Snitz Edwards

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Snitz Edwards

Snitz Edwards (January 1, 1868 – May 1, 1937) was a notable character actor of the early years of the silent film era into the 1930s.

[edit] Biography

Born Edward Neumann into a Jewish household on New Year's Day, 1868 in Budapest, Hungary (then, part of the Austro-Hungarian empire), Edwards emigrated to the United States and became a very successful Broadway stage actor during the early twentieth century. His first show was the musical comedy Little Red Riding Hood which opened on January 8, 1900. Edwards often appeared in the first decade of the twentieth-century on the Broadway stage in productions for such prominent stage directors as Arthur Hammerstein and Charles Frohman. He also traveled with touring companies across the United States and in South America. On one trip, the company manager absconded with the box office receipts, leaving Snitz and the rest of the marooned troupers to find their way across Panama to catch a steam ship back to New York. In later years, Snitz told of touring cow towns in the American West, where boarding houses had signs saying Jews, Indians and Irish were acceptable, but not actors.

Edwards transitioned to films rather easily and was quickly lauded as a talented character actor. With his expressive and "homely" face, he was considered by many directors to be well-suited to light, comedic roles and often played characters written as a comic foil opposite starring actors. Ironically, it was his "homely", pliable features that eventually made Edwards a household name during the 1920s.

At his peak in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Edwards appeared with some of the most famous actors of the era, including: Mary Pickford, Clara Kimball Young, Barbara La Marr, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Wallace Reid, Lila Lee, Colleen Moore, Lionel Barrymore, Conrad Nagel, Owen Moore, Mildred Harris, Rod La Rocque, Ramón Novarro, Marion Davies and countless others. In 1925 he was cast in one of his most memorable roles, that of Florine Papillon in the Rupert Julian directed box-office hit The Phantom of the Opera, opposite Lon Chaney, Sr. and Mary Philbin, and he co-starred with Fairbanks in "Thief of Bagdad."

Edwards was married to actress Eleanor Taylor and the couple had three daughters: Cricket, Evelyn and Marian. Edwards was a popular Hollywood personality, and he and Eleanor hosted lively parties as well as being guests of Marion Davies at San Simeon Castle.

Edwards also was personally chosen by actor and director Buster Keaton to act in three of Keaton's films: 1925's Seven Chances, 1926's Battling Butler, and the extremely popular 1927 film College.

By the early 1930s and the advent of talkies, Edwards was already in his 60s, suffering from crippling arthritis, but remaining active until his last role, a part in the 1931 William A. Wellman directed crime drama The Public Enemy opposite actors Jean Harlow, James Cagney, and Joan Blondell. Originally, the part was a significant one, but the first scenes were shot were in driving rain, causing Edwards to become severely ill. In the surviving film, he appears in only a few scenes (breezily saying "Hi Ya Boys" to the juvenile Cagney and pal in the beer parlor, dropping a dime into a pay phone to rat out Cagney, refusing to open the door to Cagney after his first big job at the fur wearhouse goes bad.)

Edwards died of natural causes on May 1, 1937 in Los Angeles, California at the age of 69. His wife Eleanor continued to act as a dress extra until World War II, when she volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen. Snitz's and Eleanor's three daughters continued careers in the movie industry; Cricket was an executive for Carl Foreman and for Columbia Pictures, Evelyn was a writer, story analyst and story editor for MGM and CBS, and Marian (married to writer Irwin Shaw) produced numerous plays in Europe. Eleanor died at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Calabasas California in 1968.