Spanish actor Antonio Moreno was in films from 1912, and in the pre-1920 years had built himself up into one of the bigger stars of Vitagraph Studios. A beefy, handsome man who could spring into rugged action at the turn of a camera crank, Moreno also appeared in several silents serials, with titles like The House of Hate and Invisible Hands. Like many pioneer movie players, Moreno found his star waning in the early '20s, until the arrival of Rudolph Valentino created a demand in Hollywood for Latin Lover types. Moreno's career was revitalized, and by 1926 he was pitching woo to Greta Garbo and engaging in a bloody bullwhip duel (not with Garbo) in The Temptress. When talkies came in, Moreno was kept busy starring in Spanish-language versions of Hollywood film hits, and continued making films in his native tongue both in the USA and below the border. As an actor, Moreno was rather locked in the declamatory style of his Vitagraph days, as witness his florid performance as an amorous gypsy in Laurel and Hardy's The Bohemian Girl (1936). But he worked often, if not for the high salaries of his silent days, in character roles in such Hollywood costume epics as The Spanish Main (1945) and Captain from Castile (1948). John Ford devotees will be familiar with Moreno for his role as Emilio Figueroa in Ford's influential western epic The Searchers (1955). Antonio Moreno's final film was still another Spanish-language production, El Senora Faron y la Cleopatra (1958).
by Hal Erickson
biography
