From 1920 to the early 1940s he was in the exhibition area of show business, managing vaudeville theaters and, later, movie theaters all over the US. He specialized in installing pipe organs in theaters, and while in Hollywood in the early 1940s to do just that, he was spotted by a casting director who thought he looked the way a Nazi SS officer was supposed to look (although he was actually Swedish, not German) and talked him into doing a small part in a picture, which gave him his start in acting.
