Max Wagner

Like thousands of "day actors' during Hollywood's Golden Era, Max Wagner toiled in relative obscurity in supporting and bit roles with the occasional meaty character part. It was a film career that sustained him as a durable and dependable actor from the mid-1920s through the '70s. The youngest of five boys, Wagner was born in Mexico, the son of William W. Wagner, a railroad conductor. His mother, Edith Wagner, was a writer and correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor during the Mexican Revolution. He was 10 years old when Mexican rebels fatally wounded his father. His mother then brought him to Salinas, California, where he struck up a lifelong friendship with John Steinbeck. Wagner served as a model for the boy in Steinbeck's novel "The Red Pony" and he would appear in many of the films based on Steinbeck's books. Max's brothers - Jack, Blake, and Bob - were already in Hollywood working on films. Jack and Blake worked under D.W. Griffith at Biograph as cameramen and later we