Henry Kolker
Actor
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Joseph Henry Kolker (November 13, 1874) [some sources 1870] Berlin, Prussia, Germany – July 15, 1947, Los Angeles, California) was an American stage and film actor and director.
Kolker came to America at the age of five and his family settled in Quincy, Illinois. Kolker, like fellow actors Richard Bennett and Robert Warwick, had a substantial stage career behind him before entering silent films.
On stage he appeared opposite such leading ladies as Edith Wynne Matthison, Bertha Kalich and Ruth Chatterton. Kolker is best remembered for his motion picture appearances and for appearing with Barbara Stanwyck in the ground-breaking Pre-Code film Baby Face (1933) as the elderly CEO of the company whom Stanwyck's character seduces. Another well remembered part is as Mr. Seton, father of Katharine Hepburn and Lew Ayres in the 1938 film Holiday directed by George Cukor.
Kolker entered films as an actor in 1915 and eventually ended up trying his hand at directing. Kolker's best known directorial effort is Disraeli (1921), starring George Arliss which is now a lost film with only one reel remaining. Prints however exist in Europe and Russia.
Filmography
Holiday
as Edward Seton 1938
Baby Face
as J.R. Carter 1933
Mad Love
as Prefect Rosset 1935
Imitation of Life
as Dr. Preston (uncredited) 1934
Union Pacific
as Asa M. Barrows 1939
A Woman's Face
as Judge 1941
The Black Room
as Baron de Berghman 1935
Bullets or Ballots
as Mr. Hollister 1936
Bluebeard
as Deschamps 1944
Theodora Goes Wild
as Jonathan Grant 1936
Jewel Robbery
as Baron Franz Hohenfels 1932
Abraham Lincoln
as New Englander (uncredited) 1930
Romeo and Juliet
as Friar Laurence 1936
Marie Antoinette
as Court Aide (uncredited) 1938
Black Moon
as The Psychiatrist 1934
Coquette
as Jasper Carter 1929
The Cowboy and the Lady
as Horace Smith 1938