Walter Hiers — Blue Book of the Screen (1923) 🇺🇸

Walter Hiers tips the beam at 235 pounds. He has played in many comedy roles, but despite his bulk is capable of appearing in serious parts. It is easy for him to make his audience laugh, but when occasion demands he can also arouse sterner emotion.

Hiers was born on July 18, 1893, at Cordele, Georgia. He attended high school at Savannah, Georgia, and afterward the military academy at Peekskill, New York. It was while he was at the academy that the thought came to him that he might serve humanity more effectively as an entertainer than as a man in army uniform.

Because of his likeable humor and rotund figure, he had been eagerly sought, while in school, for amateur theatricals and minstrel performances. He enjoyed the work so much that his original aspiration, after leaving the military academy, was to act in vaudeville.

Going to New York City, he obtained a part in a vaudeville satire, “The Villain Still Pursued Her,” by Frank Sheridan. This was in 1913. While playing in this sketch, he was offered the role of the fat country boy in “The Failure,” a D. W. Griffith screen production, and accepted it.

In 1916 he was engaged by Paramount to take the part of the stout youth who is the rival of Billy Baxter, in “Seventeen,” for the affections of the baby-talk girl. Before being made a star he appeared in What’s Your Husband Doing?, “The City Sparrow,” “Mrs. Temple’s Telegram,” “The Fourteenth Man,” “Sham,” “Is Matrimony a Failure,” “Bought and Paid For” and “The Mysterious Miss Terry.”

He worked in “Mr. Billings Spends His Dime,” his first starring vehicle, in December, 1922.

Hiers is 5 feet 10 ½ inches tall. He lives in Los Angeles, and has two hobbies — baseball and football.

Collection: The Blue Book of the Screen (1923)