Peter Lorre

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Peter Lorre (born László Löwenstein; 26 June 1904 – 23 March 1964) was a Hungarian-born American character actor of Jewish descent.

Lorre began his stage career in Vienna before moving to Germany where he worked first on the stage, then in film in Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s.

Lorre caused an international sensation in the German film M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang, in which he portrayed a serial killer who preys on little girls. Lorre left Germany when Adolf Hitler came to power.

His second English-language film, following the multiple-language version of M (1931), was Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) made in Great Britain.

Eventually settling in Hollywood, he later became a featured player in many Hollywood crime and mystery films.

In his initial American films, Mad Love and Crime and Punishment (both 1935), he continued to play murderers, but he was then cast playing Mr. Moto, the Japanese detective, in a B-picture series. From 1941 to 1946, he mainly worked for Warner Bros.

His first film at Warner was The Maltese Falcon (1941), the first of many films in which he appeared alongside actors Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet.

This was followed by Casablanca (1942), the second of the nine films in which Lorre and Greenstreet appeared together.

Lorre's other films include Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954).

Frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner, his later career was erratic.

Lorre was the first actor to play a James Bond villain as Le Chiffre in a TV version of Casino Royale (1954).

Some of his last roles were in horror films directed by Roger Corman.

Early life

Lorre was born László Löwenstein (Hungarian: Löwenstein László) on June 26, 1904, the first child of Alajos Löwenstein and his wife Elvira Freischberger, in the Hungarian town of Rózsahegy in Liptó County (German: Rosenberg; Slovak: Ružomberok, now in Slovakia). His parents, who were Jewish, had only recently moved there following his father's appointment as chief bookkeeper at a local textile mill. Alajos also served as a lieutenant in the Austrian Army Reserve, which meant that he was often away on military maneuvers.

László's mother died when he was four years old, leaving Alajos with three very young sons, the youngest several months old. He soon married his wife's best friend Melanie Klein, with whom he had two more children. However, Lorre and his stepmother never got along, and this colored his childhood memories. At the outbreak of the Second Balkan War in 1913, anticipating that this would lead to a larger conflict and that he would be called up, Alajos moved the family to Vienna. He served on the Eastern Front during the winter of 1914–15, before being put in charge of a prison camp due to heart trouble.

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Acting career

Lorre started performing in Vienna, aged 17, where he collaborated with Viennese Art Nouveau singer and puppeteer Richard Teschner. He then migrated to Breslau and later to Zürich. In the late 1920s, the actor migrated to Berlin, where he worked with Bertolt Brecht, including a role in Brecht's Man Equals Man and as Dr. Nakamura in the musical Happi End.

After producer Fritz Lang cast him as child-killer Hans Beckert in M (1931), a film reportedly influenced by the Peter Kürten case, the actor became much more popular. When working on the script, Lang said he had Lorre in mind and did not give him a screen test because he was already convinced that Lorre was fine for the role. According to the producer, the actor gave his best role in M and that it was one of the best in film history. Lorre played the "loner, [and] schizotypal murderer," with "raspy voice, bulging eyes, and emotive acting, according to Sharon Packer (a holdover from the silent screen) [which] always make him memorable." Lorre appeared alongside Hans Albers in the science fiction film F.P.1 in 1932, he was the first to explore an artificial island in the mid-Atlantic.

Lorre fled first in Paris and then London, where they later discovered him to be a bigger part in the film, but Lorre later decided to use him in a bigger role despite his poor command of English, which Lorre overcame by learning a large portion of his script.

In an article published in The Guardian in September 2014 about Michael Newton's scenes with Leslie Banks in the film: "Lorre cannot help but steal each scene; he's a physically present actor, often surrounded by the pallid English, the only one in the room with a body." Lorre returned to England to appear in Hitchcock's Secret Agent (1936), after his first two American films. Lorre and his first wife, actress Celia Lovsky, departed Southampton on July 18, 1934, a day after completing the shooting on The Man Who Knew Too Much had ended, receiving visitor visas to the United States.

Lorre landed in Hollywood and was soon under Columbia Pictures, which had trouble finding parts that were suitable for him. Lorre decided that the 1866 Russian novel Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, instead of some months spent solely for study, would be a good idea with him in the central role. Head Harry Cohn of Columbia agreed to film the film version on the condition that he loan Lorre to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, perhaps as a way to recover the cost of Lorre's appearance in none of his films.

Lorre's head was shaved for the role of Dr. Gogol, a demented surgeon in MGM's Mad Love (1935), set in Paris and directed by Karl Freund. Gogol replaces the broken hands of a concert pianist in the film with those of an executed knife throwing murderer. Gogol's unwelcome appetite is being characterized by an actor who works at the Grand Guignol theater, who happens to be the pianist's wife. "Lorre triumphs el in a role that is simply terrifying," The Hollywood Reporter wrote. "There is certainly no one who can be both repulsive and so completely wrong." There is no one who smiles so disarmingly and then sneer. His face is his fortune.

Lorre continued Mad Love with the lead role in Crime and Punishment, directed by Josef von Sternberg, also 1935. "Although Peter Lorre is occasionally able to give the film a terrifying pathological significance," wrote Andre Sennwald of The New York Times on the film's introduction, "this is barely Dostoievsky's story of a tortured brain drifting into madness with a horrific mystery." Columbia offered him a five-year contract at $1,000 a week, but he turned down.

Since appearing in his second Hitchcock photograph (Secret Agent, 1936), he was offered and accepted a three-year deal with 20th Century Fox. Lorre played John P. Marquand's character, a Japanese detective and spy, in a series of Mr. Moto films. He was initially enthusiastic about the films but soon became dissatisfied with them. He said, "The job is childish" and then proceeded to angrily dismiss the films entirely. During a stunt in Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (1939), the penultimate entry to the series, he twisted his arm. Lorre wore a badge that read "Boycott Japanese products" at a lunchtime for several visiting Japanese officials in 1939.

Universal Pictures wanted to borrow Lorre from Fox for the top-billed titular role starring Boris Karloff in Son of Frankenstein (1939), featuring Boris Karloff as Frankenstein's monster and Bela Lugosi as Ygor. Lorre left the role because he felt his menacing parts were now behind him, even though he was ill at the time. According to a Fox publicist, he had performed well in 1937 in Quasimodo, an aborted MGM version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame. (The other was Napoleon). Lorre had to end his employment by now, after being frustrated by Fox's broken promises.

He began working as a freelance photographer in May 1940 and was shot for two photographs at RKO. Lorre was the unidentified lead in the B-picture Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), the first film noir, according to Lorre. You'll Find Out, the second RKO film, also in 1940, was a musical comedy mystery vehicle for bandleader Kay Kyser, in which Lorre spoofed his sinister image alongside horror actors Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

Lorre was a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1941. By casting him in The Maltese Falcon, director John Huston effectively ended a period of decline for the actor and saved him from more B-pictures. Despite Warner Bros. being skeptical about Lorre first, Huston was eager to play Joel Cairo. Lorre "had the perfect blend of intelligence and real innocence, as well as sophistication," Huston said. He's always doing two things at the same time, both focusing on one thing and saying something else. Lorre reminisced fondly about the "stock company" he now works with: Humphrey Bogart, Sydney Greenstreet, and Claude Rains. The four of them had the rare ability to "switch an audience from laughter to seriousness," he said. Lorre was employed by Warner on a photo-by-picture basis until 1943, when he started a five-year deal that renewed each year, which lasted until 1946.

In Casablanca (1942), the year after Maltese Falcon played the character Ugarte. Although Ugarte is a minor character in the series, it is he who provides Rick with the "Letters of Transit," which is a common plot device. Lorre made nine movies with Sydney Greenstreet counting The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, a team that came to be dubbed "Little Pete-Big Syd," although they didn't get much screen time in joint scenes. The majority of these motion pictures were variations on Casablanca (1943, with George Raft); Background to Danger (1944), with Humphrey Bogart and Paul Henreid; The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), a thriller starring Geraldine Fitzgerald; and finally billed Greenstreet and Lorre's first film together, respectively.

Lorre's version of Arsenic and Old Lace starring Cary Grant and Raymond Massey brought Lorre back to comedy with the role of Dr. Einstein. Manny Farber, a film critic, compared Lorre's "double-take job" to a "natural flourish" in which the actor's face shifts rapidly from laughter, passion, or a safe that he doesn't really feel to a face more realistic, fearful, or deadpan.

Lorre's last film for Warner was The Beast with Five Fingers (1946), a horror film in which he played a crazed astrologer who falls in love with a character played by Andrea King. Lorre's "highly over-the-top performance" had "elevated the film from minor terror to first-rate camp," according to Daniel Bubbeo of The Women of Warner Brothers.

Lorre said that his continuing friendship with Bertolt Brecht, who had been in exile in California since 1941, had led to the studio's 'graylist' him and that his Warner Bros contract was ended on May 13, 1946. At his appearance before the House Un-American Activities Committee in May 1947, Warner would be a "friendly" witness. Lorre himself was sympathetic to the short-lived committee for the First Amendment, initiated by John Huston and others, and he included his name in trade press ads in favour of the committee.

Lorre's acting career in Hollywood began to decline after World War II and the end of his Warner contract, whereupon he concentrated on radio and stage work. He petitioned for bankruptcy in 1949. Lorre co-wrote, directed, and starred in the film noir Der Verlorene, which was produced in Germany in the fall of 1950. According to Gerd Gemünden of Continental Strangers, 1933-1991, with the exception of Josef von Báky's Der Ruf (The Last Illusion, 1949), it is the first film by an emigrant from Germany that uses a return to the country "addressing questions of guilt and responsibility; accountability, and justice." Though it received some critical acclaim, audiences largely opposed it, and it did not do well at the box office.

Lorre made his return to the United States in February 1952, where he made a comeback as a character actor in television and film films, often parodying his "creepy" image. When he portrayed Le Chiffre in Ian Fleming's book Casino Royale in 1954, opposite Barry Nelson as an American James Bond, he became the first actor to play a James Bond villain. Lorre appeared in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), alongside Kirk Douglas and James Mason. Lorre appeared in NBC's espionage drama Five Fingers (1959), starring David Hedison, and "The Incident of the Slavemaster" and "The Alexander Portlass Story," as Victor Laurier in Rawhide, 1960. Lorre appeared in six episodes of Playhouse 90 as well as two episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents in 1957 and 1960, the former being a spin on the Roald Dahl short story "Man from the South" starring Steve McQueen, Lorre and McQueen's wife Neile Adams. In the film Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961), he played a supporting role.

In Lorre's last years, he appeared with Roger Corman on several low-budget films, including two of Edgar Allan Poe's: Tales of Terror (1962) with Vincent Price and Basil Rathbone, as well as Boris Karloff and Jack Nicholson. In the Jacques Tourneur-directed The Comedy of Terrors (1963), he appeared with Price, Karloff, and Rathbone.

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