Dudley Digges

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Dudley Digges in the play Heartbreak House (1920)

Dudley Digges (born June 9, 1879 in Dublin , † October 24, 1947 in New York ) was an Irish - American film and stage actor.

Life

Dudley Digges began his acting career with the Irish theater and was part of the Dublin's Abbey Players before he emigrated to the United States in the 1900s . This was followed by a very successful career on Broadway that lasted until his death . From 1905 until his death he worked in over 60 productions, both as an actor and as a producer. Digges played particularly frequently with the then theater star George Arliss , in whose plays he also worked as a stage manager for many years . Digges had one of his greatest theatrical successes in the US premiere of Ferenc Molnár's play Liliomin 1921. The balding character actor did not make his first film Escape from Devil's Island until 1929 , when he started making sound films when he was already 50 years old. In total, Digges then took on mostly larger supporting roles in a total of 40 films by 1946.

Although Digges could impersonate a multitude of different characters credibly, he played particularly often unsympathetic characters like the brutal caretaker in The Mayor of Hell (1933) alongside James Cagney . In the first film adaptation of The Maltese Falcon from 1931, he played the role of Caspar Gutman, which was later taken on in John Huston's Trail of the Falcon by Sydney Greenstreet . In the horror classic The Invisible (1933), Digges took on the role of the chief of police who chases the film's title character. His other appearances included the one-legged ship's doctor Bacchus in the Oscar-winning adventure film Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and a Chinese general in The General died at dawn (1936). Until 1942 he made other films in Hollywood regularly, before he turned back mainly to the theater. His last film The Searching Wind was released in 1946 and played on Broadway until the year he died.

Dudley Digges was married to fellow actress Mary Roden Quinn from 1907 until her death in August 1947. Just two months after his wife, he died of a stroke at the age of 68. The New York Times wrote in its Digges obituary, “Few character actors achieve greatness. They tend to slip into one category of character. Dudley Digges never did. With seemingly problem-free perfection, he was able to humanize every role in which he was cast. "

Filmography

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ "Mrs. Digges, Once Active In Theater," obituary, The New York Times , Aug. 22, 1947, p. 15.
  2. ^ Media History Digital Library Media History Digital Library: Variety (October 1947) . New York, NY: Variety Publishing Company, 1947 ( archive.org [accessed May 17, 2020]).
  3. ^ Dudley Digges at Immortal Ephemera
personal data
SURNAME Digges, Dudley
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Irish film and stage actor
DATE OF BIRTH June 9, 1879
PLACE OF BIRTH Dublin
DATE OF DEATH October 24, 1947
Place of death new York