Peter Lorre
From Alfred Hitchcock Wiki
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- born: 26/Jun/1904 (Rózsahegy, Austria)
- died: 23/Mar/1964 (Los Angeles, California, USA) - stroke
Biography
Peter Lorre, born Ladislav (László) Löwenstein, was a stage and screen actor of Austrian descent especially known for playing roles with sinister overtones in Hollywood crime films and mysteries.
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, the director was unaware that Lorre had a 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. He did not much enjoy these films but they were lucrative both for the studio and for Lorre himself.
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. But Hollywood never fully tapped Lorre's creative powers.
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.
Overweight and at times addicted to morphine, Lorre's later years were not always happy ones. 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.
Filmography
With Hitchcock...
- The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) - cast: Abbott
- Secret Agent (1936) - cast: The General
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents - The Diplomatic Corpse (08/Dec/1957) - cast: Tomas Salgado
- Alfred Hitchcock Presents - Man from the South (03/Jan/1960) - cast: Carlos
Articles
Links
Film Frames
Selection of film frames of Peter Lorre (click image to view larger version or refresh thumbnails)...
Image Gallery
Images from the Hitchcock Gallery (click to view larger versions or search for all relevant images)...