Vintage original 8 x 10 in. US double-weight matte publicity photograph of silent film star JOSEF SWICKARD c.1917.
Taken during his association with the Mack Sennett Studio, he is depicted in a close interior studio shot wearing a brown suit and not yet sporting a mustache. As indicated by the logo in the lower left, this photograph was taken by the renowned Hollywood photographer, Albert Witzel. It is in fine condition.*"Josef Swickard (26 June 1866 – 1 March 1940) was a Prussian-born veteran stage and screen character actor, who had toured with stock companies in Europe, South Africa, and South America.
Swickard emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1882.
He was a stage actor several years before entering films with D.W. Griffith in 1912 and by 1914 was playing supporting roles for Mack Sennett. He appeared in Charles Chaplin's Laughing Gas and Caught in a Cabaret. He remained with Sennett until 1917, when he settled into his prolific career of playing mostly aristocratic characters.
Modern audiences are perhaps most familiar with his role of Marcelo Desnoyers, the well-intentioned but impractical French upper class father in Rex Ingram's 1921 film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His career in sound films was somewhat limited and he played in low-budget and action serial type films. He played the villainous Prime Minister Kruel in the 1925 film version of The Wizard of Oz.
Sometime around 1928 Swickard married Broadway actress Margaret Campbell. That union was short-lived and the couple divorced on January 15, 1929. Swickard's last known residence was the Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles where he lived after his divorce from Campbell.
Tragedy befell his ex-wife on June 27, 1939 when she was brutally murdered. Her son, Campbell McDonald, was the initial suspect. He was also suspected of having bludgeoned to death a Russian dancer, Anya Sosoyeva, as well as having assaulted the young actress Delia Bogard, who survived.LA police eventually arrested DeWitt Clinton Cook, who confessed and was sent to San Quentin, where he died in the gas chamber in 1941.
Swickard died in 1940 from natural causes. He was falsely rumored to have jumped from the Hollywood sign."
*(source: Wikipedia)
3RB