First things first: Peter Lorre was a great actor. The kind of great actor that rarely gives a "show-off" performance but is utterly reliable, solid and intriguing in everything he ever did. Some performers have ups and downs throughout their careers but Lorre is one the rare few of which it can honestly be said has never given anything less than a marvelous performance, no matter what the film, no matter what the character. He is the Rock of Gibralter among character actors: just give him the script and then worry about the other actors.Peter Lorre was born László Loewenstein in Austria-Hungary in 1904. He began acting on stage as a young man in Vienna and ended up getting the lead in the failed Bertolt Brecht musical Happy Ending. It closed after only seven performances but did give us the great line, "Robbing a bank's no crime compared to owning one."
His big break came in 1931 when he was cast as the child killer Hans Beckert in Fritz Lang's masterpiece, M. It is a performance of remarkable ability and one that only the best actor available could have pulled off. He kills children, uncontrollably, and yet by the end we are sympathetic towards him. Much of that sympathy is due in large part to the script itself and the rationalizations that it provides for the central character of the killer. But it is how the actor delivers those lines that makes all the difference. A lesser actor could have delivered this same dialogue and made us cringe at his callous "justifications" for his crimes:
What do you know about it? Who are you anyway? Who are you? Criminals? Are you proud of yourselves? Proud of breaking safes or cheating at cards? Things you could just as well keep your fingers off. You wouldn't need to do all that if you'd learn a proper trade or if you'd work. If you weren't a bunch of lazy bastards. But I... I can't help myself! I have no control over this, this evil thing inside of me, the fire, the voices, the torment!
But not Lorre. Maybe it's that pudgy baby face, maybe it's that voice, maybe it's those eyes but mainly it's that sense of fear and desperation that Lorre provides. Fear of himself and desperate to make it all stop. Lorre was not nominated for M in 1931. Richard Dix of Cimarron was. That oversight (and slight) alone brings the whole idea of the Best Actor Oscar into question.
In 1933 with the rise to power of Adoph Hitler Peter Lorre went to Paris and then, in 1934, Britain. He would get steady work in the movies starting with a great performance in Alfred Hitchcock's original, and much better, version of The Man Who Knew Too Much. He still had not fully learned English and learned and recited most of his lines phonetically. Later he would move to the United States and find great commercial success playing Mr. Moto in the series of the same name. They were quickies done by the studios (eight in three years between 1937 and 1939) but their success would keep Lorre's name in the public light and lead him to two of his greatest roles.
In 1941 Lorre became a naturalized citizen of the United States. That same year he would give another great supporting performance in another masterpiece, John Huston's The Maltese Falcon. He would later mirror this performance in another Humphrey Bogart film, Casablanca. In both films, his characters put on an air of sophistication and cool ease when inside they are wracked with fears and insecurities. His characters of Joel Cairo (The Maltese Falcon) and Ugarte (Casablanca) both arrive behaving as if they are in complete control yet both end up manic, frenzied and raging impotently against their own helplessness. No one could have pulled it off better than Lorre. Lorre was a genius at portraying panic and fear and these are two of his performances that complement each other perfectly. It's as if Cairo somehow evaded capture at the end of The Maltese Falcon, changed his name to Ugarte and made his way to Rick's All-American Cafe in Casablanca.
Lorre's looks kept him from ever getting the kind of leads other big stars got but his steady output of great supporting performances continued. In 1954 he played Conseil in Richard Fleischer's great adaptation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. It was an important change in character for Lorre and showed he was capable of playing a character with no guile or deceptive nature. He is helpless throughout and comes off as a lovable foil to Kirk Douglas' Ned Landry. At the same time he easily portrays a genuine concern for his employer, Professor Pierre Aronnax played by Paul Lukas.
As Lorre's health declined due in no small part to a morphine habit he could not break and an increase in weight his roles became fewer and fewer. But by the early sixties he was working with
Roger Corman and still had one great performance left in him. It came in 1962's Tales of Terror, a horror trilogy directed by Corman. Lorre is in the second story, The Black Cat, with Vincent Price who appears in all three. Lorre plays the role of a drunkard who kills his wife and her lover (Price) and bricks them up behind a wall in his basement. His scenes of drunkenness are played to the hilt, with his voice in a constantly modulating slur, his walk a hilarious stagger as his round body bobbles up and down the street. When the police come around asking questions that old Lorre is back, betraying a sense of panic behind a cool uncaring facade. It was one of the last chances the Academy would have to nominate this brilliant actor in a supporting role, and again they passed him up.
Peter Lorre died in 1964 of a stroke at the age of 59 but he has never been forgotten, even to those unlucky masses who don't know who he is. From Bugs Bunny to Ren & Stimpy to Year of the Cat and a million cultural references in between, his voice, his eyes and that diminuitive round body have made themselves known in one form or another to each successive generation. If imitation is the highest possible form of flattery, expect the flattery of Peter Lorre to continue for another hundred years. At least.
