Leslie Stowe

A heavyset, dark-haired character actor from Louisiana, Leslie Stowe had appeared with the Augustin Daly Stock Company and in the original Broadway production of Ben-Hur opposite William S. Hart. Unlike Hart, who entered films wholeheartedly, Stowe made only irregular appearances through the 1910s but was busier in the 1920s. Usually cast as villains, Stowe can be seen today as one of the worst of the kind, communist rabble rouser Herman Wolff in the Red Scare melodrama Bolshevism on Trial (1919). He left films at the advent of sound and died at the retired actor's home in Englewood, NJ.