page_title: Josef Swickard
section_title: Career
hierarchical_section_title: Josef Swickard / Career
caption_attribution_description: English: The final scene from the American film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921).
context_page_description: Josef Swickard was a German-born veteran stage and screen character actor, who had toured with stock companies in Europe, South Africa, and South America.
context_section_description: Swickard emigrated to the United States from Germany in 1882. He was a stage actor several years before entering films with D.W. Griffith in 1912 and by 1914 was playing supporting roles for Mack Sennett. He appeared in Charles Chaplin's Laughing Gas and Caught in a Cabaret.  He remained with Sennett until 1917, when he settled into his prolific career of playing mostly aristocratic characters.
  Modern audiences are perhaps most familiar with his role of Marcelo Desnoyers, the well-intentioned but impractical French upper class father in Rex Ingram's 1921 film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. His career in sound films was somewhat limited and he played in low-budget and action serial type films.  He played the villainous Prime Minister Kruel in the 1925 film version of The Wizard of Oz.
caption: Josef Swickard as Marcelo Desnoyers in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
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