(May 23, 1875 - September 4, 1950)

He was born in Germany in 1875, his real name being Max Solomon.

He entered silent movies in 1912 and worked for D.W. Griffith in the teens and Hal Roach in the 1920's.

A veteran of vaudeville and the legitimate stage, Berlin-born Max Davidson was well past forty when he made his first film appearance. A small man with hunched shoulders and an scraggly beard, Davidson specialized in playing stereotypical Jewish characters: pushcart peddlers, pawnbrokers, shopkeepers, ragmen and the like. He signed with the Hal Roach comedy studio in 1925, at first appearing in support of Charley Chase. Under the supervision of Leo McCarey, Davidson was given his own starring series, resulting in such 2-reel laughspinners as Dumb Daddies (1926), Jewish Prudence (1927), Call of the Cuckoos (1927) and Pass the Gravy (1928).

Baby boomers might best remember him as the crazy old man who haunts a house in the Our Gang short "Moan and Groan, Inc." He also starred alongside young Jackie Coogan in a pair of silent features, "The Rag Man" and "Old Clothes."

He ended his career by playing uncredited roles from the 1930's until his final screen appearance in Adventure (1945).

Many film historians and buffs rank him among the top performers in the "second tier" of silent comedians (below "The Big Three" of Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd.