An oily looking supporting actor who often played gangsters or blue-collar working stiffs, Wisconsin-born, Oregon-educated Lew Harvey had spent three years on the legitimate stage before entering films with the Texas Guinan company in the very early '20s. Later in the decade he was mainly seen as "half-breeds" or gangsters but did turn up as Will Rogers in MGM's behind-the-scenes look at the Follies, in Pretty Ladies (1925). Reduced to bit parts in talkies and under long-term contract to MGM, Harvey turned up in scores of mostly dramas, usually playing truck drivers, two-bit hoodlums, guards, and policemen. His final-known appearance came in The File on Thelma Jordan (1949), in which he played a court reporter.