Snitz Edwards — A New Career at Sixty (1925) 🇺🇸

If it be true that to portray life one must know it in many and varied forms, Snitz Edwards is fully qualified to be an actor.

He was born in a village of Hungary and quite likely would have followed the occupation of his father, a veterinary, had his family not emigrated to America. During his boyhood he took care of horses and mules for the traction company employing his father, and then became a jockey.

A chance meeting with Sam Bernard, and a mutual interest in clog dancing, led him to a Bowery theater, where the two received a joint pay of seven dollars and fifty cents a week. At fifteen he faced his first tragedy — a fall during the sweepstakes at the old Jerome Park race track when he was so badly incapacitated that he could never ride again. His little world of sport tumbled about him, he became a clown in Fourpaugh’s Circus, with Fred Walton for a teammate.

Through vaudeville tours, stock engagements, and musical comedy, he made his way to the movies. In the past eight years he has served as comedy relief in countless films, the most recent being “Seven Chances,” “Inez from Hollywood,” and “The Phantom of the Opera.”

His age, over sixty, seems incredible, for he has that wiry, active alertness, both physical and mental, which laughs at time.

A little gentleman of the earth, Snitz Edwards, close still, in his heart, to those beloved horses of his youth, interested in the sport world almost as much as in the theatrical; an honest, good-natured person, who asks only work to do. His skill gives a wry humor to his characterizations; their deft portrayal turns a light upon them, no matter how inconspicuous they may be in their relation to the story.

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Photo by: Roman Freulich (1898–1974)

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, April 1925