He was a stage actor for several years before entering films with D.W. Griffith in 1912 and by 1914 was playing supporting roles for Mack Sennett.

Modern audiences are perhaps most familiar with his role of Marcelo Desnoyers, the well-intentioned but impractical French upper class father in Rex Ingram's 1921 film The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

[1] Records also show Swickard submitted a petition for naturalization in Los Angeles, California in February 1936 under the name of Peter Joseph Schwickerath.

[3] He was also suspected of having bludgeoned to death a Russian dancer, Anya Sosoyeva, as well as having assaulted the young actress Delia Bogard, who survived.

LA police eventually arrested DeWitt Clinton Cook, who confessed and was sent to San Quentin, where he died in the gas chamber in 1941.