Romaine Callender

Alfred Romaine Callender (February 17, 1883 – February 5, 1976) was an English-born American actor who worked extensively in both stage and film. Born in Sheffield, England, to actor Edward Romaine Callender and Florence Callender (née Chapman), he came from a family with deep roots in the performing and musical arts. His father performed under the names Romaine Callender and E. Romaine Callendar, while his uncle, William Romaine Callendar, was a composer, conductor, music educator, and director of the Metropolitan College of Music in Philadelphia. The shared public name caused confusion on at least one notable occasion: when his uncle died in 1930, press reports initially misidentified the deceased as the actor rather than the musician.

Callender launched his stage career in 1906 under the name Alfred Callendar, joining Robert B. Mantell's theatre company for performances in Montreal, Buffalo, New York, and Boston. His debut with that company took place on September 5, 1906, at His Majesty's Theatre in Montreal, where he played the Duke of Albany in King Lear. During the 1906–1907 season he also portrayed Gratiano in Othello, Sir Robert Brackenbury in Richard III, Salanio in The Merchant of Venice, and Tillius Cimber in Julius Caesar.

He made his Broadway debut in 1910 at the Empire Theatre, billed as A. Romaine Callender, playing Rideout in Arthur Wing Pinero's Mid-Channel. He subsequently joined William Gillette's theatre troupe, taking the role of Gordon Hayne on a national tour of Gillette's war drama Held by the Enemy. His Broadway appearances in the years that followed included Don Mackenzie in The Rack (1911, Playhouse Theatre), Bonnaire in Les Marionnettes (1911–1912, Lyceum Theatre), Ibrahim in Bella Donna (1912, Empire Theatre; 1913, Wallack's Theatre), and Achille in The Song of Songs (1914–1915, Eltinge 42nd Street Theatre). In 1918 he enlisted in the United States Navy and served during the latter part of World War I. He also made his screen debut that year in the silent film My Wife. After the war he returned to Broadway in Arnold Bennett's Sacred and Profane Love (1920, Morosco Theatre), as El Nacional in Blood and Sand (1921, Empire Theatre), and as J. Sloane Henshaw in George S. Kaufman and Marc Connelly's Merton of the Movies (1922–1923, Cort Theatre).

Following his father's death in 1922, Callender adopted his father's stage name of Romaine Callender. Under that name he appeared on Broadway as Snake in the 1925 revival of The School for Scandal at the Knickerbocker Theatre, and in 1927 he portrayed Assistant State's Attorney Welch in the original production of Bartlett Cormack's The Racket at the Ambassador Theatre. His subsequent Broadway credits included Malacoda in Mima (1928), Dr. Otternschlag in Grand Hotel (1930), Fernand Demoncey in The Man Who Reclaimed His Head (1932), Dr. Frederick Swan in Keeper of the Keys (1933), Cesar Poustiano in Another Love (1934), General Michael Rakovski in Judgment Day (1934), and Wesley Cartwright in Post Road (1934–1935).

In 1935 Callender relocated from New York City to Hollywood and signed a contract with Columbia Pictures, transitioning from stage work to sound films. His first Columbia production was the screwball comedy If You Could Only Cook (1935), in which he played Jennings, the butler. He went on to portray butlers in several additional Columbia films, including The Music Goes 'Round (1936), Pepper (1936), Life Begins with Love (1937), The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938), Wuthering Heights (1939), and It's a Date (1940). Working primarily as a character actor, he appeared in nearly fifty feature films between 1935 and 1945, the majority of them for Columbia. Romaine Callender died in New York City on February 5, 1976.