Frederick Kerr

Frederick Kerr (born October 11, 1858 in London , England as Frederick Grinham Keen , † May 3, 1933 ibid) was a British theater and film actor .

life and career

After graduating from the University of Cambridge , London-born Frederick Kerr moved to the United States. First he appeared as an artist in various skits before he became a serious dramatic actor. His appearance in a production of The School for Scandal in 1882 brought Kerr's breakthrough. For the next 40 years he shuttled between the American and British stages, working not only as an actor but also as a theater director. On Broadway , he appeared in seven productions between 1900 and 1930 and also directed one of his plays. In London, Kerr worked as an actor and manager for prestigious theaters such as the Vaudeville Theater and the Royal Court Theater . As early as 1916 he had made his acting debut with a role in the British silent film The Real Thing At Last alongside Edmund Gwenn , but it was not until the beginning of the sound film - in the last years of his life - that he increasingly appeared in films.

For Hollywood, Kerr was in numerous films in front of the camera as a supporting actor in the early 1930s, and as a British actor he played mainly dignified aristocrats and the military. His most famous appearance of this type was in James Whale's horror classic Frankenstein (1931), where his character of the quirky Baron Frankenstein functions as a comic relief . In the same year he played again under the direction of Whale a retired major in the drama Waterloo Bridge , which was long thought to be lost. Kerr worked as an actor until the year of his death before the heavy smoker died of lung cancer in May 1933 in his native London. He founded a small acting dynasty: his son was the actor and author Geoffrey Kerr (1895–1971), his grandson the actor John Kerr (1931–2013).

In 1930, Kerr had published his memoir under the title Recollections of a Defective Memory .

Filmography

• 1916: The Real Thing at Last
• 1916: The Lifeguardsman
• 1918: Victory and Peace
• 1919: October 12
• 1930: The Lady of Scandal
• 1930: Raffles
• 1930: The Devil to Pay!
• 1931: Born to Love
• 1931: Always Goodbye
• 1931: Waterloo Bridge
• 1931: Friends and Lovers
• 1931: Honor of the Family
• 1931: Frankenstein
• 1932: Lovers Courageous
• 1932: -But the Flesh Is Weak
• 1932: Beauty and the Boss
• 1932: The Midshipmaid
• 1933: The Man from Toronto
• 1933: Lord of the Manor

Web links

• Frederick Kerr in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Frederick Kerr in the Internet Broadway Database (English)