Background
Fries was born in Saint Louis, Missouri and died in 1938 in Los Angeles, California at age 50.
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Otto Fries
Edit ProfileCareer
He appeared in 129 films between 1920 and 1938. He was the father of National Football League player Sherwood Fries. Fries became a dapper-looking supporting comic with a varied background in medicine shows and vaudeville.
He easily transitioned to film in the early 1910s.
Not surprisingly, Fries later landed at Hal Roach Studios, where he supported not only Laurel & Hardy and Charley Chase but also such lesser stars as Max Davidson and James Finlayson. Sound proved no hindrance and Fries would appear in many of Roach"s German-language talkies, as well as characters in many of the Our Gang shorts.
Often cast as inebriates, detectives, and bartenders (with a memorable turn as a Blacksmith matching wits with a delinquent 9-year-old in Roach"s Readin" and Writin"), Fries played scores of bit parts and walk-ons in grade-A films. One of his more notable appearances was as a shiphand in the Marx Brothers" Monkey Business.
