Joseph R. Tozer

Biography

Joseph R. Tozer first drew breath on 29 August 1881 amid the clang of Birmingham’s forges, and the city’s soot-flecked streets would echo behind him when he stepped before the camera. Between 1914 and 1922 he slipped into three very different skins: a wish-granting djinn in *The Brass Bottle*, Shylock’s wary adversary in the 1916 *Merchant of Venice*, and the pipe-smoking sleuth decoding danger in *The Greek Interpreter*. When the final curtain fell, he chose a sunlit balcony above the Mediterranean, expelling his last breath on 3 May 1955 in Monte Carlo, Monaco, where roulette wheels spun oblivious to the quiet exit of a silver-screen chameleon.