Sig Arno
German-born stage and film actor
Sig Arno (born Siegfried Aron; 27 December 1895 – 17 August 1975) was a German-Jewish film actor who appeared in such films as Pardon My Sarong and The Mummy's Hand. He may be best remembered from The Palm Beach Story (1942) as Toto, the nonsense-talking, mustachioed man who hopelessly pursues Mary Astor's Princess Centimillia.
Biography
Arno was born in Hamburg, Germany. Before starting out in films in 1920, he was well-known in Germany as a stage comedian. He acted in 90 films in Germany – including G.W. Pabst's Pandora's Box with Louise Brooks – playing primarily comic roles, then he left Germany in 1933 due to the rise of Adolf Hitler. He worked in Europe until 1939 when he moved to Hollywood.
During the next 20 years he appeared in over 50 films, often playing waiters, maitre d's and "funny Europeans". Arno appeared three times on Broadway, notably in the musical Song of Norway and the play Time Remembered by Jean Anouilh, for which he was nominated for a Tony Award as Best Featured Actor in a Play in 1958. In 1966, Arno won an honorary award at the German Film Awards "for his continued outstanding individual contributions to German film over the years."
Personal life
Arno was also a successful portrait painter. He was married four times:
Caroline (Lia) Dahms (1923–1932, ended in divorce, one child: Peter Paul * 1926)
Barbara Kirsanoff (1934–1953, ended in divorce)
Kitty Mattern (1953–1970, ended in divorce)
Caroline Dahms (1971; ended with his death)
Death
He died from Parkinson's disease in Woodland Hills, California on August 17, 1975, aged 79.
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Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q95444. VIAF identifies the subject as 49980582. The Library of Congress control number is n88100641. 4 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1895, 1975, 1942 and 1920.
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This entry incorporates text from “Sig Arno” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.