Warfield, David

Warfield, David [ David Wollfeld or David Wohlfelt] (1866–1951), American actor, who began as a programme seller and later an usher at a San Francisco theatre and in 1888 joined a travelling company, playing Melter Moss in Tom Taylor's The Ticket-of-Leave Man. This failed after a week, and he went into variety, appearing in New York in 1890 in vaudeville and musical comedy. He was Karl in the original production of the popular musical comedy The Belle of New York (1897) and later spent three years in a burlesque company. He was adept at presenting the New York East Side Jew of his day, and had already given proof of fine qualities in his acting when in 1901 Belasco starred him in Klein's The Auctioneer. This was an instantaneous success and had a long run, but it was as the gentle, pathetic, self-sacrificing Anton von Barwig in The Music Master (1904), also by Klein, that Warfield set the seal on his growing reputation. He played nothing else, in New York and on tour, for three years. Among his later successes were Wes Bigelow in Belasco's A Grand Army Man (1907), and the title-roles in The Return of Peter Grimm (1911), also by Belasco, and Wills's Vanderdecken (1915). He was also seen as Shylock in Belasco's 1922 production of The Merchant of Venice, retiring from the stage two years later.