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This is developing into a very bad habit
It came to my attention tonight that we have now lived for fifty years in a world without Peter Lorre in it.
I find this almost incomprehensible, so here are some arguments against the irrefutable passage of time.
It is a disservice to Lorre to say that he was at his best when he was not playing horror, because some of his horrors are the best there are on film. If you have not seen M (1931) or Mad Love (1935), check out of this post right now and see what Netflix, YouTube, and the shelves of your local library will get you. The definitive moment of Hans Beckert is not the whistling or the trial, but the faces he makes in front of the mirror at home, trying on monstrosity. No matter how crazily Dr. Gogol's voice rises, his eyes never lose their mask-like distance, staring into a private heaven-hell. He blurs around the edges of the expressionist early noir Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) like an urban legend, materializing voice-first as if stealing into reality. Rewind a little and you can see him with phonetic English in the first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), a chain-smoking, impish anarchist with the eerie nonchalance of a child. If you see The Face Behind the Mask (1941) or The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) before I do, I'll try not to feel undue jealousy.
Three B-pictures gave Lorre the chance to stretch outside of his usual gallery of spooked and charming monsters: a mild-mannered novelist in The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), a louche artist in The Verdict (1946), and a ne'er-do-well, fatalistic, honest-to-God romantic lead in Three Strangers (1946). I was about to warn that none of them exist on real DVD—I taped them off TCM in the days of cable and videocassettes—when to my temptation I discovered that I can get them from the Warner Archive. You might want to do that, especially if you like Sydney Greenstreet. While we're on that subject, if you haven't seen The Maltese Falcon (1941) or Casablanca (1942), look, is there an all-night cinema near you?
In the 1929 Volksbühne am Bülowplatz production of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening (Frühlings Erwachen, 1891), Lorre played opposite Lotte Lenya. She's Ilse, a carefree dropout Bohemian; he's the anxious student Moritz, immer noch derselbe Angstmeier even after his death. Time machine, time machine, time machine.
One of my favorite scenes of Lorre's belongs to a movie I've never seen the rest of, because something like one print exists and it's in Germany: Was Frauen träumen (1933), where he's a bouncy little detective with a misplaced confidence in his mustache, trying to impress a beautiful thief with his rendition of "Ja, die Polizei" and getting his pockets picked for his troubles. I send it to people for their birthdays.
And in 1941 (although it wasn't released until 1944, because they had to wait for the play to finish its run on Broadway) he played the part in which I saw him for the first time and fell in love. Quoting my cousins and B. in 2006, when I showed them Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace: when the most sensible character onscreen is played by Peter Lorre, everybody's in trouble.
We're working from a limited definition of "sensible," admittedly: a drunken plastic surgeon with all the moral fiber of a milkshake, hopelessly in thrall to a man he accidentally gave Boris Karloff's face to, Dr. Einstein is a person to trust with your liquor cabinet only if you're tired of it and your life only if Johnny's not around. Aside from Elaine, however—whom the film might as well have kept offscreen as a MacGuffin—he's about the only person in the Brewster household with anything resembling a grasp on the normal workings of the world, which makes him in some appalling and delightful way the closest thing the film has to a voice of reason. To watch him frantically trying to persuade Mortimer to leave the house before his homicidal brother gets back is a simultaneous exercise in the uncrackable composure of Cary Grant and all the ways Peter Lorre can find to lose his, clasping his hands, clutching his hair, jettisoning English for a string of incredulous German: "Tell me, don't those plays you see all the time teach you anything?" He's so agitated and earnest that for years I felt betrayed when moments later he's assisting in the trussing-up of Mortimer, the theater critic having in fact failed to learn anything from even the dumbest murder mystery—Lorre, you should have been stronger than that! Dr. Einstein isn't, of course. Folding like a damp rag is one of his defining traits; Raymond Massey's Jonathan relies on and relishes it. It's a little too late to dissolve our partnership. Lorre went through several changes of weight over the course of his life and for Arsenic and Old Lace he's in unusually elfin mode, his slight frame and delicate face—wincing, flickering, always those huge, beseeching eyes—the perfect visual foil for Massey's craggy, cadaverous six foot several. He's younger than the character as written, too, which creates a curiously adolescent effect, one of those small, self-protective wrasses tagging along after the scariest boy in school. (Lorre was born in 1904, but Dr. Einstein got his degree from Heidelberg in 1919. Maybe he was precocious.) He's not too scared to snicker his head off when he discovers his partner's murder record challenged by the unlikeliest of contenders, though, and the audience is right there with him. He's got our sympathy and it pays off. That final little nervous twitch of a smile. He gets a happier ending than the cab driver.
(Incidentally, I never knew Arsenic and Old Lace was a Halloween movie until I saw it on DVD. My childhood copy was taped off the television and missing the first five minutes; it picked up with Aunt Abby and the Reverend Harper in the parlor, skipping the pumpkins-and-cauldrons credits and the invented scenes with the baseball game and the marriage license. I don't think it suffered.![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and I made a point of watching it for Halloween this year anyway.)
I don't have time for more. We're catching a train to New York City tomorrow morning at eight, meaning I have to be awake by six at the latest; I need to shower and stop talking about actors who've been dead since my mother was in college. Just for now.
Well—bon voyage.
I find this almost incomprehensible, so here are some arguments against the irrefutable passage of time.
It is a disservice to Lorre to say that he was at his best when he was not playing horror, because some of his horrors are the best there are on film. If you have not seen M (1931) or Mad Love (1935), check out of this post right now and see what Netflix, YouTube, and the shelves of your local library will get you. The definitive moment of Hans Beckert is not the whistling or the trial, but the faces he makes in front of the mirror at home, trying on monstrosity. No matter how crazily Dr. Gogol's voice rises, his eyes never lose their mask-like distance, staring into a private heaven-hell. He blurs around the edges of the expressionist early noir Stranger on the Third Floor (1940) like an urban legend, materializing voice-first as if stealing into reality. Rewind a little and you can see him with phonetic English in the first version of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), a chain-smoking, impish anarchist with the eerie nonchalance of a child. If you see The Face Behind the Mask (1941) or The Beast with Five Fingers (1946) before I do, I'll try not to feel undue jealousy.
Three B-pictures gave Lorre the chance to stretch outside of his usual gallery of spooked and charming monsters: a mild-mannered novelist in The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), a louche artist in The Verdict (1946), and a ne'er-do-well, fatalistic, honest-to-God romantic lead in Three Strangers (1946). I was about to warn that none of them exist on real DVD—I taped them off TCM in the days of cable and videocassettes—when to my temptation I discovered that I can get them from the Warner Archive. You might want to do that, especially if you like Sydney Greenstreet. While we're on that subject, if you haven't seen The Maltese Falcon (1941) or Casablanca (1942), look, is there an all-night cinema near you?
In the 1929 Volksbühne am Bülowplatz production of Frank Wedekind's Spring Awakening (Frühlings Erwachen, 1891), Lorre played opposite Lotte Lenya. She's Ilse, a carefree dropout Bohemian; he's the anxious student Moritz, immer noch derselbe Angstmeier even after his death. Time machine, time machine, time machine.
One of my favorite scenes of Lorre's belongs to a movie I've never seen the rest of, because something like one print exists and it's in Germany: Was Frauen träumen (1933), where he's a bouncy little detective with a misplaced confidence in his mustache, trying to impress a beautiful thief with his rendition of "Ja, die Polizei" and getting his pockets picked for his troubles. I send it to people for their birthdays.
And in 1941 (although it wasn't released until 1944, because they had to wait for the play to finish its run on Broadway) he played the part in which I saw him for the first time and fell in love. Quoting my cousins and B. in 2006, when I showed them Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace: when the most sensible character onscreen is played by Peter Lorre, everybody's in trouble.
We're working from a limited definition of "sensible," admittedly: a drunken plastic surgeon with all the moral fiber of a milkshake, hopelessly in thrall to a man he accidentally gave Boris Karloff's face to, Dr. Einstein is a person to trust with your liquor cabinet only if you're tired of it and your life only if Johnny's not around. Aside from Elaine, however—whom the film might as well have kept offscreen as a MacGuffin—he's about the only person in the Brewster household with anything resembling a grasp on the normal workings of the world, which makes him in some appalling and delightful way the closest thing the film has to a voice of reason. To watch him frantically trying to persuade Mortimer to leave the house before his homicidal brother gets back is a simultaneous exercise in the uncrackable composure of Cary Grant and all the ways Peter Lorre can find to lose his, clasping his hands, clutching his hair, jettisoning English for a string of incredulous German: "Tell me, don't those plays you see all the time teach you anything?" He's so agitated and earnest that for years I felt betrayed when moments later he's assisting in the trussing-up of Mortimer, the theater critic having in fact failed to learn anything from even the dumbest murder mystery—Lorre, you should have been stronger than that! Dr. Einstein isn't, of course. Folding like a damp rag is one of his defining traits; Raymond Massey's Jonathan relies on and relishes it. It's a little too late to dissolve our partnership. Lorre went through several changes of weight over the course of his life and for Arsenic and Old Lace he's in unusually elfin mode, his slight frame and delicate face—wincing, flickering, always those huge, beseeching eyes—the perfect visual foil for Massey's craggy, cadaverous six foot several. He's younger than the character as written, too, which creates a curiously adolescent effect, one of those small, self-protective wrasses tagging along after the scariest boy in school. (Lorre was born in 1904, but Dr. Einstein got his degree from Heidelberg in 1919. Maybe he was precocious.) He's not too scared to snicker his head off when he discovers his partner's murder record challenged by the unlikeliest of contenders, though, and the audience is right there with him. He's got our sympathy and it pays off. That final little nervous twitch of a smile. He gets a happier ending than the cab driver.
(Incidentally, I never knew Arsenic and Old Lace was a Halloween movie until I saw it on DVD. My childhood copy was taped off the television and missing the first five minutes; it picked up with Aunt Abby and the Reverend Harper in the parlor, skipping the pumpkins-and-cauldrons credits and the invented scenes with the baseball game and the marriage license. I don't think it suffered.
derspatchel and I made a point of watching it for Halloween this year anyway.)I don't have time for more. We're catching a train to New York City tomorrow morning at eight, meaning I have to be awake by six at the latest; I need to shower and stop talking about actors who've been dead since my mother was in college. Just for now.
Well—bon voyage.
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*top hat* *cane*
Peter Lorre PETER LORRE
Runs a nightclub well downtown
Peter Lorre Peter Lorre
Always wears an evil frown
Don't
spit on his shoes
Or
mess up his hair
Or he will shoot you dead
And go back upstairs.
Thank you for this. I was just thinking of Lorre this afternoon, and now I know why.
I have a graymarket DVD of The Face Behind The Mask that I'd like to lend you sometime. It's wildly uneven but well worth watching, if you like gangster movies, narratives about disfigured people, sweet love stories, or gallows humor. That's what I mean by uneven.
You watched Mad Love after all! Last time we talked about Lorre I don't think you had seen it. My thing for mad scientists AND my thing for poetry-quoting murderers, with bonus white cockatoo!
The film version of Arsenic and Old Lace... I can't stand Cary Grant in that one, but Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha make it watchable for me, and Peter Lorre makes it genius.
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*top hat* *cane*
You will note I posted that song the next day! You reminded me.
It's wildly uneven but well worth watching, if you like gangster movies, narratives about disfigured people, sweet love stories, or gallows humor. That's what I mean by uneven.
That sounds like a B-picture all right. My father loved The Beast with Five Fingers and Florey co-directed one of my favorite short films; I'd like to give it a try. It is on YouTube, but broken into chunks and the quality looks a little soft and fuzzy (good things in a duckling, bad in a print).
You watched Mad Love after all! Last time we talked about Lorre I don't think you had seen it.
I hadn't! It was on YouTube one night. It's a great role for Lorre, always trembling on the edge between sympathetically yearning and disturbingly. I am amazed at how many variants exist on the theme of the disembodied, criminal hand. Gilmore & Roberts have one that gets stuck in my head: "The Stealing Arm." A ticket to the grave and an arm that won't stop stealing.
I can't stand Cary Grant in that one, but Aunt Abby and Aunt Martha make it watchable for me, and Peter Lorre makes it genius.
I'm pretty sure I have read that Grant never liked his performance in the film, feeling he'd fallen back too much on mugging. I'm very fond of Raymond Massey even if he isn't Boris Karloff, and Mr. Witherspoon may have been my introduction to Edward Everett Horton. And John Alexander's Teddy. He was one of the originals, too, and he's great. "CHAAAAAAAAAARGE!"
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NB: this is not just a "We should do this sometime" vague suggestion, this is something that I really want to make happen. I'll text you about it.
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E-mail is better than text. My phone is an archaic and limited piece of technology, which suits me just fine.
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Speaking of stage productions, those photos of Lorre and Lotte Lenya are killing me. Time machine, indeed!
Enjoy New York!
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I don't remember why they couldn't get him for the film. He may still have been playing Jonathan onstage.
Speaking of stage productions, those photos of Lorre and Lotte Lenya are killing me. Time machine, indeed!
Would some hand-cranked home movies be too much to ask?
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Nine
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It was mostly an excellent trip!
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That it was filmed in 1941? Or some other fact?
it is a house favorite.
I grew up on it. I've still never seen the play, although I've read it.
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See now, I just immediately wanted to disagree with this assertion. I think Peter Lorre is inherent: having been, he cannot now unbe. He's everywhere, he's invested.
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.
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I like your view.
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Was Frauen träumen
(Peter Lorre is definitely in it despite that site not including him in their description.)
I've found other Peter Lorre movies there, or on archive.org, or even on YouTube - sometimes you just can't search with "Peter Lorre" as your keywords, oddly enough.
Anyway: Eeee! Another fan! :)
Re: Was Frauen träumen
In point of fact, I have still not seen it, and I greatly appreciate the link! Speaking of other movies with Peter Lorre which I know to exist but have not yet tracked down for myself, I take it you've seen that Kino Lorber recently brought out a Blu-Ray of F.P.1 antwortet nicht (1932)?
Anyway: Eeee! Another fan!
Likewise! Thank you for commenting, even ages late. Since some of the links in the body of this post no longer function, I should note that I did eventually write in a semi-formal capacity about The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), Three Strangers (1946), and The Verdict (1946).
Re: Was Frauen träumen
I do! I have it but haven’t watched it in full yet. I skipped through the film to make sure it worked and just focused on Peter, ha.
I have happily tracked down all his movies from Der Verlorene back - about 63 of them? - though there are two I just cannot find:
The silent film Die verschwundene Frau (The Missing Wife) (and he was originally uncredited), and then
Schuß im Morgengrauen (A Shot at Dawn).
I do have a few of his post-1951 movies as well, but his health and discomfort continue to plummet so that it becomes outright painful (for me) to watch, knowing he was unhappy.
Anyway, I owe my discoveries to Stephen D. Youngkin and his excellent biography and earlier work on compiling Lorre’s films. And radio appearances. And television! Still trying to gather all of those that I can find; Lorre was marvelously prolific.
His Tell-Tale Heart on radio is chilling to this day.
Before this reply turns into an actual blog post itself, I will travel to your links. :)