Biography
Tall, balding character actor in US films from 1921 until the year he died, usually portraying obstinate or irascible types. A man so disagreeable on celluloid, Claude Gillingwater's characters seemed to subsist on a steady diet of persimmons. Fondly recalled as the cranky old skinflint whose seemingly cold heart could only be warmed by the actions of a cute little tyke, the tall and rangy Gillingwater invariably played much older than he was. He, with the omnipresent bushy brows, crop of silve...
Known For
Complete Filmography

Cafe Society
1939
as Old Christopher West
A pampered heiress (Madeleine Carroll) elopes with a shipboard reporter (Fred MacMurray) just to get her name in a society column.

Just Around the Corner
1938
as Samuel G. Henshaw
Penny helps her idealistic architect father get his dream of a slum clearance project; The little miss dances with Corporal Jones.

There Goes My Heart
1938
as Cyrus W. Butterfield
An heiress takes a job as a department store clerk.

Little Miss Broadway
1938
as Judge
An orphan is provisionally adopted by the manager of a hotel populated by show business people. The hotel's owner doesn't like the entertainers and wa...

A Yank at Oxford
1938
as Ben Dalton
A brash young American aristocrat attending Oxford University gets a chance to prove himself and win the heart of his antagonist's sister.

Conquest
1937
as Stephan
A Polish countess is dispatched by her country to become Napoleon Bonaparte's mistress at the urging of Polish leaders, who feel she might influence h...

Top of the Town
1937
as William Borden
In this musical set in swingin' Manhattan, an heiress plans a ballet in the famous Moonbeam ballroom located atop a 100-story skyscraper. Unfortunatel...

Can This Be Dixie?
1936
as Col. Robert Peachtree
A young girl and her uncle who run a traveling medicine show lend their efforts to salvage an old plantation.

Wives Never Know
1936
as Mr. Gossamer
The blissful marriage of Homer and Marcia Bigelow is disrupted when Marcia hosts a party for one J. Hugh Ramsay, author of the bestselling book, "Marr...

Poor Little Rich Girl
1936
as Simon Peck
Cossetted and bored, Barbara Barry is finally sent off to school by her busy if doting widowed soap manufacturer father. When her nurse is injured en ...

Ticket to Paradise
1936
as Robert Forbes
A man on his way to closing a million dollar deal has an accident and gets amnesia.

Counterfeit
1936
as Tom Perkins
A cop goes undercover to infiltrate and break up a counterfeiting ring.

Florida Special
1936
as Simeon Stafford
A Florida-bound train is filled with romance and intrigue when one of the passengers disappears while carrying $11-million in unset jewels.

The Prisoner of Shark Island
1936
as Colonel Dyer
After healing the leg of the murderer John Wilkes Booth, responsible for the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln, perpetrated on April 14, 1865...

A Tale of Two Cities
1935
as Jarvis Lorry
Set against the conditions leading up to the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror, French doctor Alexandre Manette serves an 18-year imprisonment...

Together We Live
1935
as Dick
A ham-handed cautionary fable against communism, the film concerns a group of Civil War veterans who are appalled by the burgeoning radical movement i...

Calm Yourself
1935
as Col. Allenby
A recently-fired advertising executive starts his own company, Confidential Services, to help clients solve their unusual and problematic situations.

Baby Face Harrington
1935
as Colton
Thanks to a series of comic mishaps, a timid, small-town office clerk finds himself wanted by the police and labeled by the media as "Public Enemy No....

Mississippi
1935
as General Rumford
A young pacifist after refusing on principle to defend her sweetheart's honor and being banished in disgrace, joins a riverboat troupe as a singer, ac...

The Woman in Red
1935
as Grandpa Wyatt
A professional jockey struggles to fit in with her new husband's upper-crust Long Island family in this horsy-set drama.

Strange Wives
1934
as Guggins
When a young man marries a Russian girl, he finds that he has "married" her entire family.

The Captain Hates the Sea
1934
as Judge Griswold
Alcoholic newspaperman Steve Bramley boards the San Capador for a restful cruise, hoping to quit drinking and begin writing a book. Also on board are ...

Green Eyes
1934
as Steven Kester
The owner of a large mansion in the country throws a costume party for some of his friends. However, the party turns sour when he is found stabbed to ...

In Love with Life
1934
as Morley
Professor John Sylvestus Applegate has been dismissed from his college teaching position for objecting too loudly to the predominant part that footbal...

Unknown Blonde
1934
as Papa Van Brunt, Sr.
An unprincipled hustler who makes his living getting--or making up--evidence in divorce cases finds that he's framing his own daughter.

City Limits
1934
as Tom Oliver
The wealthy president of a big railroad, who's beginning to crumble under the combined pressure of business, personal and physical problems, meets up ...

The Show-Off
1934
as J.B. Preston
Aubrey cons Amy into thinking he's a railroad bigwig. When he loses his job he takes one wearing a sandwich board. After he helps Joe sell his patent ...

You Can't Buy Everything
1934
as Asa Cabot - Banker
A scorned woman dreams of revenge on the man who betrayed her.

Before Midnight
1933
as John Fry
A detective tries to figure out who killed a man who predicted his own death.

Back Page
1933
as Sam Webster
A former New York reporter (Peggy Shannon) is hired as editor of a failing, small town newspaper in California.

I Loved a Woman
1933
as Banker (uncredited)
The son of a ruthless meatpacking king goes through a number of changes in ideals and motivations as he reluctantly inherits the mantle and falls in l...

Skyway
1933
as John Beaumont
A cocky young pilot, at the urging of his girlfriend, takes a nice, "safe" job at the bank where her father is president.

The Avenger
1933
as Witt
A disgraced former District Attorney plots his revenge on the members of a criminal gang who had him framed and sent to prison.

Ann Carver's Profession
1933
as Bingham
Newlyweds experience marital problems when the wife's highly successful job as an attorney overshadows her husband's stagnant career.

Tess of the Storm Country
1932
as Frederick Garfield Sr
When Captain Howland decides that his daughter Tess is getting a bit to old to continue to go to sea with him, they move into a small cottage on the c...
Running Hollywood
1932
as Claude Gillingwater
Running Hollywood is a comedy short.
The Wide Open Spaces
1931
as Judge
A Wild West spoof by The Masquers Comedy Club of Hollywood.

Compromised
1931
as John Brock
Poor working-class girl Stella marries wealthy Sidney Brock, recently jilted by his fiancée and social equal Connie. The two go through contentious ti...

How I Play Golf, by Bobby Jones No. 8: 'The Brassie'
1931
Bobby Jones teaches an angry old man how to use the Brassie, while simultaneously freeing his daughter from his oppressive clutches.

Gold Dust Gertie
1931
as John Aberdeen Arnold
Early 30s pre-code comedy about a woman attempting to get her two ex-husbands to pay back alimony.

Daddy Long Legs
1931
as Riggs
Wealthy Jervis Pendleton acts as benefactor for orphan Judy Abbott, anonymously sponsoring her in her boarding school. But as she grows up, he finds h...

The Conquering Horde
1931
as Jim Nabours
Not long after the Civil War, Texas cattle ranchers realize they have a problem--the Union Pacific railroad is bypassing their state and make it near ...

Illicit
1931
as Richard Ives Sr.
Ann, a young woman with outrageously advanced ideas, has been living in sin with Dick, her lover, because of her conviction that marriage would destro...

Kiss Me Again
1931
as Count de St. Cyr
An officer of the French Military is in love with a shop girl, but his aristocratic father wants him to marry in his class and convinces the girl that...

The Flirting Widow
1930
as Faraday
An older daughter invents a fiancé so that her father will allow her younger sister to marry. However, the lie comes back to haunt her.

Dumb-bells in Ermine
1930
as Uncle Roger
In a small town in Virginia, Faith Corey, daughter of a socially prominent family, meets and falls in love with Jerry Malone, a prizefighter, though h...

Mexicali Rose
1929
as (uncredited)
The owner of a border town gambling saloon falls in love with a promiscuous young girl. When she has an affair with another, he tosses her out of town...

So Long Letty
1929
as Uncle Claude Davis
Uncle Claude comes to the Ardmore Beach Hotel to see Tommy and his wife. At the hotel, with his two granddaughters Ruth and Sally, Uncle Claude meets ...

The Great Divide
1929
as Winthrop Amesbury
Stephen Ghent, a mineowner, falls in love with Ruth Jordan, an arrogant girl from the East, unaware that she is the daughter of his dead partner. Ruth...

Smiling Irish Eyes
1929
as Michael O'Connor
A pretty, young violinist who travels from Ireland to America to seek fame and fortune on Broadway finds a bit more than she expected. A lost film.

Glad Rag Doll
1929
as Sam Underlane
She sought to conquer...but found Cupid her master! This is one of many lost films of the 1920s, no prints or Vitaphone discs survive, but the song w...

Stolen Kisses
1929
as H.A. Lambert Sr.
A crotchety old coot wants his son and daughter-in-law to have kids so he can have grandchildren, but so far they haven't done so. In a somewhat ham-h...

Stark Mad
1929
as James Rutherford - Expedition Leader
An expedition sets out through the jungle to find a missing explorer, but stumbles upon an ancient Mayan temple that houses a giant ape.

Oh Kay!
1928
as Judge Appleton
On the eve of her wedding Lady Kay Rutfield runs off aboard her sloop. A storm carries her out to sea and she is rescued by a passing rumrunner bound ...

Women They Talk About
1928
as Grandfather Mervin
Women They Talk About is a part-talkie Vitaphone film, with talking, music and sound effects sequences, starring Irene Rich, directed by Lloyd Bacon a...

Husbands for Rent
1927
as Sir Reginald Knight
A newlywed couple, after six months of marriage, decides that they've made a mistake and plan to divorce. Her father, however, has other ideas and hat...

The Gorilla
1927
as Cyrus Townsend
An ape is suspected of committing a series of murders.

Barbed Wire
1927
as Jean Moreau
During WWI, a French farm girl and a German P.O.W. fall in love.

Naughty But Nice
1927
as Judge J. R. Altewood
Naughty But Nice was based on The Bigamists, a story by Lewis Alen Brown. Gawky country girl Berenice Summers (Colleen Moore) is catapulted head-first...

Fast and Furious
1927
as Smithfield
When Tom Brown, a wealthy young bachelor with a reckless penchant for speed, wrecks his car in an accident, he is assisted by Mr. Smithfield… When he ...

45 Minutes from Hollywood
1926
as Old Man in Hotel Bed (uncredited)
A young man visiting Hollywood on family business gets into trouble when he sees a bank robbery in progress, and thinks it is a movie scene.

Into Her Kingdom
1926
as Ivan
In Czarist Russia, a young peasant boy is sent to Siberia for insulting the Grand Duchess. Released years later, he joins the fighting to overthrow th...
That's My Baby
1926
as John Raynor
On the eve of his wedding, businessman Alan Boyd gets a telegram notifying him that his "bride" has fallen in love with another man and eloped with hi...

Wages for Wives
1925
as Jim Bailey
Nell Bailey, taking a lesson from the married lives of her sister, Luella Logan, and her mother, agrees to marry Danny Kester provided that he will sp...

We Moderns
1925
as Sir Robert Sundale
Mary Sundale is a young woman who spurns her childhood sweetheart to attach herself to a large group of riotous, semi-artistic young people and become...

Seven Sinners
1925
as Pious Joe McDowell
Six burglars separately break into the Vickers mansion on Long Island to loot the safe but catch each other in the act. They all pretend to be members...

Winds of Chance
1925
as Tom Linton
A love triangle set against the turn-of-the-century gold rush.

A Thief in Paradise
1925
as Noel Jardine
Years of failure and bad luck have made Maurice Blake a beachcomber on an island in the Samoas, earning a precarious living by diving for pearls with ...

Cheaper to Marry
1925
as Riddle
Dick Tyler is the junior partner in the law firm of Knight and Tyler. He tries to convince his partner, Jim Tyler, than it's cheaper to be married tha...

Idle Tongues
1924
as Judge Daniel Webster Copeland
After serving 5 years in prison for embezzling church funds, Dr. Ephraim Nye returns to Ostable and the scornful gossip of its residents, led by Althe...

Madonna of the Streets
1924
as Lord Patrington
Rev. John Morton, who is determined to follow as closely as possible the teachings of Jesus, inherits a considerable fortune when his uncle dies. Shor...

How to Educate a Wife
1924
as Henry Bancks
Business failure Ernest Todd is advised by his friend, Billy Breese, to enlist his wife's charms as a means of winning customers.

Daddies
1924
as James Crockett
A group of confirmed bachelors finds their informal "anti-matrimony club" turned into a home for adopted orphans when six orphaned children are sudden...

Tiger Rose
1923
as Hector McCollins
Originally a Broadway play by Willard Macks, Lenore Ulric played the lead on Broadway and reprises her role for this film. At the Wutchi Wum trading p...

A Chapter in Her Life
1923
as Mr. Everingham
Jewel stays with her grizzled, angry grandfather while her parents are overseas on business. Family squabbling is brought to heel through love and und...

Dulcy
1923
as Mr. Forbes
Dulcy, a devoted but scatterbrained bride, tries to improve her absent husband's finances by inviting two of his business prospects to dinner. Though ...

Three Wise Fools
1923
as Theodore Findley
Sydney Fairchild, the daughter of a woman who was once loved by three bachelors, surprises the men with a visit. Findley, Trumbull, and Gaunt honor th...

Souls for Sale
1923
as Self - Celebrity Actor (uncredited)
A young woman hits Hollywood, determined to become a star.

Crinoline and Romance
1923
as Col. Charles E. Cavanaugh

The Christian
1923
as Lord Storm
Glory Quayle and John Storm, sweethearts since childhood on the Isle of Man, go to London, Glory to become a nurse and John to enter a monastery. Inst...

The Strangers' Banquet
1922
as Uncle Sam
In managing the shipyard inherited from her father, Derith Keogh has considerable labor problems and accedes to the unreasonable demands of John Treve...

Remembrance
1922
as John P. Grout
Although he graduated from that time-worn university, the college of hard knocks, the tireless efforts of John P. Grout have paid off. He owns a numbe...

The Dust Flower
1922
Trying to escape her gloomy existence, Letty attempts suicide but is stopped by Rashleigh Allerton, a millionaire, who asks her to be his wife to spit...

Fools First
1922
as Denton Drew
Tommy Frazer is one of a gang of crooks lead by "Tony the Wop". Frazer gets caught and is sent up the river for three years on a forgery rap. When he ...

My Boy
1921
as Captain Bill
An orphan escapes immigration officials at Ellis Island and goes to live with an old ship's master who can't find work and can't pay the rent.

Little Lord Fauntleroy
1921
as Earl of Dorincourt
An American boy turns out to be the long-lost heir of a British fortune. He is sent to live with the cold and unsentimental lord who oversees the trus...

Alice Adams
N/A
as Virgil Adams
Alice (Florence Vidor) is not satisfied with her family's financial situation and tries to convince others that she comes from a wealthy family. In th...