[1] Fred Kohler was born in Kansas City, Missouri[2] or in Dubuque, Iowa.

Eventually he was able to join a touring company, and worked steadily in show business for several years.

With the advent of the talkies, Kohler reprised many of his silent roles in remakes with sound, particularly in Westerns based on novels by Zane Grey.

At the beginning of the sound era, he appeared in the Allan Dwan film Tide of Empire (1929) alongside Renée Adorée and Tom Keene.

In 1910 he married Ida Friedman; their son Fred Kohler, Jr., birthname Jesse William Koehler, was born September 4, 1911.