Tad Alexander

Biography

Over a five-year-period (1930-1934), John Alexander, a cute little boy, was known as Tad Alexander and acted in a dozen films, alongside big stars (Will Rogers, Lionel Barrymore, John Barrymore and Ethel Barrymore, Clark Gable, Bette Davis and in important roles (the young King of Sylvania in Ambassador Bill (1931), the Czarevitch in Rasputin and the Empress (1932)), at least once under the direction of a great director (King Vidor for The Stranger's Return (1933)). But for all this impressive debut, Tad, for some unknown reason, gave up acting. He then became a concert artist before joining the Army in the Second World War where he served as a radar technician. After the War he worked as an engineer at Lockheed Radioplane, Hughes Aircraft and TWR. A pretty full life in fact, in which movie acting was only a short (but not insignificant) parenthesis but of which John Alexander, then a very old man, was reminded the day his name was added to the Young Hollywood Hall of Fame. Two years after, he died aged ninety.