I'm a big Leslie Howard fan. His son and daughter both wrote books about their father, which are worth reading.
It may not be the best poem in the world, but I found the below verses online. It expresses the same thought I always have - that he (and so many other great stars) has a kind of immortality, and we can see him on the screen as alive as moviegoers in the 1930's and 40's saw him:
Leslie Howard is dead.
Shot down by Nazis in 1943,
and yet he now looks out onto the desert, turns to Bette Davis and says:
"The trouble with me, Gabrielle,
is that I belong to a vanishing race."
We too vanish with each passing frame.
Each day a projection, and each self projected twice.
Where do we go when we die? Scraps on the cutting room floor.
And poor Leslie Howard.
What was left, claimed by an indifferent sea -- and still
his battered body reanimated
with each cycle of the tape.
I wrote that poem in college about eight years ago. So strange to see it reiterated all over the web...