Hollywood Unmasked: Latin Lover is Kosher Butcher’s Son

Ricardo Cortez (1899-1977) was a handsome and talented leading man whose image, in the silent era, was that of a hot-blooded Latin lover.

In truth, his name was Jacob Krantz, the son of a kosher butcher, born and raised in the mean streets of New York’s Lower East Side.

Cortez worked as a runner on Wall Street while training to be an actor at night.  Soon his good looks afforded him an opportunity to break into the young but flourishing movie business. Paramount groomed the tall and handsome Cortez by giving him bit parts, and then moving him up to more substantial roles.

One of the more interesting glimpses into Cortez’s career and character comes from a 1965 interview Cortez granted to silent film historian Kevin Brownlow, published in The Parade’s Gone By. Brownlow was seeking information regarding director D.W. Griffith. Cortez had starred in Griffith’s The Sorrows of Satan (1926).

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