Howard Da Silva

Howard Da Silva was born Howard Silverblatt in Cleveland, Ohio, on May 4, 1909. As a young man he worked in the steel mills of Pennsylvania to pay his way through Carnegie Institute. After finishing his acting training, Da Silva went to work for Eva Le Galliene’s theatrical troupe. He brought attention to himself by staging a one-man show, Ten Million Ghosts, which led to several years’ work with Orson Welles’ Mercury Theatre. On Broadway, the stocky, booming-voiced Da Silva created the roles of Jack Armstrong in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (a part he re-created in the 1940 film version) and Jud Frye in Oklahoma! His other stage credits include The Unknown Soldier and His Wife, My Sweet Charlie, The Advocate, Dear Me The Sky Is Falling, In The Counting House, Romulus, Fiorello!, Compulsion, Burning Bright, The Cradle Will Rock, Golden Boy, and The Green Cockatoo, amongst others. As a writer, he is the author of the play The Zulu and the Zayda. His earliest movie appearance was in the Manhattan-filmed Jimmy Savo vehicle Once in a Blue Moon (1934), but Da Silva didn’t gain cinematic prominence until signed by Paramount in the 1940s, where, among many other choice assignments, he was cast as the bartender in the Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend (1945). As one of the most vocal and demonstrative of Hollywood’s Left Wing, Da Silva became a convenient target for the House Un-American Activities Commission, and he was blacklisted. During this time, Da Silva supported himself by doing theatre work and didn’t return to the movies until 1961’s David and Lisa, when the blacklist was lifted. He died in New York in February 1986.