'The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre' by Stephen D. Youngkin
 
 
       



The Lost One:
A Life of
Peter Lorre


Home



Table
of
Contents



Excerpt:
Chapter 3



Peter Lorre's
Credits
(A Sample)



Critics Are
Saying . . .



Interview
With
The Author



What's New!


World/Inferno
Friendship
Society




Peter Lorre:
The Man,
The Actor


Biographical
Sketch



Photo Album



Poster Art



FAQ



DVD — VHS



Radio Programs


 



In The Lost One, I separated the person of Peter Lorre from his screen persona. Continuing that theme for this website, I suggested including photos (most of which belonged to Lorre himself) that pictured a happy, healthy man at odds with his sinister image as a movie menace.

There are many images here that would have made the biography but for space limitations and/or poor resolution. Nonetheless, these shots (and more to come) show rather than tell his many-sided story behind the camera.



Except where noted, all photos are from the collection of Stephen Youngkin.


Andrew Lorre

Andrew “Bundy” Lorre looked a great deal like his famous brother. Often told that he also talked just like Peter Lorre, he would reply, “Yes, but he is getting paid for it.” Circa 1931.

Peter and Francis

Peter Lorre and brother Francis Lorant, who later emigrated to Australia, lunching in Berlin, 1932. Lorre’s head is shaved for his role as a humpbacked drug dealer in Der weisse Dämon (The White Demon).

Celia Lovsky

Celia Lovsky, circa 1925. Lovsky was already well established on the Vienna and Berlin stages when Lorre met her in 1929. He was mesmerized by her beauty, she by his talent.

Celia Lovsky

Celia Lovsky, circa 1927. Peter Lorre told friends he didn’t know how he attracted such beautiful women. Some female admirers found his menacing and mysterious screen image appealing. His wives, however, shared something else in common – an unqualified belief in his talent.

Peter and Celia

On a winter holiday in the Black Forest of southwestern Germany, December, 1929. Peter proposed to Celia at Christmas that year.

Peter and Celia

Peter and Celia motor-boating on der Wannsee, a popular area for swimming and boating in the southwestern Berlin borough of Steglitz-Zehlendorf. Taken in 1932.

Celia Lovsky

After Peter and Celia divorced, she was seldom without one or more cats. When I knew her, she had four felines, all tabbies and all very spoiled. Here she is at a petting zoo with a tiger cub in her lap. Berlin, circa 1932.

Lorre and Falkenberg

Peter Lorre and Paul Falkenberg in a Paris editing room, 1933. Falkenberg, who edited M (1931), became a good friend of Lorre’s, even lending him money to take a cure for his drug addiction.

Lenya and Lorre

Peter Lorre, as the angelically simple “Moritz Steifel” in Frank Wedekind’s Frühlings Erwachen (Spring’s Awakening), resists the sexual overtures of the nymphomanical Ilse (Lotte Lenja), Volksbühne, Theater am Bülowplatz, Berlin, October 1929. Taken by photographer Lotte Jacobi.

Gerron and Lorre

Kurt Gerron plays the shady profiteer “Camillioni” to Peter Lorre as the corrupt Vienna press czar “Barkassy” in Karl Kraus’ Die Unüberwindlichen (The Unconquerable, October 1929). At the Volksbühne, Theater am Bülowplatz, Berlin.

Wallburg and Lorre

Otto Wallburg and Peter Lorre (as “Bach”, editor of The People’s Voice) in Carl Sternheim’s comedy Der Kandidat (The Candidate), Deutsches Kammerspiele, Berlin, January 1930. Said theater critic Fritz Engel in the Berliner Tageblatt: “He has a personal enchantment, not one of beauty; one is strongly moved and cannot pull himself away from Lorre.”

Rühmann, Körbe and Lorre

Heinz Rühmann and Hilde Körbe opposite Peter Lorre, as “Wasja”, a fanatical member of the League of Communist Youth, in Valentine Katayev’s Die Quadratur des Kreises (Squaring the Circle). The satire, set against Russia’s housing shortage, premiered at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm, Berlin, in December 1930.

Lorre, Neher, Kampers

Whether distancing himself from a character or absorbing himself in a role, Lorre labeled himself a “face-maker.” As Vincent Price said, “It was his definition of acting.” Lorre first played the funnyman (“Pipi the Clown”) in Der Dompteur (The Lion Tamer) on the stage of Berlin’s Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in March 1931, with Carola Neher and Fritz Kampers.

Lorre and Fürstenberg

Director Tay Garnett felt that Lorre called himself a “face-maker” because he wanted no one to know how seriously he took his art. Once again, as “the Pawnbroker” in Georg Kaiser’s Nebeneinander (Side by Side, September 1931), his facial expressions gave, according to one reviewer, “good insight into one driven by demons.” With Ilse Fürstenberg.




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The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre (2005) by Stephen Youngkin – now in its third printing and winner of the Rondo Award for "Best Book of 2005" – is available in bookstores everywhere, as well as these on-line merchants.