Peter Lorre

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Peter Lorre, 1946, by Yousuf Karsh
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Peter Lorre, 1946, by Yousuf Karsh

Peter Lorre (June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964), born Ladislav (László) Löwenstein, was a Hungarian/American stage and screen actor. He was especially known for playing roles with sinister overtones in Hollywood crime films and mysteries.

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[edit] Background

Lorre was born into a Jewish family in Rózsahegy/Rosenberg, Austria-Hungary, now Ružomberok, Slovakia. He began acting on stage in Vienna, Breslau, and Zürich. In the late 1920s he moved to Berlin where he worked with German playwright Bertolt Brecht. 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, the Jewish 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 but they were lucrative for the studio and gained Lorre many new fans.

In 1940 Lorre costarred 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 played the role of "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 Sidney Greenstreet and Geraldine Fitzgerald in Three Strangers, a suspense film about three people that had three different parts of 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.") In the early 1960s he worked with Roger Corman on several low-budgeted, tongue-in-cheek, and very popular films.

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.

Lorre has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6619 Hollywood Boulevard.

Lorre enjoyed pulling pranks and, with Humphrey Bogart, once rolled an enormous safe out of Chasen's restaurant and left it standing in the middle of Beverly Boulevard.

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.

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.

Lorre is the subject of songs by several bands, notably The Jazz Butcher Conspiracy [1] and The World/Inferno Friendship Society ("Fiend In Wien," "Peter Lorre, and the waltz "Heart Attack '64"), and is mentioned in the songs "It's a Pose" on Nellie McKay's debut album Get Away from Me and Al Stewart's "Year Of The Cat". The title track from Jon (Anderson) and Vangelis' 1981 album "The Friends Of Mr. Cairo" pays tribute to Hollywood film noir, specifically "The Maltese Falcon", with narratives by characters sounding like Lorre (as Cairo), Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet.

The World/Inferno Friendship Society has also written a punk-rock song cycle in twelve parts, "Fiend in Wien: Peter Lorre's Twentieth Century." It traces the life of the iconic character actor is traced from his birth in the Carpathian Mountains in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, through street life in Vienna, to Weimar Berlin, minor success in Hollywood, and his return to then-East Germany to work with Bertolt Brecht, where he died in 1964.

Lorre was a character in the novel Thank You For Smoking. He appears as Nick Naylor's kidnapper.

[edit] Emulating Lorre

The practice of emulating Peter Lorre's unforgettable voice, look, and mannerisms is quite notable throughout television and cinema, dating from impersonations in various cartoons such as Looney Tunes and characters such as Ren from Ren and Stimpy, Morocco Mole from Secret Squirrel, Rocky Rococo from various Firesign Theatre sketches, Surface Agent X20 from Stingray, Mr. Gruesome from The Flintstones, Staring Herring from Beany and Cecil, Marlon Fraggle from Fraggle Rock, Cruel from Count Duckula, Harry Slime from Avenger Penguins, Doctor N. Gin from the Crash Bandicoot series, Boo Berry from Boo Berry cereal, the hanging lamp from The Brave Little Toaster, Cosmos from Transformers, and Digitamamon from Digimon were based on Lorre's mannerisms. 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." Even today, films show his distinct characteristics in characters, such as a routine Robin William's genie character did in Disney's Aladdin and the maggot in Corpse Bride.

[edit] Filmography

Lorre in M
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Lorre in M

[edit] External links

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