Queer Places:
Pacific View Memorial Park
Corona del Mar, Orange County, California, USA
William Austin (12 June 1884 – 15 June 1975) was an English
character actor. He was the first actor to play
Alfred in a
Batman
adaptation. He played effete butlers and Englishmen from the silents until
the 1940s. Austin was a minor character actor whose forte was the highly
effeminate, offensive homosexual stereotype. In a skit in Paramount on
Parade (1930), he is almost killed by an outraged George Bancroft,
and it must be noted that the attack on Austin's person is greeted with
delight by audiences today—and presumably by audiences then as well.
William Austin was born on a sugar plantation in
Georgetown in
British Guiana (now
Guyana).
On the death of his father he was brought to the United Kingdom to
complete his education. He later filled a business post in Shanghai and on
being sent to San Francisco by the company he worked for, he decided to
stay in America and take up acting on the stage and later in films. He
appeared in many American films and
serials between the 1920s and the 1940s, though the vast majority of
his roles were small and uncredited. He was the brother of actor
Albert Austin.
Of the numerous silent films Austin appeared in, he is best remembered
as the sidekick friend of
Clara Bow in Bow's best known film
It (1927). He supported
Laurel and Hardy in two of their films,
Duck Soup and
County Hospital.
Austin's portrayal in the 1943
Batman serial of
Batman's
butler
Alfred is the iconic portrayal still used in the comics. Previous to
being played by Austin, the character was fat and had no facial hair.
Performed by Austin, the character was thin with a moustache. Shortly
after the serial was released, Alfred in the comics was changed to match
the look of the serial; this representation of the character has for the
most part continued to this day except for the live action films, the
Birds of Prey series, and the
Deadshot
short in
Batman: Gotham Knight where he has no
moustache.
His son, Lawrence Austin, was a silent film promoter and theater owner,
owned and operated Los Angeles' only extant silent movie house on Fairfax
Avenue in south Los Angeles, until his murder at 74, in 1997, shot in the
right eye in the lobby while a Larry Semon comedy preceded a scheduled
showing of Sunrise.
Austin died in his Newport Beach home from complications of a stroke.
My published books:
BACK TO HOME PAGE
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Austin_(actor)
- Eccentrics of Comedy
Anthony Slide
Scarecrow Press, 1998
- Behind the Screen: How Gays and Lesbians Shaped Hollywood,
1910-1969, William J. Mann, 2001