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Noah Beery was an American actor. Born Noah Nicholas Beery in Kansas City, Missouri, USA, he and his younger brothers William Beery and the legendary Wallace Beery all became Hollywood actors. The three Beery brothers were the children of Frances Margaret Fitzgerald and Noah Webster Beery, which made them full brothers (contrary to countless sources).[1] Noah Beery worked in the theatre starting at the age of sixteen and by 1905 was performing on Broadway. After a dozen years on the stage, in 1915 he joined his brother in Hollywood to make motion pictures where he would become a respected character actor adept at playing the role of the villain. One of his most remarkable characterizations was as Sergeant Gonzales in The Mark of Zorro (1920) opposite Douglas Fairbanks; the Beery brothers always offered extremely energetic portrayals and gave the audience something extraordinary to behold. The tagline on the poster for 1923's Stormswept proclaimed, Wallace and Noah Beery, The Two Greatest Character Actors on the American Screen.

Noah Beery worked during the silent film era (giving a fine performance as Sgt. Lejaune in the 1926 Beau Geste) and successfully made the transition to talkies. He had a pleasant singing voice and he appeared in a number of lavish early Technicolor musicals such as The Show of Shows (1929), Song of the Flame (1930), Bright Lights (1930), Under A Texas Moon (1930) and Golden Dawn (1930), (in which he wore blackface makeup as an African native). He seems to have reached his peak in popularity in 1930, even recording a phonograph record for Brunswick Records with songs from two of his films. Like his brother Wallace, he had an amazingly powerful and distinctive voice, and while he carved out a long and memorable career, he gradually lost popularity while his brother eventually gained a position in the screen pantheon (Wallace was the highest paid actor in the world in 1932, the year he won an Oscar). During a career that spanned three decades, Noah appeared in nearly two hundred films. In 1945 he returned to star in the Mike Todd Broadway production of Up in Central Park.

Beery died in 1946 (on his brother Wallace's birthday) in Beverly Hills, California of a heart attack and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California, USA.