Peter Lorre: One Of Cinema's Most Deliciously Sinister Presences

Anne Billson at the Telegraph looks back at the late actor Peter Lorre.

It's 50 years since the death, on March 23, 1964, of one of cinema's most deliciously sinister presences. Peter Lorre was born in 1904, of Jewish Austro-Hungarian descent, and attracted international attention in 1931 with his terrifying but weirdly sympathetic portrayal of a child murderer in Fritz Lang's M, the mother of all serial-killer movies.

Lorre used to tell the story that after he'd left Germany following the Nazi rise to power, he received a telegram from Joseph Goebbels, praising his performance in M and asking him to return. To which Lorre wrote back, "There is no room in Germany for two murderers like we are, Hitler and I."

In London, for Alfred Hitchcock, he was a charming baddie (learning his English dialogue phonetically) in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1924) before swapping over to the side of the good guys to play an exuberant spy with moustache and earring in Secret Agent (1936).  

In Hollywood his accent and slightly bug-eyed look landed him signature roles as a mad scientist, a Japanese detective, and, most memorably, as the slippery Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon. And, of course, he was a vital part of one of the greatest supporting casts ever assembled, in Casablanca.
 

After the war, his movie career seemed to go off the boil (though he made a welcome contribution to Disney's fabulous 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) but he did plenty of television. He was the screen's first ever Bond villain, Le Chiffre, in CBS's Casino Royale (1954), and played opposite Steve McQueen in the classic Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode, Man from the South, adapted from a Roald Dahl story.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/starsandstories/10703031/Peter-Lorre-one-of-cinemas-most-deliciously-sinister-presences.html

 

A Look Back At Bernard Lee, The Actor Who Was M

MI6, the James Bond web site, not the British intelligence agency, offers a look back at the late Bernard Lee, the wonderfully gruff old actor who portrayed Ian Fleming's character M, James Bond's wonderfully gruff old boss in the Bond film series.

James Bond's relationship with his chief is a complex and paternal one. He is regularly summoned to the plush office on the top floor of the MI6 headquarters for a stern briefing wherein "M" typically survey's his top double-0 operative severely and instructs him on his latest mission. Yet, behind the authoritarian demeanor, M cares for Bond and the service, having given his life to the intelligence forces. Bond affectionally refers to his chief as 'The Old Man', but only when he believes M to be out of earshot.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.mi6-hq.com/sections/allies/m1.php3?t=&s=&id=03089

Note: Commander Ian Fleming served as the personal assistant to the director of British Naval Intelligence in WWII. He served two directors during the course of the war and the first was Royal Navy Admiral John Godfrey. Many have noted that Fleming based M on Admiral Godfrey.

Also, the piece fails to mention that Bernard Lee also appeared in Carol Reed and Graham Greene's classic film The Third Man with Orson Welles and Joseph Cotten.

Lee appears in the above photo as M as he addresses Sean Connery as James Bond in From Russia With Love.