He claimed to have an early pre-disposition toward show business: "I discovered a boy a block away who would eat worms and swallow flies for a penny. For one-third of the profits, I exhibited him in a tent". At nine his widowed mother moved to San Francisco where, following the earthquake of 1906, his family lived in a tent for two weeks "in mortal terror of the fire". By 1910 he was in vaudeville and from there came Broadway plays and movies. A matinee idol in the silents, he came to prominence as the Cisco Kid with In Old Arizona (1929) for which he won an Oscar. He went on to star with 'Myrna Loy' in - Penthouse (1933) and to what many consider his best role, that of the doctor who treated Lincoln's assassin, in The Prisoner of Shark Island. That year his $284,000 income topped the industry. In 1943, after slipping into a string of B-pictures, he began his Dr. Ordway Crime Doctor series. He had suffered a nervous breakdown, and these pictures were easy on him (studio sets for one month, two films a year). Following a lobotomy to relieve pains of arthritis, he died of pneumonia.
Interred at Forest Lawn (Glendale), Glendale, California, USA. Got the part of the Cisco Kid in the movie "In Old Arizona" due in part to veteran director Raoul Walsh's automobile accident in which he lost an eye. Walsh was set to play the Kid. Was said to have had a fear of horses.