early Life
Howard was born Leslie Howard Steiner to a British mother, Lilian (née Blumberg), and a Hungarian father, Ferdinand Steiner, in Forest Hill, London, UK. His father was Jewish and his mother was raised a Christian; her own grandfather was a Jewish immigrant from East Prussia who had married into the English upper classes. He was educated at Alleyn's School, London. Like many others around the time of the First World War, the family changed their name, using "Stainer" as less German-sounding. He worked as a bank clerk before enlisting at the outbreak of the First World War. He served in the British Army as a subaltern in the Northamptonshire Yeomanry, but suffered shell shock, which led to his relinquishing his commission in May 1916.
Read more about this topic: Leslie Howard (actor)
Famous quotes related to early life:
“Many a woman shudders ... at the terrible eclipse of those intellectual powers which in early life seemed prophetic of usefulness and happiness, hence the army of martyrs among our married and unmarried women who, not having cultivated a taste for science, art or literature, form a corps of nervous patients who make fortunes for agreeable physicians ...”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)