He also served in the Second World War going out to Iceland to help guard Sir Winston Churchill, for which he obtained a bulldog and polar bear badge.
His father was born in Cape Town, South Africa where he was a missionary for the Free Protestant Episcopal Church[6] and came to London to study as Clerk in Orders, eventually becoming Titular Bishop of Claremont in Cape Town but foregoing this to help with the work he dedicated to the helping of poverty stricken children in London and beggars.
He starred in many silent films in Britain, in Boadicea (where he rode Roman style learnt in the army and circus) in 1927; France and Germany, making in 1929 the reputedly first German Talkie with Conrad Veidt, Bride 68 or Das Land Ohne Frauen, set in Australia with camels and the desert but all filmed in a Berlin studio with a tank of water spilling from overhead and an aeroplane propeller.
Cavalcanti made two prize winning films in France with Clifford McLaglen: Rien Que Les Heures (1926) and Yvette (1928).
He made a few talkies and was on the stage in America, on Broadway with Frederick Marche's wife Florence Eldridge.