After a long barnstorming stage career, corpulent American actor Willare Louis entered films as Mr. Striver in the 1917 adaptation of Tale of Two Cities. It was the first of many "literary" properties that would star or feature Louis over the next nine years. His subsequent credits included Madame X (1920), Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922, as Friar Tuck), the 1924 version of Edith Wharton's Age of Innocence and Beau Brummel (1924). In 1924, he played the title role in a cinemadaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Babbitt. Not long after finishing his work as Pedrillo in John Barrymore's Don Juan (1926), 52-year-old Willard Louis was dead, a victim of typhoid fever and pneumonia.