The Lost One

by Stephen D. Youngkin

  For the most part, Lorre got along well during his treatment. According to Dr. William F. Ossenfort, medical director in charge, he developed friendships with several members of the hospital staff, although he reportedly also generated what the physician euphemistically described as “negative transference” toward narcotics enforcement officers. His remarkable progress even earned him consideration for a sixty-day furlough to continue his convalescent care at home. Commissioner Anslinger, however, strongly recommended against Lorre’s release and threatened that if he left the hospital “under any other circumstances than with the diagnosis of being cured,” the Bureau would proceed with an indictment of his New York physicians for violating the narcotics laws and would name him and Irving Yergin as co-conspirators. Just so there was no misunderstanding, continued the commissioner, representatives of the Narcotics Enforcement Bureau would be waiting for him outside the hospital, pictures would be taken, and “no limit” of publicity would go forward. Le Grand explained that the staff at the hospital had no choice but to put the furlough on indefinite hold. “These circumstances are considered unfortunate,” he concluded, “but they are, nevertheless, real.”

  In an undated handwritten testimonial to the hospital’s good work and his own best intentions, Lorre stated, “I am satisfied with the treatment here and have confidence in the medical officer in charge and his staff. My primary interest is to get well and I intend to follow the advice of Dr. ossenfort in all respects. I am not ashamed of anything in my life and I know that neither I nor my doctor have done anything wrong. I have avoided publicity due to the adverse effect it would have on my job, but if it appears to be unavoidable I will of course face it and defend my rights.”

  By April 15 Lorre had been off drugs for one month. His severe headaches, which Le Grand believed were psychosomatic, “as they have been precipitated during periods when the patient was under some tension,” were relieved with only small amounts of aspirin and Nembutal. He therefore determined that, at the present time, “the patient has received maximum benefit from hospitalization and it is recommended that he be discharged as ‘cured.’” Dr. ossenfort concurred. “Never in his medical experience,” he told Yergin, “had he witnessed such courage and willpower in dealing with such a problem.”

  The medical director concluded that Lorre had previously “been treated well but not too wisely. By this, I mean he was given narcotics when other substances might have done just as well. He strikes me as being a brilliant individual who has made a success of his chosen vocation under circumstances which in many instances were most trying. He has attained a better than average insight into his problem…. The prognosis for remaining off drugs, provided he keeps himself under the care of an entirely reputable physician who understands him, would appear to be very good.”

  Lorre was discharged on April 16. Asked what he had in mind after his release, he said he planned to “remain off work” and return to the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in the next month or two. As he got off the plane in Los Angeles, he broke down. Seeing Karen and the animals brought more tears. Four days after his return, Karen wrote friends at the hospital in Texas that Peter “is feeling fine. Of course I am terribly happy to have him back home and so were the dogs, horses, cats and even the ducks and chickens. We have been riding quite a bit already and Peter looks as fit and healthy as when I first met him 7 years ago.”

  Narcotics authorities kept Lorre on a short lead during the next few months. Skeptical about the efficacy of his unexpectedly quick cure, Anslinger “was very unhappy about the discharge,” Yergin wrote Dr. Ossenfort on April 23. “Fortunately [he] is precluded by law from doing anything about it, so therefore I am not particularly concerned about his feelings in this matter. I know that your judgment in this matter will be more than justified.”

  On May 8 agents interviewed Lorre for the first time since his release. The actor cordially talked of his plans for canceling all film commitments and of keeping his name before the public through “as much radio work as possible.”7According to the agents’ field notes, he was worried about the papers picking up the story. Apparently, several others—likely his business partners—besides Yergin and Karen knew about his hospitalization. But the story never broke. Yergin later claimed to have persuaded William Randolph Hearst, an old friend from his newspaper days on the Chicago Times and Tribune, to hush up the matter. Lorre’s request for permission to call a doctor to treat his flu symptoms, including discharge from the ears, very possibly explains why the agents returned five days later to take yet another interview, in which he revealed his plans to spend a week in Arrowhead Hot Springs. In late May Anslinger ordered the district supervisor of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in Los Angeles to keep an eye on Lorre, whose activities he would closely monitor until June 1949, when the actor left for England.

  “Alcohol and narcotics,” noted Bertolt Brecht in a letter to Dr. Gruenthal in January 1947, had taken a heavy toll on a generation of gifted actors. Only the bad ones “can keep themselves sober in an industry that produces mental addiction.” Being one of the good ones, Lorre had more easily fallen into the hands of a “racket.” Brecht liked the word. Distinctly American, it threw a large net around Hollywood and the drug trade and at the same time let Lorre off lightly as a victim, however willing, of a corrupt system. Brecht wasn’t sure whether Lorre agreed with him “that his situation is degrading,” but he “admired the practical common sense with which he looks at his sickness.” The actor, it seemed, clashed opposites even in the role of a drug addict.

  At these crossroads of personal and professional crises in Lorre’s life, Brecht expressed his concern—and frustration—in a poem general enough to convey a universal meaning, yet discreetly personal. When Naomi Replansky, who translated “Der Sumpf” (“The Swamp”) into English, asked Brecht if he had written the poem about Lorre, he shrugged and answered, “It might be.” Karen Verne also told James Powers that Brecht had confided to her that Lorre was indeed the “friend” sunk in the swamp.8 In 1977 Ernest Pascal’s widow gave Brecht scholar James Lyon permission to poke through her late husband’s papers in their garage in Topanga Canyon. There he found a drawer full of odds and ends once belonging to Peter Lorre, including the German original of “The Swamp,” believed lost, presumably given to him by Brecht. Clearly, the poem’s epitaphic verse bears witness to Brecht’s deep feelings for an old and dear friend:

  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.

  “For nearly a decade and a half,” Brecht told Gruenthal, Lorre “couldn’t find the work he wanted in his profession.” Dr. Greenson took the analysis one step further, pointing out that “the addiction itself was an indication of how Peter failed to find in his work the kind of satisfaction that Brecht seemed to have achieved.” Brecht had a plan to change all that. “Once again many thanks for your quick help in the Lorre business,” he wrote Ferdinand Reyher in March, 1947. “It’s not only that I like him, I also need him badly in Germany, if I’m going to get my theatre together again. Writing plays has become a complicated, many-sided profession; now I’m trying to disentangle Lorre’s muddled affairs.”

  Brecht had received an offer for a theater in Berlin for the 1947–48 season. “I need Lorre, unconditionally,” he confided to Gruenthal, no doubt with the idea that the physician would prescribe what Brecht conceived as a lifesaving cure for his friend. “Without him I can hardly imagine the whole thing. He has to play my parts and the gr
eat classical parts, too. We have a very definite style prepared and conversations and recitations by Lorre showed me that he has grown and that he has his best time as an actor (and director) before him.” Brecht had it all worked out. While he got things in order, paid debts, and put some money in the bank, Lorre would continue his film work. During their first season, the actor would make only guest appearances at the theater and get a feel for his new situation. The next year he would reverse the process, staying in Berlin to help organize the theater and only returning to Hollywood and London for the occasional film roles, in effect borrowing from the screen to pay the stage. Keeping his foot in both worlds, Brecht felt, “would make him happy.” Lorre would not only “again become a great German actor,” but would be able to keep his beautiful house in America. As long as he realized that he could “only buy the possibility for the use and perfection of his great talents by not fully trading on his admirable friendliness to humans and animals,” all would be well. With one foot planted on each continent, how easily Brecht forgot that Lorre stood firmly on American soil.

  “Lorre may straighten out,” replied Reyher, brushing aside the actor’s drug problem before getting down to business. “Incidentally, do you know anything of Columbia offering a pretty fair sum for the Lady Macbeth, which was turned down by Lorre’s agent because of additional stipulations which made it too expensive?” Brecht apparently had not kept up with developments regarding the film story, but said he would look into it: “Naturally, we would sell, if at all possible, that’s what we agreed upon. Lewis Milestone showed interest, met with resistance at the box-office. He’s still interested, but cutting at any moment his last film in New York.” The authors then placed Lady Macbeth with Paul Kohner, who, in July 1952, wrote Lorre that he “just came across some copies of an old story property called All Our Yesterdays which are of no further use to us. I thought you might like to have them and am sending them herewith to you.” Always the bridesmaid, never the bride, Lady Macbeth came closest of the Brecht-Lorre film stories to the Hollywood altar.

  True to his word, shortly after appearing on the Armed Forces Radio Service’s Mail Call on June 25, Lorre embarked on his first radio series. For their summer slot, NBC traditionally set a show with a crime or detective theme. Mystery in the Air—originally titled Horror Stories—replaced The Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Show from July 3 to September 25, 1947. On thirteen Thursday nights, Paul Baron’s nerve-tingling musical score crept out of NBC’s Studio A in Hollywood at 6:00 p.m. and into American homes, pausing just long enough for Harry Morgan, The Voice of Mystery, to announce gravely: “Mystery in the Air, starring Peter Lorre, presented by Camel (pause) Cigarettes. Each week at this time, Peter Lorre brings us the excitement of the great stories of the strange and unusual, of dark and compelling masterpieces culled from the four corners of world literature.”

  For the first half-hour show, Lorre once more recited Frank Wilson’s adaptation of “The Tell-Tale Heart.” No stranger to Poe, he drew plaudits from the trade press. The Hollywood Reporter credited his “finely-shaded and almost delicate portrayal” as being “the finest interpretation of ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’ that has ever come over the airwaves…. As the first in a series of 13 Camel-sponsored half-hour mysteries, it was an auspicious first and radio thriller—fans must be looking forward to the next 12 with more than modest anticipation.”

  “For grisliness and gruesomeness … POE AND LORRE’S ‘TELLTALE HEART’ … was a gem raw and red,” hailed Daily Variety, “and a classic triumph for Lorre—a masterpiece of character etching and a cameo of narration…. Production-wise,

  the eerie mood was sustained with pin-point timing, precisioned sound effects and the isolation of music and mike-frightening by curtaining off the moaning instruments and compounding Lorre and his fellow workers in an enclosure.”

  Subsequent stories based on works by Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, Mrs. Belloc-Lowndes, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Ben Hecht assured the series literary respectability as well a measure of quality control. Lorre likewise stamped the series with a personal touch, blending player and part in “The Horla.” In a fevered pitch, he closes, “LET ME GO! YES, I KNOW I’M PETER LORRE. I know. i know it’s a story. i know it’s thursday night and we are on the air. i KNOW IT’S BY DE MAUPASSANT. BUT, IT’S THE HORLA. (seemingly awakening from a spell) Oh, I beg your pardon. I’m sorry. I got so excited, but I warned you at the beginning. It’s a very uncomfortable story.”

  Regardless how large or small the studio audience, Lorre gave performances worthy of the camera. Harry Morgan said:

  I have never seen in front of a microphone anybody throw himself into a performance in every which way, including physically, which was to me so astounding, as Peter. I mean, if you’re playing to a mike, you’re playing to a mike. He wasn’t playing to the audience. The things that he went through, contortions of the face and his whole body—everybody remarked on that. And he’d be dripping with sweat after the half-hour was over because he’d not only done a great vocal performance, he’d been through a lot physically. He used to perform with almost clenched teeth and his body so tense that the legs would quiver and his whole body would shake as he acted into the microphone…. At one point the intensity and the push and the drive that he had made his false teeth shoot right out about three feet and he caught them in his hand, just a reflex, and put them back in his mouth and went on without missing a beat. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life.

  In interviews given at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in Texas, Lorre had told the medical staff that he was only a social drinker, and in fact, his friends and co-workers bear out the truth of his statement. However, during the broadcasts, he mixed business and pleasure, requesting that a tumbler of scotch be placed alongside his microphone. During each show, he emptied it. Yet, said Morgan, “whether it was nervousness or tension … it didn’t affect him one way or another.”

  Mystery in the Air ended on September 25. Lorre subsequently gave only three or four radio performances each year, and most often in guest spots for popular variety shows, such as Philco Radio Time, on which “the continental Mickey Rooney” played a psychoanalyst (“I won’t have to make faces anymore”) and Spike Jones’s Spotlight Revue, which offered something never seen on the big screen—a seminar on the art of impersonation by none other than Paul Frees and Peter Lorre himself. In June 1947 Jones and head writer Eddie Brandt, who opened one of Hollywood’s legendary movie memorabilia shops in 1969, put Lorre-like lyrics to the song hit “My Old Flame” and hired popular voice actor Paul Frees to record the revised tune at RCA Victor in Hollywood. The next year, Jones scheduled Lorre and Frees to appear together on the Coca-Cola-sponsored Spotlight Revue for Chicago’s WBBM Radio. Following a popularly resonant rendition of “My Old Flame” by Dick Baldwin (accompanied by the City Slickers), Frees masterfully magnified the actor’s vocal mannerisms, catching rhyme and rhythm, rant and rave, to perfection in his own rendition of the song: “My old flame. I can’t even think of her name—I’ll have to look through my collection of human heads…. She would always treat me mean, so I poured a can of gasoline … and struck a match to my old flame.”

  “I think that imitation of me was just wonderful,” complimented Lorre during the broadcast. And, as he learned at a rehearsal attended by several hundred spectators, quite intimidating. “The impressionists had made Lorre ten times stronger than he really had been,” recalled Brandt. “They exaggerated it so much, Lorre didn’t sound like Lorre anymore. His voice was so soft and quiet. And Paul Frees built it up like imitators do. When Lorre stepped in, he was a mouse against a mountain lion.” Later, Brandt went by Lorre’s dressing room to see how he was doing on the script and caught him “practicing Peter Lorre in the mirror and making faces at himself!”

  Asked to hear “My Old Flame” done by the real Peter Lorre, the actor told “Spook-Jones … Spooky-boy … Spooky-man” that he has his own version. “My old flame,” began Lorre, imitating him
self for comic effect, “I can’t even think of her name, no … I … Oh, yes, she had no name. My old flame was a hotfoot.” Lorre seemed a new man altogether, Elisabeth Hauptmann noted in a letter to Ivor Montagu on August 19, 1947. “Peter is in very good shape,” she wrote, “and anxious to do something worthwhile.” His partnership in Lorre Inc. renewed his expectations—and Brecht’s—that he could make things happen.