underworldling

The sprouting beard might still be misconstrued as the whim of a director sanctified to realism -- every day it was getting to look more like that -- but no director would have commanded the wearing of such a collar except in actual work where it might have been a striking detail in the apparel of an underworldling, one of those creatures who became the tools of rich but unscrupulous roues who are bent upon the moral destruction of beautiful young screen heroines.

Merton of the Movies Harry Leon Wilson 1903