the PETER LORRE thread

for one thing, I didn't know he was addicted to morphine:

http://selfstyledsiren.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-man-who-knew-too-much-1934-with.html

anyone read that bio?

I did know that his first wife was the Vulcan priestess on that Star Trek episode where Spock is in heat.

I love his utter resignation in Beat The Devil. Also: O'HORROR.

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his performance in "man from the south" scared the crap out of me when i was a youngun

Lorre is one of those few actors where i was probably aware of his persona and how he looked thru gags in cartoons before i ever saw him in a film

^^ same

When I watched The Maltese Falcon for the first time and heard his voice I yelled, "STIMPY! YOU EE-DIOT!"

lol!

The Maltese Falcon is the best movie and Peter Lorre is also the best.

I think the cartoon iconography is probably true for everyone who came of age after his career.

Saw The Face Behind the Mask, a '41 Columbia cheapie, last week. He plays a credulous Hungarian immigrant who's scarred in a hotel fire and becomes a burglary kingpin to get the money for plastic surgery. He gives a sort of radio performance (the script is adapted from a radio play) with his back to the camera for about 15 minutes, until the character gets a mask (which is Lorre's face). Of course he does find a true love -- a blind girl -- tragedy ensues, and there's a cold, despairing ending.

Totally want to read that bio. He is also the protagonist of the novel Pandemonium, by Leslie Epstein, which I recommend.

Has Matt Groening ever said straight up that Dr Nick is meant to be Lorre?

Classic in Maltese Falcon, M and Arsenic and Old Lace.

fascinating figure in American film insofar as he's really bringing German stage stuff to the process imo. Will enjoy any movie he appears in. Reminds me of Joan Crawford somehow.

Has anyone seen the Mr Moto's?

xp

yeah otm he's yr ultimate Expressionist Hollywood guy.

The Raven with Lorre, Price and Karloff bouncing off each other is one of Corman's best for sure.

at least one Moto appears to be viewable on YouTube.

also:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxSOms0bQ4Y

Anyone ever seen the only movie he ever directed (I haven't)?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Verlorene

yes! at a retro of postwar German films maybe 5-6 years ago. Good and grim.

I watched the original Man Who Knew Too Much last week and his performance is really striking, miles ahead of everyone else's, really inhabiting the character, confident and naturalistic in contrast to the rest of the cast's British Theatre Tradition Stagebound Acting (TM).

I haven't seen it but that's the encouragement I need.

This was a quick'n'dirty digital transfer for a cheap box set of pre-Hollywood Hitchcocks -- I'm really looking forward to the upcoming Criterion release so I can A/B them and see what they've done to the picture and sound.

My favorite ever is Three Strangers, where Lorre is the romantic lead. And Sidney Greenstreet has the best ever complete breakdown.

Feel I have seen Der Verlorene but it obviously didn't make much of an impression on me if I did.

it also appears to be on YT in ten parts.

The Raven with Lorre, Price and Karloff bouncing off each other is one of Corman's best for sure.

w/ Lorre as Jack Nicholson's father!

Mr Slugworth in the willy wonka movie always struck me as a deliberate conflation of Lorre and Gestapo. Maybe it was just how the guy worked his eyes during his scenes.

think it's maybe Lawrence via Olivier

Lorre I mean jeez have I got like two years of typing left before I can no longer control the feed from my brain to my fingers at all

Enh, don't worry, I do that constantly. I think it's called dysgraphia.

I think I first saw him for real, outside of Bugs Bunny cartoons, the first time I saw Casablanca. He's just so great.

Ha, that was a common phenomenon. I remember the same with Edward G. Robinson and the froglike villian in Courageous Cat and Minute Mouse.

for me: phil silvers and like one character in every episode of rocky and bullwinkle (plus for some reason almost any wolf in a fractured fairy tale)

Rewatched Man Who Knew Too Much on Criterion, ditto what WmC said.... he chuckles his way through the role til the last 10 minutes. Not sure I believe his anecdotes about being inept w/ English at the time, the line readings seem too nuanced for that.

When director Vincent Sherman asked Lorre how he endured playing Moto in eight films, Lorre replied, "I took dope."

http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2007/07/5-for-the-day-peter-lorre/

I borrowed the bio from the library... Great stories about him and Bogart being comrades against the studio brass; they were very close. When VIPs visited the set, Lorre would pace around snarling "I sent that goddamn Jack Warner out for beer 10 minutes ago, and he's not back yet!"

Also the MGM brass visited some WW2 film where PL was in a Gestapo uniform, and Louis B Mayer asked him how he stayed in character. "I eat a Jew for breakfast every morning." (The execs cracked up, knowing LB was Jewish but not that Lorre was.)

He also would muse forecastingly, "I can feel it in my urine..."

also Der Verlorene is playing in NYC this weekend.

last night I saw the Hitchcock TV show (1960) where PL bets his new convertible against Steve McQueen's little finger (story by Roald Dahl). Lorre has a blast, scrupulously making preparations to sever the digit with a butcher knife.

"Man From The South"?

yes

(I remember the '80s AHP remaking it with John Huston, and Tarantino did it in Four Rooms!)

i'm finishing up the Lorre bio (after a long pause) and it's kinda grim. He was back on drugs as he directed/starred in The Lost One... Brecht kept trying to get postwar theatre/film projects going with him, failing... He and Miriam Hopkins toured in a grand guignol play, hated each other...

had no idea Lorre was a drug addict

One would think making endless Mr. Moto movies would be enough to content any man.

Wasn't Miriam Hopkins quite a difficult person to get on with? Lorre probably was, also

things get slightly better when, post-20000 Leagues, he starts getting a lot of TV work (better than the shit movies) and has a daughter. Then his health goes south and he peters out with the Corman Poes and Irwin Allen.

His last film was Jerry Lewis's The Patsy, and JL said Lorre called him "The Facemaker."

Was Frauen Träumen is an entertaining trifle in the Lubitsch vein. Lorre plays a policeman, and gets to sing at one point.

wow, that's on YouTube w/ English subs.

Had no idea he played Le Chiffre: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casino_Royale_(Climax!)

I've still never seen that... but I did recently see again the WB cartoon where Daffy Duck meets a Lorre caricature -- voiced by Stan Freberg.

https://cartoonresearch.com/index.php/the-clampett-freberg-lorre-connection/

One great role (in Mad Love, an adaptation of Hands of Orlac) as yet unremarked itt

https://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Mad-Love-photo-6.jpg

Late, but:

Has Matt Groening ever said straight up that Dr Nick is meant to be Lorre?

This is very bad and wrong. The two have no resemblance, visually or vocally.

Ren (of '& Stimpy' fame), otoh, lifts both Lorre's vocal stylings and a handful of lines from the film I just mentioned.

I saw Mad Love a very long time ago... it might be most famous for Pauline Kael's ludicrous accusation that Orson Welles borrowed heavily from it for Citizen Kane. Directed by Karl Freund, later the cinematographer on 'I Love Lucy."

For all kinds of reasons, including Peter Lorre, Beat the Devil is a very fine movie has never risen above obscurity and cult status, even though it is highly entertaining.

Peter Lorre fled to Paris in 1933. All but broke, he was rescued by a meeting with Alfred Hitchcock. That evening, all the English that Lorre then knew was "yes" and "no", but he impressed Hitchcock largely by using as often as possible the first of these two words... pic.twitter.com/vRJEJ2gAsT

— Badger (@Bertrom) January 19, 2020

🐦[Peter Lorre fled to Paris in 1933. All but broke, he was rescued by a meeting with Alfred Hitchcock. That evening, all the English that Lorre then knew was "yes" and "no", but he impressed Hitchcock largely by using as often as possible the first of these two words... pic.twitter.com/vRJEJ2gAsT🕸
— Badger (@Bertrom) January 19, 2020🕸]🐦

ie it didn’t matter what lorre said - his expressive face said it all.

Just saw an old Star Trek with his first wife, Celia Lovksy, playing a extremely Viennese Vulcan - T'Pau in fact!

_🐦[Peter Lorre fled to Paris in 1933. All but broke, he was rescued by a meeting with Alfred Hitchcock. That evening, all the English that Lorre then knew was "yes" and "no", but he impressed Hitchcock largely by using as often as possible the first of these two words... pic.twitter.com/vRJEJ2gAsT🕸
— Badger (@Bertrom) January 19, 2020🕸]🐦_


this reminds me of michael powell’s observation that even when he moved to talking pictures, he retained the directorial principles of the silent era - show what the characters mean as expressively as possible.

Galatea. But I am no Pygmalion.

Your case is one of arrested wish fulfillment.

I, a poor peasant, have conquered science. Why can't I conquer love?

Triumph, Galatea, triumph.