Hugh Dempster was a British

Great Britain

Great Britain or Britain is an island situated to the northwest of Continental Europe. It is the ninth largest island in the world, and the largest European island, as well as the largest of the British Isles...

 theatre

Theatre

Theatre is a collaborative form of fine art that uses live performers to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place. The performers may communicate this experience to the audience through combinations of gesture, speech, song, music or dance...

 and film

Film

A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...

 actor

Actor

An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

.

Born in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, Dempster began his screen career in the silent film

Silent film

A silent film is a film with no synchronized recorded sound, especially with no spoken dialogue. In silent films for entertainment the dialogue is transmitted through muted gestures, pantomime and title cards...

 era. His credits included Vice Versa

Vice Versa (1948 film)

Vice Versa is a 1948 British comedy film written and directed by Peter Ustinov. It is the third screen adaptation of the 1882 novel of the same name by F. Anstey. The film was produced by Two Cities Films and distributed by General Film Distributors....

, Anna Karenina

Anna Karenina (1948 film)

Anna Karenina [p] is a 1948 British film based on the 19th century novel, Anna Karenina, by the Russian writer Leo Tolstoy. The film was directed by Julien Duvivier, and starred Vivien Leigh in the title role...

, The Winslow Boy

The Winslow Boy (1948 film)

The Winslow Boy is a 1948 film adaptation of Terence Rattigan's play The Winslow Boy. It was made by De Grunwald Productions and distributed by the British Lion Film Corporation. It was directed by Anthony Asquith and produced by Anatole de Grunwald with Teddy Baird as associate producer. The...

, The Fan

The Fan (1949 film)

The Fan is a 1949 American drama film directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Dorothy Parker, Walter Reisch, and Ross Evans is based on the 1892 play Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde...

, Scrooge

Scrooge (1951 film)

Scrooge, released as A Christmas Carol in the United States, is a 1951 film adaptation of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol. It starred Alastair Sim as Ebenezer Scrooge and was directed by Brian Desmond Hurst, with a screenplay by Noel Langley.The film also features Kathleen Harrison in an...

, The House Across the Lake

The House Across the Lake (1954 film)

The House Across the Lake is a 1954 British film released in the U.S. as Heat Wave. The film noir drama stars Alex Nicol and Hillary Brooke.- Plot :...

, and The Ghost Train.

Thirty-six years separated Dempster's first and last appearances on Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

. He debuted in the 1929 melodrama

Melodrama

The term melodrama refers to a dramatic work that exaggerates plot and characters in order to appeal to the emotions. It may also refer to the genre which includes such works, or to language, behavior, or events which resemble them...

 Rope's End

Rope (play)

Rope is a 1929 British play by Patrick Hamilton. In formal terms, it is a well-made play with a three-act dramatic structure that adheres to the classical unities. Its action is continuous, punctuated only by the curtain fall at the end of each act. It may also be considered a thriller whose...

by Patrick Hamilton

Patrick Hamilton (dramatist)

Patrick Hamilton was an English playwright and novelist.He was well regarded by Graham Greene and J. B. Priestley and study of his novels has been revived recently because of their distinctive style, deploying a Dickensian narrative voice to convey aspects of inter-war London street culture...

 and in 1965 replaced Peter Sallis

Peter Sallis

Peter Sallis, OBE is an English actor and entertainer, well-known for his work on British television. Although he was born and brought up in London, his two most notable roles require him to adopt the accents and mannerisms of a Northerner.Sallis is best known for his role as the main character...

 as Dr. Watson

John Watson (Sherlock Holmes)

John H. Watson, M.D. , known as Dr. Watson, is a character in the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Watson is Sherlock Holmes's friend, assistant and sometime flatmate, and is the first person narrator of all but four stories in the Sherlock Holmes canon.-Name:Doctor Watson's first...

 in the Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is a fictional detective created by Scottish author and physician Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The fantastic London-based "consulting detective", Holmes is famous for his astute logical reasoning, his ability to take almost any disguise, and his use of forensic science skills to solve...

-inspired musical

Musical theatre

Musical theatre is a form of theatre combining songs, spoken dialogue, acting, and dance. The emotional content of the piece – humor, pathos, love, anger – as well as the story itself, is communicated through the words, music, movement and technical aspects of the entertainment as an...

 Baker Street

Baker Street (musical)

Baker Street is a musical with a book by Jerome Coopersmith and music and lyrics by Marian Grudeff and Raymond Jessel.Loosely based on the Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia by Arthur Conan Doyle, it is set in and around London in 1897, the year in which England celebrated the Diamond...

.

Dempster died in Chicago, Illinois.

External links

• Hugh Dempster at the Internet Movie Database
• Hugh Dempster at the Internet Broadway Database