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The Lost One

Acknowledgments ❖ i
ii ❖ Acknowledgments
THE

LOST ONE
A LIFE OF

PETER LORRE
❖

STEPHEN D. YOUNGKIN

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY

Acknowledgments ❖ iii
Publication of this volume was made possible in part by a grant
from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Copyright © 2005 by The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern
Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College,
Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University,
Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University,
University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.
All rights reserved.

Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky

663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008
www.kentuckypress.com

09 08 07 06 05 5 4 3 2 1

All illustrations are from the author’s private collection unless otherwise noted.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Youngkin, Stephen D.
The lost one : a life of Peter Lorre / Stephen D. Youngkin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-8131-2360-7 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Lorre, Peter. 2. Motion picture actors and actresses—United States—Biography.
I. Title.
PN2287.L65Y64 2005
791.4302’8’092—dc22 2005009206

This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting

the requirements of the American National Standard
for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Member of the Association of

American University Presses

iv ❖ Acknowledgments
Dedicated to
MEY
and
JMA

Acknowledgments ❖ v
 This page intentionally left blank

vi ❖ Acknowledgments
 Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Prologue: “Who are you, really?” 1
1. Facemaker 4
2. M Is for Morphine 52
3. Escape to Life 89
4. Softly, Softly, Catchee Monkey 142
5. Being Slapped and Liking It 176
6. Insider as Outsider 246
7. The Swamp 279
8. Smoke Gets in Your Eyes 311
9. Elephant Droppings 360
10. The Mask behind the Face 425
Epilogue: Mimesis 451
Appendix: Peter Lorre Credits
and Broadcast Appearances 455
Notes 493
Bibliography 567
Index 581

Illustrations follow pages 106, 266, and 426.

Acknowledgments ❖ vii
 This page intentionally left blank

viii ❖ Acknowledgments
 Acknowledgments
Dating from the late Curmudgeon Period, I am the most disgruntled de-
tractor of those Academy Award recipients who shed glycerin crocodiles and
name names I’ve never heard of (and don’t care to): from a twice-removed
aunt who sewed sequins on a grade school costume to a mechanic who lubed
the Ferrari that got them there. However lonely the writing of a book, it is
uniquely individual. Or so I told myself until I began crediting my many con-
tributors. The list fast scrolled into a cast of thousands. Composition, it ap-
pears, is no less collaborative than film production.
For those who kept me company for most or all of the way, I am infinitely
grateful, for without them I might well have steered off course. Raymond J.
DeMallie midwifed the birth of the biography and babysat it through early
drafts, exercising a maternal care that was deeply touching. Without his will-
ingness to broach the idea of a book to Vincent Price, who kindly made him-
self available for countless questions and consultations, the project might not
have survived its infancy. Mary Youngkin rode the roughest part of the jour-
ney and paid the highest fare, with few complaints. Her tendered support played
many unsung roles. When the conveyance slowed to a crawl, my wife, Julia
Alpert, got out and pushed, then pulled, and finally whipped it over the finish
line. Never did she ask to get off, however long the ride or distant the destina-
tion. My debt of gratitude to her is greater than can be expressed.
I also owe a collective thanks to the Lorre family—brothers Francis and
Andrew (Bundy), sister-in-law Zelma (Musia), daughter Catharine, nephew
Lawrence, and niece Kathy (Vern-Barnett)—which weighs me down with “in-
terest and interest’s interest.” By allowing me to go to the wellspring of memory
as often as I liked, they helped quench my thirst for source materials. Though
unrelated by blood, Celia Lovsky, Peter Lorre’s first wife, qualifies as family.
Friend, mother, and helpmate to Peter, she was all that and more to me. Un-

Acknowledgments ❖ ix
derstandably cautious, Robert Shutan invoked attorney-client privilege long
enough to cross-examine me. Finding my motives just and honorable, he of-
fered a hand in friendship and a memory keen with insight. James Lyon, the
beacon of Brecht scholarship, inspired me to set my sights higher with his
constructive criticism. I am also much indebted to James Bigwood and
Raymond G. Cabana Jr., my coauthors on The Films of Peter Lorre. Our col-
laboration has fed a friendship that has not gone out of print. Cheryl Morris,
who has contributed the most comprehensive list of Lorre’s radio, television,
and American stage credits to date, climbed aboard in the early stages of what
stretched into a prolonged passage to the printed word. As she matured from
enthusiast to expert, her proofing skills likewise developed into editorial ex-
pertise. Milena Hidatty and Ursula Gressenbauer, my Berlin and Vienna con-
tacts, mopped up more errands than I thought possible during the push toward
submission. Their patience and perseverance tested positive time and time
again. Knowing there are no small details, Tom Weaver kept the east-west pipe-
line flowing with a steady stream of rare finds. To archivists, librarians,
interviewees, and buttonholed co-workers who shared this adventure, I am
equally thankful to them and for their contributions. University of Southern
California archivist Ned Comstock comes first to mind. If all the acknowledg-
ments paying tribute to his service above and beyond the call of duty were laid
end to end, he would have a book to himself, which is as it should be. With feet
on both continents, Lotte Guertler extended an old-world hospitality and a
new-world common sense. How lucky to find a Hamburgian who told it like it
was and tells it like it is. Dr. Ron Smelser, Department of History, University of
Utah, kept his red phone free for emergency consultation on matters histori-
cal. Janet Smoak arbitrated disputes between me and my chronically conten-
tious computer. Nancy Litz flew many fact-finding missions over the Internet.
Ted and Martha Youngkin kept the lights on in Studio City. From New York,
my agent, Adam Chromy, exercised careful patience and perseverance in plac-
ing my manuscript in the right hands. Leila Salisbury, David Cobb, and the
staff of the University Press of Kentucky brought this long journey toward
publication to a final destination. Lois Crum kept me on track, adding much
without taking anything away. To these and countless others who bore tales of
Lorre labors with polite forbearance, I give thanks.

Interviewees and other individuals: Robert Alda, Irwin Allen, Robert Allen,
Jürgen von Alten, John Alvin, Eric Ambler, Leon Ames, Morey Amsterdam,
Ken Annakin, Samuel Z. Arkoff, Fred Astaire, Frankie Avalon, Charles Barton,
Pat Battle, Thomas Beck, Don Beddoe, Charles Bennett, Eric Bentley, Elisabeth

x ❖ Acknowledgments
Bergner, D.A. Berryhill, Alvah Bessie, Gerhard Bienert, Henry Blanke, Edwin
H. Blum, Richard Bojarski, Ronald V. Borst / Hollywood Movie Posters, Mort
Briskin, Karl Brown, Joseph Buloff, Murray Burnett, David Butler, Red But-
tons, Jeanne Cagney, Corinne Calvet, William Campbell, Frank Capra, John
Carradine, Rudolph Cartier (Katscher), Chick Chandler, Ralph Clanton, Roger
Corman, Hazel Court, Broderick Crawford, John Croydon, Robert Cummings,
Delmer Daves, Ron Davis (Southern Methodist University), Irma Delson,
William Demarest, Walter Doniger, Gary Dorst, Kirk Douglas, Frances Drake,
Amanda Duff, Philip Dunne, Hal Eddy, Barbara Eden, Axel Eggebrecht, Lotte
H. Eisner, Denholm Elliott, Terry Ellison, Julius J. Epstein, Paul Falkenberg,
Harun Farocki, Rudi Fehr, Fritz Feld, Marta Feuchtwanger, Geraldine Fitzgerald,
Richard Fleischer, Robert Florey, Norman Foster, Gustav Fröhlich, Suzanne
Gargiulo, Tay Garnett, Rhonda Gaylord, Leonard Gershe, Julie Gibson (Barton),
Sir John Gielgud, Harper Goff, Alex Gordon, Barry Alan Grael, Martin Grams
Jr., Dr. Ralph Greenson, Daniel Haller, David Hamson, Mike Hawks, Paul
Henreid, Gerald Hiken, Alfred Hitchcock, Felix Hofmann, John Houseman,
John Huston, Andreas Hutter, Joe Hyams, Burl Ives, Lotte Jacobi, Sam Jaffe,
Joyce Jameson, Paul Jarrico, Rudolph Joseph, Michael Kanin, Hal Kanter, Irvin
Kerschner, Andrea King, Sidney Kingsley, Howard Koch, Paul Kohner, Walter
Kohner, Ernst W. Korngold, Johanna Kortner-Hofer, Henry Koster, Ben Kranz,
Buzz Kulik, Kay Kyser, Ilse Lahn, Inge Landgut-Oehlschlaeger, Fritz Lang, June
Lang, Lilli Latté, Matthew Levins, Dr. William C. Link, Johnny Lockwood, Joan
Lorring, Rouben Mamoulian, Marion Marsh, Tony Martin, James Mason, Ri-
chard Matheson, Victor Mature, Paul Mayer, Herb Meadow, Burgess Meredith,
Marta Mierendorff, Ivor Montagu, Caroline Moorehead, Jacob and Zerka
Moreno, Harry Morgan, Milton Moritz, Robert Morley, Oswald “Ossie” Mor-
ris, John Mueller (University of Rochester), Corinna Müller, Harold Nebenzahl,
Jean Negulesco, Gerhard Nellhaus, Joseph M. Newman, Phillip Notarianni,
Jan Oser, Marvin Paige, Hermes Pan, Harvey Parry, Lee Patrick, Lotte Pauli-
Rausch, Alf Pearson, Joseph Pevney, Karlheinz Pilcz, Richard Pirodsky, James
Powers, Fred Pressburger, Walter Reisch, Naomi Replansky, Rhoda Riker, Allan
Rivkin, Cliff Robertson, Casey Robinson, Wolfgang Roth, Viktor Rotthaler,
Jochen Ruge, Willy Saeger, Hans Sahl, Lester Salkow, Wendy Sanford, Tom Saw-
yer, Jürgen Schebera, Dan Seymour, Sidney Sheldon, Vincent Sherman, Armin
Shimerman, Herman Shumlin, Don Siegel, Jonas and Beatrice Silverstone, Curt
Siodmak, John Spalek (State University of New York at Albany), Milton
Sperling, Sam Spiegel, Ellis St. Joseph, Michael Stock, Herbert Swope, Barbara
Sykes, Paul Tiessen (Wilfred Laurier University), Michael Todd Jr., John Trayne,
Gisela Trowe, Janell Tuttle, Ludwig Veigel, Hans Viertel, June Vincent, Ilse

Acknowledgments ❖ xi
Waldner, Joseph Warren, Lotte Lenya Weill, Billy Wilder, Bob William, Elmo
Williams, Lucy Chase Williams, Bob Wood, Thomas Wood, Morton Wurtele,
Margaret Tallichet Wyler, Keenan Wynn, Irving and Naomi Yergin, Alastair
Young, and Paul Zastupnevich.

Archives, institutions, and organizations: Walter Huder, Akademie der Künste

(Berlin); Krista Vogt and Hannelore Renk, Akademie der Künste der DDR (East
Berlin); Phil Gries, Archival Television Audio Inc.; Archiv Dr. Karkosch
(Munich); Associated Actors & Artistes of America; Carol Stuart, Aufbau;
´
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (Munich); Krystyna Rohozinska-Owczarek,
Biblioteka Uniwersytecka, Uniwersytet Wroclawski (Wroclaw,
– – Poland);
Bibliothèque du film (Paris); Marc Wanamaker, Bison Archives (Los Angeles);
Elfriede Borodin, Brecht-Weigel-Gedenkstätte, Stiftung Archiv der Akademie
der Künste; Brenner-Archiv (Innsbruck); James D’Arc, Special Collections and
Manuscripts, Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah); Claire Thomas and
Saffron Parker, British Film Institute National Library (London); Bundesarchiv/
Filmarchiv (Berlin); Ceskoslovenska Socialisticka Republicka, Ministerstvo
Vnutra (Bratislava); Brigitte J. Kueppers, Julie Graham, and Lauren Buisson,
Arts Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library, Univer-
sity of California, Los Angeles; Anne Caiger, Department of Special Collec-
tions, Charles E. Young Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles;
Cinémathèque Suisse (Lausanne); Copyright Office, Library of Congress
(Washington, D.C.); Deutsches Filmmuseum (Frankfurt am Main); Eberhard
Spiess and Gerd Albrecht, Deutsches Institut für Filmkunde (Wiesbaden); Jörg
Wyrschowy, Deutsches Rundfunkarchiv; Embassy of the Czechoslovak Socialist
Republic (Washington, D.C.); Bernd O. Rachold, The Erich Wolfgang Korngold
Society; Otto G. Schindler, Fachbibliothek für Theaterwissenschaft an der
Universität Wien; Emil P. Moschella, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S.
Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.); Beth Alvarez, Ferdinand Reyher
Papers, Rare Books and Literary Manuscripts Department, University of Mary-
land College Park Libraries; Marje Schuetze-Coburn, Feuchtwanger Memo-
rial Library, Specialized Libraries and Archival Collections, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles; Jerome Johnson and Kristine Sorensen,
Filmarchivists/Filmarchivists; Filmbewertungsstelle (Wiesbaden); Francis A.
Countway Library of Medicine (Boston); Fred Bauman, The Fred Allen Pa-
pers, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress; General Register Office (Lon-
don); Edda Fuhrich-Leisler, Gesellschaft für Max Reinhardt-Forschung; Gary
Adams, Grand Order of Water Rats (London); Handelsakademie und
Handelsschulen der Wiener Kaufmannschaft; Erwin Strouhal, Hochschule für

xii ❖ Acknowledgments
Musik und darstellende Kunst in Wien, Archiv; Henry S. Dogin, Immigration
and Naturalization Service, U.S. Department of Justice (Washington, D.C.);
Institut für Theaterwissenschaft an der Universität Wien; Gustav Kropatschek
and Rosina Raffeinder, Josef Stadt-Archiv, Theater in der Josefstadt (Vienna);
Karl Kraus Archiv der Stadt Wien, Stadt- und Landesbibliothek; Kunst-
historisches Museum (Vienna); Herbert Koch, Magistrat der Stadt Wien;
Samuel A. Gill and Kristine Krueger, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of
Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Toni Neidlinger, Markt Garmisch-
Partenkirchen; Linda Burns, Marriott Library, University of Utah;
Forschungsarchiv Marta Mierendorff, Max Kade Institute for Austrian-
German-Swiss Studies, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; N.Ö.
Landes- Real- und Obergymnasiums (Mödling, Austria); Peter Michael
Braunwarth, Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Vienna); Michael
Omasta, Brigitte Mayr, and Elisabeth Streit, Österreichische Filmmuseum,
SYNEMA—Gesellschaft für Film and Medien; Österreichische Nationalbibliothek
(Vienna); Österreichisches Staatsarchiv-Kriegsarchiv (Vienna); Haris Balic,
Österreichische Theatermuseum (Vienna); Ken Greenwald and Martin
Halperin, Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters (Los Angeles); John Munro-Hall, RKO
Radio Pictures Inc., Studio Collection (Los Angeles); Romania Arhivele
Nationale (Bucharest); Schiller Nationalmuseum, Deutsches Literaturarchiv
(Marbach am Neckar, Germany); Valerie Yaros, Guild historian, the Screen
Actors Guild (Los Angeles); Janet McKee and staff, Sound Recordings Depart-
ment, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.; Staatliches Filmarchiv der DDR
(East Berlin); Dagmar Bouziane, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin; Staatsbürger-
schaftsverband Mödling; Stadtarchiv Zürich; Stephen Dörschel and Sabine
Wolf, Stiftung Archiv der Akademie der Künste (Berlin); Werner Sudendorf,
Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek (Berlin); The Theater Collection of the Lin-
coln Center for the Performing Arts (New York); Sigurd Paul Scheichl,
Universität Innsbruck; Basil Stuart-Stubbs, Special Collections Section, Uni-
versity of British Columbia; Ned Comstock, USC Cinema-Television Library,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Stuart Ng, Stuart Galbraith,
and Haden Guest, USC Warner Bros. Archives, School of Cinema-Television,
University of Southern California, Los Angeles; Paul A. DuCommun, U.S. Public
Health Service; Jerry Haendiges, Vintage Radio Classics; Volksbühne Archiv /
Bibliothek (Berlin); Ingeborg Weiss, Westdeutscher Rundfunk Köln; Wiener
Stadtbibliothek, Handschriften-sammlung; Wiener Stadt- und Landesarchiv;
Susan Dalton, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theatre Research (Madison); and
Zentralbibliothek, Institut für Theaterwissenschaft, Freie Universität Berlin.

Acknowledgments ❖ xiii
 This page intentionally left blank

xiv ❖ Acknowledgments
 Prologue
“Who are you, really?”

We live in times when there is a tremendous exaggeration

on the glamour of viciousness, of angriness, of hardness, all
the so-called basic faults. Well, kindness has become
identified almost with weakness and attractiveness. To me,
it is much more fascinating to make kindness fascinating.
—Peter Lorre

Indeed in pretending to be somebody else, he [the actor]

does not show himself; he conceals himself.
—Otto Fenichel

As a little girl bounces her ball against a Steckbrief (wanted

poster) pasted to a circular pillar, the shadow of Hans
Beckert falls across the sheet.
“What a pretty ball!”
The shadow bends down.
“What is your name?”
“Elsie Beckmann.”
—M

Walking along Hollywood’s Highland Avenue one fall evening in 1977,

twenty-five-year-old Catharine A. Lorre, sole heir to the face and fame of her
highly recognizable father, watched a police car pull up and cut her off. Out of
the vehicle stepped two undercover vice-squad officers, who flashed their badges

Prologue ❖ 1
and demanded to see some identification. Among the papers in Catherine’s
purse was a photo of herself at age ten sitting on her father’s lap. “Look what
we’ve got here,” one of the policemen allegedly said, handing the snapshot to
the other officer. They let her go.
Two years later, former Glendale auto upholsterer Angelo Buono Jr. and
his adoptive cousin Kenneth A. Bianchi confessed to the “Hillside Strangler”
murders of ten women as well as an abortive attempt to abduct and murder an
eleventh: Catharine Lorre. According to Bianchi, posing as police officers, they
intended to order her into the car, but they changed their minds after learning
that she was meeting someone nearby. Catharine told a different story, one
that might have twisted her father’s smile into the ironic grin so familiar to
moviegoers. After abandoning the thought of ransoming her, claimed
Catharine, the starstruck killers decided to spare the look-alike daughter of
their screen hero who, as Hans Beckert, had won fame for his psychopathic
tendencies toward young girls in Fritz Lang’s M (1931).
Neither Catharine nor little Elsie Beckmann dreamed what was in store
for them. From benign beginnings, no one, especially the intended victims,
could have expected such malignant endings. With Beckert, Bianchi, and
Buono’s on- and offscreen admissions of guilt, persons and personas soon
sorted themselves out. The “Hillside Stranglers” were confessed killers, and
that was that. They would spend the remainder of their lives in prison.
For Lorre’s part, he simply hung up his costume and walked away. But the
paying public wasn’t buying. “Look, it is not me they see,” he told a friend. “It
is the murderer. I am not famous. It is the murderer. . . . they think I am the
murderer.” After personifying the “Vampire of Düsseldorf,” claimed the actor,
he raced from hostile crowds, dodged stones, watched forks drop from plates,
and received death threats—all signs, however exaggerated, of a mistaken iden-
tity that surely gave him pause to reconsider his statement about enjoying roles
that complemented part and player. Even Fritz Lang thought better of casting
him as an innocuous schoolteacher after witnessing the backlash to a perfor-
mance as convincing as it was credible.
In the wake of M, Peter Lorre watched the “lively,” “naive,” “melancholy,”
“explosive,” “carefree” personality that had found expression on stage slip from
public view. The mantle of screen villainy concealed it. According to friends
and co-workers, we saw only the tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface lay
unplumbed depths. Sound waves sent out saying, “Who are you, really? And
what were you before? What did you do and what did you think?” came back
only as vague blips. Finding the real Peter Lorre proved difficult. His “life in-
terest” had gained the upper hand on his life long before the cinema opened

2 ❖ The LOst One

up to him. He was, in a word, elusive, at times laughing at the truth, at others
hiding from it. He was also modest. Opening up about himself in interviews
went “against the grain,” he explained to New York talk-show host Helen
O’Connell in 1961. “I had a very strict father and he brought me up not talk-
ing about myself, like a decent person should. Now in an interview, all of a
sudden you have nothing but talking about yourself, so you have to overcome
a certain amount of inhibition.” He also had not joined the throngs of actors
who had penned autobiographies: “It’s a racket now. I want to be the only
actor who never wrote a book.”
As a biographer, I soon realized I would not reconcile man and myth by
treading ties. Middle ground does not accommodate who Peter Lorre was and
what he became. I broadened my parameters. Spanning the wide tracks of his
personality conditioned my appreciation of the extremes of his life. Along the
fringes of memory, I found scattered remnants of a being long since extinct,
one who had given us not what he wanted of himself, but what he thought we
wanted. Between creator and creature stood a man who had lost his way.

Prologue ❖ 3
 1

Facemaker
Acting is a ridiculous profession
unless it is part of your very soul.
—Peter Lorre

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Arad looked to the future. Thanks
to its position as an important railroad junction, the commercial center of
southeastern Hungary boasted one of the largest distilleries in Europe, its own
brand of flour (Arad Königsmehl, or King’s Flour); a lumberyard; and wagon,
machine, and barrel factories. The surrounding countryside produced grains,
fruit, tobacco, honey, and cattle. Underground lay gold, silver, and copper. Above
lived nearly 40,000 inhabitants. Predominantly Roman Catholic, the popula-
tion also included nearly 10,000 Greek Orthodox Christians and 5,000 Jews,
together with Greek Catholics, Lutherans, and Reformed Protestants. Little won-
der the bustling community could afford to top its new city hall with a tower
and fund a telegraph, a business school, a cathedral, a conservatory, a theater,
and a horse-drawn trolley to connect the growing suburbs. Given its impor-
tance as an industrial hub, it is not surprising that the city attracted the business-
minded Loewensteins.1 Born to Savolta and Wilhelm Loewenstein, an office
worker and assistant rabbi, in nearby Csene on January 27, 1877, Alajos fol-
lowed in his father’s footsteps. After graduating with honors from a three-year
commercial academy in 1897, he established himself at the Erste Arad Fabrikshof
Aktiengesellschaft, a manufacturing concern. Three years later, he stepped into
the comfortable position of chief bookkeeper at Adolf Weigel and Company.
The need to supplement his income no doubt played an important part in

4 ❖ The LOst One

his decision to join the kaiserlich und königliche Armee, the professional stand-
ing army of the Habsburgs, on September 18, 1897. More likely, his love for
Emperor Franz Joseph tugged at his heart and universal military service forced
his hand. Whatever his motivation, Loewenstein signed up for one year at a
volunteer training school, ten years in the Heer (army), and two years in the
Landwehr (national guard). The Haupt-Grundbuchblatt described the five-foot-
four soldier as having black hair, brown eyes, a well-formed mouth, a round
(dimpled) chin, and an oval face.2 A surviving portrait of Alajos Loewenstein
in his uniform shows a proud man with clear, strong features that convey a
firm sense of purpose.
Loewenstein began at the bottom but advanced rapidly. After passing the
volunteer’s one-year examinations at the infantry regiment number 33, Kaiser
Leopold II, in Arad, he was promoted to the rank of titular corporal, then field
sergeant. Another exam paved the way for his rise to deputy cadet and finally
lieutenant in January 1901. Believing war with Russia inevitable, the Dual
Monarchy had increased its military budget in 1895. The army was slowly
awakening from a period of stagnation, and active reserve officers, drawn from
the ranks of the one-year volunteers, were becoming increasingly important.
Alajos was among the better-paid public servants. He was soon earning six
thousand kronen per year, three times what he was making behind his desk.
That he was able to speak and write both German and Magyar pushed his
stock higher. Besides being remunerative, the Austro-Hungarian Army—com-
posed of “different and often hostile nationalities . . . held together by tradi-
tion and discipline”—was surprisingly liberal, becoming one of the first
European forces to open its officer corps to Jews. Military historian Gunther
E. Rothenberg notes that although the “well-educated and largely middle class
Jewish population of the monarchy” constituted only 5 percent, it “continued
to provide over 16 percent of reserve officers.”
Between military exercises at nearby Grosswardein (Nagyvárad), Loewen-
stein found time to marry twenty-three-year-old Elvira Freischberger, a native
of Zubrohlava, on September 8, 1903. The following year he accepted the po-
sition of chief bookkeeper with the Textil Industrie Aktiengesellschaft in
Rószahegy, a small primarily Slovak town of 12,490 inhabitants nestled against
the High Tatra Mountains on Hungary’s northern border. Rising sharply out
of a high plateau in the central Carpathians, they kept close company with the
Transylvanian Alps. However, as the elevation dropped, wolves, bears, and wild-
cats gave way to spring and summer cow pastures and, lower yet, to vineyards.
Closely tied to the land, Rószahegy depended on the production of textiles,
wood, cotton, flax, grains, livestock, and marble.

Facemaker ❖ 5
 On June 26, 1904, Elvira gave birth to their first child, László, who would
become better known as Peter Lorre.3 True to what would become an all-too-
familiar pattern of enforced absenteeism, Loewenstein barely had time to greet
his new son before reporting for another month of military maneuvers. Two
years later, a second son, Ferenc (Francis) was born. In April 1908, shortly after
giving birth to a third son, András (Andrew), Elvira died of either blood or
food poisoning, depending on the brother who searched a distant and vague
memory of a mother he never knew. Her death certificate cites blood poison-
ing (vérmérgezés, literally “angry blood”) as the cause.
“To me, the food poisoning theory is much more plausible,” said Kathy
Vern-Barnett, Francis’s daughter. “‘Opi’ [Alajos] had an absolute obsession
about not saving up cooked potatoes (even when we had refrigeration). He
insisted that they were poisonous.”4
Loewenstein, who was seldom home, recognized the boys’ need for a
mother and married Elvira’s schoolmate and best friend, Melanie Klein, who
raised them (and Liesl and Hugo, her two children by Alajos) almost single-
handedly. Lorre later told his first wife, actress Celia Lovksy, that when Melanie
entered the house in her new capacity, he hid under his bed. His stepmother
apparently neither forgot nor forgave the affront, setting the bitter tone of
their relationship. Lorre admitted in 1947 that he had gotten along very poorly
with Melanie, who “spoke of him only in terms of the prodigal who let them
down, who wasn’t there to support them when they needed it.” The hand-held
joy nurtured by Elvira’s touch turned to closed-fisted defiance of the inter-
loper. Young László struck off from the family. Instead of playing soccer with
his brothers, he kept to his room and sketched and painted in watercolors. “At
home and also in school,” Francis recalled, “he kept separate from us, never
joined in any play we had in mind and never helped to do the home chores,
which we had to do before leaving for school, such as make the beds, clean and
so on.” Kathy recalled that the “extremely pragmatic” Melanie, who insisted
that the boys learn to knit, sew, and cook, disapproved of László’s sloppy ways
and late hours, habits that were, to her mind, symptomatic of an artistic tem-
perament. Described by Andrew and Francis as a strict but loving parent who
doled out equal treatment to the boys, she won no recognition from László,
who willfully resisted her efforts to mold him in the image of her successful
brother-in-law, Oskar Taussig, and resented her harangues about the impor-
tance of good grades.
Lorre’s childhood memories of what he called the “dark mountains” yield
little else. Those who imagine a Kafka-like tragedy in his youth that will solve
the mystery of Peter Lorre are disappointed. It did not exist and he knew it.

6 ❖ The LOst One

The best lies couldn’t hide the truth. Nonetheless, by steering people away from
his early years, he helped create the mystique of clouded beginnings.
His memory of the period ran to extremes, when it flowed at all. In 1936
he confessed that the death of his mother had “taught me what sadness can
be.” Lorre disingenuously credited his father with being “a very rich man, own-
ing many castles.” History again took a back seat one year later when he dug
into his early memories of Christmas for interviewer J.M. Ruddy.

To my small boy’s mind, no other event could compare in grandeur and

enchantment with the thrill of Christmas. For nights my dreams were filled
with wonderful thoughts of a bag full of beautiful toys and luscious candies
dropped down our chimney by the ever-thoughtful Kris Kringle.
But always I was doomed to disappointment. My family was thrifty and
exceedingly practical. My father and mother realized how much wiser it was,
if not so pleasing, to supply their son with a pair of extra warm boots, or a
new pair of pantaloons, than to give him something which would fill his heart
with joy but not further material welfare.

Forty years later, Andrew had only one thing to say about his brother’s
Yuletide tales of colorfully garbed country folk, full larders, street dancing,
and plaintive carols: “Unadulterated B.S.” Peter, he maintained, would have
remembered little about life in Hungary because by 1910 the Loewensteins
ˆ
had moved on to Braila, Romania, where Alajos had been promoted to inspec-ˆ
tor at another division of the Textil Industrie Aktiengesellschaft. Braila, with
its nearly sixty thousand inhabitants, was far from rustic. The one-time mili-
tary fortress was now a transportation nexus. Both hub and harbor, it lay on
the Barbos-Buzau line of the Romanian state railway and trafficked grains to
Constantinople by steamship down the Danube River to the Black Sea. Here,
László and Francis enrolled in a private German school. Although Alajos had
been transferred to nonactive status in the Landwehr in December 1907, the
breakout of the Second Balkan War in August 1913, and the likelihood of a
larger conflict, in which he most certainly would be called to play a part, in-
duced him to move his family to Vienna (Landstrasser Hauptstrasse 123) in
September.5 There they stayed with “Uncle” Oskar Taussig, who was married
to Melanie’s sister, “not a real uncle,” said Francis, “but he definitely was a good
friend of my father and helped him on many occasions when he was in trouble,
which, unfortunately, was very often.”
Loewenstein’s military service record, somewhat inexplicably, ends here.
According to Francis and Andrew, their father was called up August 5, 1914,

Facemaker ❖ 7
one day after World War I erupted. As the oldest ranking lieutenant in his
regiment, he was automatically promoted to Oberleutnant and assigned to the
Third Army’s operations on the Eastern Front, where he witnessed the colli-
sion of the Austro-Hungarian and Russian forces in the Carpathians during
the winter of 1914–15. Bitter fighting produced heavy casualties, while sub-
zero temperatures and severe food shortages pushed the death toll higher. By
1916 the Austro-Hungarian Army had suffered eight hundred thousand dead
and another 1 million sick or wounded. Although a German-supported coun-
teroffensive repelled the Russians, thousands fell into enemy hands. After heart
trouble forced him to retire from active duty, Alajos was put in charge of a
Russian prisoner-of-war camp. “I believe the Russians praised him,” said Kathy,
who recalled hearing her grandfather tell stories about “cleaning up the bar-
racks where they were living and feeding them, because by the time some of
those Russian soldiers were finally caught by the Germans in that particular
area, they were on the verge of starvation.” During their internment the pris-
oners fashioned an aluminum ring with a copper inlay inscribed “M.L. 1914/
16,” which they presented to Melanie in appreciation of their kind treatment.
In March 1915 Loewenstein moved his family to Ludwig-Höflergasse 20
in Mödling, ten miles south of Vienna, where they lived in a townhouse built
in 1913 by the Jugendstil architect Karl Lehrmann. Since the nineteenth cen-
tury, this fashionably expensive bedroom community near the Wienerwald
had drawn artists who wanted to retreat to the country but stay within strik-
ing distance of the city. There they could touch nature and be touched in turn
by the area’s famous Heurigen (“new wine” from the last vintage). The city also
hosted a Jewish enclave of merchants, tradespeople, and civil servants. While
only 100 of Mödling’s 18,680 inhabitants (fewer than 1 percent) listed their
religion as Israelisch, they formed a Kulturgemeinde (cultural community) that
exerted influence beyond its number.
Here László attended Mittelschule (sixth to ninth grades) at the Niederöster
Landes Realgymnasium from 1915 to 1917, when the family again moved, this
time to Valeriestrasse 88 (today Böcklinstrasse), near the Prater, Vienna’s great
amusement park. As a Jew and one of only two private students, he was in the
minority. While his brothers applied themselves, studying long hours in an-
ticipation of helping their father support the family, the “clever” László seem-
ingly breezed through school, admitted Francis, “with an ease which was always
an envy from my side.” He earned A’s in drawing and writing and B’s in reli-
gion, German, history, geology, mathematics, and physical fitness. He lagged
behind only in Latin with a C.
Grades, however, tell only part of the story of László’s school years. No

8 ❖ The LOst One

one has painted a more damning picture of turn-of-the-century education
than the Austrian novelist Stefan Zweig. Using “unfeeling and soulless” meth-
ods, unapproachable teachers taught nothing worth knowing. School became
a treadmill of lifeless lessons as coldly impersonal as the dreary, barracks-like
classrooms, whose whitewashed walls smelled of mold and whose hard wooden
benches twisted the spine. Doctrine, dogma, and discipline suffocated the in-
tellect and suppressed the spirit of many but engendered in others “a hatred
for all authority” that awakened a passion for freedom. For these students, the
“impulse to creative production became positively epidemic,” fostering an “ar-
tistic monomania.” Melanie’s stringent standards had edged László out of the
nest, but school “spread his soul out wide” for flight into the boundless worlds
of art, literature, theater, and, alas, business.
Loewenstein acquired three thousand acres along the Sava River in
Carinthia after mustering out of the army. Rich in mountain scenery, the Aus-
trian crown land, with more than 1 million wooded acres, was populated by
far more trees than people, who numbered only eighty-four inhabitants per
square mile. Now an agriculturalist, Loewenstein filled small timber contracts
for the army. In May 1917 less lucrative circumstances necessitated relocation
of the Loewensteins to the inner city. After months of deprivation in Vienna,
where ration cards allowed each adult only a small portion of meat that was all
but inedible, when it could be found, the family depended increasingly on
their country estate. Here the boys spent “the nicest time of our youth” eating,
playing, and working. To earn a little pocket money, László and his brothers
harvested hay, minded cows, and collected apples from more than two thou-
sand trees and helped press them for wine. Alajos also taught his sons the
fundamentals of horsemanship. A detachment of military riders furthered their
equestrian education by teaching them circus trick riding. Fit and full-bellied,
the boys returned to the city of shortages.
With war’s end, lands changed title. Loewenstein’s property became part
of the new Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes, called Yugoslavia after
1929. According to Andrew, because he had served in the Austro-Hungarian
Army, Alajos was classified as an “enemy officer” and his land was placed un-
der state supervision, with a commissar to oversee its production.6 Convinced
that the government supervisor was skimming off the profits, Loewenstein
sold the estate to Uncle Oskar, who, since he had not served in the army, could
operate the business free of restrictions, and started dabbling in the grain ex-
port business. Through Taussig, who was on the board of Steyr-Automobil-
Werke, he also developed a long association with the car company. Loewenstein’s
promotion to director of sales for personal cars and trucks eased the family’s

Facemaker ❖ 9
financial worries but kept him on the road for weeks at a time. “Practically
always on the move,” he would not come to rest until he moved to Australia in
1949. “My father was very intelligent, oversensitive and a good organizer,” ob-
served Francis, which was “perhaps the reason [why] he was either on top and
in high position or without a job for many years.” A photo taken toward the
end of the war frames a face world-weary in its lean knowing. Tired and sub-
dued, Loewenstein once again felt the weight of starting over in a city whose
burgeoning population (from 476,220 in 1857 to 2,031,420 in 1910) had wit-
nessed the growth of a housing shortage into a housing crisis. Rents ate up
more than one-quarter of a worker’s wages.
Unlike the stabilizing Melanie, Alajos hovered just a couple inches above
the ground. “Opi was an idealist,” said Kathy. “He wasn’t a terribly practical
man.” Strongly bound to his cultural roots, Loewenstein nurtured “a passion-
ate secret love, [which] was the establishment of a Jewish homeland in Pales-
tine and [he] was a great supporter and admirer of the Hungarian journalist
Theodor Herzl.” His conversion to Catholicism during the war years had been,
according to the family, only a “life-saving exercise.” When asked by the Ge-
stapo how long he had been a Catholic, Loewenstein reportedly replied, “Let’s
just say that I have been a Free Mason for a lot longer.” Until his death in 1958,
he faced east every morning and faithfully read from the Hebrew prayer book.
Alajos also prided himself on his ability to “examine a pregnant woman’s
hand and prognosticate as to what the sex of the child would be,” said his
granddaughter, “and I never knew him to be wrong. I remember him very
proudly telling me that he won two dollars from Bogie [Humphrey Bogart]
because he forecast his son and daughter to Lauren Bacall.”
In September 1918 good marks allowed László to advance to the second
year of a four-year business program at the Wiener Handels-Akademie. Al-
ready striking his independent colors, he listed his religion as konfessionslos
(without a confession of faith or creed). The designation set the pattern for
nonobservance that characterized the rest of his life. Like so many of his artist
friends, he fell somewhere between agnosticism and apathy. Given his fiscal
irresponsibility as an adult (euphemistically dismissed as inattention to daily
details), it is easy to understand why he never mentioned that he had earned
high grades in merchant and travel geography, commercial history, business
mathematics, bookkeeping, business law, and economic policy. László took
his final exam on June 28, 1921, and graduated the following week at the top
of his class, a distinction that undoubtedly would have surprised his future
creditors.
Actors who talk about being bitten by a bug or infected by a desire to act

10 ❖ The LOst One

might have taken their cue from Lorre, who claimed that his addiction to act-
ing amounted to a disease transmitted by an unknown host. Although Lorre
expounded by the paragraph when questioned later about the psychology of
acting, he had little to say on the subject of his beginnings. He later explained,
seemingly searching his own past for the seeds of his first flowering, that as a
young boy he had “read a great deal [“like somebody else is eating,” said Francis]
and lived in fantasies wherein I acted, all unconsciously, my many parts.” Francis
recalled that he and László debuted as dwarfs in a grade school production of
Snow White. “I was the smallest of these people,” recalled his brother, “and
Peter the biggest one. Of course, we just had to hop around on the stage and
not talk.” If Lorre remembered his early introduction to the stage, he never
spoke of it.
László did not act again until his Mittelschule years. When his German
professor learned that Hans Winge was casting three one-act plays for a the-
ater evening, he recommended a student from another class. László Loewenstein
accepted the role of a quarrelsome defendant and stood upon the stage of the
Vienna Kammerspiele for the first time. “He had no interest in the theater,”
wrote Winge, “but I infected him with my enthusiasm. . . . I dragged him into
the theater and into the movies and further from the business career, which he
had intended to pursue.”7 Again, Lorre seemed to have forgotten his first role
as a criminal.
Lorre later downplayed his acting origins and the idea of “expressing your-
self. I think they are automatic. You either make faces or are born to it, or you
don’t like it and that’s all there is to it.” He commented in 1935 that becoming
an actor wasn’t a conscious decision: “I did not say to myself, ‘I am going to be
an actor,’ because I did not really know what an actor was. But somewhere, in
my subconscious being, the root stirred and motivated me and I went. . . . I
knew then why I had left my father’s house.”
Not without a word of advice. As the apple of his father’s eye, László bore
a double burden. Loewenstein expected great things of his firstborn and looked
to him to set a good example for his younger brothers. News of his son’s acting
aspirations fell on unappreciative ears. Acting was barely tolerable as an avo-
cation; as an occupation, it was downright foolish. With Vienna’s economy in
shambles, he warned, his son would starve. Loewenstein urged him to pursue a
more practical profession, a trade with a solid future. Unable to “imagine that
anybody would be wasteful enough of their talents to want to go into such a
thing as the theater,” recalled Kathy, Melanie seconded her husband’s opinion.
Thanks to his influential Uncle Oskar, a director at the Anglo-Öster-
reichischen Bank in Vienna’s Strauchgasse, László landed a job in the foreign

Facemaker ❖ 11
exchange department.8 According to his first Meldezettel (residence registra-
tion forms), in late October 1922 he took up lodgings in Margarethe-strasse
56. The local authority listed his occupation as “beamter” (official) and his
religion as “konfessionslos.” Within a few months, the clever and efficient bank
employee headed his section. His superiors smiled down on him. Herr Engel,
his manager, even extended his hand in friendship. Earning his own way sat
well with László. The six telephones on his desk rang to the importance of his
new position. Alajos beamed with pride and sighed with relief.
What his father did not know—and the local authorities soon learned—
was that László divided his life into public and private sides. In early April,
when he moved from Webgasse 30 to a studio apartment in Fischerstiege 9, he
again filled out the required Meldezettel. Alongside the designation beamter is
a handwritten note that reads, “auch Schauspieler” (also actor). The young
bank employee had, in effect, come out from behind his desk.
With “some other nuts” determined to explore their acting skills, László
built a stage in a barn. After quickly learning that the inexperienced actors
became self-conscious and stiff delivering memorized lines, he suggested an
improvisational approach. One of the players would invent a situation and
create a character. The others would then define their roles, ad-libbing the
dialogue and the action until they exhausted the possibilities of the situation,
and then move on to another scene.
“I am amazed when I look back now,” Lorre reflected from his Hollywood
home some sixteen years later. “We acted out these plays we had concocted.
They were bad and we were bad—but we were acting. And do you know my
parents had been so strict that I had never been inside a theater; had never
seen a play? I was an actor before I had ever been part of an audience.”
The late nights played havoc with László’s schedule. One day he didn’t
report to work. When Herr Engel telephoned to inquire after his absent worker,
Melanie told him that her son had left that morning at the usual time. That
evening, when he returned home, she confronted her undependable stepson,
who declared that he wanted to be an actor, not a bank teller. “Counting people’s
money is a thankless business,” he later said. László vowed he would not re-
turn to work, but Melanie’s strong hand prevailed. Herr Engel opened a canned
speech about tardiness.
“You know,” interrupted László, dropping a sure hint, “you can fire me,
but you can’t reprimand me so severely.” (To make sure that others didn’t miss
the point, he appended to the oft-repeated story a postscript about wiggling
his ears during the lecture.)
Engel fired him.

12 ❖ The LOst One

 In a revised version of the story told to New York talk-show host Helen
O’Connell in 1961, Lorre confessed that he “wasn’t very good” at banking:
“One day the manager of the bank told me a long story in front of all the other
people. To me it was very boring. I didn’t listen to him, so I guess uncon-
sciously I wiggled my ears and everybody laughed and I was fired.”
Whatever the cause, “his boss got him past the promise he had given his
father that he wouldn’t quit,” explained Peter’s brother Andrew. “From that
time on he just devoted his entire attention to the stage.”
It was the worst of times for an actor. Postwar Vienna knew poverty, hun-
ger, widespread unemployment, and rampant inflation. “We got our pocket
money and carried it home in two suitcases, all paper,” recalled László’s friend
Walter Reisch, who went on to become a prominent screenwriter at Universum
Film AG (UFA) and eventually wound up in Hollywood.9 “By the time you
came home you couldn’t buy a cigarette with it.” Against this backdrop, László
decided to “run away from home.” There was a ring of truth to it, just enough,
in fact, to feed the movie tabloids years later. More accurately, the door closed
on him and he drifted away. After losing his bank job in November 1923, László
lodged on a day-to-day basis, first at the Hotel Wandl for a few months and
then at the Hotel Nord for a few weeks. On nights when he could not afford
even a cheap room, he turned up at home. But with Alajos away, Melanie had
set new rules. She told László she could not forbid him to stay there, but if he
wasn’t home by nine o’clock, he would be locked out for the night. Likewise, if
he failed to show up for meals, he could go hungry. Francis recalled that al-
though László never came home again, “sometimes he was so desperate he
waited in the morning in front of our flat until my sister and I went to school
and we gave him the sandwiches our mother had packed for us. I know that
for some time this was the only food he consumed, as he had no money to buy
anything. We also gave him our pocket money and sold some of our books in
order to give him something to live on.” At one point, the large-hearted
Loewenstein also gave László what he thought would be an adequate sum to
tide him over until he found work as an actor, despite his disapproval of his
son’s new career. The next week, however, the jobless offspring returned for
another handout, prompting heated discussions between Alajos and Melanie.
To keep peace in the family, he secretly deposited an allowance with his attor-
ney. Once a week, László rolled in to collect the gratuity.
During the making of I’ll Give a Million some fifteen years later, Lorre
told actor John Carradine that he had lived in packing crates and even “robbed
people out of necessity.” However much romance he read—and later related—
into his poverty, he did sleep on wooden benches in the nearby Prater. With

Facemaker ❖ 13
the metallic grind of its giant Ferris wheel, the pinging of the shooting gallery,
and the cacophony of outdoor concerts, it is no surprise that he sought out, as
he later claimed, a bed of pine needles in the woods or a quiet doorway. Re-
duced to selling newspapers to buy his beloved goulash, he used the extras as
bedding. Celia remembered Peter telling her that hunger forced him to trade
his “little lilac wool jacket for a roll.”
“For a long while I went hungry and friendless and cold,” Lorre told an
interviewer in 1935. “I knew park benches for beds and the feel of a face pressed
against the window of a sweet-shop.” People didn’t know it to look at him.
Because of his starchy diet, he stayed surprisingly pudgy, although his health
was poor: “I am the only actor, I believe, who really had scurvy.”
Francis recalled that his brother was determined to act: “I know that once
he decided to be an actor, he stuck to it and spent all his time either going to
the theater or learning.”
To shelter himself from the elements as well as gain free entrance to the
theater, László joined a claque, or group of clappers, at the Burgtheater. Around
seven-thirty each evening a stagehand admitted László, Walter, and a few oth-
ers and planted them throughout the theater, where they were expected to
sigh, whistle, laugh, and applaud at just the right moments in the show. The
members of the claque received no pay for their services, but they nurtured
their aspirations—for as many as thirty performances of the same play—of
one day finding themselves on the stage. “Peter’s great obsession and ambition
was the theater,” recalled Reisch, “and since at that time Vienna had an enor-
mously rich theater life, he spent practically every night there.”
While the theater filled his head with dreams, the American government
filled his stomach with food. Under the direction of Herbert Hoover, the Ameri-
can Relief Administration supplied foodstuffs to the war-torn countries of
central Europe after the armistice in November 1918. After its liquidation,
Hoover helped form a private charitable organization called the European
Children’s Fund, which provided food and clothing to needy youngsters until
June 1922. Reisch credited Hoover with saving his and Lorre’s lives:

The Herbert Hoover action was one of the most beautiful things God ever
invented. . . . Hoover’s name was more popular in Austria than Abraham Lin-
coln or George Washington, much more important than Woodrow Wilson. . . .
It was always four o’clock in the afternoon when the kitchen opened. . . . Any-
body who lined up with a pot and a little box could, free, completely free, by
the grace of the United States of America, get a big pot of chocolate, which
was unheard of. Hot chocolate! And a huge piece of gugelhupf, which was a

14 ❖ The LOst One

 certain pound cake. . . . And while lining up, Peter only talked about the the-
ater.

Destitute and malnourished, László jumped the ship of blind optimism

and security enjoyed by the older generation and was swept away by the liberal
tide of the times. Vienna’s younger generation rejected the moth-eaten moral-
ity, “petrified formality,” and “disciplined conformity” of a bourgeois exist-
ence. For László, abandoning the values he had known at home made way for
a new emphasis on self-expression, intellectual mobility, and bohemianism.

While the theater satisfied his ambition to become an actor, another Viennese
institution met most of his other needs. In the literary coffeehouse, László
discovered the “ersatz totality” that family, profession, and political party could
not offer. It was a home away from home for those who could not afford even
a cramped and cold apartment. There, too, he could stay busy without pur-
pose, receiving and answering letters, making telephone calls, discussing the
merits of a play, a book, or a painting, or perusing an assortment of newspa-
pers and journals. As an “asylum for people who have to kill time so as not to
be killed by it,” the coffeehouse held body and soul together, soothing what
writer Alfred Polgar liked to call a “cosmic uneasiness” by offering escape “into
an irresponsible, sensuous, chance relationship to nothingness.” Here the “or-
ganization of the disorganized” built an inner world out of anecdote at the
expense of facts.
Lying “on the Viennese latitude at the meridian of loneliness,” the literary
coffeehouse offered “solo voices [that] cannot do without the support of the
chorus” a longitude of fellowship among the cultural elite. To an assimilated
Jew with artistic aspirations, the strong Semitic presence of the coffeehouse
was an intellectual magnet. At the Café Central László could huddle anony-
mously over a cup of coffee or rub shoulders with writers of Kleinkunst (small
forms), such as Polgar, Peter Altenberg, Egon Friedell, and Karl Kraus.10 Or he
could walk a few steps down narrow Herrengasse and further his education in
psychoanalysis at the spacious and sunny Café Herrenhof, which was frequented
by Alfred Adler, Siegfried Bernfeld, Otto Gross, and Adolf Josef Storfer.11 Some-
thing of a shining figure there, “Laczy” (pronounced Lazzy) Loewenstein bril-
liantly advertised his cabaret gifts. Milan Dubrovic, the doyen of Austrian
journalism, remembered László “as an unmasked blitz parodist notorious and
famous for his mischievous sayings, puns and bawdy rhymes, which he pro-
duced on an assembly line.” Most famously, after the homosexual actor Gustaf
Gründgens wed actress Marianne Hoppe, he devised the popular chant

Facemaker ❖ 15
 Hoppe, Hoppe Gründgens
they don’t have children.
And if they do have children,
they are not by Gründgens

Reduced to begging, László made the café circuit in the hopes of cadging
a cup of coffee or collecting enough spare change to buy something to eat. At
one stop, he met William Moreno, whose older brother Jacob had founded the
Stegreiftheater (Theater of Spontaneity) in 1922.12 Jacob Moreno believed that
traditional theater had lost its surprise. Words and gestures had grown tired in
their long trip from page to stage. To restore the lost sense of immediacy, he
proposed stringing together “now and then flashes” that would unchain illu-
sion and let imagination run free. As a young medical student at the Univer-
sity of Vienna, he had walked through the public gardens collecting children
for “impromptu play.” In his interactive kindergarten, he learned how to “treat
children’s problems by letting them act extemporaneously.” He also conducted
sessions in the streets and at military camps, prisons, and hospitals. On April
1, 1921, psychodrama, a “science” that explored the therapeutic effects of spon-
taneous drama, was born.
Not only social misfits, malcontents, and psychological rebels (which László
must certainly have appeared to be) were attracted to the experimental the-
ater, but also natural actors untainted by experience or orthodoxy—certainly
a cut at Freud’s teachings—and gifted enough to improvise both gestures and
dialogue. Among those who came by the Stegreiftheater to watch, listen, and
learn were Alexander Moissi, Ernst Toller, Georg Kaiser, Franz Theodor Csokor,
and Arthur Schnitzler.
William Moreno was intrigued by the young waif. Zerka Moreno, Jacob’s
widow, recalled that William listened attentively to László’s stories of street life
and (somewhat skeptically) to his claims that “he had been ejected from his
parental home because he had impregnated a maid” and that his parents “were
middle-class people who could not deal with him, and did not support him in
any way.”13 He reported to Jacob that he had met a rather odd-looking young
man who was in need of a job. He “might be a suitable character for the the-
ater, he had such a curious smile and face, quite unforgettable.” Would Jacob
like to meet him? He would. Jacob, who was “always fond of mavericks, being
one himself,” tested László at the Stegreiftheater, “putting him into a situation
with a surprise element, to test and evaluate his ability.” He apparently showed
promise and was invited to become a regular member of the acting troupe in
1922.

16 ❖ The LOst One

 Years later, Lorre remembered it as an “ideal school of acting.” Instead of
focusing on linear time, the actors discovered a collection of moments that
aroused “the subject to an adequate re-enactment of the lived out and unlived
out dimensions” of their private worlds. In this way, he pointed out, they could
commit “dramatic suicide,” if they were so inclined, and rid themselves of psy-
chic complexes at the same time. Always contemptuous of conventional meth-
ods, Lorre defiantly pointed out that acting cannot be taught in school: “I
don’t believe in studying a thing that lies definitely in the realm of imagina-
tion.” Rather, he believed that “the actor must have a feeling for it. If a person
acts because he has ‘learned it in school,’ rather than because he has a striking
talent for it, he’ll just be reaching a dull medium in his performances.”
Also known as The Therapeutisches Theater (Therapeutic Theater), the
Stegreiftheater followed two lines of development, one purely aesthetic-
dramatic, the other psychiatric. Steering a course between the “ecstatic pathos
of expressionism” and direct analytical therapy, Moreno stressed the need to
define the individual in relation to the group, an approach that put László in
the spotlight. As a talented improviser capable of using his “facial muscle ac-
robatics” to instantly change his normal expression—a “mask frozen in an
ugly grimace”—from the saintly face of a Tibetan beggar monk to that of a
demonic lust murderer, he was an ideal actor for Moreno. The so-called star of
the Stegreiftheater, according to Dubrovic, could motivate patients who played
with him to “spontaneous healing reactions.” Zerka Moreno remembers hear-
ing about another side of László: “He acted particularly in roles involving streaks
of cruelty, pimps, murderers, gamblers, etc. One of his best roles was that of a
wealthy miser who lived, however, in abject poverty and whose sole reason for
living was to count his money, neatly stacking his coins and from time to time
letting them run through his hands as if they were water. His delight in this
was captivatingly infectious.”
One day the distraught fiancé of Moreno’s chief actress complained that
his angelic sweetheart, Barbara, acted like a “bedeviled creature” when they
were alone. Moreno smiled his “mixture of mockery and kindness” and said
he would try a remedy. Because she had taken part in his extemporaneous,
living-newspaper experiment, Moreno told her that “news just came in that a
girl in Ottakring (a slum district in Vienna), soliciting men on the street, had
been attacked and killed by a stranger.” Moreno, pointing to László, identified
him as the “apache” and told the actors to “get the scene ready.” László

came out of an improvised cafe with Barbara and followed her. They had an
encounter, which rapidly developed into a heated argument. It was about

Facemaker ❖ 17
 money. Suddenly Barbara changed to a manner of acting totally unexpected
from her. She swore like a trooper, punching at the man, kicking him in the
leg repeatedly. . . . [T]he apache got wild and began to chase Barbara. Sud-
denly he grabbed a knife, a prop, from his inside jacket pocket. He chased her
in circles, closer and closer. She acted so well that she gave the impression of
being really scared. The audience got up, roaring, “Stop it, stop it.” But he did
not stop until she was supposedly “murdered.”

The therapy worked. Having acted out her problems on stage, Barbara joyfully
embraced her fiancé, and they went home “in ecstasy.”14
Just as Moreno’s “moments” anticipated poet and playwright Bertolt
Brecht’s “pictures”—there the similarity ends—László’s self-presentations fore-
shadowed what he later described as “psychological” acting. “There is little
doubt,” wrote Zerka, “that Moreno was one of the sources of his awareness of
human psychology and its role in acting.” The psychodramatist counseled his
players and patients to “lift the veil” and make evident what is genuinely there
but “hidden, repressed or denied.” Through nonverbal acting techniques, his
actors made their bodies speak explicitly and learned to put the gesture before
the word, pairing it with the abstract or unspoken.
Jacob Moreno clearly recognized László’s talent for “learning to be in the
core of the role, swapping skins with another’s feelings and being.” Helping
the budding actor to find himself and a style that answered his apparent needs
did not, however, preclude constructive criticism. After watching him repeat
his best lines and movements—he had already adopted the “peculiar grin” he
later trademarked in Hollywood—Moreno cautioned him to “de-conserve”
his “mimic behavior.”
Moreno drew László into his circle at the Café Herrenhof, where he and
the nineteen-year-old Billy Wilder sat at the “kitten table for the children.”
Among this group were Franz Werfel, Franz Theodor Csokor, and the highly
respected Viennese character actor and director Karl Forest, who took the as-
piring artist under his accomplished wing and schooled him for the stage.
Forest played the provinces—Ingolstadt, Czernowitz, Reichenberg—after
mounting the boards at the age of seventeen. He moved on to Munich, Ham-
burg, and finally, in 1898, Berlin’s Deutsches Theater, where he appeared in
productions of Gerhart Hauptmann, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg, Frank
Wedekind, Carl Sternheim, and Georg Kaiser and took classical roles as well.
In 1917 he returned to Vienna and the Deutsches Theater, the Burgtheater, the
Raimund Theater, and the Theater in der Josefstadt. Grounded in realist drama,
he gravitated toward “an exploding expression of fate.” Wilhelm Kosch wrote

18 ❖ The LOst One

that he was “an episodist of the fantastic, the farcical in a human being, a ma-
cabre humor. At the same time, the strong, graphic power of his drawing shows
up in his delicate lines, which let the human and his fateful background sud-
denly blend into each other so that one had to think of Kubin.”15 Perhaps László
recognized something in Forest that he saw in himself.
Moreno couldn’t release this talented unknown into the world without
giving him a more suitable professional name. The psychodramatist borrowed
his friend Peter Altenberg’s Christian name, bemusedly recalling the actor’s
resemblance to the character of Struwwelpeter, an unruly young man in Ger-
man children’s literature “whose hair and nails grew to unreasonable un-
groomed lengths.” For a surname, Moreno suggested Lorre, which means
“parrot” in German. (Perhaps a more accurate origin of the word is the com-
mon parrot vocalization of the phonetic equivalent of “lora,” a predictably
popular call name.) “This name would mean he could keep the same initial as
in both his given names,” said Zerka. “‘Parrot’ seemed the right designation
for him. Probably Lorre’s ability at mimicry was the source of the inspira-
tion.”16
Lorre told German film editor Paul Falkenberg “that he met an actor friend
in Vienna, who said, ‘Oh, Peter, I’m going to see an agent for a job. Can you
help me read the cues?’ So Peter said, ‘Fine, I’ll come along.’ And they went to
see the agent and Peter read the cues and the other guy spoke his part. At the
end of the performance, the agent said, ‘And who are you?’ pointing to Peter.
‘My name is Peter Lorre,’ he told him. ‘I have a job for you in Breslau,’ said the
agent. He forgot about the professional actor and hired Peter right on the spot.”
Falkenberg stated that this account “came from Peter’s mouth.” For public
consumption, however, Lorre standardized the story that Leo Mittler, director
(along with Paul Barnay) of the Lobe and Thalia Theaters in Breslau, Ger-
many, saw him perform at the Stegreiftheater and offered him a job. “Moreno
did say that [Lorre] needed to earn more money,” said Zerka, “and was ambi-
tious for a wider audience—as what actor would not be?” Lorre later admitted
that after going “through a certain period of Bohemianism, . . . then you have
enough of it.” The working actor claimed he didn’t know what his services
were worth and was afraid to ask. Bit parts, he soon learned, paid one hundred
marks (about twenty-four dollars at the time) per month, an apparently tidy
sum to a destitute artist, especially one who was also expected to pay for his
basic costume: white shirt, dark suit, hat, and shoes. Alajos gave his son an old
suit, the only thing he could spare, and train fare.
No other period in Lorre’s life suffered as much sheer reinvention as his
first shaky professional steps. He later shrugged off his early experience, insist-

Facemaker ❖ 19
ing that he had no idea of what constituted acting, only that “an actor was a
guy not allowed to speak in his natural voice.” Lorre told George Frazier of Life
magazine that “his efforts to disguise himself as a basso profundo were so
ludicrous that he inadvertently found himself regarded as a comic.” Judging
by his comments about his first professional stage performance, Lorre pre-
ferred to have audiences laugh with him rather than at him, putting one of his
most often told anecdotes in some kind of perspective. “I was on the stage in a
small city in Germany,” he later said of his role as a Teutonic warrior in Heinrich
von Kleist’s Die Hermannsschlacht (Hermann’s Battle), “and I had a small part,
but everybody laughed [at] every line I said. Well, they didn’t know that it
wasn’t intentional. I had never been to school and didn’t know how to walk or
speak or anything.” As punishment, the actor was stuck in a line of bearded
soldiers carrying spears: “It so happened that the man in front of me pointed
backward and said, ‘Do you see the Roman eagles?’” Lorre wiggled his ears and
the audience howled. He was fired for a second time. “Don’t ask me about any
more firings,” he appealed to O’Connell. “The next one might be coming up.”
In another version closer to the event, Lorre said he “dropped my spear,
flapped my arms in true eagle fashion, and tried to look as much like a bird as
possible. Everyone thought this very amusing—everyone but the producer,
who promptly fired me.”
All kidding aside, Lorre found himself not in stock theater, as he liked to
imply, but at elegant provincial theaters with distinguished traditions. Here he
performed in a variety of small roles, often seven days a week, in both after-
noon and evening productions, during 1924–25. At the Lobe Theater, which
sounded a higher literary note, he appeared in a bit part in Gustav Freytag’s
comedy Die Journalisten (The Journalists), under the direction of Hans Peppler;
as a donkey in the Grimm brothers’ fairytale Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten (The
Bremen Town Musicians); as a soldier in the historical Die Hermannsschlacht;
and as a tousle-haired apothecary in Romeo und Julia (Romeo and Juliet). At
the Thalia Theater, which struck a more comedic and often folksy chord, Lorre
could be seen—if you looked closely—as a servant in Shakespeare’s Die lustigen
Weiber von Windsor (The Merry Wives of Windsor).17
German writer Hans Sahl, then a student at the University of Breslau, “did
not expect Peter Lorre to become a great actor. He was a nice guy with no
particular characteristics, except for his protruding eyes.” They “gave him the
look of a demonic, pop-eyed frog and . . . predestined him for criminal and
gangster roles. He loved to parody himself and to scare others.” Sahl regarded
Peter as “very intelligent, well read and very ambitious. He was very eager to
become somebody, but he was not a faker, he was very, very serious about it.”

20 ❖ The LOst One

Other documents randomly have
different content
 Maija. Ja se oli paikkaa, kun tultiin tänne kaupunkiin, tultiin maalta
tänne muka makeanleivän paloille, porvarien ja rikkaiden töihin,
myytiin mökki ja lehmä, kyllästyttiin hyvään elämään! Tuo ukko
hyväkäs kun ei muka enää talonjussien töihin sujunut, kaupunkiin piti
muka päästä, kymmenen markan päiväpalkoille lossauksiin,
lastauksiin ja jos mihin. — Vaan oliko sinusta niihin? Ei saanutkaan
täällä tupakoida ja istuskella joka viiden minuutin päästä, ei
seisoskella lapionvartta vasten, eikä maata pensaiden takana
isännän poissaollessa.

Täällä olisi pitänytkin laiskansuoni katkaista, mutta eipäs.

Työpaikka toisensa jälkeen meni — ja kun sen vielä piti oppia tuota
oluenkuraa latkimaan kaiken muun hyvän lisäksi — sillä tavalla on
nyt lehmä ja mökki mennyt, — aivan oluessa, Herra nähköön. Sitte
sitä muka kuletaan kokouksissa ja rohveerataan toisten
samanlaisten kanssa. (Syrjään.) Nyt se on saanut päähänsä, että
pian tulee sellainen kumous, että rikkailta otetaan tavarat ja
annetaan köyhille. Sitä se nyt odottaa sängyssä selällään kuin
hyvääkin työtä tekisi, vaikka kohta ei ole ruuan kipenettä suuhun
pantavana. (Kovemmin.) menisit edes isännältä jotain työtä
kysymään, että saisi vähänkään ansiota. Luulisi tuossa paikkainkin
puutuvan, kun aina vain makaa.

Pekka. Enkä mene.

Maija. millä luulet eläväsi? Enkä minäkään jaksa laiskaa ukkoa

sänkyyn selälleen elättää!

Pekka. Ruokkikoon kaupunki niinkauvan.

Maija. Miten kauvan?

 Pekka. Siksi kunnes porvarit romahtavat.

Maija. Eikö rämähtävät! Se hullu vielä kaikkia uskoo!

Pekka. En minä kaikkia, vaan sen sanoi temokraati.

Maija. Eikö temokraato — — ja tokko lie sanonut kukaan… ilman

vain sanot, että olisi muka hyväkin syy laiskotella.

Pekka. Tokko tuo lie sen rikkaampi, vaikka tekisi työtä, että pää
olisi kolmantena jalkana.

Maija. Jos ei rikaskaan, niin söisihän edes omaa leipää.

Pekka. Kaikki on yhteistä — ei se ole leipä paremmin toisen kuin

toisenkaan.

Maija. Taivaassa tuo niin lienee, vaan ei täällä.

Pekka. Kuuluu Ranskanmaalla olleen sellaiset komuuti-päivät, että

kaikki oli yhteistä.

Maija. Komuuti-päivät! Ja onko siellä nyt kaikki rikkaita?

Pekka. Käy katsomassa.

Maija. Sitä minä en usko.

Pekka. Ole uskomatta.

Maija. Ja sinä et rikkaana pysyisi, vaikka saisitkin rahoja.

Pekka. Jaettaisiin taas tavarat vähän ajan perästä, malja. Odota

semmoista, vaan älä pitkästy. Pekka. Odotan kyllä.
 Maija. mutta sen minä sanon, että jos et huomenna ala mennä
töihin, niin otan kepin ja roitelen niin pakaroillesi, että laiskuus lähtee.

Pekka. Et uskalla.

Maija. Otan isännän avukseni pitelemään.

Pekka. Sekö on sitte aviopuolison rakastamista?

Maija. On se laatuaan sekin ja ainakin yhtä hyvää kuin sinun

makaamisesikin.

Pekka. Ei kukaan ole omaa lihaansa vihannut.

Maija. — — — Ja sen minä sanon, että jos minä voitan miljoona-

arpajaisista rahaa, niin et näe niistä penniäkään.

Pekka. Ja sinä et näe markastasi laitaakaan, sillä koko peli on vain

rahan narraamista.

Maija. Ostettu se nyt kuitenkin on, ja kiitin, että sillä pääsin, niitä
on nykyään arpalippujen kauppiaita niin ettei silmiään tahdo auki
saada, ja ne ovat vielä hullumpia kuin henkivakuutusasiamiehet, —
—— mikä sen tietää, jos vielä voitankin…

Isäntä (tulee puusepän esiliina edessään). Päivää! — Eikö teidän

isäntä joutaisi vähän töihin? minulla olisi laudan kantamista ja vähän
muutakin.

Maija. Kyllä se joutaisi, kun vaan lähtisi.

Isäntä. No miksi ei?

 Maija. Se odottaa jonkinlaista kumousta, jolloin rikkailta rahat
jaetaan köyhille.

Isäntä. milloin se tulee?

Maija. Eikö tuota näiksi ajoiksi nuo nykyiset rohveetat ennustane.

Pekka. Pian se tulee.

Isäntä. Vai pian? mutta eikö sitä sentään sopisi… odotellessaan

vähän töitäkin paiskella?

Pekka. Tehkööt työnsä.

Isäntä. Kyllä minä kumousta odotellessani olen vähän höyläillyt

sekä liimaillut — — ja saman neuvon annan pojallenikin.

Pekka. En minä höylää.

Maija. Siinä sen kuulette!

Isäntä. Minä arvelin, että olisit vuokrasta vähän työssä ollut, vaan
kun ei sovi, niin saat muuttaa muualle.

Malja. Herra isä!

Pekka. Saatanhan minä siinä tapauksessa vähän kantaa niitä

lautoja.

(Nousee vaikeasti.)

Isäntä. Tule sitten vähän ajan perästä.

 Maija. Olisiko isännällä tämän päivän sanomalehteä? Joko niissä
on miljoona-arpajaisten voitoista mitään?

Isäntä. Eiköhän niissä liene ollut isompien voittojen numeroita.

Maija. Vai! Saisinko minä katsoa!

Isäntä. Tule noutamaan.

(Menevät.)

Pekka. Lautoja kantamaan. Eihän tuota viitsisi, vaan täytyy.

Hohhoi, täytyy… täytyy… höh hooi.

Maija (tulee). Tässä nyt on lehti — — Katsotaanhan… näissä

paikoin pitäisi olla sen kirjoituksen, tulehan katsomaan.

Pekka. En viitsi.

Maija. Tässä, tässä on, voih, kun vilisee silmissä. (Lukee hitaasti.)
Päävoitot miljoona-arpajaisissa ovat langenneet seuraaville
numeroille… Voi en minä saata, lue sinä.

Pekka. Tavaa itse.

Maija. Neljänkymmenen tuhannen… yksi kolme nolla… ei se ollut

se numero — viisitoistatuhatta… kahdeksan nolla nolla… ei sekään
— kymmenen tuhannen… kaksi nolla viisi, eikä tämä… viiden
tuhannen… kaksi sataa nolla nolla… seitsemän sataaviisi kymmentä
kuusi. (Kiljaisee.) Uijjui-jui-jui! (Painaa päätään.) Aih, oih oi oi.

Pekka. No mikä nyt tuli?

 Maija. Se… se on minun numeroni, armias isä auttakoon, se on
minun numeroni!

Pekka. Älä hele…

Maija. On, on, on.

Pekka. Näytäppäs lippusi.

Maija (ottaa laatikosta tai taskustaan arpalipun; vertailevat

numeroita levittäen lehden ja lipun pöydälle.)

Pekka ja Maija (yhtaikaa). Kaksi, nolla, nolla… seitsemän, viisi,

kuusi.

Pekka. Kies’auta! Sama numero — viisituhatta markkaa…

Maija (itkien Pekan kaulaan). Viisituhatta markkaa!

Pekka. No älä nyt ulvo siinä! Hyvä, että saatiin.

Maija. Kun se tuli niin äkkiä! Nyt saadaan hyviä vaatteita, ruokaa
ja vaikka mitä.

Pekka. Niin.

Maija. Ja nyt elätän sinut vaikka sänkyyn.

Pekka. En minä nyt malta sängyssä pysyä, kun rahoja saatiin.

Maija. Vaan jos se temokraato tulee jakamaan?

Pekka. Jakamaan? Jos tulee, niin kirveskamaralla otsaan.

Maija. Mutta itsehän sinä sanoit, että kohta tavarat jaetaan.

 Pekka. Niin, kun oltiin köyhiä, mutta en minä nyt anna, vaikka maa
halkeisi! Kylläpä käskisi!

Maija. Minä kun jo luulin, että ihan sinulla päätä viiraa.

Pekka. Ei me rahoja anneta muille.

Maija (lyö reiteensä). No ei vaikka mikä olisi. — Jo piti olla onni!

Pekka. No sanos muuta.

Maija. Aivan tekisi mieli tanssahtaa.

Pekka. No pyöritään vaan. (Ottaa Maijaa vyötäisistä ja alkaa

rallattaa polskaa, jota pyörivät yhä kiihtyen nopeammiksi.) Rati-riti
rati-riti rallaa-rati-riti-rati-riti rei j.n.e.

Isäntä (tulee ovelle ja katsoo vähän aikaa kummissaan). No

hulluiksiko ne ovat tulleet? (Huutaen.) Aivanhan te talon hajotatte!

Maija (näyttäen isännälle lippua). Katsokaas tätä!

Isäntä. Tätä?

Maija. Ja numeroa tässä. (Näyttää lehteä.)

Isäntä (ottaa molemmat, katsoo ja vertailee). No lempsatti!

Pekka. Mitäs sanotte?

Isäntä. Sama numero.

Maija.. Viisituhatta markkaa!

Isäntä. Niin on.

 Pekka. Tarvitseeko muuttaa talosta?

Isäntä. Eikö hiidessä, olkaa vaan niin kauvan kuin haluttaa.

Pekka. Ja olisiko isännällä jotain parempaa takkia minulle antaa?

Minä maksan heti kun rahat joutuu.

Isäntä. Minä tuon juhlatakkini.

(Menee.)

Pekka.(huutaa isännän jälkeen). Sama se on, jos se on

parempikin. Puhtaalla rahalla minä sen maksan… puhtaalla rahalla!

Maija. Ja minun täytyy heti lähteä ostoksille. — — Mutta entäs

rahaa?

Pekka. Näytä vain lippuasi ja lehteä, niin kyllä lähtee vaikka mitä.

Maija. Niin tosiaankin. Mitä minä tuon?

Pekka. Tuo ruokaa ja juomaa.

Maija. Ja itselleni korean puvun.

(Menee.)

Pekka. Vaikkapa senkin… ja kuule, kuule! — — — Nyt se meni…

Olisin käskenyt tuoda olutta, mutta ehkä hommaan sitä itse
kokonaisen korin.

Isäntä (tulee tuoden mustan sortuukin). Tässä nyt olisi juhlatakki

isännälle.
 Pekka.(panee päälleen). Ollaanpa häntä nyt vähän herroiksi, kun
varat kerran kannattaa. Paljonko tämä nyt maksaa?

Isäntä. Kaksikymmentäviisi markkaa.

Pekka. Olkoon, mitä se meidän varoissa tuntuu. —

Isäntä. Mitä sitä nyt on aikomus ryhtyä hommaamaan, kun noin

rahojakin siunautui, tai ainako sitä vain maataan?

Pekka. Eihän toki! Taidanpa ruveta hevoskauppoja tekemään.

Siinä liikkeessä on aina hupinsakin mukana.

Isäntä. Kun ryypätään, ajetaan ja kehutaan, he he.

Pekka. Ja aina ne kuuluvat kortitkin läiskähtävän hevosmies-

sakissa; kun sattuu, niin voittaa viisituhatta lisää.

Isäntä. Mistä sen tietää, voipa niinkin käydä.

Pekka. Kunhan tässä rahat joutuu, niin ostan oikein silkkimustan,

ajelen sillä huvikseni ja myön sitte torniolaiselle.

Isäntä. Kyllä meillä talliresukin saadaan laitetuksi, jos vain

ruvetaan sitä tarvitsemaan.

Pekka. Tarvitaanpa tietenkin — — ja jos isännällä olisi joku kaapin

tapainen, jossa saattaisi niinkuin rahoja ja viinoja säilytellä lukon
takana, niin ostaisin senkin.

Isäntä. Onhan niitä toki nikkarismiehellä semmoisiakin. Kyllä minä

toimitan.

Pekka. Minä maksan oikean hinnan ja puhtaalla rahalla.

 Isäntä. Kyllähän niistä sovitaan.

(Menee.)

Pekka.(kävelee kädet taskussa tai selän takana hyvin arvokkaasti

edestakaisin). Jaa-ah, oli se kumma laaki… tullappa yhtäkkiä
rikkaaksi! Pahinta on se, ettei oikein ymmärrä mitä niillä rahoilla
parhaiten tekisi? Ei sitä köyhä osaa yhtäkkiä olla rikkaanakaan — —
— ei ole rikkaita tuttujakaan, joiden luo menisi tupakoimaan, mutta
temokraatit — — — mitäs minä niille sanon?

Miten minun nyt sopii rikkaita? — — — Peijakas sentään, kun

olinkin niin suurisuinen. — — — Toisekseen, — mitäs minun
tarvitsee selitellä! Sanon vain, että menkää hiiteen; ja kun ajan
silkkimustallani, huutelen vain että, pois tieltä köyhät ja
rumannäköiset, sen minä teen.

Maija (tulee hengästyneenä). Tuoss’ on leipää, tuossa makkaraa,

— antoivat niin mielellään, kun näytin lippuni. — Se on kai jo tietona
koko kaupungilla, että me olemme voittaneet viisituhatta. Sitte minä
olin vaatekaupassa, ja sieltä tuovat aivan kohta minulle uuden
puvun, kunhan vähän laittavat ensiksi. — — — Syö nyt, Pekka.

Pekka. Entä olutta?

Maija. Oluttako?

Pekka. Niin.

Maija. Sitä tavaraa ei minun rahoillani osteta.

Pekka. Sinun rahoillasi? milloin sinulle on omia rahoja tullut?

 Maija. Silloin kun voitin arpajaisista.

Pekka. Minähän rahoja hallitsen, saipa niitä kumpi hyvänsä.

Maija. Mene sitte ottamaan postista Maija Möttösen rahoja, kun ne

tulevat.

Pekka. Sinä annat valtakirjan.

Maija. Se on sillälailla, Pekka-rukka, että hyvän hoidon sinä saat,

mutta rahoja et hallitse — muista se.

Pekka.(itsekseen). Kyllä minä ne joskus viekkaudella anastan,

ollaanhan sovussa siihen asti. (Ääneen.) Pidä sitte rahasi ja huvittele
mielesi mukaan.

Maija. Huvittele! Kunhan et itse enemmän huvittelisi, jos vain

käsiisi saisit. — — Arvelin vähän äsken, kun puhuit siitä tavaran
jakamisesta, että kauvankohan noita riittäisi sulla?

Pekka. Älä siinä nyt intoile, vaan tule syömään.

Maija. Taitaisi pian olla uudestaan jaettava.

Pekka. Tulehan syömään, on hyvää makkaraa.

Maija (tulee syömään). — — Kyllä tuntuu lystiltä, kun ei ole enää

syömisestä huolta niinkuin ennen. Ei tuo makkarakaan tunnu enää
niin erinomaiselle, kun saanti on helpompi. Voi kun nyt jo tulisi se
puku!

Isäntä (tulee pahvilaatikkoa kantaen). Tämä tuotiin teille

annettavaksi.
 Maija. Voi! Siinä se nyt on se uusi puku.

Isäntä. Oikeinko rouvaksi puetaan?

Maija. Pitäähän sitä nyt vähän parempaa olla, kun on varoja.

Isäntä. Niinpä niin, niinpä niin.

(Poistuu.)

Maija (ottaa laatikosta värikkään leningin, asettelee sitä eteensä ja

silittelee). Voi, voi! Kyllä pitää lähteä sinne kotipuoleen aivan
näyttelemään itseään, kun on tämmöinen läninki, punainen vyö ja —
—

Pekka. Olisit sinä aika näökäs tuossa oorningissa.

Maija. Näökäs? Resunenko pitäisi sitte olla, vaikka on varojakin?

Pekka. Tiesi hänet, mutta kun tuommoisia panet päällesi, olet kuin
variksenpelätin.

Maija. Vai variksenpelätin! Entä sinä itse, hyväkin kuvatus!

Pekka. On minulla takki. (Panee isännän tuoman takin päälleen.)

Maija. No nyt se nasta variksenpelätin nähtiin! (Nauraa.) On kun

sontiainen. (Asettelee uudestaan leninkiä eteensä.) Kyllä se tuo
vaate muuttaa niin ihmisen, ettei uskoisi; kun sieltä meidän
puolestakin tytöt menevät kaupunkiin ja ovat siellä vähän aikaa, niin
eipä tahtoisi tuntea samoiksi ihmisiksi, kun ovat niin herrastuneet. —
— — Niin minäkin laittelen, kunhan rahat joutuu. — — — Menen heti
kotipuoleen käymään — — — ja siellä kun sitten kysytään, että
kukahan tuo tutunnäköinen ihminen on, kun niin hienossa
hankituksessa kulkee? — Ja kun saavat kuulla, niin akat lyövät
reiteensä ja ihmettelevät, että ei tässä maailmassa olisi uskonut
Möttösen Maijaa tuossa oorningissa näkevänsä.

Pekka. Olitpa tuota nyt sinäkin missä oorningissa tahansa.

Maija. Mitä?

Pekka. Tuota, minä meinasin, näytäthän sinä melko pulskalta

muutenkin.

Maija. Jaa-ah, mutta kyllä se onkin aivan toista, kun on oikein

ylöslaitettu ja puettu.

Pekka. Valtaavat vielä sinut minulta, kun kovin laittelet.

Maija. Elä siinä viisastele! makaa sinä vain ja odota

vallankumousta.

Pekka. Elä nyt leikistä suutu! Hyvissä mielissähän minä tässä

puhelen. (Menee Maijaa taputtelemaan.) Ollaan ystävät, ollaan
ystävät.

Maija. No älä rypistä läninkiä, kuvatus.

Pekka. Hi, ai, enpä huomannut. Onko se oljanssia?

Maija. Ei, se on velvettiä.

Pekka. Vai helvettiä, onpa sillä kumma nimi.

Maija.. Eli lieneekö se muuta, en minä oikein muista.

 Pekka. Komiaa on, olipahan mitä oli; ei ole parempaa
herroillakaan.

Maija. Hyvä jos on semmoistakaan! Niistä ovat monet sellaisia

visukinttuja, etteivät raski laittaa, vaikka varojakin olisi.

Pekka. Mutta me raskitaan, me, ja maalle ei muuteta, vaikka mikä

olisi.

Maija. Johan nyt sinne hapanta piimää juomaan!

Pekka. Ja silakoita ja kuoriperunoita syömään.

Maija. Hyi olkoon! Oikein rintaa korventaa, kun ajattelenkaan.

Pekka. No niin minullakin.

Maija. Täällä on toista! Täällä saa mitä haluaa, eikö ole lystiä?

Pekka. No on! Sattui se kerran oikeaan, arpajaisvoittokin.

Maija. No sattui.

Isäntä (tulee sanomalehti kädessä). Tuota… tuota… Tässä on

Helsingin lehti ja siinä on viidentuhannen voittoarvan viimeinen
numero yhdeksän eikä kuusi.

Pekka. mitä?

Maija. Meidänkö numeron?

Isäntä. Katsokaahan, tuossa on 200,759 eikä 56, niinkuin teidän

arpalipussanne.
 Pekka. Se on erehdys!

Isäntä. Kunhan ei olisi erehdys tämän kaupungin lehdellä, minäpä

lainaan vielä Huustasplaatetinkin tuolta Enkelpäriltä.

(Menee.)

Maija. Herra hyvästi siunatkoon!

Pekka. Ja varjelkoon!

Maija. Eihän tuo toki liene totta.

Pirkka. Eihän toki.

Maija. Siinä menisi viisituhatta.

Pekka. Turkanen!

Maija. Mutta kun se on kerran painettu, niin totta se pitää.

Pekka. Tiesi heidän konstinsa, — mutta täytyy mennä käräjiin, jos

ei muuten saa oikeutta.

Maija. Voi hyvänen aika!

Pekka. Olen minä käräjissä ollut ennenkin, niin että kyllä minä
tiedän miten siellä ollaan.

Maija. Mutta jos ei auttaisi sittenkään, vaan raha menisi muille?

Pekka. Älä puhukaan sellaista, minä ainakaan en hyvällä anna.

Isäntä (tulee sanomalehti kädessä). Tässä on samalla tavalla kuin

toisessakin Helsingin lehdessä.
 Maija. (lopsahtaa toivottamana istualleen).

Pekka (kynsii päätään). Johan minä sinulle sanoin, että narripeliä.

Maija. Voi voi sentään!

Pekka. Johan minä sanoin.

Isäntä. Ainakin tahdon nyt takkini pois, siksi kun asia selvenee.

Pekka (riisuu takin). Siinä on.

Isäntä (menee tukkineen).

Maija. Aivan sydän halkeaa! Ensin semmoinen ilo ja nyt tällainen

surkeus.

Pekka. Johan minä sinulle sanoin, että narripeliä koko arpajaiset.

Maija. Olisi kaiketi voinut sattua oikeinkin meidän kohdallemme

eikä tällä tavalla.

Isäntä (tulee takaisin). Siellä on jo asiapoika hakemassa emännän

leninkiä pois.

Maija. Ei kuuna päivänä! Leninkiä minä en anna, sillä se on

minulle kuin tehty. En anna, en!

Isäntä. Sanoi poliisin tulevan hakemaan, jos ei hyvällä anneta.

Pekka ja Maija. Poliisin? (Katsovat toisiinsa.) Voi ja (ottaa leningin,

nyyhkien). Se on niin sievä ja sopii niin hyvästi — en minä raskisi
sitä antaa — eikä minulla milloinkaan ole ollut sellaista.
 Pekka. Työnnä vaan menemään.

Maija (asettaa leningin takaisin laatikkoonsa). Mikäs siinä auttaa.

(Huokaa.) mikäs siinä auttaa. (Yrittää antaa kotelon pari kertaa
isännälle, vaan vetää sen aina takaisin. Viimein työntäisee sen
päättäväisesti isännälle, joka poistuu. Purskahtaa itkuun.) Nyt se
meni!

Pekka. Menköön, johan minä sen sanoin.

Maija. Sanoit! Sinä et ole milloinkaan omasta päästäsi mitään

sanonut.

Pekka. Minäkö?

Maija. Juuri sinä! (Äänettömyys.) Kun ei olisi tultukaan tänne! Ei

täällä ole maalaisella kuin alituinen huoli ja rauhattomuus.

Pekka. Jos mentäisiin takaisin maalle?

Maija. No se oli kuitenkin omasta päästäsi sanottu!

Pekka. Lähdetään jo tänä päivänä, niin päästään lauvantaiksi

Paarmakankaalle kylpemään.

Maija. Voi, mennään! Eiköhän tuo isäntä uskoisi vuokran loppua

velaksi?

Pekka.(huutaa ovesta). Isäntä hoi! Tulisitteko vielä tänne puheelle.

Isäntä (tulee), Mitä nyt sitte?

Maija. Me on tässä aijottu lähteä takaisin maalle, että jos isäntä

uskoisi sen vuokran lopun velaksi, niin kyllä me toimitetaan.
 Isäntä. Uskoisin mielellänikin, kun vaan tämä Pekka muuttaisi
sosialisteista sen mielipiteen, että ne vaan makaavat.

Pekka. Joko tuo sitte pitäisi muuttaa?

Isäntä. Nehän ne vasta hommaavatkin.

Pekka. Taitaa niin olla.

Maija. Ja kyllä minä muistan, jos unohtuu.

Isäntä. No onnea matkalle sitte.

(Menee).

Maija. Vaan sen minä sanon, että arpajaisvoitosta ei puhuta

kotipuolessa mitään.

Pekka. Ei; eikä sinun läningistäsi.

Maija. Ei siitäkään.

Pekka. Ja minä vielä sanon sulle yhden asian.

Maija. Sana.

Pekka. Että jos vielä joku arpalippujen kauppias tulee minulle tai
sinulle kauppaamaan tavaroitaan, väännä siltä niskat nurin.

Väliverho.
TOPPAKAHVIA
Yksinäytöksinen huvinäytelmä

Kirj.

PASI JÄÄSKELÄINEN

Hämeenlinnassa, Kustannusosakeyhtiö Kirja, 1926.

HENKILÖT:
ANTTI, talon isäntä, 24 v.
SIMPPA, renki, 50 v.
LIISA, piika, 22 v.
KUSTAAVA, n. 50 v.
POIKA.
 Näyttämö.

Tavallinen maalaistupa.

LIISA (Askaroipi laulellen).

Minä se olen pikkuinen tyttö ja iloinen on mieli, laulan

aamut, laulan illat, niinkuin satakieli. Tämä tyttö se lauleleepi
äänellä hellällä, aamut, illat asteleepi mielellä keviällä.

(Ottaa hyssytellen askeleita.)

Minä se olen pikkuinen tyttö ja — —

SIMPPA (On tullut viime tahtien aikana halkosylen kanssa ja

romahduttaa ne äkkiä lattialle.)

Loiskis, sanoi merimies, kun laiva kaatui!

LIISA (Säikähtää.)

Uiui jui uijui…! (Pitelee sydäntään.) Sinäkö tuhannen läskimaha

siellä ihmisiä säikyttelet? (Lyö rääsyllä Simppaa.) Tuossa, tuossa,
tuossa!

SIMPPA

Älä hyvä ihminen, älä, älä! Halkojahan minä tuon hyvän hyvyyttäni
ja sinä pieksät kuin vierasta sikaa.

LIISA