The Dark Life and Career of Arthur Edmund Carewe

The life and career of early 20th century  actor Arthur Edmund Carewe (Hovsep Hovsepian, 1884-1937) are both interesting enough for brief treatment here.

In spite of his highly Anglo professional name, Carewe was an Armenian refugee from persecution in the Ottoman Empire during the Hamidian Massacre, a kind of prologue to the Armenian Genocide. The son of a well-off businessman and community leader, he fled to the U.S. with his family in the 1890s and was enrolled in posh private schools. In 1904 he graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, winning a David Belasco Medal for his efforts. He acted regionally with stock companies for 15 years under the name Arthur Carew before coming to Hollywood in 1919 to appear in Venus in the East, directed by Donald Crisp, starring Bryant Washburn and Anna Q. Nilsson.

As the photo above will attest, Carewe possessed leading man good looks, though he mostly distinguished himself in character parts. He specialized in the kinds of roles Peter Lorre later played: nervous, shifty crazies. He made 50 films during his 18 year career, many of them melodramas, with the best remembered of them being horror films or mysteries: The Ghost Breaker (1922, with Wallace Reid), Trilby (1923, in the plum role of Svengali), The Phantom of the Opera (1925), The Cat and the Canary (1927), Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1927). He returned to theatre and traveled in Europe for a time before buckling down to act in sound films.

In the sound era Carewe was in the Technicolor musical Sweet Kitty Bellairs (1930) with Claudia Dell, and the Frank Fay comedy God’s Gift to Women (1930). Carewe was up for the title role in Dracula in 1931, but turned it down, going on to do four more dark films: Dr. X. (1932), Mystery of the Wax Museum(1933), Thunder in the Night (1935), and Charlie Chan’s Secret (1936).

Carewe was in his early 50s when a stroke paralyzed the right side of his body, ending his time in the limelight. In keeping with the grim nature of many of his films, the theme of suicide bookends his career. In 1910, he had gotten some of his first major publicity when he was jailed for faking a suicide in order to gain the attention to actress Nance Gwynne. 27 years later, he took his own life with a gun to his head while parked outside a motel near the beach in Santa Monica.

For more on silent film please read Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.