Rupert Julian

Biography

Rupert Julian crossed the Pacific at thirty-four, trading the stages of Wellington and Sydney for the glare of Hollywood arc lights. Audiences first knew him as the sneering, spitting image of the German Kaiser in Universal’s 1918 war-barrage The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin—a performance that lined the studio’s coffers with seven figures and pinned a target on his profile. The actor pivoted behind the camera, churning out brisk programmers until Erich von Stroheim’s exit hurled him onto the lavish sets of Merry-Go-Round (1923) to salvage a runaway epic. The assignment led to the gothic centerpiece of his résumé: 1925’s The Phantom of the Opera, where Lon Chaney’s unmasked face sent chills through movie palaces—though studio impatience saw Julian yanked from the project before the final curtain fell. Talkies arrived; his voice never found its footing. Two sound pictures later, the lights dimmed, the calls stopped, and Rupert Julian slipped from the industry as quietly as a theater ghost.