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(September 18, 1899 – April 28, 1977)
 Born Jacob Krantz in Vienna, Austria-Hungary into a Jewish family,
he worked on a number of jobs before his looks got him into the film
business. Hollywood executives changed his name to Cortez to appeal
to film-goers as a "Latin lover" to compete with such highly popular
actors of the era as Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro and Antonio
Moreno. When rumour began to circulate that Cortez was not actually
Latin, the studios tried to pass him off as French, before they
finally admitted his Viennese origin.
Cortez appeared in over 100 films. A popular star, he was saddled in
a number of run-of-the-mill romantic movies which would depend more
on his looks than on the script. Pictures like Argentine Love (1924)
and The Cat's Pajamas (1926) did little to extend his range as an
actor. He did show that he had some range with his role in Pony
Express (1924), but roles like that were few and far between.
Cortez would be the only actor to ever have his name above Greta
Garbo when she appeared with him in her first American movie, The
Torrent (1924). With the advent of sound, Cortez made the transition
and he would play Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1931) (aka
Dangerous Female). When sound cinema arrived, his powerful delivery
and New York accent made him an ideal villain and conman, and he
switched from sex symbol to character actor. He played a newspaper
columnist Is My Face Red? (1932), a home wrecker in A Lost Lady
(1934), a killer in Man Hunt (1936) and even Perry Mason in The Case
of the Black Cat (1936). |
