Ricardo Cortez was born Jacob Krantz in New York City, New York, the son of Sarah (Lefkowitz) and Moses/Morris Krantz, Austrian Jewish immigrants who moved to New York just before he was born. His brother was cinematographer Stanley Cortez, who also changed his surname. Cortez worked a number of jobs
while he trained as an actor. When Jacob he arrived in Hollywood to work
in movies in 1922, the Rudolph Valentino craze was in full bloom. Never shy
about changing a name and a background, the studio transformed Jacob
Krantz into "Latin Lover" Ricardo Cortez from Spain. Such
was life in Hollywood.
Starting with small parts, the tall and dark Cortez was being groomed by
Paramount to be the successor to Valentino, but Cortez
would never be viewed (or consider himself) as the equal to the late
sex symbol. A popular star, he was saddled in a number of
run-of-the-mill romantic movies that would depend more on his looks
than on the script--pictures such as
Argentine Love (1924) and
The Cat's Pajamas (1926) did
little to extend his range as an actor. He did show that he had some
range with his role in
Pony Express (1924), but roles like
that were few and far between.
Cortez' career, unlike some other silent-screen stars, survived the advent of sound, and he would play
Sam Spade in
The Maltese Falcon (1931) (aka
"Dangerous Female"). Never a great actor, Cortez was cast as the smirking
womanizer in a number of films and would soon slide down into "B" movies. He played a newspaper columnist in
Is My Face Red? (1932), a home
wrecker in A Lost Lady (1934), a
killer in Man Hunt (1936) and even Perry
Mason in
The Case of the Black Cat (1936).
After 1936 Cortez hit a dry patch as far as acting work was concerned and tried his hand at
directing. His career as a director ended after a half-dozen movies and
his screen career soon followed. He retired from the screen and
returned to Wall Street, where he had worked as a runner decades
before. This time he returned as a member of one of Wall Street's top
brokerage firms and lived a comfortable life.
