Trivia

Met his wife, Mildred Pam, when she visited the set of a Snakeville comedy he was making at Essanay Studios in Niles, CA, in 1914. Her father, Leopold Pam, was a theater manager, whom she was accompanying the day she met Potel. After a whirlwind courtship, Victor and Mildred were married in San Francisco, and on their return to Niles the entire staff of the Essanay Company greeted them at the station with a donkey cart bearing a sign "To Victor Belong the Spoils.".

His acting career goes back almost to the beginning of the commercial film industry in the United States.

He made his first silent film in 1910, a comedy short filmed in Chicago by Essanay Film Manufacturing Company called "A Dog on Business". Potel continued to make films for Essanay, appearing in dozens of films every year, including most of the Broncho Billy series.

In addition to acting, on several occasions Potel also wrote and directed. In the 1920s he directed two silent shorts, The Rubber-Neck in 1924 and Action Craver in 1927, and contributed the story for Saxophobia in 1927.

He also appeared in Universal Pictures' "Snakeville" series.

He was an American film character actor who began in the silent era and appeared in more than 430 films in his 38-year career.

Potel's first talking picture was Melody of Love, starring Walter Pidgeon, made for Universal in 1928, and in the sound era he continued to work continuously and constantly, playing small parts and sometimes uncredited bit parts, all primarily comic roles due to his height (6 ft 1 in or 1.85 m) and gawkiness.

In the 1940s, Potel was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors, appearing in nine films written and directed by Sturges.

In the sound era, he was the dialogue director for The Big Chance (1933), and wrote the story for Inside Information in 1934). In 1935 he provided continuity and dialogue for Million Dollar Haul and the screenplay for Hot Off the Press.

He played a character called "Slippery Slim" in 80 movies.