VIENNA -- This summer, though it's my fifth in Europe, I have never felt closer to Hollywood. No, it's not the explosion of global day-and-date Hollywood releases.
It's not even the preponderance of Euro talent in the latest spate of summer B.O. behemoths, from the largely British lineup behind and in front of the cameras for the latest "Harry Potter," or the Teutonic helmers of "Troy" and "The Day After Tomorrow" or the many Brit/Euro voice talents in "Shrek 2."
It's one small, deceased Mittel-European thesp who would have been 100 on June 26: Peter Lorre.
This month, the Austrian Film Museum in Vienna is hosting a retrospective celebrating Lorre's birth in Ruzomberok, Slovakia, and his 30-plus years of film artistry, from his startling lead debut in Fritz Lang's German crime classic "M" (1931) to Jerry Lewis' antic Hollywood comedy "The Patsy" (1964).
Lorre's career reminds one that the importance of Europeans in the Hollywood filmmaking process is far from some new development of globalization. As historian Neil Gabler brilliantly explained in his tome "An Empire of Their Own," the town was invented by Jews from Eastern Europe, and it has always been enriched by the blending of Euro voices and visions into the Hollywood pic mix.
What would a Hollywood classic like "Casablanca" have been without the talents of its Hungarian helmer (Michael Curtiz), European cast (including Lorre, Ingrid Bergman, Conrad Veidt and Brits Claude Rains and Sydney Greenstreet) or composer Max Steiner and art director Carl Jules Weyl, to name a few?
Look at the Lorre filmography and you see an American/Euro mix of the greatest names in Hollywood helming: Huston, Hitchcock, Siegel, Negulesco, Walsh, Mamoulian, Borzage, Capra, Tourneur, Dieterle.
Ironically, in my search for someone to talk about the qualities that Europe's Lorre brought to his Hollywood projects, it is his American helmer/writer/co-star of "The Patsy," Jerry Lewis, who best articulates the Lorre touch.
That touch involved the ultimate European accessory: the cigarette.
"He was the immaculate professional," Lewis recalls. "He came prepared and gave you what you wanted. But he was a reclusive actor who worked behind a facade, and his cigarette was his greatest prop. Without it, he couldn't function."
Lewis says he conspired with other actors on the film to concoct a scene where one of the characters would grab the cigarette from Lorre's hand. "Lorre came to me in a panic and said, 'I will do anything you want, but please don't take my cigarette.' Everything was in that prop: how he lit it, when he lit it, how he smoked it and when. It was an adjunct of his personality."
With all of the actors at his disposal, why did Lewis hire Lorre? At that point in the thesp's career, personal problems had taken a severe toll on Lorre; he died shortly after completion of the film.
"The guy I wrote was Peter Lorre," Lewis says. "I needed this little obnoxious schmuck who showed as little emotion as possible while delivering a performance filled with emotion. If you didn't watch carefully, you didn't see it. I needed that guy from 'Casablanca.'?"
He meant that guy from Ruzomberok.
The Austrian Film Museum's Peter Lorre retrospective runs through June 20.
