Joseph Henry Kolker (November 13, 1874) [some sources 1870] Berlin, Germany – July 15, 1947, Los Angeles, California) was an American stage and film actor and director. He came to America at the age of five and his family settled in Quincy, Illinois. Kolker, like fellow actors Richard Bennett and Robert Warwick, had a substantial stage career behind him before entering silent films.

On stage he appeared opposite such leading ladies as Edith Wynne Matthison, Bertha Kalich and Ruth Chatterton. Kolker is best remembered for his motion picture appearances and for appearing with Barbara Stanwyck in the ground-breaking Pre-Code film Baby Face (1933) as the elderly CEO of the company whom Stanwyck's character seduces. Another well remembered part is as Mr. Seton, father of Katharine Hepburn and Lew Ayres in the 1938 film Holiday directed by George Cukor.

Kolker entered films as an actor in 1915 and eventually ended up trying his hand at directing. Kolker's best known directorial effort is Disraeli (1921), starring George Arliss which is now a lost film with only one reel remaining.

Spouse(s)

• Margaret Bruenn (her death)
• Lillian Carroll

Selected filmography

• How Molly Made Good (1915) (*cameo; himself)
• Gloria's Romance (1916)
• The Red Lantern (1919)
• Her Purchase Price (1919)
• Disraeli (1921) - directed
• I Will Repay (1923) - directed
• The Purple Highway (1923) - directed
• The Great Well (1924) - directed
• The Leopardess (1924) - directed
• Sally, Irene and Mary (1925)
• Hell's Four Hundred (1926)
• Rough House Rosie (1927)
• Annie Laurie (1927)
• The Charge of the Gauchos (1928)
• Coquette (1929)
• The Valiant (1929)
• The Bad One (1930)
• I Like Your Nerve (1931)
• Indiscreet (1931)
• Rasputin and the Empress (1932) uncredited
• Jewel Robbery (1932)
• Faithless (1932)
• Baby Face (1933)
• The Power and the Glory (1933)
• Wonder Bar (1934)
• Journal of a Crime (1934)
• A Lost Lady (1934)
• Lady by Choice (1934)
• The Ghost Walks (1934)
• Whom the Gods Destroy (1934)
• Red Hot Tires (1935)
• The Great Impersonation (1935)
• The Florentine Dagger (1935)
• Red Salute (1935)
• The Last Days of Pompeii (1935)
• The Black Room (1935)
• Great Guy (1936)
• Theodora Goes Wild (1936)
• Sitting on the Moon (1936)
• Thoroughbreds Don't Cry (1937)
• The Invisible Menace (1938)
• The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938)
• Holiday (1938)
• Union Pacific (1939)
• Let Us Live (1939)