George Zucco

George Zucco (11 January 1886 – 27 May 1960) was a British character actor who appeared in plays and 96 films, mostly American-made, during a career spanning over two decades, from the 1920s to 1951. In his films, he often played a suave villain, a member of nobility, or a mad doctor. Early life and family George Desylla Zucco was born in Manchester, Lancashire, on 11 January 1886. His mother Marian (née Rintoul) ran a dressmaking business. His father, George De Sylla Zucco, was a Greek merchant from Corfu who became a naturalised British subject in 1865. Zucco debuted on the Canadian stage in 1908 in a stock theater company. In 1910, he entered the United States for the first time from Canada, bound for Seattle, Washington, where he soon appeared in plays such as The Melting Pot and The White Sister. He and his wife Frances toured the American vaudeville circuit during the 1910s, their satirical sketch about suffragettes earning them renown. He returned to the UK and served as a lieutenant in the British Army's West Yorkshire Regiment during the First World War. He lost the use of two fingers when he was shot in the right arm in France. When the war ended, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and later taught there.