IMDb is under the impression that Sam M Lewis, the prolific songwriter who produced many standards in the 1910s, 20s and 30s, also played the part of the Jewish Hindu in the MGM musical Student Tour. (The entry gets his middle initial wrong, but that is definitely who is meant.) Lewis would have been forty-nine when the film was made. It is difficult to see why a successful songwriter would have taken time out to play a bit part in a Jimmy Durante film.
This information is reproduced widely on other sites, which means that, if we take it as incorrect, it is impossible to identify any other Sam Lewis who might have been the actor in question.
The IMDb entry cites three other acting credits, including Chaplin’s Shoulder Arms (1918). But since it also says that Lewis, while having died in 1959, was the crane operator on a 2017 television series called Dino Dana, it is probably best to move on.
Anyone with information about Student Tour’s Jewish Hindu should get in touch.
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