Ricardo Cortez

He played a newspaper columnist in Is My Face Red? (1932), a home wrecker in A Lost Lady (1934), a killer in Man Hunt (1936) and even Perry Mason in The Case of the Black Cat (1936).

Cortez' career, unlike some other silent-screen stars, survived the advent of sound, and he would play Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1931) (aka "Dangerous Female"). Never a great actor, Cortez was cast as the smirking womanizer in a number of films and would soon slide down into "B" movies.

A popular star, he was saddled in a number of run-of-the-mill romantic movies that would depend more on his looks than on the script--pictures such as Argentine Love (1924) and The Cat's Pajamas (1926) did little to extend his range as an actor.

He did show that he had some range with his role in Pony Express (1924), but roles like that were few and far between.

Ricardo Cortez was born Jacob Krantz in New York City, New York, the son of Sarah (Lefkowitz) and Moses/Morris Krantz, Austrian Jewish immigrants who moved to New York just before he was born. His brother was cinematographer Stanley Cortez, who also changed his surname. Cortez worked a number of jobs while he trained as an actor. When Jacob he arrived in Hollywood to work in movies in 1922, the Rudolph Valentino craze was in full bloom. Never shy about changing a name and a background, the studio transformed Jacob Krantz into "Latin Lover" Ricardo Cortez from Spain. Such was life in Hollywood. Starting with small parts, the tall and dark Cortez was being groomed by Paramount to be the successor to Valentino, but Cortez would never be viewed (or consider himself) as the equal to the late sex symbol.

He was born in New York City, to Austrian Jewish parents, Sarah (Lefkowitz) and Moses or Morris Krantz, who married in New York on October 8, 1899. His paternal grandparents were Jacob Krantz and Annie Schluosselfeld. His maternal grandparents were Samuel Lefkowitz and Rosa Schwartz.