April 18, 2010

Daemen College Screens M on Apr. 19, 2010

On Monday, Apr. 19, 2010, the classic German film M will be shown in the Wick Center – Charles J. Wick Campus Center – at Daemen College in Amherst, NY. Chris Wilson, Director of Computer Services on campus, will be the commentator.

The program begins at 7:30 p.m. Admission is free.

Daemen College is located at 4380 Main Street in Amherst, NY. Parking is available behind the Wick Center, as well as other locations on campus.

Peter Lorre was 26 when famed German director Fritz Lang cast him in the role of a serial child murderer who terrorizes Berlin and is finally brought to justice by the Underworld. It was a role that catapulted Lorre to fame, contracts with American movie studios, and a place in motion picture history.

But it wasn’t his first time before the movie cameras. It was his second.

Lorre’s first movie was a silent film called Die verschwundene Frau (The Missing Wife), released in 1929 through Österreichisches Filmindustrie and directed by Karl Leiter. Peter appeared in the small role of a patient visiting a dentist, and his participation in the film was a secret he took with him to the grave. He told no one – not his brothers, not Celia Lovsky, with whom he was living at the time, and not the many reporters who interviewed him over the years. It wasn’t until 1996, during the restoration of a nitrate print found in a Belgian archive that his first screen appearance was revealed.

Photos of Peter as the dental patient are included in Stephen D. Youngkin’s Lorre biography The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre. The Missing Wife is discussed in Chapter 1, “Facemaker”, while the production of M is chronicled in Chapter 2, “M is for Morphine”.

5 comments:

francois duckett said...

Have you seen the movie. Have you or someone actually recognized Lorre's face in it. To date I have not found anyone who has.

francois duckett said...

Additionally I wanted to post that I have been collecting movie publicity material of Lorre since the 1970s. The collection includes everything in the "The Films of Peter Lorre." I corresponded with Stephen D. Youngkin in the 1980s to help in the research.

I now want to sell the entire collection for the best offer. Only two pieces were not issued during the films year of release.

Could I ask you to post this?

Cheryl Morris said...

No, I have not seen "The Missing Wife" -- however, in Stephen Youngkin's Lorre biography The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre, there are frame blow-ups of Peter in his scene from the film. From these, it's very obvious that it's Peter Lorre.

Cheryl Morris said...

Francois, I have posted your offer to sell your Lorre collection. Stephen Youngkin might be interested in some or all of the items. If you want to contact him, you may do so through the website for his book The Lost One.

Becky B said...

I realize this is an older post, but if you still get emails - like Cheryl, I am amazed at the prospect of a full Lorre collection. I too am wondering how the family got a copy of "Die Verschwundene Frau." I would dearly love to purchase one, as well as "Schuß im Morgengrauen" (1932). I have been unable to source these thus far, to my distress.