Screenland (May-Oct 1936)

60 SCREENLAND Monarch o f Menace Peter Lorre tells how a mere accident made him famous as the screen's craftiest ubad man" By Tom Kennedy THE wide-shouldered, chunkily-built man with the round, pink-complected face and very prominent brown eyes, rose from his chair, stamped heavily on the solid floor beneath his feet. "The story/' he said as he gave this emphatic demonstration, "is the ground I walk on. If I know how to walk — understand the character I am playing — I must go in the right direction, and the character must be 'right,' convincing, interesting to the audience. If the ground crumbles under me, I am lost." I'etcr Lorn-, hailed in Europe, America and far corners of the world as one of the most forceful character delineators the screen has ever known, is voluble, never verbose ; a ready, willing and compelling conversationalist who commands attention by a steads (low of ideas, tersely expressed without vocal bombast, gesticulation or other acting tricks. I thought you would like to hear him tell how he puts characters together, makes creatures of fiction and dramatic invention "tick," become startlingly real on the screen. Also why, even as a youth whose father forbade him and his three brothers and sister to enter a theatre, he had determined to be an actor. And why, after creating a sensation in his first film, he had spurned lucrative offers from the film magnates of Hollywood, Paris, London, and returned to the stage. A cordial, friendly chap, a bit past thirty, is this man who burst upon the consciousness of film-goers with his terribly realistic portrayal of the gruesomely warped creature in the German production, "M." Short, (he's about five-feet three), stocky, (his weight is about 160 pounds), Lorre has sandy-brown hair, brushed flat and close to his scalp from a part that makes a line as straight as a draughtsman's rule at the left side of his head. His is a beaming, smiling countenance that certainly does not associate itself with characterizations in "M," "The Man Who Knew Too Much," and "Crime and Punishment," the three films by which he was best known before release of the new Alfred Hitchcock English production, ''Secret Agent." "There are tricks in acting," Lorre began. "Anybody of intelligence can acquire skill in their use. It doesn't take long — a few years." That's pretty encouraging for all who would like to become actors. But wait, before you take heart for yourself, if you aspire to an acting career, or for friends who may have such ambitions. "A part can be built up by means of these tricks," he continued. "Those who are adroit at mimicry may take some person they know, or have merely observed walking along the street, and put that person into the situation called for by the dramatist. It is not a difficult trick to thus transplant a certain type. But I don't think we have seen any great acting produced by that method. 'Great acting' is an intangible. But we know it instantly when we see it. An audience lounging in the chairs of the auditorium, listless, only partly interested in what's taking place on the stage or screen, sees a door open, perhaps, a man or woman appears, and immediately the audience comes to attention, eager, alert, interested. Why? That is great acting — there is something essentially 'right' about that person, maybe it's only the way the door is opened, perhaps the lift of an eyebrow. But whatever it is, you are seeing not an actor using an effective trick, but a living character who belongs in the world of illusion before you." In other words, the talent — something inside a per (Continued on page 93) The eyes have "it," the it of suggestini = Win of terror that has thrilled film audiences; but Lorre, tl of menace, is a genial, scholarly chap, who as well as art to scree