Pedro de Cordoba

Pedro de Cordoba (September 28, 1881 – September 16, 1950) was an American actor.

Biography
De Cordoba was born in New York City to parents who were French and Cuban in origin. He was a classically trained theatre actor who confessed he did not enjoy appearing in silent films nearly as much as he liked working on stage, but his career during the silent film era was extensive.

In 1913 he was a member of the resident summer stock cast at Elitch Theatre in Denver, Colorado.

His first film was Cecil B. DeMille's version of Carmen (1915), and he soon became a regular leading man in Hollywood. His Broadway career cast him with such stage actresses as Jane Cowl and Katharine Cornell.

In the sound era, his deeply resonant speaking voice made him perfectly suited to talking pictures and was active as a character actor in Hollywood, from the mid-1930s through to the end of his life. He was most often cast as aristocratic, or clerical characters of Hispanic origin, as in The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), because of his last name as well as his royal bearing. On rare occasions, he would be cast in the role of a villain. His "living skeleton" sideshow character hides fugitive Robert Cummings (and Priscilla Lane) in his carnival wagon overnight in the Alfred Hitchcock film Saboteur (1942).

He was a devout Catholic and served for a time as president of the Catholic Actors Guild of America. The last film in which he appeared, a political drama set in an unnamed South American dictatorship, Crisis (1950), was released shortly after his death.