Peter Lorre’s Day on TCM, August 24, 2018

Every August, the Turner Classic Movies channel holds their “Summer Under the Stars” film festival. For 24 hours, TCM devotes the day’s movies to one actor, usually a leading player.

For most of his film career, Hollywood studios considered Peter Lorre a character actor, cast in support of stars such as Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable, Cary Grant, all of whom have enjoyed many a “Day” of their own during the August festival.

However, this year, Peter has a “Day” of his own – Friday, August 24, 2018 – and a selection of 13 movies, some of them seldom shown on the TCM channel, and one completely new to TCM.

The Lorre marathon will begin at 6 am on the East Coast, 5 am Central time, 4 am Mountain time, and 3 am Pacific time. The films include ~

6 am – The Face Behind the Mask (1941). Peter plays Hungarian watchmaker Janos Szabo, a new immigrant to the United States, who finds his hopes of a wonderful life in America destroyed by a terrible rooming-house fire that irreparably burns his face.

7:30 am – Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). As Dr. Einstein, personal plastic surgeon to the murderous Jonathan Brewster (Raymond Massey), Peter was not yet under contract to Warner Bros., the studio at which he would achieve the high point of his personal and professional lives.

9:45 am – Silk Stockings (1957). This musical remake of Greta Garbo’s 1939 film Ninotchka features Peter as Brankov, one of three Russian commissars sent to Paris to retrieve a famous Russian composer (Wim Sonneveld) hired to write the music for an American film and end up discovering the joys of Paris nightlife.

12 noon – You’ll Find Out (1940). Radio performer Kay Kyser and his band are hired to provide the entertainment at debutante Janis Bellacrest’s (Helen Parrish) 21st birthday party. As Professor Fenninger, supposed debunker of phony spiritualists, Peter appeared for the first and only time on film with Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The three actors also made a guest appearance with Kyser on his radio show Kay Kyser’s Kollege of Musical Knowledge.

2 pm – All Through the Night (1942). As Pepi, a German Nazi working undercover in New York City, Peter appeared for the second time with his Maltese Falcon pal Humphrey Bogart – and with Kaaren Verne, who would soon become the second Mrs. Peter Lorre.

4 pm – The Comedy of Terrors (1964). In his final movie with Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone, Peter plays Felix Gillie, assistant to undertaker Waldo Trumbull (Vincent Price), in 1800s New England. Unable to get paying “customers”, the two begin drumming up a little business by suffocating elderly men in town.

5:45 pm – Scent of Mystery (1960). Long thought lost, this movie turned up in the 1980s and was shown on the independent San Francisco channel KOFY, followed a few years later by a broadcast on MTV. Peter plays Smiley, a cabbie who chauffeurs around an Englishman (Denholm Elliott), hoping to rescue an attractive tourist from murder. The “Scent” in the title refers to the Smell-o-Vision process of piping various odors, such as perfume, coffee, and tobacco, into the theater during the film’s presentation.

8 pm – M (1931). In his first sound movie, Peter plays one of the characters he is most famous for – Hans Beckert, murderer of children in Berlin, Germany.

10 pm – Crime and Punishment (1935). To play Roderick Raskolnikov, the student of crime who murders a pawnbroker, Peter had to agree to play Dr. Gogol in the MGM horror film Mad Love (1935), to be shown later this evening.

11:45 pm – The Mask of Dimitrios (1944). Peter Lorre plays Cornelius Latimer Leyden, a Dutch mathematics professor turned mystery writer, who becomes interested in the life and nefarious career of international criminal Dimitrios (Zachary Scott), and while researching Dimitrios’ past, meets up with a Mr. Peters (Sydney Greenstreet), who holds a secret leading to blackmail.

1:30 am – The Verdict (1946). Peter teams up again with Sydney Greenstreet in the last of their nine movies together. He plays Victor Emmric, artist, man about town, and best friend to Superintendent Grodman (Greenstreet). When another of their friends is murdered in a locked room in Victor’s lodging house, Emmric and Grodman do some investigating on their own.

3:15 am – Mad Love (1935). Peter agreed to be loaned to MGM for his first American role, famed Parisian surgeon Dr. Gogol, in order to get the part he really desired – Raskolnikov in Crime and Punishment, shown earlier in tonight’s festival.

4:30 am – Island of Doomed Men (1940). “Peter Lorre Day” comes to an end with one of Peter’s few leading roles – Stephen Danel, owner of a private island with a diamond mine and a crew of paroled convicts to dig out the mine’s treasures.

In between the Lorre movies are sprinkled these short subjects ~

• 7:16 am – So You Think You’re Allergic (1945), one of the famous Joe McDoakes comedy shorts from the Warner Bros
• 9:33 am – Getting’ Glamour (1946)
• 11:47 am – That’s the Spirit (1933)
• 1:49 pm – Night Life in Chicago (1948)
• 7:38 pm – The Symphony Murder Mystery (1932)
• 3:05 am – The Operation (1930)
• 5:40 am – Night Descends on Treasure Island (1940)

In the pages of The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre, Stephen D. Youngkin discusses the making of these and all of Peter’s movies through interviews with the directors, actors, and crew, Lorre friends and family members.

In the book’s appendix, a full list of Peter’s filmography, as well as his theater, radio, and television credits, is also available.

The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre may be purchased from Amazon U.S., Amazon Canada, and Amazon U.K, as well as other booksellers.

Happy viewing!