The Lost One

by Stephen D. Youngkin

  Unable to convince Lorre that he should reunite with him, Lang watched producer Jerry Wald’s dissatisfaction with the Zola story, in which “everybody is bad,” transform the exposure of man’s bestial side into just another love triangle in the “present-day American” spirit of The Big Heat (1953), again with Glenn Ford and Gloria Graham. Lang did not think the picture, retitled Human Desire (1954), worth comparing to the Jean Renoir version.

  In 1952 Walt Disney formed WED (Walt Elias Disney) Enterprises to realize his dream of creating a family amusement park. Among the artists he recruited to design and plan what would become Disneyland was Harper Goff, who had worked as an assistant art director on many of the Warner Bros. classics of the 1930s and 1940s. Before Goff got to work on the theme park, Disney assigned him to scale down some live-action footage of sea slugs shot by marine biologist Dr. George E. MacGinitie and work it into an undersea film for his “True-Life Adventure” nature series. Instead of counterposing the colorful animals with inanimate objects, the artist visualized cartoon characters interacting with real sea creatures. Goff worked on the idea of translating live-action “ballet inserts” into several animated sequences from Jules Verne’s classic futuristic adventure 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, one of his favorite stories. He began his storyboard with the tour of Captain Nemo’s undersea garden. From there, he created an entire script in rough outline, then integrated larger sketches in more detail and color, along with notes on the use of underwater photography. Since he was not a cartoonist, his storyboard looked like an outline for a live-action film.

  Disney had earlier considered animating the Verne tale, but property conflicts and potentially high costs had frustrated his plans. Goff’s storyboard rekindled his interest. “Sooner or later,” said Disney, “I’m going to have to start making real one-hundred-percent live-action pictures, instead of fifty-fifty.” He thought about casting the film and got back to Goff: “If we made a liveaction picture of it, instead of a cartoon, what would you say if we cast Kirk Douglas as Ned Land? My daughter has seen this guy in a prize-fighting picture, Champion [1949], and she’s absolutely crazy about him. He’s got wonderful muscles.”

  Goff was amazed. “I thought we were daydreaming,” he said. “I couldn’t believe that Walt was even considering making a live-action picture.” The question of casting, however, did not catch the set designer off guard. “Whenever I read a book,” said Goff, “I cast the people in it in the image of somebody I relate to as an actor.” He saw Lorre as Professor Arronax’s tractable assistant, Conseil: “I had apparently and unconsciously thought of him as kind of obsequious … a gentleman’s gentleman, but one who feels he possesses as much horse sense and intelligence as his absentminded boss…. When I looked at it, Conseil was a round-faced guy with big eyes, kind of a hat holder the way I had pictured him and drawn him.” Disney agreed.

  Goff’s storyboard next went to Bill Walsh, a supervising writer who saw that the studio’s products carried the “Disney touch.” Characterized as an extension of Walt Disney’s personality, he toned down Verne’s political message, softening the insurgent and misanthropic Nemo, and selected sequences from the book to translate into film, finding a careful balance between the human equation and mechanical devices. He then brought in John Tucker Battle to create a screenplay, which Disney labeled the “empirical script.” This allinclusive scenario translated the story into screen form. Walsh next engaged Earl Felton, who produced a final draft—which underwent nine revisions during principal photography—and tailored the roles to the players, adding many comic touches to the picture.

  Disney assembled a strong cast, which featured James Mason, Paul Lukas, Kirk Douglas, and Peter Lorre, and offered the job of directing his first liveaction feature to Richard Fleischer, whose work on The Happy Time (1952) had especially impressed him.8 To give Verne’s glimpse into the future the look and feel of scientific reality, Disney put to work his Special Effects and Processes Department and chose scenic Montego Bay in Jamaica for location shooting.

  Jules Verne described Conseil as “fit for any kind of service” with a “strong constitution [that] defied all illness; he had powerful muscles, but no nerves.” In the film version, Disney also required him to supply comic relief. Lorre plays the foil for Kirk Douglas, who delights in rubbing his crew cut the wrong way. At one point, Captain Nemo (James Mason) permits the brawny harpooner and the dumpy underworker to join an undersea hunting expedition. Ned and Conseil spot a sunken galleon and wander off in search of hidden treasure. When a hostile shark swoops down on them, Nemo plugs the fish with his spear gun. Back aboard the submarine, Professor Arronax (Paul Lukas) reproaches the reckless adventurers. Ned brazenly admits that booty was their aim, but Conseil innocently protests that he accompanied his friend in the name of science. “Don’t look at me with those soft-boiled eggs,” improvised Douglas. “I saw the glint of gold in them when that chest busted.”

  “I always had a kind of feeling,” said Goff, “that Peter’s role was written just about the way he would have done if he had been ad-libbing it.” Lorre often discussed his role with Fleischer and suggested additions to the part. “Even things offered extemporaneously were not extemporaneous, but well thought out,” said the director. “Peter thought about his role carefully and deeply.” Tempering a generalization that Lorre took direction well, Fleischer added, “His screen image was not without validity—he really did have a morbid sense of humor. He knew what his eyes could do and he didn’t hesitate to do it. My biggest problem was holding him down. Peter always gave more and was constantly improvising or trying new things.” Nonetheless, the actor managed to wedge some bits of business into the final cut. To quiet Esmarelda, Nemo’s pet seal, Ned snatches a humidor and feeds her a seaweed cigar, which she gobbles down. When Lorre crawls over the floor in search of more cigars, the seal nudges his backside, earning a hearty guffaw for her effort. “Now eat them slowly,” he improvised. “You don’t have to inhale them.”

  Lorre firmly held that he had an aptitude for comedy and regretted he could not convince others of this. In a Disney promotional sheet, studio publicist Joe Reddy wrote: “After all these years, Peter Lorre wants everyone to know that he is, deep down inside, a comedian. The little, round man—who has made a profitable career making little round holes in his movie victims—claims his type casting as a villain was a mistake.” On the set Lorre opened up about typecasting with Goff and Fleischer, taking them on a rare excursion over sensitive ground. Fleischer recalled that Lorre had “high hopes” of breaking the pattern with this role. “I thought that he was more hopeful that it would break the mold than convinced it was going to,” clarified Goff. “I think he talked about it in a wistful way, like maybe it will, maybe this is the thing that will.”

  In reply to one of Reddy’s questions about the funniest thing that ever happened to him in his career, the actor answered, “That I was cast as a villain. Here I have always wanted to ‘kill’ people with jokes—and I end up just plain killing them.” At the first sight of Disney’s mechanical squid, he quipped, “He’s got the part I usually play.”

  Lorre loved to impersonate Kirk Douglas. When the camera rolled, he pinched his chin into a dimple, closed his eyes, and read his lines. “There could be no tension when he was around,” said Fleischer. “He exuded humor. His joy was in wringing humor out of every moment he could find.” Lorre functioned as a “cohesive factor” whose little services ranged from lifting morale to offering counsel, not as a backseat director, but as a teammate who needed to promote the total effort. “A discussion took place,” recalled James Mason, “when we were rehearsing a conversation in the bowels of the ‘Nautilus,’ one in which Nemo speaks bitterly of events which turned him into such a weirdo. At one moment I seemed to Peter to be pressing too hard, tending to scream before I had generated sufficient emotion internally to justify it. He seemed to be deeply hurt and muttered, ‘You’re not going to do it like that, are you?’ Punctured, I made a supreme effort t
o render the scene in such a way that it would not cause him any further distress.”

  An inveterate practical joker, Lorre grew feistier with age, pulling incredibly elaborate, sometimes bizarre practical jokes. At the Roundhill Hotel in Montego Bay, he met an officious manager who callously berated the black employees in front of the Disney group, including Douglas, Goff, Lorre, and cinematographer Franz Planer, who had worked with the actor on The Face behind the Mask (1941) and The Chase (1946). The major-domo also scheduled the company’s free time without their permission. Each evening, after cast and crew knocked off work, he importuned them to change clothes, go out to one of the cabanas on the beach, and take a swim. “Peter defied him,” said Goff. “He just ran out of his room, down across the lawn and jumped into the water and came back and went to his room.”

  Lorre arranged a “semi-public taking-the-wind-out-of-the-sails,” related Goff, “and caught him up in a very hilarious practical joke. This seemed to be something that Peter really enjoyed when he met a pompous ass or insufferable bore. It never was really cruel, but so sophisticated that the guy himself didn’t know it happened to him.” A nightclub on 1 Downing Street, a two-way mirror, and two exotic dancers—identical twins—provided the setting. Douglas and Lorre arranged for the hotel manager to catch a private performance by one of the dancers. The two pranksters also planned for members of the Disney cast and crew to observe the show through a two-way mirror. “The plan was to get the guy loaded,” said Goff. “The women, who had rehearsed all the action and synchronized their movements, would come in and do everything in unison. It was really befuddling to him because he thought he was seeing double. Then all of a sudden one of them would disappear and there would only be one. The next couple of days there was a great deal of laughter. Everyone congratulated Peter, who said, ‘I didn’t do anything, except suggest it and pay the bill.’”

  Bridging two apparently irreconcilable trends in his film career, 20,000 Leagues under the Sea enjoyed enormous popular acclaim and critical praise and at the same time asked something new of Lorre in a substantive role. Some critics, accustomed to seeing the “merchant of menace” in a more sinister capacity, felt he had been miscast as Conseil, but Lorre did not listen. “Peter wasn’t sure it was going to bring him a lot more friends in the viewers because he was a minor hero,” said Goff. “But he was not unhappy with what he was doing in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.” He told Reddy that his fan mail had always been friendly and added, “I’ve been luckier than a lot of movie villains in that my fans have never confused me with the parts I play.”

  In a letter to Marcus on March 22, Annemarie wrote that the diving-suit work was hot and strenuous, “a giant agitation [but] he hasn’t had so much fun in a film in a long time.” Lorre returned from location work “burnt brown” and fired with tales of the lush and beckoning countryside. “Peter thinks one can easily become a beachcomber there, for a period of time,” she said, “but between us I believe that Peter can do that almost anywhere.”

  Invigorated by Hollywood’s renewed interest, Lorre took stock of his life. “The people here now know that he is healthy and are happy with him and his work,” Annemarie continued, “which expresses itself by a large concrete interest in all fields. What kind of feeling it is to know that they need him. It makes him proud and thankful and crazier for work than previously.” The tropical sea breezes put him on a health kick: beer, cheese and his beloved goulash were out. The sunshine also brought out the writer in Lorre. He bought a new typewriter, which, said Annemarie, “fascinates Peter so … that one has justified hopes he really will begin to write. He has a working room and hundreds of pencils and a pencil sharpener which hangs on the wall and many cartons and little machines for stapling together old and new papers. It is an empire in itself, his and he likes it so. There he can be alone when he wants.”

  During the making of 20,000 Leagues under the Sea, Lorre enthusiastically confided to Fleischer that he was working on a murder-comedy that he wanted to produce. Most likely, this was The Survivor, a screenplay by fellow émigré and friend Hans Wilhelm—based on an original story by Peter Lorre and Hans Wilhelm—about a professional pallbearer who ingratiates himself with grieving and vulnerable widows. A sucker for a pretty face, he nearly cons himself out of a handsome legacy when he pushes a pyramid scheme that plays on the time difference between Rome and New York. When the scam backfires, he attempts to murder his patroness. He botches the job and retreats, under the guise of amnesia, to a sanatorium, where, with the happy grin of an accomplished moron, he hatches a plot to win his freedom and enjoy the fruits of his labor.

  It is natural to suppose that Lorre also expected to star in this comedy vehicle, which he planned to shoot in Italy with a foreign cast. Wilhelm had captured his collaborator on paper, freeze-framing a mocking and mischievous wit, full of wry charm. It was a role after Lorre’s own taste, and likely one of his own design.

  From his office sanctuary, he fed the dream of discovering the elusive pivotal role. “There are some really good things going on,” Annemarie confided to Marcus. “What do you think of Pancho Villa? Certainly that cannot be played by such a boyish face.” Lorre declined to talk about his plans, claiming that he was superstitious, but news of work abounded—a four-picture directorial deal with Disney; an Italian production with Roberto Rossellini and Ingrid Bergman, set for the fall of 1954; and a role in the upcoming We’re No Angels (1955) with Humphrey Bogart. That spring, Lorre also announced plans to reassemble the crew of Der Verlorene—including Egon Jameson and Axel Eggebrecht—for an independent German-American collaborative film venture, which would benefit from the “mutual exchange of fertile ideas on both sides.” But nothing materialized. In a letter to the Hamburger Anzeiger published March 10, 1954, under the heading, “Ist Peter Lorre vergessen?” (“Is Peter Lorre Forgotten?”) the actor lamented that

  every day I am questioned if I would like to make somewhere some kind of movie: the most horrible stories are among these, unfilmable murder stories—but they ask me if I would film them. I receive good and solid offers, occasionally from established movie societies in England, Italy, Egypt, and even—don’t laugh—Japan. Not to say offers from U.S. firms. Swedish producers want me to direct and suggestions come from South America: if I were to accept them all I would be working until 1960. But among all the letters there isn’t one from Germany. No offer. No inquiry. Would you return to a land that you love, whose language you speak, in which you grew up—with-out being called?

  Little wonder that Lorre retreated to his private domain. Within the walls of his workroom, he could put his life in order and keep the world outside at bay. Hollywood did not storm his office stronghold. His regenerative hiatus lasted more than a year, during which he filled his time with television work.

  On October 21, 1954, Lorre appeared on CBS’s popular anthology series Climax! in “Casino Royale.” In the first adaptation of a James Bond spy tale, based on Ian Fleming’s novel, Lorre was cast as Soviet agent “Le Chiffre.” Reluctant to work in live television, Barry Nelson expressed no interest in playing an American version of the British agent until he learned he would be costarring with one of his favorite actors. Pallid by contemporary standards, “007” appeared more so to Nelson, who came out of a story conference feeling the part was poorly written and rather dull. Much to his surprise, Lorre “went to bat” for the young actor and suggested the part be “repaired.” Improving the role, however, did not mitigate the pressures of shooting live. When the director discovered that the show ran three minutes overtime, he ordered lines trimmed rather than cut a scene, setting off Nelson’s “body tic.” Offscreen, Lorre teased the actor, “Barry, stand still so I can kill you.”

  The Climax! episode is famous for a scene described by screenwriter Charles Bennett, who coscripted the teleplay, in which “Peter expired as the camera sent the show across the nation live. But then, the director failed to push the right button, and instead of this scene jumping to the next,
the cameras remained on ‘dead’ Peter. Rightfully concluding that his job was done, he rose and quietly departed to his dressing room, smiling whimsically, to the utter bewilderment of possibly thirty million viewers.” As Bennett watched the show, he “was appalled, so was Peter when he learned what had happened.”

  Believed lost, an incomplete telerecording of the show surfaced in the 1980s. The closing minute materialized some years later. In the commercially available video, one sees Lorre take a bullet, stumble, wheeze, and then break character as he furtively steals to the next set, where a second bullet dispatches him.

  Lorre kicked off 1955 as Dr. Einstein in The Best of Broadway’s January 5 broadcast of “Arsenic and Old Lace,” costarring Helen Hayes and Boris Karloff and adapted by Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse, who had produced the original stage play. Nicknamed “the morticians” by Hayes, the long-faced duo gravely suggested daily changes during the script readings. In one of the biggest comedy hits of the year, Karloff and Lorre, wrote Variety, “made the perfect murderous pair, relishing every line and turning them out beautifully.”