Bert Woodruff: Geezer for Hire

Bert Woodruff (1856-1934) is best known (to some of us anyway), for his iconic role as Pop, New York’s last horse-drawn trolley driver, in Harold Lloyd’s Speedy (1928).

Speedy was one of Woodruff’s last films. He’d begun career nearly a half century earlier in his native Peoria, in a two-man act called Woodruff and West, which played vaudeville and minstrelsy, with an act that featured singing and dancing, with blackface*** and Irish delineations. By 1882 he was seasoned enough for drama and secured a long term gig with a local stock company, the Adelphi. Seven years later, he opened his own vaudeville house in Peoria, which is operated until 1904. Finally, he made the big move to movies, operating the first nickelodeon in the L.A.-area community of Redondo Beach, and breaking into the business itself as an actor.

Woodruff was 60 years old when he made the first of his over 60 films, The She Devil (1916) with Constance Talmadge. He carved out a well defined niche for himself as a character actor, playing roles named Pops, Gramps, Old Dad, Pa, and any number of Uncles, Judges, Professors, and police captains. In 1924 he played a character named Jimmy Whiskers in a series of Information Kid shorts starring Billy Sullivan. Some of his better known features included the 1924 version of The Sea Hawk, Paths to Paradise (1925) with Raymond Griffith, The Vanishing American (1925) with Richard Dix, and the 1928 version of The Shopworn Angel. His last picture was Laughing Sinners (1931) with Joan Crawford and Clark Gable.

***Obligatory Disclaimer: It is the official position of this blog that Caucasians-in-Blackface is NEVER okay. It was bad then, and it’s bad now. We occasionally show images depicting the practice, or refer to it in our writing, because it is necessary to tell the story of American show business, which like the history of humanity, is a mix of good and bad.

For more on the history of vaudeville, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on classic comedy and silent film please check out my book Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.