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(January 1, 1868 - May 1, 1937)
 Born
Edward Neumann into a Jewish household on New Year's Day, 1868 in
Budapest, Hungary, Edwards emigrated to the United States and became
a very successful Broadway stage actor during the early twentieth
century. His first show was the musical comedy Little Red Riding
Hood which opened on January 8, 1900. Edwards often appeared in the
first decade of the twentieth-century on the Broadway stage in
productions for such prominent stage directors as Arthur Hammerstein
and Charles Frohman. He also traveled with touring companies across
the United States and in South America. On one trip, the company
manager absconded with the box office receipts, leaving Snitz and
the rest of the marooned troupers to find their way across Panama to
catch a steam ship back to New York. In later years, Snitz told of
touring cow towns in the American West, where boarding houses had
signs saying Jews, Indians and Irish were acceptable, but not
actors.
Edwards transitioned to films rather easily and was quickly lauded
as a talented character actor. With his expressive and "homely"
face, he was considered by many directors to be well-suited to
light, comedic roles and often played characters written as a comic
foil opposite starring actors. Ironically, it was his "homely",
pliable features that eventually made Edwards a household name
during the 1920s.
At his peak in the late 1910s and early 1920s, Edwards appeared with
some of the most famous actors of the era, including: Mary Pickford,
Clara Kimball Young, Barbara La Marr, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.,
Wallace Reid, Lila Lee, Colleen Moore, Lionel Barrymore, Conrad
Nagel, Owen Moore, Mildred Harris, Rod La Rocque, Ramón Novarro,
Marion Davies and countless others. In 1925 he was cast in one of
his most memorable roles, that of Florine Papillon in the Rupert
Julian directed box-office hit The Phantom of the Opera, opposite
Lon Chaney, Sr. and Mary Philbin, and he co-starred with Fairbanks
in "Thief of Bagdad."
Edwards also was personally chosen by actor and director Buster
Keaton to act in three of Keaton's films: 1925's Seven Chances,
1926's Battling Butler, and the extremely popular 1927 film College.
By the early 1930s and the advent of talkies, Edwards was already in
his 60s, suffering from crippling arthritis, but remaining active
until his last role, a part in the 1931 William A. Wellman directed
crime drama The Public Enemy opposite actors Jean Harlowe, James
Cagney, and Joan Blondell. Originally, the part was a significant
one, but the first scenes were shot were in driving rain, causing
Edwards to become severly ill. In the surviving film, he only
appears in the first scene (dropping a dime into a pay phone to rat
out Cagney.) |
