[citation needed] His Broadway credits include Enter Madame (1920), The Ladder (1926), Let Us Be Gay (1928), That's Gratitude (1930), After Tomorrow (1931), The Stork Is Dead (1932), Honeymoon (1932), and The Party's Over (1932).

[6] Alexander looked back at The Ladder with bemusement because its oilman backer, who had declared that the play would have a record-breaking run, kept his word by keeping the show open -- despite audiences of perhaps a dozen people at each performance.

In 1934, casting director Max Arnow signed him with Warner Bros. His bigger successes from this period were Flirtation Walk (1934), A Midsummer Night's Dream and Captain Blood (both 1935).

It was a defining role in his persona as a glamorous, well-dressed and dapper leading man, not in the usual Warner gangster mold of rough-hewn stars such as Edward G. Robinson or Paul Muni.

On January 2, 1937, three months after marrying Nagel, with his professional and personal life in disarray, Alexander shot himself in the head with a .22 pistol in the barn behind his home.