Walter McGrail — A Villain Gone Wrong (1925) 🇺🇸

After six years of heroism, during which he failed to win more than lukewarm approval, turning villain proved the torch needed to light up Walter McGrail’s immediate vicinity.

For, as the nasty husband in “The Bad Man,” he started off on a new path, making crooked war on the sappy heroes whom he had played and is now pursuing his new calling in “Havoc,” the war play of which Fox [William Fox] is making a special.

Like so many of the screen’s men, he dallied around, working at this and that, before Fate threw him into the theatrical world. He was an embryonic artist, salesman for a tobacco firm, and worked at various other things, and on the stage appeared in vaudeville and in comic opera.

To Edwin Carewe he owes his change of type. Carewe announced that he was an excellent villain gone wrong, that he could be so bad that he would be good. This belief was rewarded when the actor before mentioned in the reviews merely as “adequate” began to be praised.

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Photo by: Roman Freulich

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, September 1925