Josef Swickard

Josef Swickard
Swickard in 1921
Born	Peter Josef Schwickerath (1866-06-26)June 26, 1866 Coblenz, Germany
Died	February 29, 1940(1940-02-29) (aged 73) Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States
Other names	Joe Swickard Joseph Swickard
Spouse	Margaret Campbell

Josef Swickard (26 June 1866 – 29 February 1940) was a German-born veteran stage and screen character actor, who had toured with stock companies in Europe, South Africa, and South America.

Career

Swickard emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1882. He was a stage actor several years before entering films with D.W. Griffith in 1912 and by 1914 was playing supporting roles for Mack Sennett. He appeared in Charles Chaplin's Laughing Gas and Caught in a Cabaret. He remained with Sennett until 1917, when he settled into his prolific career of playing mostly aristocratic characters. Modern audiences are perhaps most familiar with his role of Marcelo Desnoyers, the well-intentioned but impractical French upper class father in Rex Ingram's 1921 film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His career in sound films was somewhat limited and he played in low-budget and action serial type films. He played the villainous Prime Minister Kruel in the 1925 film version of The Wizard of Oz.

Family & Death

Swickard was the brother of actor Charles Swickard, and the former husband of Broadway actress Margaret Campbell, who on June 27, 1939 was brutally murdered by her adult son from a previous marriage, Campbell McDonald. Nearly seven months to-the-day after his ex-wife's murder, Swickard died on February 29, 1940. He was 73.

Despite rumors that Swickard committed suicide by jumping from the Hollywood sign, his death was from natural causes.

Swickard was buried under a simple headstone at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Selected filmography

Year	Title	Role	Other notes
1913	Cupid in a Dental Parlor
1914	Twenty Minutes of Love	Victim
	Caught in a Cabaret	Father
	A Rowboat Romance
	Laughing Gas	Patient
	The Property Man	Old Stagehand	Uncredited
	The Face on the Bar Room Floor	Drinker	Uncredited
	Lover's Luck	The Girl's Father
	Hello, Mabel
	Tillie's Punctured Romance	Cinema spectator	Uncredited
	Fatty and Minnie He-Haw	Minta's father
1915	Mabel and Fatty's Simple Life	Mabel's father
	Mabel, Fatty and the Law
	Mabel and Fatty's Married Life		Uncredited
	Hogan's Romance Upset
	Love, Loot and Crash	Mary's Father, a Banker
1916	A Social Cub
	Haystacks and Steeples
1918	When a Woman Sins	Mortimer West
	The Light of Western Stars	Padre Marcos
	Treasure of the Sea	Thomas Elkins
1920	The Beggar Prince	Grand Vizier
1921	The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse	Marcelo Desnoyers
	No Woman Knows	The Great Schabelitz
	Cheated Hearts	Colonel Fairfax Gordon
1922	Across the Dead-Line	Abel
	The Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
	Pawned	Paul Veniza
	The Storm	Jacques Fachard
	My American Wife	Don Fernando DeContas
1923	The Age of Desire	Marcio
	Maytime	Colonel Van Zandt
1924	The Shadow of the Desert	John Locke
	Poisoned Paradise: The Forbidden Story of Monte Carlo	Professor Durand
	A Boy of Flanders	Jan Van Dullan
	Men	Cleo's Father
1925	Wizard of Oz	Prime Minister Kruel
1926	Stop, Look and Listen	Old Actor
	Desert Gold	Sebastian Castaneda
1927	The Golden Stallion	John Forsythe
	Old San Francisco	Don Hernandez de Vasquez
1928	Sharp Shooters	Grandpère
	Eagle of the Night
	The Toy Shop
1929	The Phantom of the North	Colonel Rayburn
	Street Corner		short film
1933	The Perils of Pauline	Haggins, Foreign Consul	Chapter 9
1934	Cross Streets	Dean Todd
1935	The Lost City	Dr. Manyus
1938	The Secret of Treasure Island	Passenger Ship Doctor	Uncredited, chapter 1
1939	Dick Tracy's G-Men	Presidente Huenemo Mendoza	Chapter 3

External links

• Josef Swickard at IMDb
• Josef Swickard at the Internet Broadway Database
• Josef Swickard at Find a Grave