Antonio Moreno

Antonio Garrido Monteagudo, known professionally as Antonio Moreno, was born on September 26, 1887, in Madrid, Spain, and died on February 15, 1967, in Beverly Hills, California. A stage and screen actor who also worked as a film director, Moreno built a career that extended from Broadway and early silent films through the sound era and into the 1950s.

Moreno emigrated from Madrid to New York in 1901 and subsequently settled in Massachusetts, where he completed his education. He later claimed to have attended Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts, though records at the institution, now known as the Williston Northampton School, do not confirm his enrollment. He went on to work as a stage actor in regional theater productions before appearing on Broadway in 1912, where his credits included C.O.D. and the musical The Man from Cook's. That same year, he relocated to Hollywood, California, where he signed with Biograph Studios and made his film debut in Iola's Promise.

Beginning in 1914, Moreno co-starred in a series of serials at Vitagraph opposite silent film actress Norma Talmadge, work that expanded his profile among filmgoers. By 1915, he had become a recognized matinee idol and appeared alongside performers including Tyrone Power Sr., Gloria Swanson, Blanche Sweet, Pola Negri, and Dorothy Gish. He was frequently cast in the role of the "Latin Lover," a characterization that preceded Rudolph Valentino's widely noted portrayal of a similar type in the 1921 film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

In the early 1920s, Moreno joined Famous Players, the company headed by film mogul Jesse Lasky, and became one of its highly compensated performers. His prominence in silent cinema continued with a starring role opposite Greta Garbo in the 1926 film The Temptress, followed the next year by a role in It, a box-office hit starring Clara Bow. On January 27, 1923, Moreno married American heiress Daisy Emma Canfield in Los Angeles, and the couple resided at an estate called Crestmount. Their marriage lasted ten years and ended shortly before Canfield was killed in an automobile accident on February 23, 1933.

The transition to sound film in the late 1920s and early 1930s presented difficulties for Moreno, in part due to his pronounced Spanish accent. During this period he took roles in Mexican productions and directed several films in that country, among them the 1932 drama Santa, which film critics have identified as one of the notable works of Mexican cinema. In 1994, the Mexican magazine Somos ranked Santa 67th on its list of the 100 best films in Mexican cinema history, published in the magazine's 100th edition.

By the mid-1930s, Moreno resumed work in Hollywood as a character actor. His later career included a role in the 1954 horror film Creature from the Black Lagoon and the part of Emilio Figueroa in John Ford's 1955 western The Searchers. His work in film spanned more than four decades. In recognition of his contributions to the motion picture industry, Moreno received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6651 Hollywood Boulevard. He died at his Beverly Hills home on February 15, 1967, at the age of 79, and was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.