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Peter Lorre
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Peter Lorre was one of the screen's most popular villains--his bulging eyes and sibilant voice were known, and imitated, all over the world. Born in 1904, in a remote part of Hungary, he ran away from home at the age of seventeen to become an actor. He found work difficult to obtain during the first three years of his career and was often obliged to sleep on park benches. But in 1924 he managed to get a small job in a Breslau theatre run by Leo Mitler who later became a film director in Berlin and Hollywood. Things improved for Lorre after that and from Breslau he went to Berlin where his performance in a German production of Galsworthy's Society led to an offer of work in Vienna, which, in turn, led to the People's Theatre in Berlin. It was here that Fritz Lang saw him for the first time--Lorre was playing the part of a sex fiend in a play called The Recruits of Inglestadt.
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P[E]ter Lorre was born Laszlo (Ladislav) Löwenstein in Rosenberg, a small town in Austria-Hungary about 150 miles northeast of Vienna. He grew up and was educated in Vienna. To satisfy his father, he became an unhappy bank clerk before starting his acting career. Despite his father's disapproval, Lorre was drawn to the stages of Breslau, Zurich, Vienna, and finally Berlin, to which he moved at the age of 21. It was on the stage in the German capital that Lorre drew the praise and attention of German playwright Bertolt Brecht (1898-1956). After years of dramatic obscurity, Lorre finally made it big with his masterful role as the psychopathic child molester/murderer in Fritz Lang's first sound film in 1931, the still enjoyable M. (See photo below.)
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Peter Lorre made film history with his startling performance as a psychotic murderer of children. Too elusive for the Berlin police, the killer is sought and marked by underworld criminals who are feeling the official fallout for his crimes. This riveting, 1931 German drama by Fritz Lang--an early talkie--unfolds against a breathtakingly expressionistic backdrop of shadows and clutter, an atmosphere of predestination that seems to be closing in on Lorre's terrified villain. M is an important piece of cinema's past along with a number of Lang's early German works, including Metropolis and Spies. (Lang eventually brought his influence directly to the American cinema in such films as Fury, They Clash by Night and The Big Heat.) M shouldn't be missed. This original 111-minute version is a little different from what most people have seen in the cinema.
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One of the comments I’ve most often heard from fans and the actor’s own friends, family and co-workers is how different Peter Lorre looked in each of his many pictures. From his pubescent fleshiness in M to his spare leanness in Stranger on the Third Floor and silkily menacing form in The Maltese Falcon, he kept audiences guessing: Was this indeed the same man? While he often trademarked many of his roles with the same delicately strung balance of humor and terror, physically he rarely repeated himself. Close friends remembered that he was very unhappy with his appearance, which he felt limited, not his range, but the roles offered him. In this sense, he regretted the typecasting constraints imposed by his physical features.
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Beautiful Yvonne Orlac (Frances Drake) is the star of a Grand Guignol theatrical production; creepy Dr. Gogol (Peter Lorre) is infatuated with her, going into a swoon during her onstage torture scenes and sending mash notes to her dressing room. The doctor is devastated when she plans to leave the stage and go on tour with her husband, Stephen Orlac (Colin Clive), a concert pianist. Gogol buys Yvonne's wax figure and keeps it in his house, feeding his preoccupation with her as he slips further into madness. Disaster strikes... when Orlac's hands are ruined in a train accident; seeing his chance, Gogol locates Rollo, a knife-throwing murderer who has an upcoming appointment with the guillotine. The murderer's hands are affixed to the pianist's stumps, and soon Orlac discovers a newfound penchant for flinging knives with deadly accuracy. He quarrels with his father over money for his medical bills, and when the father turns up dead, Orlac is arrested for his murder.
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The actor Peter Lorre was born in Roszahegy (Hungary) as Ladislav Löwenstein. After a abandoned banc apprenticeship he turned to his real calling, to the theater. He followed to the Stegreiftheater of Jacob Moreno who gave him the stage name Peter Lorre. When Lorre, after some local theater successes, got engaged by Fritz Lang for the movie "M" (1931) he landed a great success which could ... be designated as zenith of his career at the same time. The criticism described Lorres performance as "worrying good" and Lorre was put over in and over again for roles of pychopaths, criminals and so on
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Peter Lorre