Otto Hoffman

Gangly, bald-pated stage actor Otto Hoffman inaugurated his screen career with producer Thomas Ince in 1916. After directing Ince's Secret of Black Mountain (1917), Hoffman concentrating on acting. He was seen as cadaverous, crafty, menacing, and sometimes near-moronic types in such silents as Human Wreckage (1918), The Eagle (1925), The Terror (1928) and Noah's Ark (1929). His ethnic range in talkies embraced the Riffian Hasse in Desert Song (1929), frontiersman Murch Rankin in Cimarron (1931), and Gandhi parody "Khook" in Eddie Cantor's Kid Millions (1934). Otto Hoffman spent his last film years in bit roles, most often cast as pawnbrokers or caretakers.

~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide