William Austin (1932) 🇺🇸

He arrived in Hollywood from British Guiana. On the way, he stepped off in England to be educated. He attended Reading College. He also broke his journey at Shanghai where he went in pursuit of a business career. Then he got going again, and this time he arrived in Los Angeles in 1915. Four years later he made his first appearance on the stage, at the Morosco Theatre in Los Angeles, and subsequently played in such dramas as The Tailor Made Man, Three Faces East and Polly with a Past. But all the time he was thinking of pictures.

“Grow a moustache and you will always be able to secure work in motion pictures,” a casting director told William Austin eight years ago, and for once an actor took good advice! William Austin began the cultivation of the light brown moustache which has made him an ideal player of light comedy. He has never been out of work since. He is now under contract to Paramount, as the result of his excellent acting with Bebe Daniels in “ Swim, Girl, Swim,” the film in which he took the part of an eccentric professor.

The first film in which he appeared was Ruggles of Red Gap. In all he has played important parts in more than twenty pictures, ranging from the ultra-modern “It” in which Clara Bow was the star, to such wholehearted melodrama as The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu, and always he has made his mark as a comedian with a unique personality.

Very few actors are able to gather as many laughs out of a part as William Austin. With the coming of talking pictures, he has found his services in very great demand. He has the unique faculty of being able to make even a small part stand out as a finely etched creation, while his voice, in the P. G. Wodehouse sense of the phrase, is perfectly priceless.

Collection: The Filmgoers’ Annual, 1932