Peter Lorre Biography

At 21, having moved to Berlin, he caught the eye of up-and-coming German playwright, Bertolt Brecht, quickly becoming one of his favourite actors.

Lorre achieved real fame in 1931, when he appeared as the child killer in Fritz Lang’s legendary 'M'. Scenes from the film were re-used by the Nazi propaganda machine in the anti-Semitic film, 'Der Ewige Jude'.

The actor left Germany for Paris upon the election of Adolf Hitler in 1933, eventually emigrating to the United States and Hollywood. Lorre knew no English upon his arrival, and initially learnt his lines phonetically.

Though definitively typecast as a villain, the work kept streaming in. Notable performances include his villainous role in Alfred Hitchcock's 'The Man Who Knew Too Much' in 1934, and Raskolnikov, in 'Crime and Punishment', in 1935.

Signed to 20th Century Fox in 1936, Lorre requested the chance to play a good guy for a change. And so, Lorre proceeded to appear in a series of 'Mr. Moto' movies, playing a Japanese detective.

He also landed major roles in the 1940s, with the all-time favourites 'The Maltese Falcon' and 'Casablanca'.

Gaining excessive weight in the 1950s, he played lesser roles, with the exception of Skeeter the clown in the 1959 movie, 'The Big Circus'. Warner Brothers also used Lorre's caricature in a wide range of cartoons. Notably, his persona was used in the Dick Tracy cartoons, as the basis for the character Flat Top.

Appearing in a number of tongue-in-cheek Edgar Allan Poe adaptations for Roger Corman, alongside Vincent Price and Boris Karloff, kept Lorre in the public eye during the early 1960s.

However, Lorre passed away after suffering a heart attack in 1964 and was honoured with burial in the Hollywood Forever Memorial Park Cemetery.