Harry William Depp (1883-1957) started out as a comedian in vaudeville and travelling theatre companies. By 1907, he was appearing on Broadway, in the first of many productions.
Depp made his film debut in Between Midnight (1916), a Carter DeHaven short, but then travelled to Hollywood for the first of around 140 feature films. Early on, he worked for a number of small studios, always in comedic roles and with a penchant for cross-dressing. He also made appearances for Mack Sennett.
He had many featured roles in the 1920s, but after 1930 tended to have smaller, uncredited parts. He cropped up in Howard Hawks’s Barbary Coast (1935), History is Made at Night (1937), Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940). In 1945, Depp played the pharmacist who supplies Gene Tierney with the arsenic needed for suicide.
Harry Depp made uncredited appearances in six Metro musicals: The Cat and the Fiddle, Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry, The Big Store, Ship Ahoy!, I Dood It and Girl Crazy.
