Henry Brandon

Henry Brandon (born Heinrich von Kleinbach; 8 June 1912 – 15 February 1990) was an American film and stage character actor with a career spanning almost 60 years, involving more than 100 films; he specialized in playing a wide diversity of ethnic roles. Early life Brandon was born in 1912 in Berlin, German Empire, the son of Hildegard and Hugo R. von Kleinbach, a merchant. His parents emigrated to the United States while he was still an infant. After attending Stanford University, where he was a member of the Alpha Sigma Phi fraternity, he trained as a theatre actor at the Pasadena Community Playhouse and subsequently performed on Broadway, continuing to return to the stage periodically throughout his career. Film career He made his motion picture debut in 1932 as an uncredited spectator at the Colosseum in The Sign of the Cross. In the Victorian-era stage melodrama The Drunkard — played for laughs in a popular local revival — Kleinbach appeared as the wizened old villain "Squire Cribbs". The 22-year-old Kleinbach was so convincing in elderly makeup that he fooled movie producer Hal Roach, who hired Kleinbach to play Silas Barnaby, the villain in the Laurel and Hardy feature Babes in Toyland. In 1936, having until then been performing under his real name, he adopted the stage name of Henry Brandon. He reprised the Barnaby character in Roach's short-subject production Our Gang Follies of 1938. In the late 1930s Brandon became a familiar face in adventure serials, almost always in villainous roles. In 1940, he had his only starring film role, as the imperious Fu Manchu in the Republic Pictures serial Drums of Fu Manchu. The serial was withdrawn at the express request of the State Department in 1941 after the U.S. entry into World War II out of concern that it was inciting anti-Chinese sentiment in the American public, which conflicted both with the interests of the Chinese-American population and the international relationship with China as an allied power in the war against Japan.