Francis Pierlot

Biography

When Francis Pierlot stepped off the train in Hollywood one bright afternoon in 1939, the 63-year-old French-born actor expected nothing grander than a quick cameo before slipping into a quiet retirement. Instead, the cameras kept rolling for fourteen more years, turning what was meant to be a curtain call into an unexpected second act. Born in France on July 15, 1875, Pierlot crossed the Atlantic as a small boy and grew up on Boston’s cobblestone streets. At thirteen he was already earning pennies showing theatergoers to their seats, soaking in every line of dialogue that floated from the stage. By adulthood he had traded the aisle for the spotlight, juggling vaudeville turns and Broadway roles with easy grace. Audiences of the ’20s and ’30s knew him from comedies like Please Get Married (1919), the newsroom romp Gentlemen of the Press (1928), and the historical romp Knickerbocker Holiday (1938). The movies lured him west just before the war, and Warner Bros., RKO and Paramount kept him busy. Never the marquee name, he became the comforting presence in the corner of the frame: silver-haired bankers, cordial judges, affable uncles whose spectacles caught the light just so. Between 1940 and 1953 he popped up in The Captain Is a Lady, Henry Aldrich, Editor, Hit the Hay, Two Guys from Milwaukee, The Flame and the Arrow, and It Happens Every Thursday. On early-’50s television he could be spotted as “Mr. Hubert,” trading quips with Jack Carson. A heart attack finally lowered the curtain on May 11, 1955, in the same Hollywood he had never meant to call home.