Warren Hymer

Edgar Warren Hymer was born on February 25, 1906, in New York City, into a family with deep roots in American entertainment. His father, John Bard Hymer, was a playwright, vaudeville writer, and actor credited with nine Broadway productions, while his mother, Eleanor Kent, worked as an actress. Hymer died on March 25, 1948, in Los Angeles, California, from a stomach ailment, and his remains were interred at Chapel of the Pines Crematory.

Despite a screen persona built around unsophisticated tough guys speaking in a Brooklyn accent, Hymer was a Yale University graduate. His burly build and good-natured expression made him a natural fit for recurring character types: punch-drunk prizefighters, affable soldiers and sailors, and Runyonesque gangsters. He made his Broadway appearance in 1928 in the play The Grey Fox before transitioning primarily to film work, accumulating 129 screen credits between 1929 and 1946.

Among his film roles, Hymer received one of his two leading parts opposite Buster Keaton in the 1934 short subject The Gold Ghost, which marked part of Keaton's comeback period. His other leading role came in Hitler: Dead or Alive (1943), in which he played one of three mobsters contracted to assassinate Adolf Hitler. A notable departure from his usual characterization came in the 1941 Monogram feature Phantom Killer, where he began the film as the slow-witted assistant to a police lieutenant played by Kenneth Harlan. When Harlan fell briefly ill and could not complete production, his character was written out through a fatal wounding, and Hymer assumed the senior officer role, playing the remainder of the film in a straightforward manner without his trademark dialect.

A well-known Hollywood incident involving Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn significantly disrupted Hymer's career. After Cohn had Hymer removed from the studio lot for arriving to work drunk, Hymer broke into Cohn's office and urinated on his desk. Cohn ordered the desk burned and moved to blackball Hymer across the industry. The episode is believed to have occurred in 1939 during the filming of The Lady and the Mob, Hymer's final Columbia assignment. The effort to sideline him proved effective in the short term, limiting him to two film assignments in 1940. Director Frank Capra, who had himself departed Cohn's employ under contentious circumstances, effectively ended the blacklist by casting Hymer in the 1941 feature Meet John Doe. Following that, Hymer worked steadily again, taking on assignments at smaller studios such as Monogram and PRC alongside appearances at larger productions.

Serious health problems curtailed Hymer's activity in his final years, forcing him to retire from the screen in 1946 after remaining seriously ill for more than a year before his death in 1948.