Nicholas Soussanin — “It’s an Ill Wind” (1928) 🇺🇸

Because he once had all his money stolen, Nicholas Soussanin is now in motion pictures.

Undoubtedly you know him, for his impersonation of the waiter who wept, in Adolphe Menjou’s Service for Ladies, and he was also the valet, in A Gentleman of Paris. Two parts that have identified him as possessing both a sense of comedy and ability to characterize.

Soussanin is a Russian, from the historic region of Crimea. His parents being wealthy in pre-revolutionary days, he received an education at the University of Petrograd, where he obtained his degree as a lawyer.

The stage proved enticing, however, and he joined a traveling theatrical company finally ending in China. Here he tried various expedients to earn a livelihood and for a time maintained a dramatic school. Knowing the French language he felt that he could, perhaps, best succeed in that country.

He was just about ready to journey there from Shanghai, when his money was stolen, thereby changing his destiny. Taking all sorts of odd jobs, he managed to save some money. During this period he heard much of America and decided to come to this country. He had heard of Hollywood and decided to go there. A few of the Russians in the picture colony helped him to get some bits to do in pictures. He got screen credit for a small rôle or two, and then was selected for Service for Ladies. Now he has the outstanding masculine rôle, in Esther Ralston’s “The Spotlight.”

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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, March 1928