Edmund Lowe

Edmund Sherbourne Lowe was born on March 3, 1890, in San Jose, California, where his childhood home stood at 314 North 1st Street. He attended Santa Clara College, where his classmates included future performer William Gaxton, and at one point considered entering the priesthood before pursuing an acting career. His early professional experience took shape in vaudeville and silent film, and he appeared on Broadway across a span stretching from 1917 to 1945.

Lowe's screen career began in 1915 and ultimately encompassed more than 100 films. He established himself as a popular leading man in silent pictures, but the role that defined his public image was Sergeant Harry Quirt in the 1926 Raoul Walsh-directed silent feature What Price Glory?, in which he starred opposite Victor McLaglen's Captain Jimmy Flagg. The two characters — abrasive, wisecracking rivals — resonated strongly with audiences, and the pairing carried over into the sound era through a musical comedy remake and two sequels, the first two again directed by Walsh. Lowe and McLaglen also reunited for the military comedy Call Out the Marines, and Lowe reprised the Quirt role on radio in Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt, which broadcast on the Blue Network from September 28, 1941 through January 25, 1942, and subsequently on NBC from February 13 through April 3, 1942.

Throughout the 1930s Lowe worked steadily as a leading man, freelancing across multiple Hollywood studios. Among his notable credits from that period was Dinner at Eight (1933), in which he played a young doctor entangled with the wife of Wallace Beery's character, the wife being portrayed by Jean Harlow. His last major romantic lead came in 1937's Every Day's a Holiday, opposite Mae West. As the decade closed, Lowe transitioned into strong supporting parts in larger productions and leading roles in smaller ones.

In 1942, as a favor to his friend, director William K. Howard, Lowe took the lead in Klondike Fury at the low-budget Monogram Pictures. The decision carried professional consequences, as association with Monogram's minor-league standing damaged his reputation with major studios. Nevertheless, the performance led Columbia Pictures to cast him in three comedy-mystery features. He continued working at Monogram as well, appearing in the 1945 crime thriller Dillinger, a surprise commercial success. His final starring film role came that same year in Monogram's The Strange Mr. Gregory.

Lowe's Broadway work during his long stage career included the comedy The Ryan Girl and the plays Tonight or Never, The Channel Road, The War Song, and Desert Sands, among other productions. On television, he starred in 38 episodes of Front Page Detective during 1951 and 1952, and in 1957 appeared as the lead villain in the premiere episode of Maverick opposite James Garner. He continued making appearances in major motion pictures through 1960.

His first marriage, to Esther Miller, ended in early 1925. He met actress Lilyan Tashman while filming Ports of Call, and the two married on September 21, 1925. They maintained homes in Beverly Hills and Malibu and remained married until Tashman's death from cancer in 1934 at age 37. Lowe subsequently married costume designer Rita Kaufman in 1936; that marriage lasted until 1950. He died on April 21, 1971, in Woodland Hills, California, of lung cancer, and is buried at San Fernando Mission Cemetery in Mission Hills, California.