Don Alvarado

Don Alvarado was an American actor, assistant film director, and film production manager.

Born as José Paige in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He first studied agriculture on his father's sheep and cattle ranch but ran away from home and went to Los Angeles in 1922, still a teenager, hoping to find acting work in the fledgling silent film industry. He secured work in a sweet factory before getting into the films via work as an extra, his first appearance being in Mademoiselle Midnight. In Los Angeles, he became close friends with another Mexican actor, Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso, who would later be known as Gilbert Roland.

The struggling young actors shared a place for a time, but Alvarado soon met and fell in love with sixteen-year-old Ann Boyar, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants. They married in 1924. Later that year they had a daughter, actress Joy Page. Jack Warner convinced Ann to file for a quick divorce from Alvarado in Mexico in August 1932. She moved in with Warner perhaps as early as September 1933, and married him in 1936. In 1932, Alvarado was briefly engaged to the musical-comedy star Marilyn Miller, but the marriage did not take place.

Alvarado got his first uncredited silent film part in 1924 and, with the studio capitalizing on his "Latin Lover" looks, he was very shortly cast in secondary then leading roles. The advent of talkies all but ended his starring roles but he still managed to work regularly, usually cast in secondary Spanish character roles, such as in the 1929 Thornton Wilder adaptation The Bridge of San Luis Rey. Mr. Alvarado appeared on stage in "Dinner At Eight" at the Belasco Theatre in Los Angeles in 1933.