Arthur Hohl

Who was Arthur Hohl?

Arthur Hohl was an American stage and motion-picture character actor. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and began appearing in films in the early 1920s. He played a great number of villainous or mildly larcenous roles, although his screen roles usually were small, but he also played a few sympathetic characters.

Hohl's two performances seen most often today are as Pete, the nasty boat engineer who tells the local sheriff about Julie and her husband's secret interracial marriage in the 1936 film version of "Show Boat", and as Mr. Montgomery, the man who helps Richard Arlen and Leila Hyams to make their final escape in Island of Lost Souls. He also played Brutus opposite Warren William's Julius Caesar in Cecil B. DeMille's version of Cleopatra, starring Claudette Colbert.

Among his other notable roles were as Olivier, King Louis XI's right-hand man, in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, as the real estate agent in Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux, and as Journet, a bereaved innkeeper who seeks to avenge his daughter's murder in the Basil Rathbone Sherlock Holmes film The Scarlet Claw. Hohl also played a Christian named Titus in Cecil B. DeMille's religious epic The Sign of the Cross.