Robert Edeson — The Face of a Financier (1926) 🇺🇸

If Robert Edeson owned all the money that he has handled through business deals before the camera, his wealth would make pikers of Rockefeller and Morgan.

Because he has the stern, line-engraved face that, by screen theory, matches shiny mahogany desks and big, luxuriously furnished offices, he has been cast almost always on the screen as a shrewd master of high finance.

As a matter of fact, bankers and business executives often have jolly faces and urbane manners, and seldom look as if grave happenings hinged upon the properly tense way of holding a telephone receiver. But custom has formed typifications all the screen’s, own, and Edeson does fit into these ideas of how big business should be conducted.

His personality belies his face. A jollier disposition would be hard to find. He is always chuckling over a joke he has heard, and simply must tell. He is the prize raconteur of the studios and of the many clubs to which he belongs. His friends come in for much kidding, nor does he spare himself in his wit.

A wager brought about his entry into the theatrical world. He was treasurer of a Brooklyn stock theater. When the leading man became suddenly ill, the nineteen-year-old boy, Robert Edeson, scoffed that it didn’t take particular ability to act; whereupon the manager disdainfully bet one hundred dollars that he could not step into the hero’s place. Within three days, he learned his lines and played the rôle satisfactorily, though his experiences in the years since have convinced him that acting does require a trifle more than mere aplomb.

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Collection: Picture Play Magazine, October 1926