by Hal Erickson
biography
Bluff, blustery Irish character actor Dudley Digges spent many of his earliest acting years at Dublin's Abbey Players. In the U.S., Digges was most closely associated with the Theatre Guild before making his cinema debut in the early talkie Condemned (1929). Permitted a wide range of characterizations on stage, Digges was usually pigeonholed in films as a pompous villain or fallen-from-grace drunkard. On two occasions, Dudley Digges essayed film roles that would later be recreated by his Theatre Guild colleague Sidney Greenstreet: The Heavenly Examiner in Outward Bound (1930), (remade as Between Two Worlds in 1944), and Kasper Gutman in The Maltese Falcon (1931 version).
