Peter lorre

Peter Lorre (László Löwenstein, Rózsahegy, Austro-Hungarian Empire, June 26, 1904 - Hollywood, March 23, 1964) was a film actor and Austrian-American theater of Hungarian origin.

Trajectory

László Löwenstein, a Hungarian Jew whose family spoke Yiddish and Hungarian, studied at a German-speaking college and later in Vienna when his family moved there. At the express wish of his father, he sought work in the banking environment. After working for a while in this sector, he entered the & # 34; Theater of Improvisation & # 34; from psychiatrist Jacob Levi Moreno, who changed his name to & # 34; Peter Lorre & # 34;. There he studied the method of improvisation, and his interest in psychoanalysis began, which he never abandoned and became evident in his only film as a director, Der Verlorene .

Later he performed at the Lobe Theater, at the Thalia Theater in Breslau, at the Züricher Schauspielhaus, from 1926 to 1927 at the Kammerspiele and in 1928 at the Karl-Theater in Vienna.

In the spring of 1929 Bertolt Brecht hired him for the role of Fabian in Pioneers in Ingolstadt by Marieluise Fleisser, in a theater in Berlin. There and at the Volksbühne he performed works such as The Death of Danton , by Georg Büchner, or Spring Awakening , by Frank Wedekind. Little by little he made a name for himself on the Berlin scene.

It was precisely in the theater that Fritz Lang discovered him, giving him the role that launched him to fame in M, the Vampire of Düsseldorf (1931), where he gave the already classic interpretation of a girl-killing psychopath.

The film historian Fernando Méndez-Leite, in his work Fritz Lang, recounts that Lang appeared in his dressing room at the theater to congratulate him on his work on stage, and to propose the leading role in the film. film, on the sole condition that he not participate in any other sound film, which, naturally, was accepted by Lorre.

In any case, Lorre played his role in M, the Düsseldorf Vampire with little enthusiasm — according to Méndez-Leite. The disputes with Lang were continuous, since Lorre considered that his role in a Brecht play was much more important than in the cinema, which he distrusted, like other theater personalities of that time. However, he did not have to wait long to get out of his mistake: M, the Vampire of Düsseldorf was a success and the play that Lorre was performing at the theater at that time, a resounding failure.

Lotte H. Eisner highlights Der Verlorene (The Lost Man, 1951) among the few German films that attempted to capture the ideas of expressionist cinema.

Exile

Lorre in 1946, photograph of Yousuf Karsh

Due to his Jewish origin, he fled Germany after the 1933 elections, which gave victory to the Nazis, and traveled first to Paris and then to London, where his next success came from Alfred Hitchcock, from whom he became a personal friend. He participated in the director's first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, in 1934, shot in English, despite Lorre's limitations with this language. During the filming of The Man Who Knew Too Much he met the actress Celia Lovsky, whom he married.

Meanwhile, in Nazi Germany, the regime used its promotional image of M, the Vampire of Düsseldorf, for a propaganda poster inciting anti-Semitic hatred.

He had his first dalliances in Hollywood, where he starred in a series of very popular films, those of Mr. Moto, a Japanese detective solving mysteries in the exotic Orient, based on the novels by writer John P. Marquand.

In July 1934 he was hired by the production company Columbia Pictures to play the mad scientist in the film The Hands of Orlac (1935), but he switched to the production company 20th Century Fox because he felt typecast in his roles, a feeling that followed him throughout his acting career. His peculiar physique, short in stature and huge bulging eyes, was a double-edged sword, and he also failed to feel comfortable with the characters he had to play for 20th Century Fox. After finishing with the latter, he worked for a time without a contract. permanent.

In 1939 he permanently emigrated to the United States together with the Austrian director Billy Wilder and became a supporting actor for the Warner Bros. production company, becoming famous for his appearances in The Maltese Falcon (1941), as Joel Cairo and in Casablanca, where he played the ill-fated Ugarte, a key character in the plot. In 1941 he became a US citizen.

Divorced from Celia Lovksy in 1945, he married Kaaren Verne, whom he divorced in 1950.

Since that year, his relationship with Bertolt Brecht —who had gone into exile in the United States— became closer. The German playwright, who had known his potential since the actor's Berlin beginnings, wrote several draft scripts for him, but Lorre's partners at the production company Lorre Incorporated turned them down. The production company finally collapsed in 1949 and in June of that year Lorre returned to Europe to work in refugee camps, read literary texts on various tours of the United Kingdom and Germany, and perform another of his masterful performances: the main character of Der Verlorene or The Disappeared (shot between 1950 and 1951). El desaparecidos is his only film as director, as well as co-author of the script.

Luck didn't seem to be with him. The film was a flop and he returned to the United States with Annemarie Brenning, whom he married in 1953, and with whom he had his only daughter, Catharine. He had to go back to the theater for a while, until the producers remembered him.

Years later, critics recognized the originality and value of Der Verlorene. In this film, you can trace the influence of that German cinema between the wars, during the Weimar Republic, through whose prestige contributed. And, especially, the influence of the one who launched him to stardom, Fritz Lang, almost as unlucky as he was after his return to Germany.

Always linked to Warner Bros. productions, Lorre became a very popular personality in the United States of the 1950s and 1960s, where even imitators of his thick German accent and high-pitched, funny intonation arose. The cartoonists of Warner Bros. created a cartoon-character inspired by the peculiar physiognomy of him who starred in some animated films with Bugs Bunny. Along with other classic horror film actors such as Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone, he participated in Tales of Terror (1962), a film based on stories by Edgar Allan Poe, directed by Roger Corman.

Other very popular films of his were Arsenic for Pity (1944), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1956). His last film was The Patsy (1964), a Jerry Lewis comedy.

He died on March 23, 1964, in Hollywood, of a stroke at age 59. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6619 Hollywood Boulevard.

Filmography (non-exhaustive list)

Peter Lorre in the trailer The Maltese Falcon.

• M, the vampire of Düsseldorf (M1931)
• The man who knew too much (The Man Who Knew Too Much1934)
• The hands of Orlac (Love1935)
• Crime and Punishment (Crime and Punishment, 1935)
• Crack Up, 1936
• Strange cargo (Strange Cargo, 1940)
• The third floor stranger (Stranger on the Third Floor, 1940)
• The castle of mysteries (You'll Find Out, 1940)
• The fire mask (The Face Behind the Mask1941)
• The Maltese Falcon (The Maltese Falcon1941)
• Casablanca, 1942
• Passage to Marseille (Passage to Marseille1944)
• Arsenic for compassion (Arsenic and Old Lace1944)
• The Dimitrios mask (The Mask of Dimitrios1944)
• Three strangers (Three Strangers, 1946)
• Black angel (Black Angel, 1946)
• The verdict (The Verdict, 1946)
• Harassed (The Chase, 1946)
• The beast with five fingers (The Beast with Five Fingers, 1946)
• Casbah (1948)
• The lost man(1951, film directed by him)
• 20000 underwater leagues, (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea1954)
• The mockery of the devil, (Beat the Devil1954)
• Round the world in eighty days (Around the World in Eighty Days1956)
• The beauty of Moscow (Silk Stockings1957)
• Travel to the bottom of the sea (Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea1961)
• Stories of terror (Tales of Terror1962)
• Five weeks balloon (Five Weeks in a Balloon1962)
• The comedy of terrors (The Comedy of Terrors1963)
• The raven (The Raven1963)
• The Patsy (1964)