Max Davidson
MGM Studio publicity photograph, 1927
Born	(1875-05-23)May 23, 1875 Berlin, Germany
Died	September 4, 1950(1950-09-04) (aged 75) Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1912–1945
Spouse	Alice Marti (1927 - ?)

Max Davidson (May 23, 1875 – September 4, 1950) was a German film actor known for his comedic Jewish persona during the silent film era.^[1] With a career spanning over thirty years, Davidson appeared in over 180 films.

Career

Born in Berlin, Germany, Davidson emigrated to the United States in the 1890s where he began working in stock theater and vaudeville. He entered silent movies in 1912. By the mid-teens, Davidson had appeared in his first feature film, Edward Dillon's Don Quixote (1915), followed by D.W. Griffith's Intolerance, and Tod Browning's Puppets (both 1916). In the 1920s, he began working for Hal Roach, appearing in numerous two-reeler comedies including Call of the Cuckoo with Charley Chase, Get 'Em Young with Stan Laurel, and Why Girls Say No and Love 'Em and Feed 'Em with Oliver Hardy, as well as the early talkie Our Gang short Moan and Groan, Inc. (1929), as the crazy old man who haunts a house.

In 1927, he was given his own series of starring two-reelers, among them Jewish Prudence, Don't Tell Everything, Should Second Husbands Come First?, Flaming Fathers and Pass the Gravy. The series ended with the coming of sound in 1929.

He starred alongside a young Jackie Coogan in a pair of silent features, The Rag Man (1923) and Old Clothes (1925).^[2] In 1923 he appeared in the Mack Sennett feature The Extra Girl with Mabel Normand, and in 1927 made a rare starring feature at Columbia, Pleasure Before Business, as well as playing a somewhat more serious role as a servant in the Pola Negri WW1 vehicle Hotel Imperial. He also received the colorization treatment as an irate shopkeeper in the Three Stooges film No Census, No Feeling (1940).

His 1928 short Pass the Gravy was deemed "culturally significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

Later career and death

Davidson made the transition to sound film, but ended his career by playing mostly uncredited roles. He made his final screen appearance in the 1945 Clark Gable film Adventure. Davidson died on September 4, 1950 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California.

Historian Richard W. Bann, in an article on laurel-and-hardy.com, asserts that Davidson's career was scuttled by MGM chiefs Louis B. Mayer and Nicholas Schenck, who objected to his portrayal of a stereotypical (and more importantly, unassimilated) Jew and forced Roach to terminate him shortly after sound arrived.

Partial filmography