The Lost One

by Stephen D. Youngkin

  He said that they would make underground forays into Germany and bring out people who had brilliant minds—scientists and intellectuals. (I got a very strong impression that Peter fancied himself an intellectual.) He said that they didn’t bring out loved ones. One of the last times he went in, which was about the twelfth time, they were ambushed. They had been betrayed, he said, and he had gotten away; but he had lost his nerve and never went back again. He also realized that because his face was so well-known, it would be a danger to everyone else.

  In another version of an old story, Lorre told how, after exiting Berlin, he had received a wire from Goebbels offering him honorary Aryan status in exchange for his promise to return and make propaganda pictures.

  Padding his scant political profile, he also loved to tell of the eight Nazi saboteurs landed by German submarines off Florida and Long Island on the night of June 12, 1942, and apprehended by the FBI just fourteen days later. Ordered to destroy hydroelectric and aluminum plants, rail lines, reservoirs, and locks on the Ohio River, they carried explosives and incendiaries, fuses, timing devices, forged documents, $174,000 in American currency, and the names and addresses of their contacts in the United States written on a handkerchief in an ink that only ammonia fumes would expose. Lorre claimed, with a surprisingly straight face, that his name ranked third on their list of one hundred enemies of the Reich to be polished off.

  “I think he embroidered his past for the sake of being an interesting and amusing companion,” said Sanford. “He felt that he was not being used properly and wanted everyone to know that there was more to him than what was on the screen.” The “tubby little Buddha” who often retreated behind his boogeyman image became attractive to her “because of what was inside him: I never voiced it, but he must have sensed it or seen it on my face; when I realized that he had a very civilized mind and he was actually a very charming companion, I thought, ‘Oh, Peter, how could you have done this. You’re not like that at all.’ And I think he must have sensed that. He felt he could trust me. And that’s why he wanted to show me yes, I was right, he wasn’t like that.”

  At the same time, however, he also wanted her to know he wasn’t as harmless as he appeared. Sanford recalls that, after they had wrapped up production on Diamond Fever,

  He said, “I’ve been a perfect gentleman with you, haven’t I?”

  I said, “Yes, you have been.”

  “I just want you to know if things were different, I wouldn’t have been.” He said it with such a sweet way, I took it as a compliment.

  After he returned to Hollywood, he followed up what she described as a “personal relationship without being intimate” with telephone calls until shortly before his death.

  Who and what did Lorre want to be? “Peter wanted to be thought of as a ‘heavy’ actor,” said Ludwig Veigel. “He wanted his portrayals to be the real thing—reality, juicy. He wanted people to know what life is, not the pretty things, but the sad things.” Interviewed by film historian Joel Greenberg during the making of Comedy of Terrors, Lorre eagerly brought the conversation around to Brecht’s epic theater. “He thought of himself as an intellectual and a serious actor,” said friend James Powers, who Lorre confessed to Celia came closest to replacing Brecht as his intellectual touchstone. “But he couldn’t make up his mind whether to be a serious artist or a popular guy. He wasn’t taking it [his career] seriously himself. He never made the choice. As he grew older, his choice of options diminished.”

  “When I met Peter,” said Kirk Douglas, “I think he felt it was all over and he was just marking time making a living … that he had not done as much with his talents as he could have, but then one has to make a living.”

  Television director Buzz Kulik detected a “goodly amount of cynicism” in Lorre’s attitude toward the film business. He talked little about current projects and much more about his early days in Germany and America. He now took the roles as they came, with little concern about typecasting or quality. Blandine Ebinger remembered that his “strange, tired, sensual-mysterious” eyes looked at you as if they wanted to say: “Oh, go. I’ve known you for a long time. You tell me nothing new. You bore me.”

  At what point had his career derailed? “I think he felt had Hitler not happened and had he gone on as Bertolt Brecht’s actor,” said Sanford, “he would have been himself and been appreciated for what he really was. I don’t think he ever found himself again after that.” And who would he have become? Fearing the illusion earned greater acceptance than the reality, the actor play-acted a game of wish-fulfillment to the end. Lorre toyed and wisecracked, his gentle amiability shining through a cloud of remorse. After swinging a television deal for Lorre, Arthur Kennard handed him the contract. “I don’t sign contracts,” Lorre dryly intoned. “I make the faces, you make the deals.” He then showed Kennard how to forge his signature, which the agent polished to perfection. Few saw through the guise, the shield that warded off the melancholy and softened the blow. Whatever was left of the good soldier Švejk drew on depleted reserves.

  “I have to return to latrine duty,” he told his brother Andrew after one of his last visits. Reconciling himself to the commercial reality of Hollywood meant giving in to public expectations. To Ebinger, he complained that filmmakers could come up with nothing new for him.

  “It’s always the same. A murderer. A criminal.”

  “But you can choose,” she challenged.

  “No, Blandine,” said Lorre. “I cannot choose. I am stamped.”

  Too weary to squeeze through the bars, the actor walked through his last roles. “I think toward the end there still was an anger in him and also of course a loss of self-esteem and self-worth,” summed up Sanford, “and sadness at his inability to get through. I got a feeling of, ‘I’m enjoying what there is, but isn’t it a shame that I wasn’t allowed to do more.’”

  “There was a sadness about him that was inescapable,” said Hal Kanter. “If not for his sense of humor, Peter would have destroyed himself much earlier.” Clearly, it smoothed out the wrinkles in a crumpled life. However, he did not think it funny when someone tried to steal what little he had left—his name. The last thing Lorre needed—another impersonator—stepped into his life in 1962. Allegedly born Apri1 1, 1934, in Karlsruhe, Germany, to an unmarried factory worker, Eugene Weingand had been adopted by foster parents. In 1954 he immigrated to New York and four years later made his way to southern California, where he worked as a real estate salesman and attended the Loretta Young Acting School, performing in small theaters on the side. Weingand claimed that people thought he looked like the famous movie villain and even began calling him “Peter Lorie.” He adopted the name, introducing himself as “Peter Lorie” or “Peter Lorie, Jr.” Most of the time, Weingand let those he met assume the rest.

  In July 1963 he applied for a change of name to Peter Lorie, citing two reasons: “Because everybody calls me Peter Lorie … [and] … Because my name is too hard to pronounce.” The real Peter Lorre objected in the press and in the courtroom. “I am without a question of a doubt the most imitated man in night clubs,” stated the actor. “I have never sued anybody who imitated me. But it’s a different story to use my name…. My special relationship to an audience is a deep satisfaction to me…. When I come on a screen in a theater there is a silence. That means there is a contact. My name to me is a reward. It means to me everything that encompasses me in relationship to others.”

  Robert Shutan took Weingand’s deposition on September 10. He was determined to learn all he could about the man who wanted to carry the name “Peter Lorie.”

  Q Have you any idea, any idea at all, as to who your father was?

  A I don’t know …

  Q In other words, you actually have no idea who your father was, therefore could not possibly know whether that person was alive or dead; is that a fair statement?

  A Yes …

  Q Are you in any way related to Peter Lorre, the actor?

  A I don’t know. I don
’t think so.

  Q Do you have any reason to believe that you are?

  A No reason was given to me yet to believe so.

  Q Do you have any reason whatsoever of any kind to believe that in any way you are related to Mr. Peter Lorre, the actor?

  A I don’t have no reason now, no….

  Q May I ask you to explain that answer, when you say you don’t have any reason now; what do you mean by now?

  A At this particular moment I don’t have any reason to believe that I’m related to him.

  Q Have you ever in the past had any reason to believe that you’re related to him?

  A No, I don’t think so.

  Q Do you expect in the future to have any reason to believe that you are related to him?

  A No.

  Q Was there any particular reason for you to qualify your answer then and say you don’t have any reason now?

  A I don’t believe that I’m related to Peter Lorre, the actor. Would that clear it up?

  Q Let me ask the questions. In addition to your not having any reason, in addition to your telling me that you don’t believe that you’re related to Peter Lorre, I would like you to answer the question: do you have any reason of any kind whatsoever to believe that you might possibly be related to Peter Lorre, the actor?

  A I have no reason to believe that.

  Shutan’s patience wore thin, but not his sense of humor. Asked why he wanted to introduce himself as Peter Lorie Jr., Weingand replied:

  A Well, I want to have my name changed to Peter Lorie, so I don’t want to have no confusion of any kind that people might take me for a 65 year old man, so I figure well, I’ll tell them I’m Junior. What’s wrong with that?

  Q I see, you figure that the best way to avoid confusion so that nobody will think that you’re related to Peter Lorre, or are Peter Lorre, is to call yourself Peter Lorie, Jr.?

  A Perhaps.

  Q Did it occur to you that there might be less confusion if you introduced yourself as Eugene Weingand?

  A Perhaps.

  The Superior Court of Los Angeles County considered Weingand’s petition on October 3, 1963. The players in what had the comic overtones—and punch lines—of a television sitcom were Robert Shutan, representing the Objector Peter Lorre; Curtis L. Gemmil, counsel for the Petitioner Eugene Weingand; Superior Court Judge Burnett Wolfson; Eugene Weingand; and Peter Lorre.

  Judge Wolfson did not find Weingand’s reasons for the petition for a change of name convincing:

  Q Anyone ever call you Bob Hope? A Not yet. Q Jack Benny? A No.

  Q Danny Thomas? A No.

  Q George Jessel? A No….

  Q The only reason you want your name changed is because people call you Peter Lorie?

  A That’s one of them, yes.

  Q What’s the other reason?

  A Because my name is too hard to pronounce.

  Q What’s hard to pronounce about Eugene Weingand?

  A (No response.)

  Even Lorre got in on the act:

  Q COURT: Be seated, please and state your name.

  A My name is Peter Lorre. I hope you believe me….

  Q BY THE COURT: Do you ever do a Jack Paar show?

  A I did, I admit to that.

  Q Johnny Carson Show? Did they only pay you $320?

  A They didn’t pay it to me, but they paid it to somebody.

  Weingand privately admitted that his petition for a change of name was only a publicity stunt. On the stand, however, he denied laying plans to launch a career in show business. Acting, he claimed, was just a hobby. Lester Salkow testified that a soundalike in the entertainment field would compromise the “considered box-office value” of his client and create confusion in the minds of producers, exhibitors, and the public. Likewise, Milton Moritz pointed out that AIP had hired Lorre as an “exclusive” and that a bogus imitator would reduce the value of their contract with the actor and materially affect his earning capacity.

  Believing Weingand had sought only “to cash in on the reputation established over a period of years by Peter Lorre,” Judge Wolfson denied the petition and permanently restrained him from using the name “Peter Lorie,” spelled in any fashion, without the written consent of the actor.

  In December 1964, eight months after Lorre’s death, Weingand appealed the judgment of the Superior Court on the grounds that Judge Wolfson had exceeded his jurisdiction “in permanently restraining petitioner from using the name Peter Lorie … unless (he) first obtains in writing the express written consent of Peter Lorre.”2 He won his point and the Second District Court of Appeals modified the judgment, dropping the permanent injunction.

  In his deposition and on the stand, Weingand had denied any familial relationship to Lorre. After the actor’s death, however, he brazenly began passing himself off as Lorre’s son, repeatedly contradicting his earlier testimony. His driver’s license and social security card even bore the name “Peter Lorre, Jr.” Although they never met outside the courtroom, Weingand concocted a reunion with Lorre in London. In interviews, he cited Rosenberg, Lorre’s birthplace, as the actor’s original name. Asked by a prospective client if his father suffered from a liver ailment, Weingand slandered, “No, he has another ailment…. Alcohol.”

  In November 1971, claiming that he was “the surviving son of Peter Lorre, who married my mother in Germany in 1932,” Weingand filed a petition for a change of name to “Peter Lorre, Jr.,” which stated that “no previous application for change of name had been made on behalf of the petitioner.” On December 15, two weeks before the scheduled hearing, Martin Hersch, Weingand’s attorney, suddenly filed for dismissal.

  In the coming years Weingand eventually landed several small roles in television productions and appeared under the name Peter Lorre Jr. in a low-budget horror title, The Cat Creature (1973), in which he leaned heavily on the actor’s familiar screen style, even affecting—and wildly exaggerating—his soft, menacing delivery.

  A decade later found Weingand impersonating Lorre—as “Booberry”—in a popular television advertisement for General Mills’s “Frankenberry,” “Count Chocula” and “Booberry” cereals, until Andrew Lorre stepped in and pulled the plug on his commercial exploitation of the family name. Nonetheless, Weingand continued to play out the charade, turning Lorre’s life upside down and inside out.

  There were no appointments at AIP. Sam Arkoff kept his door open to anyone who wanted to drop by. Lorre appreciated the ready availability of a responsive ear to bend. He typically wandered in with a bit of business or a story idea and softly brought the conversation around to the past, to parts he had wished to play and projects he still hoped to realize, always with the thought of discovering that elusive pivotal role, the one to fan the creative spark and recoup the lost opportunity. Among them was an American remake of M, something he had earlier dismissed as artistically infeasible. “One of the things he was a little sad about,” recalled Arkoff, “was that so few people in this country had really seen the picture.” The studio head listened sympathetically but expressed some reservations about the idea. “Many of our Poe pictures,” he later explained, “would do well in the English-speaking countries, but they would not do too well in some of the non-English-speaking countries…. In the rest of the European market, when one had a horror picture, it was normally adult only because of the concept of horror being adult and it should be kept away from the kids. And M, in that sense, was an adult picture.” Arkoff did not see a large market for a faithful remake of M and cautioned Lorre there probably would have to be some humor in it. The actor nodded in agreement, doubtlessly wondering if he should have stayed in Europe and faced Hitler.

  Just as unlikely was Hy Gardner’s suggestion that Lorre might make a good “younger edition of Winston Churchill.” Lorre told him that he doubted very much if audiences would have accepted him in such a role, “but I would loved to have played Churchill. Many a man had that bright idea, but the trouble is, I can’t speak English.”

  A
IP had other plans for Lorre. In Muscle Beach Party (1964), a picture geared for the teen trade, the actor made a pro bono appearance. Lorre paraded out Dr. Strangdour, the strongest man in the world, as a quiet thug, a gentle heavy. If he felt the minute of self-parody was made at his own expense, he didn’t seem to care.

  Roger Corman had hired Chuck Griffith to adapt Edgar Allan’s Poe’s “The Gold Bug” for Price, Lorre, and Rathbone. The screenwriter turned the tale into a horror-comedy along the lines of A Bucket of Blood (1959) and set it in the South after the Civil War, with Price as a decayed planter who turns his burned-out mansion into a hock shop to maintain appearances. Lorre, a “servant in the house whose uncle was an admiral in the Transylvanian navy,” carries a gold bug around in a snuffbox and lets it out at night to dance the gold bug rag on the keys of a harpsichord. The actor died before Griffith finished his script.

  Happy with Comedy of Terrors, Arkoff had also signed Richard Matheson for another horror-comedy with “all four of them”—Vincent Price, Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone—plus Tallulah Bankhead. The writer tailored Sweethearts and Horrors to Price as a ventriloquist, Karloff as a childhating host of a kiddie show, Rathbone as an aging musical comedy star, and Lorre as an inept magician whose fire act gets out of hand, burning down every theater in which he plays. “They’re all called back to their father’s home, after he dies, for the reading of the will,” said Matheson. “The father manufactured gags, and the whole house is booby-trapped with gags. Then they start getting murdered off, one by one. It would have been a ball, because it was a very funny script.” But the actors began “popping off” at the rate of nearly one per year, leaving only Price.