Ralph Sipperly

Ralph Wilson Sipperly (1890–1928) was a comic and character actor whose career spanned Broadway theatre and silent film. Born in Rochester, New York, he worked on stage from 1918 to 1925 before transitioning to motion pictures, ultimately appearing in ten films between 1923 and 1927.

Sipperly's earliest documented stage appearance was in A Prince There Was in 1918. He went on to perform in The Meanest Man in the World in 1920 and Six Cylinder Love in 1921, the latter of which became one of the more memorable engagements of his theatrical career. During a 1921 New York performance of Six Cylinder Love, in which he played a high-powered car salesman, Sipperly accidentally drove an actual automobile off the stage and into the front row of seats. No injuries resulted, though screams filled the sold-out hall and one woman was reported to have become hysterical as audience members scrambled clear. The incident was covered in The New York Times the following day and appeared to have no lasting effect on his career.

His Broadway credits also included The Deep Tangled Wildwood, Schemers, The New Poor, Canary Dutch, and The Fall Guy, among other productions. A 1925 New York Times article noted that Sipperly, described as the "saxophonist de luxe of The Fall Guy," had selected a design for a monument to mark the site of his Rochester birthplace, consisting of two crossed baseball bats above a dumbbell, reflecting what the article characterized as baseball's dominant role in his life.

Sipperly made his film debut in the 1923 screen adaptation of Six Cylinder Love, reprising the same role he had originated on stage. He continued working in silent films over the following years, with his most prominent screen credit coming in 1927 when he portrayed the barber in Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, the F.W. Murnau film that won the Academy Award. Sipperly died in Bangor, Maine, and is buried at Mount Hope Cemetery in that city.