Photoplay (Jan - Jun 1943)

Enter Paul Henreid His home, a comfortable Brentwood house; his wife, the Viennese "Lisl" If you are an American girl, Paul Henreid's first gesture upon meeting you might be a bit startling. After that, though, knowing him would be all to the good ON the select blacklist compiled by the German National Socialist Party his name is written, "Paul, Baron von Hernried. Minorities sympathizer... Official designation, enemy of the Third Reich." It was this little catch phrase of the Nazis — enemy of the Third Reich — that drove him out of Germany into the arms of the wife he had not yet met and eventually into a country he never dreamed to call his own. Today he lives in a smart, not too pretentious Brentwood house in company with his wife "Lisl," a cantankerous old Skye terrier, a sophisticated young male secretary, an equally unimpressed but beloved nurse who insists she is too old to learn English, and a colored maid who, finding it necessary to talk over household problems with the nurse, obligingly learned German. She speaks it with a strong Jacksonville accent whenever there are guests in the house, because she knows it amuses the master. Many things amuse him, in a quiet way. It would be very hard to induce in Mr. Henreid the Austrian equivalent of plain American belly laughter. He is too completely a product of post-war Vienna, with its bittersweet aura of abject poverty and audacious gaiety; too recently escaped from the peril of the New Order; too newly a resident of America, to believe one hundred percent in any joke. JANUARY, 1943 BV HOWARD SHARP! If you are an American girl meeting Mr. Henreid for the first time, it is imperative that you remember this: He is an actor, and he is also a Continental gentleman, trained that way from infancy. The combination in practice is likely to take you unawares. For one thing, he will kiss your hand. You may put it behind you or hide it in a muff, to no avail; it is going to get kissed, and you may as well relax about this in advance. But after that it will be all to the good. You will find yourself thinking that here is a second Boyer, only younger. And a lot taller, and a better swimmer, and better looking in his clothes. YOU may have read or heard that men of the Henreid type are impossible to live with. Reserve for Mrs. Henreid only half your pity, then, since Paul is impossible only until noon. While shadows still fall westward he regards the world through purple glasses and snarls at any animate thing unfortunate enough to move within his ken. After lunch, however, he makes the transformation from ogre to prince of fellows, whereupon his household emerges gratefully from hiding and begins another day. But it must be a good lunch. He is a connoisseur of food, as he is of glass table bells (what remains of his collection after the wartime Atlantic passage fill a cabinet in his living room), of music, of books, and of women, both foreign and domestic. Like most Europeans, he is conscious of money; thrifty with it, knowing how hard it is to get; contemptuous of it, knowing how well one can live without it if necessary. He learned this ultimate truth at the age of ten, two years, after the death of his father, Baron Carl Alphonse, banker, adviser on Bohemia to late Emperor Franz Josef, originally a Swedish citizen. Paul's father had left him a fortune all right, he discovered — but in Austrian war bonds. There were some additional funds in French banks. Fortuitously, when the franc disintegrated, he learned he had been granted a scholarship at a leading academy. When that ran out he informed a family council of uncles and sundry other relatives that he wanted to become an actor. They voted against it, whereupon he joined the publishing business. This did not pay and, the argument won, he became an actor. He went to the right school, interested the correct producer (one Otto Preminger, affiliated with the Max Reinhart Theater) and, having wangled a contract, took the Vienna theater in stride. He would like, if possible, to describe these (Continued on page 80) 37