Book description
Often typecast as a menacing figure, Peter Lorre achieved Hollywood
fame first as a featured player and later as a character actor,
trademarking his screen performances with a delicately strung balance
between good and evil. His portrayal of the child murderer in Fritz
Lang's masterpiece M (1931) catapulted him to international fame. Lang
said of Lorre: "He gave one of the best performances in film
history and certainly the best in his life." Today, the
Hungarian-born actor is also recognized for his riveting performances
in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and
Casablanca (1942). Lorre arrived in America in 1934 expecting to shed
his screen image as a villain. He even tried to lose his signature
accent, but Hollywood repeatedly cast him as an outsider who hinted at
things better left unknown. Seeking greater control over his career,
Lorre established his own production company. His unofficial
"graylisting" by the House Committee on Un-American
Activities, however, left him with little work. He returned to
Germany, where he co-authored, directed, and starred in the film Der
Verlorene (The Lost One) in 1951. German audiences rejected Lorre's
dark vision of their recent past, and the actor returned to America,
wearily accepting roles that parodied his sinister movie personality.
The first biography of this major actor, The Lost One: A Life of Peter
Lorre draws upon more than three hundred interviews, including
conversations with directors Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy
Wilder, John Huston, Frank Capra, and Rouben Mamoulian, who speak
candidly about Lorre, both the man and the actor. Author Stephen D.
Youngkin examines for the first time Lorre's pivotal relationship with
German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, his experience as an ?migr? from
Hitler's Germany, his battle with drug addiction, and his struggle
with the choice between celebrity and intellectual respectability.
Separating the enigmatic person from the persona long associated with
one of classic Hollywood's most recognizable faces, The Lost One is
the definitive account of a life triumphant and yet tragically riddled
with many failed possibilities.
""Youngkin gets behind the image to incise a definitive
portrait, and Lorre becomes a likeness we can like
in-depth."" -- Thomas Schatz, author of The Genius of the
System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the
Stephen D. Youngkin is coauthor of The Films of Peter Lorre and
Peter Lorre: Portrait des Schauspielers auf der Flucht. He appeared as
an expert biographer on the German television documentary Das Doppelte
Gesicht (The Double Face) and A&E's Biography tribute to Peter Lorre.
