Lew Cody

Lew Cody aka Lewis Cody (1884-1934) was a dark-haired, suave matinée idol on the silent screen. Between 1914 and 1934, he starred in some 99 films. In the late 1910s, he gained notoriety for playing 'male vamps' in films such as Cecil B. DeMille's Don't Change Your Husband (1919). Cody easily made the transition to talkies and remained busy in leading roles or larger supporting roles until his death.


Swedish postcard by Förlag Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1172.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 2019/1, 1927-1928. Photo: MGM / Fanamet.


French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, no. 462. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, no. 463. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

With his moustache and the air of a seducer

Lew Cody was born Louis Joseph Côté in Waterville, Maine, in 1884. Some sources claim it was Berlin, New Hampshire, where he grew up. Cody was one of the six children of Joseph Côté, a French Canadian, and Elizabeth Côté, née Gifford (some sources say née Herbert). After Elizabeth's death, Louis remarried Marie Lena Rose Toussaint, and they had a daughter named Cecile Côté. The family moved to Berlin, New Hampshire, where his father owned a drugstore. In his youth, Lew worked there as a soda jerk.

He later began studying medicine at McGill University in Montreal. He dropped out and joined a theatre company in North Carolina. He studied drama at the Stanhope Wheatcroft School of Acting in New York and made his debut on the stage in New York in 'Pierre of the Plains'. Cody moved to Los Angeles and began a minor film career at The Balboa Film Studios. He debuted in Harp of Tara (1914), a silent film directed by Raymond B. West and distributed by Mutual.

He then worked for Thomas H. Ince and Mack Sennett, advancing to full-length features by 1917, initially playing villains. With his moustache and the air of a seducer, he became very popular in roles that used his vivacious charm, either as a protagonist or antagonist such as in the comedy The Beloved Cheater (Christy Cabanne, 1919).

He frequently played somewhat dodgy male admirers, which earned him the nickname 'The Male Vamp'. An example is the playboy Schuyler van Sutphen in Cecil B. DeMille's society comedy Don't Change Your Husband (1919), starring Gloria Swanson. In the late 1910s and early 1920s, Cody wandered from one production company to another: Kay-Bee, Selig, Fox, Universal and many others. He auditioned for the title role in Ernst Lubitsch's Faust (1923). The project remained unrealised, but Cody's screentest survives in the Library of Congress, along with those of other contestants.

From the mid-1920s until 1930 Cody was a steady actor at MGM, where he often was paired with the French Renée Adorée. They formed an ideal couple in mischievous comedies such as Man and Maid (Victor Schertzinger, 1925), based on a novel by Elinor Glyn. One of his most interesting films was the silent drama The Tower of Lies (Victor Sjöström, 1925), based upon Selma Lagerlöf's 1914 novel 'The Emperor of Portugallia' and starring Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer. The Tower of Lies is now considered a lost film. The last known surviving copy of the film was reportedly destroyed in the 1965 MGM vault fire.


British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 153.


Spanish postcard by EFB (Editorial Fotografica, Barcelona), no. A-124.


French postcard in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series by A.N., Paris, no. 233. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Production.

Always married to a famous actress

In the early sound era, Lew Cody again shifted from one company to another. During his career, which would last until 1934, Cody acted in about a hundred films. He was a noted wit and much sought-after as a speaker at Hollywood parties.

Among his important directors were Maurice Tourneur, Frank Borzage, Allan Dwan, Henry King, George Fitzmaurice, and Josef von Sternberg, while he acted opposite female stars such as Norma Talmadge, Barbara LaMarr, Mabel Normand, Norma Shearer, and Marlene Dietrich.

Cody married three times, always with an actress. His first wife was Dorothy Dalton from whom he married and divorced twice: 1910-1911, and 1913-1914. Playing the debonnaire leading man, Cody enjoyed the later single life of 'a man's man', which added to his acting persona.

His second wife was Mabel Normand. In 1926, during a party, Cody asked the famous actress jokingly to marry him and she accepted. They convinced the county judge of Ventura to celebrate the ceremony, but the two never lived together even though they never divorced. Cody was married to Mabel Normand until she died of tuberculosis in 1930. On her grave, the actress's name appears as Mabel Normand-Cody.

Lew Cody's last years were marred by big heart problems. At the age of only fifty, he died of a heart attack at home in Beverly Hills in 1934, immediately after shooting his latest film. Cody was buried at the Saint Peter Catholic cemetery in Lewiston, Maine, in the county of Androscoggin.


Spanish collector card in the series Los artistas cinematograficos en la intimidad by Amatller, Barcelona, Series A. Ramon Novarro, John Gilbert, Lew Cody, Kathleen Key and other stars at the yearly outdoor MGM lunch. Other actors present are George K. Arthur, Edward Connelly and Frank Currier.


Spanish postcard in the Estrellas del cine series by Editorial Grafica, Barcelona, no. 94. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.


Spanish minicard (collector card) by Escenas selectas de cinematografia, series B, no. 9. Marguerite Courtot as Jacqueline, probably Effie Shannon as her mother, and Lew Cody as Raoul Radon in Jacqueline, or The Blazing Barriers (Dell Henderson, 1923). The Spanish title was El bosque en llamas (The Forest on Fire), and indeed the climax of the film contains a real, big forest fire.


Italian promotion card by Cineteca del Friuli for Le Giornate del Cinema Muto 43 / Pordenone Silent Film Festival 2024. Photo: Lew Cody, Gwen Lee, and Gertrude Short in Adam and Evil (Robert Z. Leonard, 1927).

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia (English, German and Italian) and IMDb.