
John Roche
1893 - 1952John Roche (February 6, 1893 – November 10, 1952) was an American actor of the stage and screen.
Roche was born in the small village of Penn Yan, New York, on February 6, 1893. He graduated from the University of Rochester, after which he began his acting career touring with stock companies during the 1910s and early 1920s. In 1922, he broke into the film industry with a featured role in The Good Provider. During the 1920s, he acted in both films and on stage, including several roles in Broadway productions. He acted steadily in films until 1936, in both featured and supporting roles. In the mid-1930s he took a break from films, focusing on the stage, including directing the play, Mackerel Skies, which had a short run at the Playhouse Theatre in New York in 1936. Roche returned to films in 1941, with a small role in the Norma Shearer vehicle, We Were Dancing (1942), based on the Noël Coward play of the same name. Over the course of his career he was involved in over half a dozen Broadway productions and appeared in over 50 films. His final screen appearance was in 1946's The Brute Man.
Roche died on November 10, 1952, in Los Angeles, California.
The Man Upstairs
Roy Del Ruth
Monte Blue, Dorothy Devore
The Man Upstairs is a lost 1926 silent film comedy directed by Roy Del Ruth and starring Monte Blue. It was produced and distributed by Warner Brothers. The film is based on a novel, The Agony Column by Earl Derr Biggers.
The Man Upstairs
The Spider Woman
Roy William Neill
Basil Rathbone, Nigel Bruce
Sherlock Holmes investigates a series of so-called "pajama suicides". He knows the female villain behind them is as cunning as Moriarty and as venomous as a spider. Based on "The Sign of Four" and the short stories "The Dying Detective", "The Final Problem", "The Speckled Band" and "The Adventure of the Devil's Foot".
The Spider Woman
Don Juan
Alan Crosland
John Barrymore, Jane Winton
If there was one thing that Don Juan de Marana learned from his father Don Jose, it was that women gave you three things - life, disillusionment and death. In his father's case it was his wife, Donna Isobel, and Donna Elvira who supplied the latter. Don Juan settled in Rome after attending the University of Pisa. Rome was run by the tyrannical Borgia family consisting of Caesar, Lucrezia and the Count Donati. Juan has his way with and was pursued by many women, but it is the one that he could not have that haunts him. It will be for her that he suffers the wrath of Borgia for ignoring Lucrezia and then killing Count Donati in a duel. For Adriana, they will both be condemned to death in the prison on the river Tigre.
Don Juan
Midnight Lovers
John Francis Dillon
Lewis Stone, Anna Q. Nilsson
During World War I, a young woman marries a famous flying ace. After the honeymoon, he is called back into service and leaves for the battlefield. Not long afterwards she discovers evidence that her new husband has been cheating on her.
Midnight Lovers
The Return of Peter Grimm
Victor Schertzinger
Alec B. Francis, John Roche
"Old Peter Grimm makes his ward Katie promise to marry his nephew Frederik [ sic ] and then dies. Frederik proves to be a scapegrace and Peter's spirit returns to right matters and finally succeeds in doing so by communicating with Jimmie who is in a delirium." ( Moving Picture World, 20 Nov 1926, p164.) Peter thus thwarts selfishness and greed and rewards virtue.
The Return of Peter Grimm
The Clinging Vine
Paul Sloane
Leatrice Joy, Tom Moore
When a hardened businesswoman who goes by the initials A.B. overhears someone calling her an “Amazon” because of her butch ways, she agrees to a more “feminine” makeover. In the end she learns that no matter how she looks she’s still the smartest person in any room.
The Clinging Vine
Lucretia Lombard
Jack Conway
Irene Rich, Monte Blue
Lucretia Morgan has been married to an old man for the past seven years. The marriage is loveless but the whole time Lucretia has been a devoted wife. Her husband Allen has been sick for some time. Lucretia thinks Allen is upset with her because she is going out to a charity ball and he has to stay. Allen understands she is young and she needs to socialize he is not upset with her for wanting to go out.
Lucretia Lombard