System Mechanic - Clean, repair, protect, and speed up your PC!Peter Lorre
1904 - 1964
Actor Peter Lorre, best remembered for his movie role as Japanese crime solver Mr. Motto, died March 23, 1964. He was 59.
Lorre was born Ladislav Loewenstein in Rozsahegy, Hungary on June 26, 1904. He grew up in Vienna, Austria, and at age 17 ran away to join the theater.
To support himself, he became a bank clerk, and performed after hours with a theater company in Breslau. He later moved to Zurich where he acted regularly in a production called Society. While in Switzerland, he underwent painful gallbladder surgery, which left him with an addiction to morphine.
One of Lorre's best roles was as a serial killer in a movie entitled M, the story of child killer. Lorre's interpretation of the killer won him acclaim both in Germany and abroad.
Lorre left Germany for England in 1933. Director Alfred Hitchcock utilized Lorre's villainous side in The Man Who Knew Too Much and The Secret Agent.
Meantime, he married for the first time to Cacilie Lvovsky. They divorced in 1945. Lvovsky had a long career in movies and television.
In 1935, Lorre made his first American movie, Mad Love, also about a psychotic killer. He had been typecast as a bad guy, due in part to his short stature and his odd appearance, accentuated by his protruding eyes.
The year 1937 proved to be a good year for Lorre. He was cast in the popular role of Mr. Motto, a Japanese detective on the order of Charlie Chan. Over the next two years, Lorre made eight Mr. Motto films. People even recognized him on the street as his character.
Lorre reached the peak of his popularity in the 1940's, playing such evil characters as Joel Cairo in the 1941 movie The Maltese Falcon. He also appeared briefly in Casablanca as a murderer.
Many filmgoers remember Lorre as a creepy character in several low budget horror movies in the 1950's and 60's.
One of his more respectable roles came in 1961's Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, in which he played a subordinate to Walter Pidgeon's Admiral Nelson character.
Lorre married two more times, to Kaaren Verne in 1945. They divorced in 1950 when he married Anne Marie Brenning. They had a daughter, Catharine, Lorre's only child. He and Brenning remained married until his death.
Lorre's last film was The Patsy, a comedy with Jerry Lewis. Four days after completing the film, Lorre died of heart failure on March 23, 1964 in Hollywood.
