March 31, 2013

Restored M On-Screen in Portland, Oregon

Beginning Friday, March 29, the independent movie theater Cinema 21 presents for one week only a digitally restored M (1931) from the Munich Film Archive. The run ends on Thursday, April 4, 2013.

M will be shown every evening at 7 pm, with additional shows at 2:45 on Saturday and Sunday. On Wednesday, April 3, there will be one show only, at 4:30 pm.

For matinee shows before 6 pm, general admission is $7 for adults. Evening shows are $9 for adults and $8 for students (with ID). For seniors aged 62 and older and children, admission is $6 for any show.

Tickets may be purchased at the box office, which opens 30 minutes before the first show of the day. Tickets may also be purchased on-line through the cinema’s website. Click on the link “Buy Tickets Online” at the top of the Cinema 21 webpage.

Cinema 21 is located at 616 Northwest 21st Avenue, in Portland, Oregon. Parking is available on the streets surrounding the theater. For more information, please contact Cinema 21 at (503) 223-4515.

March 17, 2013

M On-Screen at New York City’s Film Forum

Peter Lorre’s first sound movie M will be shown at the Film Forum, beginning Friday, Mar. 15, until Thursday, Mar. 28, 2013.

Scheduled times for Mar. 15 through Thursday, Mar. 21 will be four showings daily, at 2 pm, 4:30 pm, 7 pm, and 9:30 pm, with the exception of Monday, Mar. 18, which will include only 2 pm, 4:30 pm, and 9:30 pm.

Beginning Friday, Mar. 22, until Thursday, Mar. 28, the Film Forum will show M one time only, at 5:30 pm.

Ticket prices are $7 for Film Forum members and $12.50 for regular admission. Tickets may be purchased at the box office through the cinema’s website. Click the "Buy Tickets Now" button and select M and a date and time.

The Film Forum is located at 209 West Houston Street, between 6th and 7th avenues, in New York City, NY. Directions are available through the Film Forum website. For more information, please call the cinema at (212) 727-8110.

The Film Forum is well-served by both bus lines and subway lines. Parking is available at meters on the streets surrounding the cinema. Parking is also available in the Icon garage, located at 375 Hudson Street, between Hudson and Greenwich. More information regarding transportation and parking may be found on the Film Forum website.

Stephen Youngkin details the making of M and its impact on Peter Lorre’s life and career in the pages of The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre (University Press of Kentucky, 2005).

March 11, 2013

M On-Screen in Brookline, MA – and On Stage

In March, Peter Lorre fans in the Boston area will have an opportunity to experience a showing of M (1931) on the big screen, and a stage presentation with a unique point-of-view.



As part of their “Stage and Screen” series, the Coolidge Corner Theatre will show M on Monday, March 11, 2013, in Movie House 1. The program will begin at 7 pm.

Tickets are $9.25 for adults, and $7.25 for seniors (62 and older) and children (12 and younger). Tickets may be purchased at the Coolidge box office, which opens a half hour before the first show of the day. 75 cents of every admission sold at the box office goes toward the Capital Campaign Renovation fund. Tickets may also be purchased online through the cinema’s website.

Coolidge members may purchase tickets at a discount.

The Coolidge Corner Theatre is located at 290 Harvard Street, in Brookline, MA. To hear recorded information, please contact the Coolidge at (617) 734-2500. The office at the Coolidge may be reached at (617) 734-2501.

Parking is available at meters behind the Coolidge, on Centre Street (one block from Harvard Street) and along Beacon Street. Parking is also available at an hourly rate in the garage at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel, located at 40 Webster Street, Coolidge Corner, in Brookline.

The Coolidge is also served by train and bus.

More information about parking, as well as directions to the Coolidge, is available on the cinema’s website.



Boston playwright Ryan Landry will introduce this special screening of M at the Coolidge – as a prelude to his own theatrical version of M later this month at the Boston Center for the Arts. Following the screening of M at the Coolidge, M. Bevin O’Gara, Associate Producer at the Huntington Theatre Company, will moderate a discussion about adapting the film to the stage. Participating in the discussion will be Ryan Landry, lighting designer Deb Sullivan, and cast member Ellen Adair.

Landry’s version of M will involve puppets. Local Boston actress Karen MacDonald will take Peter’s role as the child murderer, Hans Beckert. Caitlin Lowans will direct the production.

“Not for the squeamish!” warns the theatre’s website. . .

The stage version of M will be performed at the Huntington Theatre Company’s Stanford Calderwood Pavilion, beginning Friday, March 29 and running through Saturday, April 27. The Calderwood is located in the Boston Center for the Arts, at 527 Tremont Street, in the South End of Boston, MA. The Calderwood’s phone number is (617) 933-8600.

Directions to the Calderwood, as well as information about parking and public transportation, may be found on the theater’s website.

Tickets are available every evening, with matinees on the weekends. Tickets may be purchased on-line through the Calderwood website.

In addition to the stage performance will be several special events:
  • 35 Below Wrap Party – Friday, March 29, 8 pm
  • Press Opening Night – Wednesday, April 10, 7 pm
  • Humanities Forum – Sunday, April 21, 2 pm
  • Actors Forum – Wednesday, April 24, 2 pm
Theatergoers will have an opportunity to meet the cast of M at the Actors Forum, while the Humanities Forum will consider the play’s context and significance with an expert. More information on these events may be found on the Calderwood website.

March 9, 2013

Restored The Chase Included in Preservation Festival

The UCLA Film and Television Archive presents their annual Festival of Preservation this March, and on the schedule will be The Chase (1947), one of a handful of movies Peter Lorre made after leaving behind his lucrative years at Warner Bros.

The Chase will be shown on Sunday, March 10, 2013, on a double bill with High Tide, another noir movie from 1947. The program begins at 7 pm.

More information on the Festival, as well as a complete schedule, may be found on the UCLA Film and Television Archive website. The Festival of Preservation includes documentaries and television programs, as well as silent and sound movies. Silent movies will be accompanied by live music.

Tickets for The Chase / High Tide double feature are $9 general admission and $8 for non-UCLA students, seniors, and UCLA Alumni Association members. ID is required for students and Alumni Association members. Current UCLA students with ID are eligible for one free ticket to any Archive show.

General admission tickets may also be purchased on-line through the Festival website for $10 each. Tickets may be called for at the Billy Wilder Theater box office, which opens one hour before the first show.

The Festival will be held in the Billy Wilder Theater located at the Courtyard Level of the Hammer Museum, 10899 Wilshire Blvd, at the intersection of Wilshire and Westwood boulevards in the Westwood Village area of Los Angeles, CA. For more information, please call (310) 206-8013.

Parking is available in the lot under the Billy Wilder Theater. Enter the lot from Westwood Blvd., just north of Wilshire. Parking for the disabled is provided on levels P1 and P3. On Saturdays and Sundays, the fee is a flat rate of $3. More information about parking may be found on the Festival webpage.

The Hammer Museum is also easily reached by public transportation.

Restoration of The Chase was completed by UCLA Film and Television Archive preservationist Nancy Mysel, who passed away in 2012. The print was preserved from various incomplete 35mm nitrate prints and 16mm acetate picture and track negatives.

Billy Wilder, the Hungarian writer and director for whom the venue is named, was 19 when he knew the equally young Peter Lorre in Berlin, where each began his career in theater and film. For Stephen Youngkin’s book The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre (2005), Wilder reminisced about Peter Lorre, their escape from Germany to Paris after the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, and their journey to America and the film studios of Hollywood.

The popular internet story about Peter and Billy sharing rooms in Hollywood? Just a story with no basis in fact. Peter traveled to California with his wife Celia Lovsky, whom he married in London during a break in filming The Man Who Knew Too Much. The contract Peter held with Columbia Studios enabled the couple to rent a house in Santa Monica soon after their arrival in Los Angeles.

March 3, 2013

The Cinema, Inc. Screens M on Mar. 10

Peter Lorre fans holding season tickets for The Cinema, Inc.’s “Sunday Night at the Movies” film series will have the opportunity to enjoy Peter’s first sound movie M (1931) on the screen of the Rialto on Sunday, March 10.

The program begins at 7 pm. In addition to the feature film M, assorted short subjects will also be shown.

Season tickets are $20 and may be purchased by completing the order form on page 3 of the 2012-13 season-ticket brochure and mailing the form and a check or money order (no cash) for $20 to:

The Cinema, Inc.
Dept. M
P.O. Box 20835
Raleigh, NC, 27619

Built in 1942, the Rialto is located at 1620 Avenue, in Raleigh, NC. The cinema’s phone number is (919) 856-8683. Parking is available at the cinema.

In The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre, Stephen Youngkin details the making of M, including interviews with director Fritz Lang and Peter’s brother Andrew, who visited the set. The Lost One is available in hardback and softbound, in addition to the Kindle and Nook.

March 1, 2013

The Maltese Falcon at the First Time Festival, New York City, Mar. 1

The Maltese Falcon (1941) will be among the first movies presented in the First Time Festival on Friday, March 1, 2013. The Festival will run from Friday, March 1 to Monday, March 4.

The full schedule is located on the Festival website.

Introduced by William Luhr, The Maltese Falcon will be shown at the AMC Loews Village 7. The program begins at 11:30 am. A professor of film at St. Peter’s College in Jersey City, NJ, Mr. Luhr is also the author of The Maltese Falcon: John Huston, Director, published in Nov. 1995.

Admission to The Maltese Falcon, and to any single film, is $15, and $12 for students and members of Museum of the Moving Image, Film Society of Lincoln Center, Film Forum, IFP, the Players, and Motion Picture Industry Unions and Guilds, including SAG, DGA, WGA, ICG, MPEG. Passes for the Festival are also available. More information on tickets and passes may be found on the Festival website.

AMC Lowes Village 7 is located at 66 3rd Avenue, in New York City. The cinema’s telephone number is (212) 982-2116.

The First Time Festival honors new filmmakers. In the summer of 1941, The Maltese Falcon was then-screenwriter John Huston’s first directorial effort. In fact, director Martin Scorsese will present the first ever “John Huston Award” to Darren Aronofsky, director of Black Swan at the Players Club in New York City, on March 4, the final day of the Festival.

The Maltese Falcon was stage actor Sydney Greenstreet’s first movie.

The film also represents a number of “Firsts” for Peter Lorre. It was the first film Peter made at the Warner Bros. studio. The first film he made with Greenstreet, an on-screen partnership that would include another eight movies for Warners. It was also the first movie Peter made with star Humphrey Bogart, who became one of his closest friends and with whom he would make another four movies – three at Warners.

And it was also the first movie in which Peter Lorre met actress Karen Verne, who was visiting the set. Peter went on to work with Karen a short time later in another Bogart movie, All Through the Night – and in 1945 made her the second Mrs. Lorre.

In the pages of The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre, Stephen D. Youngkin details the making of The Maltese Falcon, as well as the on- and off-screen friendship of Peter and Bogie, and the romance of Peter and Karen. The Lost One is available in hardback, soft bound, and the Kindle and Nook.