Paul Panzer

Birthday: Nov 3, 1872

Bio: German-born stage actor Paul Panzer entered films in 1904 with Vitagraph studios. Panzer appeared in most of Vitagraph's one-reel Shakespearean adaptations of the 1908-1909 season, including Othello (as Cassio), MacBeth (as MacDuff), Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. Refusing to be typecast, he played in everything from romantic dramas to slapstick comedies.… More Bio: German-born stage actor Paul Panzer entered films in 1904 with Vitagraph studios. Panzer appeared in most of Vitagraph's one-reel Shakespearean adaptations of the 1908-1909 season, including Othello (as Cassio), MacBeth (as MacDuff), Julius Caesar, and Antony and Cleopatra. Refusing to be typecast, he played in everything from romantic dramas to slapstick comedies. All this ended in 1914 when he was cast as the flamboyantly duplicitous Koerner in the landmark serial The Perils of Pauline; thereafter, he was pigeonholed in villainous roles, nearly all of them based on the eye-rolling, lip-smacking Koerner. In the early talkie era, he co-starred in German-language versions of popular Hollywood films, and thereafter was confined to bit roles until his retirement in the early '50s. One of Paul Panzer's last assignments was a cameo role in the 1947 Pearl White musical biopic The Perils of Pauline -- not as a villain, surprisingly enough, but as a tuxedoed silent-flick leading man. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi