Lorre, Lorre Hallelujah!
He was born Laszlo Lowenstein, only a few years into a twentieth century Austria-Hungary , a place now known as Slovakia. Perhaps no other actor in the history of cinematic time has been parodied more than Peter Lorre. He would even be immortalized in the 1946 animated short Hair Raising Hare. As unusual as his unconventional looks were - so was his level of theater chops and he would be well aware in his teenage years, he
wanted to devote his life to acting.
Being born into a middle class family, Lorre would get his tutelage from only the finest schools, and upon graduating, would secure a job as a bank clerk to appease his stern Jewish father, who had hopes of him succeeding in business. His father was aware of his son's predilection of seriously pursuing acting, but he was also vehemently against the idea, prompting Lorre to flee home at the age of seventeen so he could then embark upon and see his dream of acting come to it's fruition .
Peter would ultimately join an improvisational theatre group, and it would be with this very Vienesse troupe, that the eager Lorre would hone his ability and would grace various stages on their tours of Zurich and Vienna.
Precociousness would not end with theatre, for Lorre had a desire to study psychiatry and would actually become intern upon studying with none other than fellow Austrian psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud
When it became brass-tax time, the film that catapulted the five-foot-three inch thespian was Fritz Lang's 1931 exasperater M, where an unforgettable Lorre portrayed a child serial-killer. This would unfortunately become his type-cast template, and many of the roles that ensued for him from that point, would be characters of a dark and deranged disposition. In 1935's Mad Love, we would find Peter the consummate mad scientist. By the time he got to Hitchcock - he was an eccentric misanthrope in The Man Who Knew Too Much and a volatile borderline personality as the "Hairless Mexican" in 1936's The Secret Agent.
From the age of twenty-nine, Peter lived his life in exile in France and then England before making his journey to America, the country he would soon call home. Lorre actually made this move prior to a Nazi act of skulduggery, where they utilized extracts from the film M, (mentioned above), and would parlay Peter's image as their insidious device to convey anti-Semitism in the propaganda production : Juden ohne Masje (Jews Without A Mask, 1940). Lorre as a result, would be tormented by this role where he was cast as a depraved murderer, and the ramifications and aspersions that followed for him would leave him to struggle to detach from it's stigma.
A role that would offer redemption, was one where he would be felonious as opposed to veritable freak as he astounded his audiences as the wheedling Joel Cairo in 1941's noted noir The Maltese Falcon. He would be one of the three villains, Sydney Greenstreet and Elisha Cook Jr. would complete the trinity. In 1942 there would be some added reprieve with his turn in Casablanca which would prove another exit from his stereo-typically sadistic roles where like in The Maltese Falcon, he would serve as a foil for Bogie and Sydney Greenstreet, as your average every day garden variety murderer Ugarte. And oh my - Peter could even do 'giddy' and playful, as well as a little self-caricature as he did in 1944's funnybone tickler Arsenic and Old Lace and better still in the Bob Hope noirish comedy My Favorite Brunette (1947).
It is honestly quite baffling as to why Lorre did not appear in more traditional noir films, given he was a natural in the deranged department. Perhaps the culprit really was his moon-like features and imposing gaze which would be polar-opposite of the contemporaneous matinee lookers, and his intensity factor was a tad too much intensity factor for your everyday tale of the streets. In 1951, he would finally hop into that directing chair where the lights and camera would be all systems go as he churned an enlightening war thriller; Der Verlorene, in which Lorre also himself starred. It would be Lorre's first and only stint as a director, and it was then that he would realize his latent love for the art. Consequently, Der Verlorene did unfavorably at the time of it's release, both with the critics and audience alike. Perhaps if Peter was born into this world a little later, he very may well of been measured and valued more as the auteur he was undoubtedly meant to be.
After his disenchantment at the helm, Lorre would return back to the ol' acting board and would have a prolific shelf-life as a television actor, namely in Climax (1954 - 1957) and The Red Skelton Hour (1954-60) as well as some kitschy appearences in horror parodies with fellow oddmen Vincent Price and Boris Karloff.
Peter Lorre sadly developed a dependency on morphine, self-medicating for pain and complications that followed a surgical mishap. Herr Lorre left our world far sooner than he should have in 1964, he was only fifty nine years old.
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