John George (actor)

John George (Arabic: جون جورج‎‎; January 20, 1898, Aleppo, Syria – August 25, 1968, Los Angeles) was a small-statured actor who appeared in at least 130 movies from 1916 to 1960. George worked in films of all genres alongside countless stars although often for only the briefest of appearances, uncredited.

Born in Syria, as Tufei Fatella. Little is known about his early life but he emigrated to the United States around 1911 and searched for his mother and sisters who seem to have settled in the Nashville Tennessee area. Eventually he found his way to Los Angeles and the early silent film industry. George may have begun his career in the Joseph De Grasse movie Bobbie of the Ballet (1916) as an uncredited "tenement dweller". George may have even appeared earlier than that in the 1915 serial The Broken Coin unbilled, as an actor who strongly favors him appears in a still photo from the chapter play with Francis Ford and Grace Cunard in Daniel Blum's Pictorial History of the Silent Screen.

George went on to appear in Rex Ingram's Gothic melodrama Black Orchids (1917) as a character named Ali Bara. George worked in dozens of movies for Rex Ingram until 1926 when Ingram, tired of George's gambling, sent him home on a bus.

George became a regular in several films with Lon Chaney both at Universal Studios and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He also appeared in the Warner Brothers production Don Juan (1926) opposite John Barrymore, where he was the cruel dwarf Castle Keeper/Informer who delighted in exposing to Don Jose (Don Juan's father) the infidelities of his wife with another man. George continued to appear in movie after movie until some time near his death at the age of 70 in 1968.