Pedro de Cordoba Biography

American actorFor the Spanish missionary, see Pedro de Córdoba.

Pedro de Cordoba (September 28, 1881:– September 16, 1950) was an American actor.

Biography

Katharine Cornell and Pedro de Cordoba in the 1924 Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw's Candida

De Cordoba was born in New York City to parents who were French and Cuban in origin. He was a cl*ically trained theatre actor who confessed he did not enjoy appearing in silent films nearly as much as he liked working on stage, but his career during the silent film era was extensive.

In 1913 he was a member of the resident summer stock cast at Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado.

His first film was Cecil B. DeMille's version of Carmen (1915), and he soon became a regular leading man in Hollywood. His Broadway career cast him with such stage actresses as Jane Cowl and Katharine Cornell.

In the sound era, his deeply resonant speaking voice made him perfectly suited to talking pictures and was active as a character actor in Hollywood, from the mid-1930s through to the end of his life. He was most often cast as aristocratic, or clerical characters of Hispanic origin, as in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), because of his last name as well as his royal bearing. On rare occasions, he would be cast in the role of a villain. His "living skeleton" sideshow character hides fugitive Robert *mings (and Priscilla Lane) in his carnival wagon overnight in the Alfred Hitch* film Saboteur (1942).

He was a devout Catholic and served for a time as president of the Catholic Actors Guild of America. The last film in which he appeared, a political drama set in an unnamed South American dictatorship, Crisis (1950), was released shortly after his death.

Selected filmography

With Marjorie Rambeau in the play Sadie Love by Avery Hopwood (1915), later made into a 1919 film starring Billie Burke.Pedro de Cordoba, Marion Davies, and Forrest Stanley in a scene still from the 1922 silent drama The Young Diana.As Antoine in Escape to Paradise (1939)

Radio appearances

References

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pedro de Cordoba.

• Pedro de Cordoba at IMDb:
• Pedro de Cordoba at the Internet Broadway Database
• Pedro de Cordoba at AllMovie - entry #1
• Pedro de Cordoba at AllMovie - entry #2 (All Movie has disjointed entries)
• Pedro de Cordoba at Find a Grave
• left to right: Gladys Hulette, Lionel Barrymore, Pedro de Cordoba in Enemies of Women (1923)
• nytimes.com – New York Times > Movies > Pedro de Cordoba
• nytimes.com – News clippings