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Actor Walter McGrail's birthdate is frequently given as 1899, but this hardly seems likely, inasmuch as he was playing adult leading roles in films as early as 1915. During his first decade before the cameras, McGrail was often cast as imperious scions of wealth in such films as Miss Ambition (1918), Girl Problem (1918) and The Country Cousin (1919). In the 1920s, he essayed scores of character roles, often playing a suave and/or villainous Latin type. The size of his roles decreased in the talkie era, though he occasionally played such meaty parts as Winsted Omstock in The Shadow Strikes (1937) and the leader of the "action" heavies in the 1940 serial Mysterious Dr. Satan. Walter McGrail retired in 1951.