L. Rogers Lytton on AllMovie

A busy character actor of the early silent era, dark, brooding L. Rogers Lytton (born Oscar Legare Rogers) was usually cast in villainous roles. A member of the Vitagraph stock company, Lytton scored a hit lampooning his trademark wickedness as the leering Sir Simon Blackheart in The Fates and Flora Fourflush (1914), a send-up of blood-and-thunder serials featuring Vitagraph's great diva, Clara Kimball Young. Later that same year, Lytton was one of the misguided pacifists in the studio's war-preparedness melodrama The Battle Cry of Peace. This controversial film was directed by Wilfred North, who five years later helmed His Brother's Keeper (released 1921), a rare "supernatural" silent drama in which Lytton, as a greedy railroad vice president, uses hypnotism to achieve his nefarious goals.