Leslie Howard was a person.
Leslie Howard (actor) . Howard also wrote many stories and articles for The New York Times , The New Yorker and Vanity Fair . Howard was one of the biggest box-office draws and movie idols of the 1930s but is probably best remembered for playing Ashley Wilkes in Gone with the Wind ( 1939 ) . He was active in anti-German propaganda and rumoured to have been involved with British or Allied Intelligence , sparking conspiracy theories regarding his death in 1943 at the hands of the German Luftwaffe when the British airliner on which he was a passenger was shot down over the Bay of Biscay .