Jean Hersholt — An Artist of the Grotesque (1925) 🇺🇸

They never have to tell Jean Hersholt what to do. He knows.

That is the pet assertion about one of Hollywood’s newly prized character actors, and he has lately gone from one production right into another to add a touch of bright “screen business” where it is most needed.

The legend of his fame started about a year or so ago when Erich von Stroheim gave him the ironic rôle of Marcus Schuler, the Nemesis of McTeague, in Greed, and it was enhanced when he made human and lovable — impossible as this at first glance may seem — a hangman in an intimate dramatic thriller presented on the stage at the Writers’ Club.

Since then, Hersholt has added interest to a number of features, chiefly by the grotesqueness of his character drawing. He played the bespectacled German who was the second husband of Constance Talmadge in “The Goldfish,” the Satanic adviser of Adolphe Menjou in “Sinners in Silk,” as well as doing humorous caricatures in “So Big,” Colleen Moore’s picture, and “Her Night of Romance,” again with Constance Talmadge.

Though Hersholt has been long in films, only lately have his comedy talents been recognized. He used to do villains in melodramas.

On several occasions during this period he has been called upon to portray the rôle of The Christ, when a cutback of religious significance was required. Despite his villainish proclivities he makes up remarkably for it.

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Photo by: Melbourne Spurr (1888–1964)

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, April 1925