George Beranger

Beranger was born George Augustus Beringer[1] in Enmore, New South Wales, Australia, the youngest of five sons of Caroline Mondientz and Adam Beringer, a German engine fitter. His mother committed suicide when he was three years old and he left home at the age of 14.[3] He studied acting at the College of Elocution and Dramatic Art founded by Scottish actor Walter Bentley.[3]

Beranger began playing Shakespearean roles at the age of sixteen with the Walter Bentley Players. He then emigrated from Australia to California, United States in 1912[1] and worked in the silent film industry in Hollywood. According to a researcher, he "reinvented himself in Hollywood, claiming French parentage, birth on a French ocean liner off the coast of Australia and a Paris education."[3] Beranger worked under the names George Alexandre Beranger and André de Beranger.

By the 1920s, Beranger had become a star, appearing in the movies of Ernst Lubitsch and D. W. Griffith.[3] He also directed ten films between 1914 and 1924. Beranger owned a large Spanish-style home in Laguna Beach, rented a room at the Hollywood Athletic Club and owned an apartment in Paris, France.[3]

Beranger eventually appeared in more than 140 films between 1913 and 1950. Beranger's career declined following the 1930s Great Depression and the advent of sound film, and his roles in later films were small and often uncredited. He supplemented his income as a draftsman for the Los Angeles City Council. He sold his large properties and moved into a modest cottage beside his house in Laguna Beach.[3]

Beranger's silent roles had often been sophisticates or dandy types, and in early sound films he was often relegated to non-speaking walk-ons or bit parts as hairdressers, concierges, florists and the like. However, in the mid and late 1940s, he played interesting speaking bit parts in three 20th Century-Fox (his main studio) film noirs: The Spider (a B noir in which he has several lines as a nosy apartment manager), Nightmare Alley (an all-time classic noir, playing the geek in the first act and singing the Irish drinking song "The Boston Burglar") and Road House (for which he received a rare screen credit, in spite of having only two lines of dialogue as Richard Widmark's bespectacled fishing buddy, "Lefty").[4]

Beranger entered into a "lavender marriage" with a neighbouring woman who was a widow, but they never shared the same house and he continued to have sexual relationships with men unabated.[5]

Beranger retired in 1952 and lived his later years in seclusion.[6] He was found dead of natural causes in his home on 8 March 1973.[7]

• Cosgrove, Bryony (December 2011). "Missing in Action, Caught on Film: Silent Film Actor "André de Beranger" Goes to War". Screening the Past. La Trobe University (32). ISSN 1328-9756.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to George Beranger.

• George Beranger at IMDb