Picture-Play Magazine (Sep 1928 - Feb 1929)

53 His Nickname Is L-onnie And that is but one of the revelations unearthed by this interviewer in her visit to Conrad Veidt, one of the screen's most sinister personalities. By Myrtle Gebkart A SINISTER shadow — hands — a distorted, ugly face — scheming eyes, half wild — a bent, misshapen form* — Doctor Caligari, creeping toward me, along crazy, three-sided rooms — Ccsare Borgia, smiling treacherously — black streaks through shafts of light — a grimacing, twisted mouth This vague and terrifying half-picture of Conrad Veidt was in my mind — snatches of his monstrous characters, men a little demented. His forte was that of cruelty. A beastly man, surely* A German. He would be built like an apartment house, layer upon layer held by thick muscles. He would glower and talk of impulses, complexes and all those somber channels of the mind in Freudian analysis. I shuddered, and wondered a bit about the brain of a man known only to us by such weird characterizations. I was half prejudiced against him, not as an actor, but as a human being. To supplement his broken English, Paul Kohner, Universal executive, had agreed to lunch with us. "His nickname is 'Connie,' " Paul lazily informed me. Scarcely had I recovered from that, when the car stopped before the one old-fashioned house left in Beverly Hills, a rambling, comfortable home, by no means pretentious. A tall, well-built man ran down the steps to meet us. One of those soldierly, foreign bows. A big, brown hand held mine. I looked up into a long, strong, tanned face, its darkness lit by electric-blue eyes. Finally I snapped out of it and asked how, why, and wherefore. "I play such characterizations, because zey haff drama," he said. "I must haff ze dramatic, ze ecstatic — somesing wiss great mental force. Good men not haff happen to zem soze unusual sings which make drama. But nein, I am not all bad. Zere iss a reason, each time, why I am bad. I haff sympazy from my audience. As in 'The Man Who Laughs,' I am cruel to all but blind, leetle girl. Peoples are sorry for me, because I haff been marked wiss scarred face. It iss great role. I act it wiss my eyes, so." In a two-minute eye duet he gave me the substance of the play. I saw pathos, hurt pride vented in cruelty, remorse, and sacrifice, flash one after the other. "Such characters haff drama, because zere iss always tragedy somewhere. Zey are bad, because somebody has made zem bad. Life has twisted zem. To find out why, and to show it why, as you play zat character doing evil, zat iss drama." I found Veidt a most interesting man, for numerous reasons. While I did not expect to see quite the grotesque figure of his screen self, giving due credit to make-up, I did imagine there would be about him something that suggested brutality. There wasn't. Indeed, there was nothing of those dark shadows, save the power and vitality that make them so curiously, yet horribly,, alive. Photo by Freulich Though Conrad Veidt specializes in terrifying roles, he is really quite genial and friendly. His lightness of movement, and his grace, are surprising in a man so large. His voice, rumbling into the reverberations of a drum, suddenly softens to the delicacy of a whisper. Big, brown hands are everywhere in wide, sweeping gestures, panoramic in the circumference of their expression. When English failed, as often it did, and before Paul could supply the interpretation of his guttural German, his tense eyes, or a quick pose, would tell me his meaning. His eyes are of that blue which, with concentration, become almost slate gray. His power lies in them. He is thirty-five, at once mature in experience and vigorously youthful. Mrs. Veidt, also German, was not in. Their little girl was asleep. The three of us dawdled over luncheon in the old-fashioned dining room, with its big windows and its mahogany woodwork, and talked of many things. Caligari worried that I was eating so little ! Henry IV trotted back and forth to the study, to bring me snapshots of a darling three-year-old baby. It was some time before I could readjust myself, and shake the screen Veidt out of my mind. Though he has made but two pictures here, he has Continued on page 106