Antonio Moreno

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 Antonio Moreno
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Antonio Moreno

Antonio "Tony" Moreno (September 26, 1887 - February 16, 1967) was a notable actor and film director of the silent film era and through the 1950s.

Born Antonio Garride Monteagudo in Madrid, Spain, he emigrated to the United States at the age of fourteen and settled in Massachusetts, where he completed his education. After attending the Williston Seminary in Northampton, Massachusetts, he became a stage actor in regional theater productions. In 1912 he moved to Hollywood, California and was signed to Vitagraph Studious and began his career in bit parts and as a movie extra.

In 1914 Moreno began co-starring in a series of highly successful serials opposite the enormously publicly popular silent film actress Pearl White; These appearances helped to increase Moreno's popularity with the nation's nascent film-goers. By 1915 Antonio Moreno was a highly regarded matinee idol and appearing opposite such successful actors as Tyrone Power, Sr. , Gloria Swanson, Blanche Sweet, Pola Negri and Dorothy Gish. Moreno was often typecaste in his earliest films as the "Latin Lover", as were other actors of the era such as Ramon Novarro and Rudolf Valentino with Latin roots.

By the early 1920s, Antonio Moreno joined film mogul Jesse Lasky's Famous Players and one of the company's most highly paid performers. In 1926 Moreno starred opposite Swedish acting legend Greta Garbo in The Temptress and the following year followed up with a starring role in the enormous box-office hit Clara Bow vehicle It.

Moreno married American heiress Daisy Canfield Danziger in 1923, a union that lasted ten years and ended shortly before Canfield Danziger was killed in an automobile accident.

With the advent of talkies in the late 1920s and early 1930s Moreno's career began to sputter, in part because of his heavy Spanish accent. While still acting in English language films, Moreno also began taking parts in Mexican films. By the mid-1930s, Antonio Moreno began rebuilding his faultering Hollywood career by taking notable roles as a character actor. By the mid-1940s and throughout the 1950s, Moreno appeared in a number of well received roles, most notably, his 1954 role in the classic horror film Creature from the Black Lagoon and his 1955 role as Emilio Figueroa in film director John Ford's influential western epic The Searchers.

Moreno retired from film in the late 1950s and died of heart failure in Beverly Hills, California in 1967. His film career spanned more than four decades.

For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Antonio Moreno was given a star on the legendary Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6651 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood, California, USA.

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