Peter Lorre: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 18:28, 3 November 2007
Peter Lorre | |
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| File:Peter Lorre in 'M' (screenshot).jpg Peter Lorre in "M," 1931 | |
| Born | László Loewenstein |
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Peter Lorre (June 26 1904 – March 23 1964), born László Loewenstein, was a Hungarian-American 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. He considered himself as Hungarian. 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 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:
- Ren from Ren and Stimpy,
- Morocco Mole from Secret Squirrel,
- The tuxedoed 'Lost Soul' in an episode of The Simpsons entitled Homer Simpson in: "Kidney Trouble"
- Rocky Rococo from various Firesign Theatre sketches,
- Surface Agent X20 from Stingray, and
- Digitamamon from Digimon
- In the episode "The Tick vs. Chairface Chippendale" from The Tick animated series, one of the villains attending Chairface's birthday party is "The Man Who Looks Like Peter Lorre."
- A Peter Lorre character, named Nero, was also featured in the Darkwing Duck episode "Fungus Amongus."
- An evil doctor called Alphonse in the Johnny Bravo cartoon entitled Intensive care
- In Transformers, Cosmos' voice actor Michael McConnohie spoke with a heavily-processed impression of Peter Lorre.
Films, television, music and video games
A 1967 episode of the sitcom Get Smart, "Maxwell Smart, Private Eye", features an extended parody of The Maltese Falcon, with actors Barry Kroeger and Phil Roth portraying two men named Mr. Sidney and Mr. Peter who strongly resemble Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Just to make things slightly more complicated, the Peter Lorre imitator (played by Roth) is the one named Mr. Sidney, and the Greenstreet imitator is Mr. Peter.
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."
The stop motion film Corpse Bride features "The Maggot", a small green worm who lives inside the title's character head. His features and voice (provided by Enn Reitel) are caricatures of Peter Lorre.
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:
- Arnold Toht from Raiders of the Lost Ark
- A routine Robin Williams' genie character did in Disney's Aladdin
- Doctor N. Gin from the Crash Bandicoot series of video games
- The maggot in Corpse Bride
- The 2005 video game Destroy All Humans! features aliens that look similar to Lorre. During gameplay, some humans will shout, "Help! We're being invaded by Peter Lorre!"
- Spike Jones utilized cartoon voice-over actor Paul Frees to perform an imitation of Peter Lorre singing "My Old Flame".
- A Looney Tunes character is an unnamed mad scientist who looks and acts identical to Peter Lorre. He is the one who created the Gossamer. This character appears in Who Framed Roger Rabbit and Looney Tunes: Back in Action.
- The butler in Mad Monster Party is an obvious caricature of Lorre.
Recordings
Firesign Theater's various comedy routines of Nick Danger involve a Peter Lorre-sounding villain named Rocky Rococco.
Filmography
Listen to
- The Lodger on Mystery in the Air, 1947, starring Peter Lorre and Agnes Moorehead
Further reading
- Peter Lorre. Midnight Marquee Press. 1999. ISBN 1-887-66430-0.
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- Youngkin, Stephen D., James Bigwood, and Raymond Cabana (1982). The Films of Peter Lorre. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-0789-6.
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- Youngkin, Stephen D. (2005). The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-813-12360-7.
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References
- ^ Batman: The Dailies 1944-1945, ISBN-10: 0878161309, ISBN-13: 978-0878161300