Harry Stephenson Garraway was born to British parents in Grenada, British West Indies and educated in England. He started acting in his twenties. He appeared on British and American stages and made his Broadway debut in 1901, playing the messenger in A Message from Mars. In the following decades, he performed in more than 30 Broadway plays.
He appeared overall in 90 films from 1917 to 1951. He often played historical figures like Sir Joseph Banks in the Oscar-winning adventure film Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and Florimond Claude, Comte de Mercy-Argenteau in Marie Antoinette (1938).
Stephenson worked with film star Errol Flynn in the films Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, The Prince and the Pauper, and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, often as Flynn's paternal friend and superior. He portrayed Sir Thomas Lancing in Tarzan Finds a Son! in 1939, and Sir Guy Henderson in Tarzan and the Amazons in 1945.
He seldom played dark figures; among the exceptions was the snobbish Mr. Bryant in Mr. Lucky in 1943. Stephenson also appeared in literary adaptions, for Example as the friendly Lawyer Havisham in Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936) and as Mr. Brownlow in David Lean's film adaptation of Oliver Twist (1948). He made his last film in 1949, but appeared in two television series in 1951 before the end of his career. In 1950, after finishing his role of Cardinal Gaspar de Quiroga in the play That Lady, Stephenson retired from the stage.
He married Actress Ann Shoemaker; the couple had one daughter. Henry Stephenson died in 1956, aged 85. He was survived by his wife and their daughter.
