Charles Judels
actor, miscellaneous, soundtrack
- Born:
- 1882-08-17, Amsterdam, Noord-Holland, Netherlands
- Died:
- 1969-02-14, San Francisco, California, USA
- Professions:
- actor, miscellaneous, soundtrack
Biography
Amsterdam, 1882: the curtain first rose on Charles Judels. By the new century he was already trading jokes with vaudeville crowds, and in 1912 he slipped into the giddy chorus of The Ziegfeld Follies, making Broadway gasp and giggle. Stocky, expressive and armed with an ear for any accent, Judels parlayed his gifts into 130-plus screen appearances. His movie story began with Old Dutch (1915), a Frank Hall Crane comedy that paired him with Lew Fields for the Shuberts. Three decades later he stepped behind the microphone to breathe fiery life into Stromboli, Disney’s marionette-master in Pinocchio (1940). Somewhere between, he immortalized himself as the frantic cheese-seller tormenting Laurel & Hardy in Swiss Miss (1938). His final bow came draped in biblical robes: a shrewd Danite merchant trading in Samson and Delilah (1949).
