Peter Lorre's 100th birthday

Born in Hungary on June 26, 1904, Peter Lorre would be 100 years old today.

Lorre has long been recognized as an exceptionally skilled actor. He was also one of the most interesting and distinctive looking actors ever. What with his weird eyes and accent, he may have been the best weird, creepy bad guy in movie history.

He's probably best known now for his supporting role in Casablanca, which was good — but that's more because of the overall reputation of that movie rather than because of his performance.

Best role to see him in action would be in Fritz Lang's early 1931 German language film M, as the young pedophile murderer Franz Beckert. You have to make the effort of subtitles, but both his performance and the overall movie are menacing pre-Nazi masterpieces. Beckert's self-defense in his "trial" before the mobsters at the end of the movie is unforgettable.

I've also recently run into a really cool audio recording of Lorre, on a 3 CD set of The Great Radio Mysteries. "Mystery in the Air - The Black Cat" from disc 2 is essentially a 23 minute monologue of Lorre, in which he describes his mental breakdown. It goes from killing a cat, and ends up with him headed for death row. It's worth looking up.

Article Author: Al Barger

Unreformed hawkish Hoosier hillbilly Al Barger runs the still squeezin' down the psychodelic Kentucky moonshine at More Things. What with the paranoid religious visions, the Pentecostal music, visions of God and anarchy running amok and such, somebody …

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