The Lost One

by Stephen D. Youngkin

  Lorre next appeared as a trigger-happy thug in UFA’s Schuss im Morgengrauen (A Shot at Dawn, 1932), based on The Woman and the Emerald by Harry Jenkins, a bullet-ridden crime drama centered around a jewel heist. Convinced he could do nothing with the “underwritten” role, the actor suggested making his character a frustrated sex maniac. “He played it like that,” remembered Rudolf Katscher, who coauthored the screenplay. “He followed every young female character from behind, with his hand and fingers outstretched to pinch her bottom. So when he started that gag, the audience knew what was coming and roared with laughter. In fact, he never got to ‘grips’ with any unsuspecting bottom!”

  Mixed reviews leaned in Schuss im Morgengrauens favor. Critics didn’t bother to build up or tear down the minor work “off the rack.” However, they credited producer-director Alfred Zeisler and his writers, Katscher and Otto and Egon Eis, for tightening the tension with humor and singled out the “splendid acting” of the criminal types, including the “horribly grotesque” Lorre, who made the most of his small part.

  Screenwriter Walter Reisch, who was under contract to UFA, had helped push fellow scenarist and friend Karl Hartl up the ladder and into a director’s chair in 1930. When the studio assigned Hartl to direct German, French, and English versions of F.P.1 antwortet nicht (Floating Platform 1 Doesn’t Answer, 1932), he returned the favor and persuaded Reisch to write the screenplay. Based on Kurt Siodmak’s novel, it tells the story of a courageous flyer who prevents the destruction of a mid-Atlantic refueling point for transoceanic flights. Hans Albers would play the German lead, Charles Boyer the French, and Conrad Veidt (of Caligari fame) the English. But who would lighten what Reisch described as “a heavy science fiction drama?”

  Since the hero had a sidekick, Hartl suggested, “Why don’t we write the part of the little newspaper photographer so that Peter can play it?”

  “We decided to have this cameraman played by the smallest actor in Berlin,” recalled Reisch, “and that was Peter Lorre.” And so they did, tailoring the role to better fit his talents. “Peter was very happy to get a part in which he could show his sense of humor, in which he could bring out laughs to get a different note from that monster, the child killer.”

  Hartl shot all three versions simultaneously on Greifswälder Oie, a small island in the Baltic, where a full-scale “floating platform” was built.14 For three months, cast and crew, including pioneer German producer Erich Pommer, shared the only hotel on the nearby island of Rügen. There Lorre met Veidt, an actor who, like himself, was capable of switching on and off his demonic personality. Reisch recalled that Veidt “always died with laughter at whatever Peter Lorre did.” While Veidt—“Connie” to his friends—found Lorre amusing, Hartl did not and threatened to have him thrown overboard for ruining takes with his jokes.

  After the sun set at five-thirty, everyone returned to the hotel for dinner, where one man “provided more fun than anybody else in the whole star roster,” said Reisch. “That was Peter. He could tell the most incredible stories with little nuances, hardly changing his face, just touching upon it and bringing the house down. It was inconceivable after working hours to have an evening without Peter. It would have been gloomy. He had an enormous sense of humor and was the happiest man on earth when people laughed.”

  After dinner, there was only one diversion—Ping-Pong. Much to everyone’s amusement, the six-foot-five Veidt and the five-foot-five Lorre—who tipped the scale at the same undisclosed weight—paired up. “And these two guys, the one who played ‘Caligari’ and the other one who played the mass murderer in M became a team in Ping-Pong that was unbeatable,” said Reisch. “It was not just if we win tonight, it was a matter of life and death to win the tournament. Not for the money, but there was a gala reception afterwards and a medal. And these guys played together like a team, with beautiful timing.”

  F.P.1 antwortet nicht delivered two star attractions, each of which guaranteed box-office success. Hans Albers, “the human dynamo with a heart of gold,” stretches beyond his blue eyes as a prototype of Casablanca’s Rick Blaine and loves, loses, and rallies. The only attraction big enough to hold its own against the popular actor was the technical setting of the film, a utopia that lay within human reach. Critics who faulted the film for being long on applied science and short on logical development were shouting in the wind. It created a major sensation at both the Apollo Theater in Vienna, where tickets were hard to come by, and the UFA-Palast am Zoo in Berlin. Even Variety hailed it as “Ufa’s greatest picture of this year.”

  Although Reisch enlarged the very small role of Johnny in the Siodmak novel, Kinematograph noted that “Peter Lorre easily steps, in spite of noticeably great virtuosity, into the background.” Nonetheless, the actor left his mark. “The most complete and impressive acting performance is by Peter Lorre as a photo-reporter,” stated Vienna’s Arbeiter Zeitung. “The person he portrays is outside of the technical puppet world of the film. He is a human being possible in reality.”

  It is easy to see today how and why Lorre answered Albers’s cocky attitude with comic understatement. When the hero is expansive, Johnny is laconic, even droll. It is just this chemistry that set the German version of F.P.1 above its English counterpart, titled F.P.1 Doesn’t Answer, which paired the mutually monotonous Conrad Veidt and London-born character actor Donald Calthrop, who was often cast as a villain, most notably in Alfred Hitchcock’s Blackmail (1929). It is far less a matter of the length of Lorre’s on-screen time (which is slightly longer) than of what he did with it. While Calthrop dispassionately distanced his character from the audience, Lorre made himself conspicuous by posture, gait, and attitude. Even his frowsy, flyaway blond hair contrasted comically with Albers’s Aryan elegance.

  Some 1930s audiences read the polarity in personalities quite differently. At a showing in Cairo, some Jewish viewers who felt that the photojournalist gave F.P.1 antwortet nicht an “anti-Semitic accent” generated a disturbance that resulted in an invitation to leave the theater from others in the audience, which included 120 attending National Socialists, Italian Fascists, and Greek Royalists. Historian Dorothea Hollstein accused Lorre of caricaturing his part, making it easier for a prejudiced viewer to misinterpret the role as a representation of the “National Socialist cliché of the Jewish journalist: he is small and a little rotund, he moves himself slowly and in an indolent manner, but gold directed; he carries out every assignment without asking; he hardly gives his own opinion, rather he always agrees with the superior one, as soon as he hopes to gain profit therefrom; he is sufficiently lacking in character to allow himself to be humbled and picked on without defending himself; if he is thrown out, he returns again through the back door.”

  Such a performance certainly was not intentional. Far from reinforcing anti-Semitic stereotypes, Lorre’s character displays no qualities that could be considered typically Jewish. Intelligent and resourceful, Lorre’s Johnny is a devoted sidekick to Albers’s hero, who affectionately teases him with a string of descriptive nicknames, including Rollmöpschen (pickle with herring wrapped around it), Rollfilm, and alter Affe (old ape). Moreover, the only people who could have given the role an anti-Semitic spin—author Kurt Siodmak, producer Erich Pommer, screenwriter Walter Reisch (who expressed shock to hear such accusations, for the first time, some forty years later), and Lorre—were Jewish.

  When Lorre’s next film project, Der Kaufmann von Hamburg (The Merchant of Hamburg)—reportedly set for direction by Fritz Eckhardt after his own script about corporate greed, and costarring Gustaf Gründgens, Paul Wegener, and Fritz Kampers—failed to materialize, the actor stayed at UFA for Der weisse Dämon. The studio publicity department went all out to convince moviegoers that in the part of the hunchbacked drug dealer (nicely balanced against his butterfly collecting), he eclipsed his earlier performances: “Lorre creates the symbol of the narcotic. He is the evil that becomes flesh, the creepy one … a warning sign to all, whenever they run across a human being like him who
knows nothing of luck, love and true humanity. Tell your audience that Peter Lorre creates a type, which, far from all cliché, is psychologically highly interesting and must be called a unique performance, and at the same time will not miss giving the audience a moral imprint.”

  Complaints that the film didn’t take a stand against drug addiction sent the script through rewrites and the picture back for retakes. Not until UFA toned down the title, scrapping the inflammatory Rauschgift (Dope) and judiciously reedited the picture, did Der weisse Dämon pass the censors. The final version struck an acceptable balance between adventure and finger-pointing instruction.15 What remained was the story of an honest coffee planter (Hans Albers) who chases, swims, boxes, and jumps to the aid of his sister, rescuing her from the evil clutches of dope peddlers.

  Lorre’s addiction undoubtedly lent him a special understanding of the sale and distribution of narcotics. One wonders if holding a syringe gave him pause to consider how art imitated his own life. However he approached his role, he apparently convinced audiences and critics that he “haunts like a nightmare that finds a form … with silent seeming eeriness, leaving a trail of dreadfulness and fear; it is a typical counterpart to Albers; he makes himself the executing voice of his own horribly evil instincts. Is he still a human being or a robot pushed by invisible forces, who as well as he sells narcotics, can crush cities and worlds or trade with corpses? Great, unforgettable and his style a unique portrayal!”

  Lorre often said that once you’re typed, “people just demand it over and over again.” Had the actor first appeared in Was Frauen träumen (What Women Dream) instead of M, he might just as easily have been typecast as a comic songster instead of a child murderer. For that reason—what might have been—it is one of his most important movies. As a clumsy criminologist, Lorre little resembles the childlike Beckert. His eyeglasses, smart moustache, and suit and tie give him a more mature look. He even stays miles ahead of his commissar cohort in solving the crime, although his methodology is laughably moronic. But it is not his attempts to free himself from foolproof handcuffs or his drunken efforts to put his coat on backward that single out his aptitude for comedy. It is a song. With head back, body bouncing, and hands pounding the piano keys, he exuberantly belts out:

  Yes, sir, the police, they are the cutest fellows.

  Yes, sir, the police, they’re always at their best.

  The lieutenants are adept at handling women.

  And when the men kiss them, they’re impressed!

  Yes, sir, the police, they fascinate every girl.

  Who can’t just pass by, one two, three.

  Sure, ev’ry little town has got good looking guys.

  But the handsomest of all are the police!

  Co-worker Gustav Fröhlich remembered that “in so singing the little stout Lorre turned an ironic coloring through his enthusiastic intonation.” He was “completely different than usual,” noted Lichtbildbühne, “a type you feel a little bit sorry for, mostly shoved to the side, but excellent in the refrain of his duet with Nora Gregor, spirited, funny, happily contented.”

  The fun was short-lived, however. Because German censors did not approve of a “picture [that] makes the police force look ridiculous,” Was Frauen träumen premiered in Budapest instead of Berlin. The film finally opened in Germany more than two weeks later, on April 20, 1933, Adolf Hitler’s forty-fourth birthday. Berlin’s Atrium Theater prefaced the feature with a documentary short commemorating the death of World War I flying ace Manfred von Richthofen with scenes celebrating the development of German air technology. After this patriotic prelude, the slick, elegant comedy about a jewel thief was deemed so much Mätzchen (silly nonsense). By the time of its release, both Lorre and coauthor Billy Wilder, whose name had been struck from the credits, had fled Nazi Germany.

  In the winter of 1932–33, with Was Frauen träumen in the can and Hitler in the chancellorship, Lorre and Eggebrecht, a leftist literary figure with ties to Brecht, began work on Ein Kaspar Hauser von Heute (A Casper Hauser of Today), an updated telling of the “strange tale of the foundling of Nuremberg, whose origin never was revealed and who has become the hero of many a legend, thriller, novel and thesis.” Born in 1812 and raised by an illiterate day laborer, Hauser turned up in Nuremberg in 1828 with a letter of introduction to the cavalry captain of the 4th Eskadron, 6th Chevauleger. Lord Stanhope adopted the slender, reticent boy, whose aristocratic hands and feet hinted at noble origins, and placed him as a clerk in a law office. On December 14, 1833, he returned home mortally wounded by a dagger, triggering rumors about the suspicious circumstances of his death and his princely origins.

  More shadow than substance, the story lent itself to reinvention. In Lorre and Eggebrecht’s hands, Hauser became a child from the Tatra region of Czechoslovakia lost in World War I. Lorre not only set the story in his homeland, but planned to shoot on location in the Carpathians. The first of numerous projects conceived to break the mold, “Kasper Hauser” held Lorre’s interest for the next two decades.

  Walking along the Ku-damm with Rudolph Joseph one wintry evening in early 1933, Lorre spoke intensely of his upcoming picture without mentioning its name. “He wasn’t telling anyone, not even me,” recalled Joseph. “I looked at him and said, ‘Casper Hauser.’”

  “How did you know?” asked a surprised Lorre.

  “It was written on your forehead,” laughed Joseph.

  With outline in hand, Lorre and Eggebrecht first approached actor Fritz Kortner, who had plans to begin his own film company. According to Lorre, however, it was UFA that signed him to star in and direct the film in three versions—German, French, and English—that would get under way after he completed his next picture, Unsichtbare Gegner (Invisible Opponent, 1933), an unlikely story of a South American oil swindle, set to begin shooting just after the March 5 elections.

  When Lorre left for Hollywood a few years later, recalled Lotte Eisner, he took with him everything he could find on Casper Hauser and asked her to send him the poetry of Verlaine. Anticipating possible objections to the idea of casting Lorre as a teenager, she told readers of Cinématographe, “Why not. Lorre’s face expresses all ages.”

  Producer Sam Spiegel had scheduled Kurt (Curtis) Bernhardt to direct Unsichtbare Gegner. When Bernhardt became involved in another project, he suggested Rudolf Katscher, who had just successfully turned out his first feature, Teilnehmer antwortet nicht (1932), to replace him. Having worked with Lorre on Schuss im Morgengrauen, in which he had performed a “similar halffunny, half-sinister part,” Katscher thought him the obvious choice for Pless, a sidekick to the main villain, played by Oskar Homolka.

  A less imaginary drama was taking shape outside the walls of Germany’s “dream factories.” As the Fascists hammered words into weapons, and hatred into ideologies, Hitler’s Storm Troops escalated their campaign of terror against Communists, Socialists, and trade unionists. Some four hundred thousand strong, the NSDAP’s private army targeted Jews. They had become all enemies in one, the single foe on whose doorstep the Nazis laid blame for Germany’s defeat in World War I (the “national humiliation”), the country’s economic depression, and revolution. As perennial outsiders, Jews held no claim to a sense of German national identity or community; no völkisch ideology embraced them. As part of his “national awakening,” Hitler promised a solution to the Jewish question. Nazi-sponsored anti-Semitic legislative proposals providing for the elimination of non-Aryans from public life soon took root in decrees, boycotts, and acts of terror.

  Tucked away in the studios, many actors had either shut their eyes to the dark shadow on the horizon or had quietly defied the expectation that they would celebrate the new spirit of the German people. But politics soon pervaded the stages and back lots. On the set of M, Fritz Lang, who followed political events with “passionate attention,” had probed and prodded his politically nonconversant star to distraction. Brushing aside the burgeoning number of anti-Semitic associations and periodicals wasn’t quite as
easy. Or news that the Jewish actress Helene Weigel had been dragged to the police station during a performance of Die Mutter. An expected ban on Jews in the film industry had almost halted production by April 1933. Later that month, Joseph Goebbels, the new minister of propaganda and popular enlightenment, told party members at UFA that “German films must be made by Germans who understand the spirit of the German people.” Even before the requirement became law, film companies voluntarily began to ease Jewish actors out of their films. Beginning in July, new film laws administered by Goebbels would completely exclude Jews from the film industry.

  Lorre soon found himself caught in the political current. His old friend Egon Jacobson, editor-in-chief of the Berliner Zeitung am Mittag, had sharpened the newspaper’s political and cultural edge with articles on Nazi atrocities and commentaries on censorship by noted humanist writers Erich Maria Remarque and Heinrich and Thomas Mann. When one of the thirty provincial newspapers that subscribed to his columns used his article on calendar reform as a pretext to sever relations with the publisher, Ullstein-Verlag, Jacobson read it as “a sign of the times.” A few days later, he called Lorre.