Biography
Henry Kolker (also credited as Joseph Henry Kolker) was an American stage and film actor and director. Born in Berlin, Germany, he moved to the United States as a child and settled in Quincy, Illinois. He began a stage career in stock theatre in 1895 and appeared opposite performers including Edith Wynne Matthison, Bertha Kalich and Ruth Chatterton before entering silent films around 1915.
Kolker directed several films in the early 1920s, including Disraeli (1921). As an actor he appeared in more than 150 films, often in supporting roles as fathers, judges or authority figures. His credits include Baby Face (1933), Mad Love (1935), Imitation of Life (1934), Bullets or Ballots (1936), Holiday (1938), Union Pacific (1939), A Woman's Face (1941) and Bluebeard (1944). He played Friar Laurence in the 1936 film Romeo and Juliet.
