Walter Leland Catlett was an American actor of stage and screen, as well as a comedian. He made a career of playing excitable, meddlesome, temperamental, and officious blowhards.
Career
Catlett was born in San Francisco, California. He started out in vaudeville, teaming up with Hobart Cavanaugh at some point, with a detour for a while to opera, before breaking into acting.
He started on stage in 1906 and made his Broadway debut in either The Prince of Pilsen or So Long Letty . His first film appearance was in 1912, but then he went back to the stage and did not return to films until 1929. He performed in operettas and musicals, including The Ziegfeld Follies of 1917, the original production of the Jerome Kern musical Sally and the Gershwins' Lady, Be Good . In the last, he introduced the song "Oh, Lady Be Good!" In 1918, he starred in, stage-managed and rewrote an Oliver Morosco-Elmer Harris-Harry Plani production titled Look Pleasant, playing at the Majestic Theatre in Los Angeles. His antics in the musical Baby Bunting in London in 1922 had King George V laughing "uproariously".
