Edmund Gwenn

Portly British actor in films since 1916 who made his mark in the 1940s as one of Hollywood's most endearing character actors, playing roles ranging from the cheerful murderer in Alfred Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent" (1940) to the long-suffering husband and father in "Pride and Prejudice" (1940) and Santa Claus in "Miracle on 34th Street" (1947), for which he won a well-deserved Oscar.