Peter Lorre (June 26 1904 – March 23 1964), born László Loewenstein, was an Austro-Hungarian actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.
He made an international sensation in 1931 with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film
M. Later he became a popular featured player in Hollywood crime films and mysteries,
notably alongside Humphrey Bogart and Sydney
Greenstreet, and as the star of the successful Mr. Moto detective series.
Biography
Lorre was born into a Jewish family in Rózsahegy/Rosenberg, Austria-Hungary, now Ružomberok, Slovakia. When he was a child his family moved to Vienna where Lorre attended
school. He began acting on stage in Vienna where he worked with Richard Teschner, then moved to
Breslau, and Zürich. In the late 1920s the young 5' 5" (1.65 m)
actor moved to Berlin where he worked with German playwright Bertolt Brecht, most notably in his Mann ist Mann. He also appeared as Dr. Nakamura in the
infamous musical Happy End by Brecht and composer Kurt Weill, alongside Brecht's wife Helene Weigel and other impressive
co-stars such as Carola Neher, Oskar Homolka, and
Kurt Gerron. The German-speaking actor became famous when Fritz
Lang cast him as a child killer in his 1931 film M.
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Lorre took refuge first in Paris and then
London where he played a charming villain in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too
Much. When he arrived in Great Britain, his first meeting was with Hitchcock and by smiling and laughing as Hitchcock
talked, Lorre was able to bluff the director about his limited command of the English language. During the filming of The Man
Who Knew Too Much, Lorre learned much of his part phonetically.
Eventually, he went to Hollywood where he specialized in playing
wicked or wily foreigners. He starred in a series of Mr. Moto movies, a parallel to the
better known Charlie Chan series, in which he played a Japanese detective and spy
created by John P. Marquand. He did not much enjoy these films (and twisted his
shoulder during a stunt in Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation) but they were lucrative for the studio and gained Lorre many new
fans.
In 1940 Lorre co-starred with fellow horror actors Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in the Kay Kyser movie "You'll
Find Out".
Lorre in
Think Fast Mr. Moto
Lorre enjoyed considerable popularity as a featured player in Warner Bros. suspense and adventure films. Lorre played the role
of Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and portrayed the
character Ugarte in the film classic Casablanca (1942). It was Lorre's
character who introduced the "letters of transit" (there was no such thing in reality) which became, in some ways, the dramatic
center of the film. He played Dr. Einstein in Arsenic and Old Lace
(filmed in 1941, released 1944). In 1946 he starred along with Sydney Greenstreet and
Geraldine Fitzgerald in Three Strangers, a suspense film about three people
who are joint partners on a winning lottery ticket.
In 1941, Peter Lorre became a naturalized citizen of the United States.
After World War II, Lorre's acting career in Hollywood experienced a downturn, whereupon he concentrated on radio and stage
work. In Germany he co-wrote, directed and starred in Der Verlorene (The Lost One) (1951), a critically acclaimed
art film in the film noir style. He then returned to the United States where he appeared as a
character actor in television and feature films, often spoofing his former "creepy" image. In 1954, he had the distinction of
becoming the first actor to play a James Bond villain when he portrayed Le Chiffre in a
television adaptation of Casino Royale, opposite Barry Nelson as an American James Bond. (In the spoof-film version of
Casino Royale, Ronnie Corbett comments that SPECTRE includes among its agents not only Le Chiffre, but also "Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi.") Also in 1954,
Lorre starred alongside Kirk Douglas and James Mason
in the hit-classic 20,000 Leagues under the Sea. In the
early 1960s he worked with Roger Corman on several low-budgeted, tongue-in-cheek, and very
popular films.
Marriages
He was married three times: Celia Lovsky (1934 - 13 March 1945) (divorced); Kaaren Verne
(25 May 1945 - 1950) (divorced) and Annemarie Brenning (21 July 1953 - 23 March 1964) (his death). Annemarie bore his only child,
a daughter, Catharine, in 1953. In the 1970s an actor appeared on the scene billing himself as "Peter Lorre, Jr.," but he was in
fact no relation, merely someone trading in on the fact that he slightly resembled the actor.
Death
Overweight and never fully recovered from his addiction to morphine, Lorre suffered many personal and career disappointments
in his later years. When he died in 1964 of a stroke he was only 59. Lorre's body was cremated
and his ashes interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood.
Vincent Price read the eulogy at his funeral.
Legacy
Lorre has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6619 Hollywood
Boulevard.
His daughter, Catharine Lorre, was once almost abducted by The Hillside
Stranglers. She was stopped by the Stranglers, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, imitating policemen. When they found out
she was Lorre's daughter, they let her go. She didn't realize that they were killers until after they were caught.
Imitating Lorre
Lorre's distinctive Viennese-meets Middle American accent and large-eyed face has been a favorite target of comedians and
cartoonists, to the point where Lorre has become far more familiar with the public in caricature form than for his actual
performances.
Books and Comics
In the early 1940s, the adventures of Batman and Robin appeared in daily newspapers. One story, The Two-Bit Dictator of Twin Mills, drawn by
Batman co-creator Bob Kane, featured a hitman
called Jojo who was, according to writer Al Schwartz, made to look like Lorre [1]. Jojo is a highly skilled gunman who, whatever the distance or the
circumstances, always hits his target. A mildly eccentric character, he refers to his hits (objects or people) as "flinks". Even
Batman, who is used to taking on armed men, hesitates in dealing with this particular gunman head-on or face-to-face. A later
story was The Karen Drew Mystery, written by Jack Schiff and drawn by Jack Burnley. This one featured villains drawn to resemble Lorre's occasional co-stars: Sydney Greenstreet as gang leader Mr Wright and Humphrey
Bogart as his henchman Merry.
A Lorre-like character (with strong admixtures of Max Schreck) is the focus of
Brock Brower's novel The Late, Great, Creature.
Science-fiction writer Howard Waldrop wrote a short story entitled "The Effects of
Alienation" which includes Peter Lorre as the main character.
Animated series
Most persons doing impressions of Lorre's voice are actually imitating Warner Brothers' Mel
Blanc doing his Lorre impression (Blanc is much broader and louder than Lorre generally was, and the cartoons are seen
much more often than Lorre's actual work. The most obvious being the Bugs Bunny cartoon "Racketeer Rabbit"). This can be noticed
in characters such as:
Films, television, music and video games
The stop motion film Mad Monster
Party?, made in 1969, featured a zombie manservant called Yetch who was made to look
and sound like Lorre. Yetch was voiced by Allen Swift. Lorre's fellow horror star
Boris Karloff provided the voice of Baron Frankenstein.
Singer-songwriter Al Stewart immortalized the actor, and his close association with Bogart, in the opening lines of his 1976
hit, "The Year Of The Cat": "In the morning from a Bogart movie/In a country where they turn back time/You go strolling through
the crowd like Peter Lorre/Contemplating a crime..."
The title song to the 1981 Jon & Vangelis release "The Friends of Mr. Cairo" includes spoken dialogue that imitates the
distinctive voice of Peter Lorre as well as that of his frequent costar Sidney Greenstreet.
The script for Godspell includes a line which is suggested as being done in the style
of Peter Lorre. Also, Rob Schneider ably played Lorre's character in the
Saturday Night Live sketch "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea."
On September 11, 2007 Brooklyn-based punk band The World/Inferno Friendship
Society released a full-length album about Peter Lorre called Addicted to Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre's Twentieth Century on the
Chunksaah Records label. The lyrics trace Lorre's film career, drug addiction, and
death. It has been performed at the world-famous Spiegeltent.
Even today, films and video games show his distinct characteristics in some characters. These include:
Recordings
Firesign Theater's various comedy routines of Nick Danger involve a Peter Lorre-sounding villain named Rocky Rococco.
Filmography
Listen to
Further reading
- (1999) Peter Lorre. Midnight Marquee Press. ISBN 1-887-66430-0.
- Youngkin, Stephen D., James Bigwood, and Raymond
Cabana (1982). The Films of Peter
Lorre. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-0789-6.
References
- ^ Batman: The Dailies 1944-1945, ISBN-10: 0878161309, ISBN-13:
978-0878161300
External links
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)
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