Walter Long

Walter Huntley Long (March 5, 1879 – July 4, 1952) was an American stage and film character actor who between 1909 and the late 1940s performed in nearly 200 screen productions. Early life and career Born in Nashua, New Hampshire, in 1879, Long was the youngest of six children of Catherine Lucia Jane (née Phillips) and Francis Long, who was a farmer. After acting on stage for years, Long debuted in motion pictures in 1909 with Broncho Billy Anderson. He disliked the working conditions in film production, so after that screen project he returned to the stage. Long soon began to act again in motion pictures, over the years gaining recognition among theater audiences for being a popular "hissed-at villain". He can be seen in some of D. W. Griffith's early films, as well as Griffith's later, far more elaborate productions, most notably The Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). In The Birth of a Nation, Long appears in blackface make-up as the African American character "Gus", and in Intolerance he portrays the "Musketeer", who operates within the crime-ridden slums of a modern American city. He was also cast as a supporting character for Rudolph Valentino in the films The Sheik (1921), Moran of the Lady Letty (1922), and Blood and Sand (1922). He also appears as a comic villain in four Laurel and Hardy shorts released in the early 1930s: as an abusive prisoner in Pardon Us (1931), a dissolute hotel owner and boxer in Any Old Port! (1932), an escaped convict Going Bye-Bye! (1933), and as a gruff sea captain in The Live Ghost (1934).