Noah Beery
(01/17/1882 - 04/01/1946)
Noah Beery worked in the theatre starting at the age of sixteen and by 1905 was performing on Broadway. After a dozen years on the stage, in 1915 he joined his brother in Hollywood to make motion pictures where he would become a respected character actor adept at playing the role of the villain. One of his most remarkable characterizations was as Sergeant Gonzales in The Mark of Zorro (1920) opposite Douglas Fairbanks; the Beery brothers always offered extremely energetic portrayals and gave the audience something extraordinary to behold.
Noah Beery worked during the silent film era (giving a fine performance as Sgt. Lejaune in the 1926 Beau Geste) and successfully made the transition to "talkies". He had a pleasant singing voice and he appeared in a number of lavish early Technicolor musicals such as The Show of Shows (1929), Song of the Flame (1930), Bright Lights (1930), Under A Texas Moon (1930) and Golden Dawn (1930), (in which he wore blackface makeup as an African native). During a career that spanned three decades, Noah appeared in nearly two hundred films.
In 1945 he returned to star in the Mike Todd Broadway production of "Up in Central Park."