Sydney Greenstreet

Sydney Hughes Greenstreet was born on December 27, 1879, in Eastry, Kent, England, the son of Ann (née Baker) and John Jarvis Greenstreet, a tanner, and one of eight children. He left home at eighteen to work as a tea planter in Ceylon, but drought ended that venture. He subsequently managed a brewery, and it was during this period that he began taking acting lessons to relieve the monotony of that work.

His professional stage debut came in 1902, when he played a murderer in a production based on a Sherlock Holmes story at the Marina Theatre in Ramsgate, Kent. He went on to tour Britain with Ben Greet's Shakespearean company before making his New York City debut in 1905 in Everyman. His Broadway career spanned from 1907 to 1940 and encompassed a wide range of material, from Shakespeare to musical comedy. Among his Broadway credits were The Taming of the Shrew, The Seagull, Amphitryon 38, Idiot's Delight, and There Shall Be No Night. Through most of the 1930s he worked with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne at the Theatre Guild. He became an American citizen in 1925.

Despite decades of stage work on two continents, Greenstreet declined film offers until he was sixty-one years old. When he finally accepted, his debut was as Kasper Gutman, known as "The Fat Man," opposite Humphrey Bogart in Warner Bros.' The Maltese Falcon (1941). The performance earned him a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. The following year he appeared in Casablanca (1942), playing the crooked club owner Signor Ferrari, for which he received a salary of $3,750 per week over seven weeks of work. He reunited with several Casablanca cast members, including Bogart, Peter Lorre, and Claude Rains, in Passage to Marseille (1944). Over the course of his film career he appeared with Bogart in five pictures total and with Lorre in nine, three of which also featured Bogart.

Greenstreet's film roles demonstrated considerable range. He played the dramatic role of William Makepeace Thackeray in Devotion (1946) and appeared in the screwball comedy Christmas in Connecticut (1944) as Alexander Yardley. He received top billing in Three Strangers (1946), The Verdict (1946), and The Mask of Dimitrios (1944). Other notable films included Background to Danger (1943) with George Raft, The Conspirators (1944) with Hedy Lamarr and Paul Henreid, Conflict (1945) again with Bogart, and Flamingo Road (1949) opposite Joan Crawford. His final film, Malaya (1949), billed him fourth after Spencer Tracy, James Stewart, and Valentina Cortese. During 1950 and 1951, he portrayed detective Nero Wolfe on the radio program The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe, based on Rex Stout's character. Playwright Tennessee Williams wrote his one-act play The Last of My Solid Gold Watches with Greenstreet in mind and dedicated it to him.

Greenstreet was married to Dorothy Marie Ogden, with whom he had one child, John Ogden Greenstreet (1920–2004). Actor Mark Greenstreet is his great-nephew. In his later years Greenstreet suffered from diabetes and Bright's disease, a kidney disorder. He died on January 18, 1954, in Hollywood from complications of both conditions, five years after his retirement from film. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California, in the Utility Columbarium area of the Great Mausoleum.