Background
His father was Albert, Ritter Conti v. Cedassamare and his mother was Marie Bernhardine Anna (Countess Caboga) a member of an old Ragusan/Dubrovnik noble family (see: House of Caboga).
His father was Albert, Ritter Conti v. Cedassamare and his mother was Marie Bernhardine Anna (Countess Caboga) a member of an old Ragusan/Dubrovnik noble family (see: House of Caboga).
When World War I began, he became an officer After his discharge from the Austrian army at the close of World War I, he came to America like many other now-impoverished postwar Europeans from both sides of the conflict. Conti emigrated to the United States in 1919.
After settling in the new country, Conti was obliged to take a series of manual labor jobs, his partician background notwithstanding.
While working in the California oil fields, he answered an open call placed by director Erich von Stroheim, who was in search of an Austrian military officer to act as technical advisor for his upcoming film Merry-Go-Round (1923). A better actor than most of his fellow Habsburg Empire expatriates, Conti was able to secure dignified character roles in several silent and sound films.
His credits ranged from Josef von Sternberg"s Morocco (1930) to the early Laurel and Hardy knockabout. He appeared in the 1928 silent film Dry Martini as a roue artist.
Though he made his last film in 1942, Albert Conti remained in the industry as an employee of the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer wardrobe department, where he worked until his retirement in 1962.
