Iconic actor Peter Lorre once was
described fondly as a rococo cherub gone slightly astray,
but as Youngkins 613 page opus shows, this extremely
talented man strayed very far indeed from his astonishingly
accomplished theatrical beginnings propelled by the rise of
Nazism, a World War, fickle Hollywood, and a witch hunt, to
name but a few of the distractions that his biographer
enumerates. Born Laszlo Lowenstein in Hungary in 1904, Lorre
doubtless remains one of the singular film figures of the
20th Century. There was never anyone quite like him and as
he immodestly pointed out toward the end of his wildly
eventful life: There wont be anyone like me when Im
gone. He was right.
Escaping his conservative Jewish family roots, the ambitious
young man was clerking in a Viennese bank when he appeared
in his first play, though according to legend, he had yet
even to see one. Enjoying a success destime in
Vienna during the early 1920s, he departed for the happier
hunting ground for major roles in Berlin, where he was
absorbed into the remarkable work circle around playwright
Bertolt Brecht. Lorre began a life-long friendship with
Brecht, who instantly tapped him for the lead in Mann ist
Mann (1931) and though the play itself was panned at the
time, Lorre gave a striking performance that Brecht, not one
to gush, never tired of praising.
A
canny student of acting, Brecht had begun as a critic and
drew his theoretical ideas from the work of Laughton,
Valentin, Chaplin, Wedekind and Lorre. Lorre was a
great physical actor and a master at what Brecht termed
gestus gestures that define, clarify, and advance a
role. Brechtian actors reveal humans making hard social and
political choices, and eschew overly emotional performances:
what Brecht termed the emotional drug trade. (Brecht liked
to point out that Hitler had learned his rhetorical style
from the stalls.) Brechts dramaturgy insists that people
are never one thing but composed of many traits; some
developed, others less so. Lorre, who easily charmed an
audience one minute and terrified it the next, offered a
vivid incarnation of Brecht's ideas.
In
1931 Fritz Lang cast Lorre as the repellent child killer
lead in his landmark film M, and with this, his second
film appearance, Lorre suddenly became an international
star. Lorre, as Lang asserted, delivered one of the finest
film performances ever, yet one that haunted and daunted the
actor for the rest of his career. Lorre, in a sense, never
recovered from this great early success. This sinister role
was to typecast him and thus to hinder his artistic
development. Youngkin plausibly suggests that it may
have planted the seeds that destroyed him.
Lorre's politics were of the "fellow traveler" variety. He was
never a Party member. Artist's like Brecht and Lorre were
frequently asked "not to join the Party," the reason being
that a Party membership would have diminished their
publicity value. Prompted by Hitlers ascent to power and an
otherwise admirably high spot on the Gestapos hit list,
Lorre immigrated to Hollywood in 1934. Hollywood was where
glitzy film parts the finest actors from the stage,
homogenizes their language and style, and reduces their
professional lives to a train of serial ingratiation with
moguls and media. Lorres role in M had made him eminently
employable so he signed as a contract player and began his
long forced march through the ever-deepening mire of a
studio system he came to detest.
Lorres first years in la-la land were spent among the
refugee German-speaking intelligentsia; for many of whom
exile was a personal disaster. Unable to master English,
severed from their rich culture, and denied employment, many illustrious refugees sank slowly to penury. His old
mentor Brecht, driven across Europe by Hitlers
expanding Reich, joined Lorre in 1941.
Lorre, however, had a chameleon knack of giving people
what they wanted. So he took to American life with all
the gleeful desperation of a man reprieved from the
gallows. He married three times, and each of his wives
was cast as caretaker by an alcoholic and drug addicted
prima donna. Stars invariably functionalize the people
around them: a driver; a cook; confidantes; the current
wife and inevitably a mistress. It all resembled a
small-time Borgia court around a swimming pool.
The actor admitted to a dark sideand indeed, traded
on it but Youngkin, perhaps wisely, tiptoes around racy
anecdotal material on Lorres sexual kinks and rumored
underworld ties. Yet, unquestionably, the man inspired
great devotion. His first wife Celia Lovsky, a favorite
of the Austrian wit Karl Kraus, gave up her own career
for Lorre, and then after the breakup of their own
marriage, she supervised his later
marriagesbefriending and caring for her
successorsand later made of her own plush home a
shrine to his memory.
Lorres domestic life was marred by serial philandering
and a psyche so precarious that it required Celias
micro-management. Incapable of saving money, he spent
freely. His hectic, lavish life prompted one actor
friend to remark: The links of our chains are forged
not of cruelties, but of our luxuries. He was
constantly in and out of rehab. It is sometimes irksome
to behold Lorres pampered poolside torment in the midst
of Never Never Land while tens of millions are dying
from disease, starvation, and a Nazi war machine he
narrowly escaped. Brecht, who served seven miserable
years in what he called the Hell of the easy-going,
describes Lorres situation in his poem "The Swamp":
I saw many friends
And the friend I loved most
Among them helplessly sunk
Into the swamp
I pass by daily.
And a drowning was not over in a single
morning.
This made it more terrible.
And the memory of our long talks about the
swamp
Which already held so many powerless.
Now I watched him leaning back
Covered with leeches in the shimmering,
Softly moving slime,
Upon the sinking face
The ghastly blissful smile. |
By 1948 Brecht was interrogated by the House Un-American
Activities Committee and, like many Leftist refugees,
hounded out of the country. Despite his close
association with Brecht, Lorre was never persecuted,
though there were people who denounced him. He eluded
HUAC by going to Europe to make a film.
Eager to build a company in Berlins Russian Zone,
Brecht begged Lorre to join him. Brecht, who considered
Lorre the finest reader of prose and poetry in the
German language, had planned a Lorre Hamlet - an
extraordinarily tantalizing prospect, no matter how it
turned out. They also planned to perform The Good
Soldier Schweik, which Lorre was born to play (and a
work from which the young Brecht had drawn his outwardly
cynical attitude and verbal style). Lorre, like Charles
Laughton, believed that Brecht was the new Shakespeare,
but the collaboration they both devoutly wished, alas,
never came to pass. Lorre, apart from his addictions,
was already in poor health by the time that Brecht had
established himself in Berlin.
By the early 1950s the Hollywood studio system that kept
him in relative luxury, under pressure of courts and
television, was dissolving into competitive cut-throat
independent companies. Desperate to repeat his success
with M, Lorre returned to Germany in 1951 to direct
and star in The Lost One, but the production foundered
due to his drug problem and growing megalomania. Lorre,
the brilliant Brechtian paragon, plummeted in a single
decade from Hustons brilliant Maltese Falcon cast
(Bogart, Greenstreet, Lorre, and Mary Astor), which set
a standard for ensemble play, to the wastelands of B
movie back lots and Roger Cormans no frills epics.
By the early 1960s Lorre was lucky to be re-cycled with
Boris Karloff, Bela Lugoisi, and Lon Chaney Jr. in
kitschy horror films. Production standards plummeted:
the work was fast, dirty and ill-paid. Lorre became lost
in reveries of days with Bogart, Brecht, and a life in
the theatre he had abandoned. Tragically, Lorre couldnt
reconcile the responsibilities that Brecht insisted were
the lot of a great artist, with his own desire for
personal comfort and adulation. His health failing, his
third marriage ending, unable to remember his lines, and
victim to an "Industry" which makes his 1930s films seem
like Renaissance dreams, he visited his brother in
Europe and, before departing, lamented: " I have to
return to latrine duty."
In March 1964 Lorre died of a massive stroke. His friend
Vincent Price, after a rabbis prayer, delivered the
eulogy. Bankrupt, Lorre left no will. Yet his death
spawned a roaring Lorre industry: his unique mannerisms,
vocal and facial tics became the mimicked basis for
hundreds of TV and radio shows, cartoons, commercials,
and feature films. At the end, Lorre called himself,
deprecatingly, a "face maker," forgetting to add, its a
face you never forget.
Mr. Youngkin's prose can wobble at times, but his life
of Lorre is a monumental piece of research and sheds new
light on a career that has too long been ignored and
undervalued. The Brecht connection alone makes this an
extraordinary piece of scholarship. We are indebted to
the author.
Warren Leming is a writer and critic. (www.coldchicagocompany.org)
