Arthur Hohl

Arthur Hohl (May 21, 1889 – March 10, 1964) was an American actor who worked in both stage and film, building a career that spanned several decades across Broadway and Hollywood. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, he became known primarily as a character actor, frequently cast in villainous or morally compromised roles, though he also took on sympathetic parts throughout his career.

Hohl's Broadway career ran from 1914 to 1932 and included productions across a range of dramatic genres. He appeared in plays by William Shakespeare, George Bernard Shaw, and Henrik Ibsen, among other productions. His stage credits included A Distant Drum, Mayfair, Becky Sharp, and The Trial of Mary Dugan. One of his more substantial stage roles came in 1930, when he played Sir Andrew Aguecheek in a Broadway revival of Twelfth Night — a role considerably larger in scope than most of the parts he would go on to play in film.

His screen work began in the early 1920s, and while his film roles were typically small, several appeared in major productions. He played Pete, the boat engineer who informs a local sheriff of the secret interracial marriage between Julie, played by Helen Morgan, and her husband, played by Donald Cook, in Show Boat (1936). In Island of Lost Souls (1932), he portrayed Mr. Montgomery, the character who assists Richard Arlen and Leila Hyams in their escape. He played Brutus opposite Warren William's Julius Caesar in Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934), which starred Claudette Colbert, and took the role of Titus, a Christian, in DeMille's religious epic The Sign of the Cross (1932).

Among his other film appearances, Hohl played Olivier, the right-hand man to King Louis XI, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). In the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film The Scarlet Claw (1944), he portrayed Journet, an innkeeper seeking to avenge his daughter's murder. He also appeared as a real estate agent in Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947).

In his personal life, Hohl married Jessie E. Gray in 1920. The couple had no children, and Gray survived him at the time of his death on March 10, 1964.