Biography
Oscar C. Apfel was an American actor, director, screenwriter and producer. After a stage career that began in 1900 in his native Cleveland, Ohio, where he became noted as a young director and producer, he spent eleven years on Broadway before entering films with the Edison Manufacturing Company in 1911. He directed 94 films between 1911 and 1927, including early features for the Jesse L. Lasky company such as The Squaw Man (1914), often in collaboration with Cecil B. DeMille, and the innovative short The Passer-By (1912).
Apfel gradually returned to acting and appeared in more than 160 films between 1913 and 1939, frequently in supporting roles as authority figures. Among his credits are Abraham Lincoln (1930) as Secretary of War Stanton and Five Star Final (1931) as newspaper publisher Bernard Hinchecliffe. He died in Hollywood on 21 March 1938.
