Snitz Edwards

Snitz Edwards, born Edward Neumann on January 1, 1868, in Budapest, Hungary, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, was a Jewish-born American stage and character actor whose career spanned Broadway, touring productions, and the silent film era into the early 1930s. He died on May 1, 1937, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 69.

Edwards immigrated to the United States and established himself as a Broadway performer, appearing in productions from 1900 to 1913. His first stage credit was the musical comedy Little Red Riding Hood, which opened on January 8, 1900. His Broadway work included the musical High Jinks, The Woman Haters, the musical The Silver Slipper, the play A Royal Rival, and the burlesque Nell-Go-In. During the first decade of the twentieth century, he worked under prominent stage directors including Arthur Hammerstein and Charles Frohman.

Beyond New York, Edwards traveled with touring companies throughout the United States and South America. On one South American tour, the company manager absconded with the box office receipts, leaving the cast stranded and forcing Edwards and his fellow performers to make their way across Panama to board a steamship back to New York City. While touring the American West, he encountered boardinghouses that posted signs welcoming Jews, Indians, and Irish patrons, but barring actors.

Edwards transitioned into film and became recognized as a skilled character actor, with his expressive and distinctively unconventional features making him a frequent choice for comedic and comic foil roles opposite leading stars. At his peak in the late 1910s and early 1920s, he appeared alongside Mary Pickford, Clara Kimball Young, Barbara La Marr, Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Wallace Reid, Lila Lee, Colleen Moore, Lionel Barrymore, Conrad Nagel, Mildred Harris, Rod La Rocque, Ramón Novarro, and Marion Davies, among others. In 1925, he was cast as Florine Papillon in The Phantom of the Opera, directed by Rupert Julian and starring Lon Chaney Sr. and Mary Philbin, and he co-starred with Douglas Fairbanks in Thief of Bagdad that same year. Actor and director Buster Keaton personally selected Edwards for three of his films: Seven Chances in 1925, Battling Butler in 1926, and College in 1927.

By the early 1930s, Edwards was in his sixties and suffering from severe arthritis, though he continued working. His final role came in The Public Enemy, a 1931 crime drama directed by William A. Wellman and featuring James Cagney, Jean Harlow, and Joan Blondell. The role was originally a substantial one, but early scenes were filmed in driving rain, leaving Edwards severely ill, and he appears in only a limited number of scenes in the finished film.

Edwards was married to actress Eleanor Taylor, and the couple had three daughters: Cricket, Evelyn, and Marian. The family was active in Hollywood social circles, and Edwards and Eleanor hosted parties and attended gatherings at Marion Davies's San Simeon Castle. After Edwards's death, Eleanor continued working as a dress extra until World War II, when she volunteered at the Hollywood Canteen, and she later died at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Calabasas, California, in 1968. The couple's three daughters pursued careers in the entertainment industry: Cricket worked as an executive for Carl Foreman and Columbia Pictures; Evelyn served as a writer, story analyst, and story editor for MGM and CBS; and Marian, who married writer Irwin Shaw, produced plays in Europe.