Paul Henreid


Paul Henreid was an Austrian-American actor, director, producer, and writer. He is best remembered for several film roles during the Second World War, including Capt. Karl Marsen in Night Train to Munich, Victor Laszlo in Casablanca and Jerry Durrance in Now, Voyager.

Early life

Paul Henreid was born on January 10, 1908, as Paul Georg Julius Freiherr von Hernried Ritter von Wasel-Waldingau in Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. He was the son of Maria-Luise and Karl Alphons Hernried, a financial adviser to Emperor Franz Joseph I. Born as Carl Hirsch, Karl von Hernried converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1904 due to anti-semitism in Austria-Hungary, although that didn’t save his son being persecuted as a Jew by the Nazis in the 1930s.
Paul von Hernried trained for the theatre in Vienna, over his family's objections, attending the Theresianische Akademie. During this time, he worked at a publishing house while attending school. Karl died in 1916. The family fortune had dwindled by the time his son graduated from the Akademie.

Career

Roles in Germany and Austria

While performing in a play at the Akademie, Henreid was discovered by Otto Preminger, then working for the director Max Reinhardt. Henreid then joined Reinhardt's theater company. In 1933, he played a minor role in a stage production of Faust. He had starring roles in the Vienna staging of the 1934 play Men in White and the play Mizzi.
With the onset of the National Socialist regime in Germany in 1933, the NS-Reichsfilmkammer controlled the making of German films. He applied for membership, but was rejected because his father had been born a Jew. In 1935, Henreid was cast in the Austrian film Jersey Lilly. Henreid went to London in 1937 to portray Prince Albert in the first British stage production of Victoria Regina. That same year, he applied again for a membership by a special permit with the NS-Reichsfilmkammer. This request was personally rejected by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels.
By the time Germany took over Austria in 1938, Henreid had become fervently anti-Nazi. During this period, he helped a Jewish comedian flee Germany. As a result of this and other actions, the German Government designated him an "official enemy of the Third Reich" and confiscated all his assets in Germany. Henreid soon moved permanently to the United Kingdom.

Roles in the United Kingdom

With the outbreak of the Second World War in 1939, Henreid risked deportation from the United Kingdom or internment as an enemy alien. However, the German actor Conrad Veidt vouched for him, and the British Government allowed him to stay and work. Veidt later appeared alongside Henreid as Major Heinrich Strasser in the film Casablanca.
In 1939, Henreid had a major supporting role as German teacher Max Staefel in Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The following year, he received third billing as a German Gestapo agent in the thriller Night Train to Munich. In 1940, Henreid also performed in a minor role in the British musical comedy Under Your Hat. That same year, he portrayed a German army officer in the film Madman of Europe.

Roles for RKO, Warner Bros., and MGM

In 1940, von Henreid relocated to New York City. He played a doctor in the 1941 Broadway play, Flight to the West. That same year, he signed a contract with the RKO Pictures in Hollywood. RKO dropped the "von" from his name to make it sound less Germanic. He also became a citizen of the United States. Henreid's first film for RKO was Joan of Paris, a 1942 war drama in which he played a Free French flyer serving in the Royal Air Force trying to escape Occupied France. The film was a big hit.
Moving to Warner Brothers in 1942, the studio cast Henreid as Jeremiah Durrance in the romance Now, Voyager, playing opposite Bette Davis. His role was that of a married man who meets the "spinster" Davis on an ocean voyage. His next role was as Victor Laszlo, an anti-Nazi resistance leader in the 1942 romantic drama Casablanca. The cast included Claude Rains, Humphrey Bogart, and Ingrid Bergman, who plays Laszlo's wife. The film was a critical success and is considered today one of the best American films in history.
After Casablanca, Henreid turned down the male lead alongside Davis in the 1943 dramatic film, Watch on the Rhine. Warner Brothers then paired Henreid with Ida Lupino in the 1944 romantic drama, In Our Time. That same year, the studio cast him as a romantic lead with Eleanor Parker in Between Two Worlds. Also in 1944, Henreid played a lead role in The Conspirators, about a Dutch resistance leader trying to escape Nazi agents in Lisbon. The film's supporting cast included Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre. Henreid rejected another romantic lead with Davis in the 1944 film Mr Skeffington.
Henreid briefly rejoined RKO to play a pirate with Maureen O'Hara in the studio's 1945 swashbuckler, The Spanish Main. Returning to Warner Bros., he was cast in 1946 in Devotion, a biopic of the Brontë family in which Henreid portrays Charlotte Bronte's husband, Arthur Bell Nicholls. He was cast again with Parker in the 1946 adaptation of the Somerset Maugham novel, Of Human Bondage. He played Philip Carey, a medical student with a clubfoot.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer then borrowed Henreid from Warners to play the composer Robert Schumann in the 1947 film Song of Love, opposite Katharine Hepburn. In his 1984 autobiography Ladies Man, Henreid stated that he then bought out his Warner Brothers contract for $75,000. MGM offered him a long-term contract for $150,000 a year, but he turned it down.

Blacklisting and independent films

Henreid recounted that in the late 1940s, he participated in a protest by some Hollywood actors in Washington, D.C. against the anti-Communist excesses of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. As a result, he said the major studios in Hollywood blacklisted him from any roles. He produced the film noir Hollow Triumph in 1948.
For the next several years, Henreid was only able to gain roles in independent films with lower budgets. He appeared in the 1949 adventure film Rope of Sand, playing a villain opposite Burt Lancaster. In 1950, Henreid made a low-budget film for Edward and Harry Danziger, So Young, So Bad, as a school psychiatrist. This film was followed by an offer from producer Sam Katzman to play the pirate Jean Lafitte in Last of the Buccaneers. Henreid then went to France for the 1951 romance film Pardon My French. He then returned to Katzman for the 1952 film Thief of Damascus. He directed and played the lead role in For Men Only, a college drama about hazing. Later, in the United Kingdom, he made the films Stolen Face and Mantrap. He then went back to Katzman for the 1953 fantasy adventure Siren of Bagdad, playing a magician.

Return to Hollywood

In 1954, Henreid returned to MGM for his first film for a major studio since being blacklisted. He played a minor role in Deep in My Heart, a biopic about the composer Sigmund Romberg. He next moved to Columbia Pictures, where he appeared as a corsair captain in the 1955 film Pirates of Tripoli. He made a cameo appearance in the 1956 comedy Meet Me in Las Vegas. He also appeared at this time on Broadway in the play Festival.
In the early 1950s, Henreid began directing both films and television shows. His directorial credits include American television episodes of:
Henreid also directed the 1956 film A Woman's Devotion, in which he played a supporting role, Girls on the Loose, and Live Fast, Die Young. In 1964, he directed Dead Ringer, which stars Bette Davis and features Henreid's daughter, Monika Henreid, in a minor role. While working as a director, Henreid continued to accept some small acting parts:
In 1973, Henreid returned to Broadway to perform in a revival of the George Bernard Shaw drama, Don Juan in Hell. Henreid's final film role was in the 1977 horror film Exorcist II: The Heretic, where he played a cardinal.

Personal life

Henreid married Elizabeth Camilla Julia "Lisl" Glück in 1936; the couple adopted two daughters.

Death

Henreid died in 1992, at age 84, of pneumonia in Santa Monica, California, after suffering a stroke. He was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica.

Legacy

The Hollywood Chamber of Commerce in 1960 honored Henreid with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles. The first, recognizing his film career, is located at 6366 Hollywood Boulevard. The second, for his work in television, is located at 1720 Vine Street.

Complete filmography

As actor

As himself or narrator

As producer

As director

Film

Television

As writer

Music