The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre: The Man, The Actor
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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. For a larger image, click on the thumbnail. A new
window will open.
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.
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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).
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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.
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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.
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On a winter holiday in the Black Forest of southwestern
Germany, December, 1929. Peter proposed to Celia at Christmas that year.
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Peter and Celia motor-boating on der Wannsee, a popular
area for swimming and boating in the southwestern Berlin borough of
Steglitz-Zehlendorf. 1932.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
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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.
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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.
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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.
The Films of Peter Lorre (1982), also by
Youngkin, is out of print, but copies may be purchased through Amazon
and Barnes & Noble below. Interested in Lorre's radio and television
performances? Check out Radio Showcase and Movies Unlimited. Netflix has
Lorre movies for rent.
University Press of Kentucky
Powell's Books
Overstock.com
Barnes & Noble Booksellers
US fans: Amazon.com
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Canadian fans: Amazon.ca
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UK fans: Amazon.uk
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US fans: Amazon.com
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The Films of Peter Lorre
Barnes & Noble Bookstores
Radio Showcase
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US fans: Amazon Gift Certificate
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Canadian fans: Amazon Gift Certificate
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Movies Unlimited
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