Paul Ellis on AllMovie

Handsome, swarthy Paul Ellis played an unscrupulous party-giver luring young girls in general and innocent Harley Wood in particular into a life of drug dependency in the 1936 exploitation thriller Marihuana. This "sensational" melodrama -- road-shown for years and making its creator, entrepreneur Dwain Esper, a wealthy man -- was actually the nadir in the long screen career of this dancer/writer/actor from Buenos Aires, Argentina. In Hollywood from the mid-'20s, Ellis (born Benjamin Ingenito) also appeared under another nom de cinema, {$Manuel Granados). Often cast as cads, Ellis caused Corinne Griffith's downfall in Three Hours (1927), attempted to corrupt Constance Bennett in The Common Law (1931), and portrayed General Castrillion in the low-budget Heroes of the Alamo (1937). In between his work in English-language films, Ellis appeared in Spanish versions of The Good Bad Girl (1931), Men in Her Life (1931), Revenge at Monte Carlo (1933), and danced in both the English and French versions of The Merry Widow (1934). Rarely seen in America after 1941, Ellis' final credited performance came in the Argentinean La Tiera del Fuego se Apaga (1955).