The Strange Life of Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre was an Austrian-American actor known for playing sinister foreigners. Born Laszlo Lowenstein in 1904 to Jewish parents in present-day Slovakia, Lorre’s mother died of food poisoning when he was only four. As a teenager, Lorre was a student of Sigmund Freud in Vienna.
Lorre began acting at age 17 and moved to Berlin where he worked with playwright Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill. He came to prominence portraying a child killer in Fritz Lang’s 1931 German film M. When the Nazis came to power, they used Lorre’s image from M as an example of a “typical Jew” for their anti-Semitic film The Eternal Jew. Ironically, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda Josef Goebbels (a fan of Lorre) warned the Jewish Lorre to leave Germany.
Lorre took refuge in Paris then London where he was cast by Alfred Hitchcock in The Man Who Knew Too Much. Lorre didn’t speak English at the time and learned his part phonetically. Hitchcock nicknamed Lorre “The Walking Overcoat” since he rehearsed in a floor-length coat no matter the season. He moved to Hollywood in 1935 where he roomed with fellow émigré filmmaker Billy Wilder. Lorre and Wilder ate cold Campbell’s soup each day to keep from starving. Lorre took small bit parts until he earned the starring role in the Mr. Moto films playing a Japanese detective.
