In Europe (1922–1934) Lorre began acting on stage in Vienna at age 17, working with Viennese
Art Nouveau artist and
puppeteer Richard Teschner. He then moved to
Breslau and later to
Zürich. In the late 1920s, the actor moved to Berlin, where he worked with
Bertolt Brecht, including a role in Brecht's
Man Equals Man and as Dr. Nakamura in the musical
Happy End. Lorre became much better known after director
Fritz Lang cast him as
child-killer Hans Beckert in
M (1931), a film reputedly inspired by the
Peter Kürten case. Lang said that he had Lorre in mind for the part and did not give him a screen test because he was already convinced Lorre was perfect for the part. He stated that the actor gave his best performance in
M and that it was among the most distinguished in film history. Sharon Packer observed that Lorre played the "loner, [and] schizotypal murderer" with "raspy voice, bulging eyes, and emotive acting (a holdover from the silent screen) [which] always make him memorable." who reminded the film's director,
Alfred Hitchcock, about Lorre's performance in
M. They considered him to play the
assassin, but wanted to use him in a larger role despite his limited command of English, which Lorre overcame by learning much of his part phonetically. In 2014, in
The Guardian, Michael Newton wrote, "Lorre cannot help but steal each scene; he's a physically present actor, often, you feel, surrounded as he is by the pallid English, the only one in the room with a body." Lorre and his first wife, actress
Celia Lovsky, boarded the
Cunard-White Star Liner
RMS Majestic in Southampton on July 18, 1934, to sail for New York a day after shooting had been completed on
The Man Who Knew Too Much, having gained visitor's visas to the United States. After his first two American films, Lorre returned to England to feature in Hitchcock's
Secret Agent (1936).
First years in Hollywood (1935–1940) and Lorre in
Crime and Punishment (1935) Lorre settled in Hollywood and was soon under contract to
Columbia Pictures, which had difficulty finding parts suitable for him. After some months of research, Lorre decided on
Crime and Punishment by
Dostoevsky as a suitable project with himself in the central role. Columbia's head
Harry Cohn agreed to make the film adaptation on the condition that he could lend Lorre to
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, possibly as a means of recouping the cost of Lorre not appearing in any of his films. For MGM's
Mad Love (1935), set in Paris and directed by
Karl Freund, Lorre's head was shaved for the role of Dr. Gogol, a demented surgeon who replaces the wrecked hands of a concert pianist with those of an executed knife murderer. An actress who works at the nearby
Grand Guignol theater, who happens to be the pianist's wife, is the subject of Gogol's unwelcome infatuation. "Lorre triumphs superbly in a characterization that is sheer horror",
The Hollywood Reporter commented. "There is perhaps no one who can be so repulsive and so utterly wicked. No one who can smile so disarmingly and still sneer. His face is his fortune". Lorre followed
Mad Love with the lead role in
Crime and Punishment (also 1935) directed by
Josef von Sternberg. "Although Peter Lorre is occasionally able to give the film a frightening pathological significance," wrote
Andre Sennwald in
The New York Times on the film's release, "this is scarcely Dostoievsky's drama of a tortured brain drifting into madness with a terrible secret." Columbia offered him a five-year contract at $1,000 a week (), but he declined. Returning from England after appearing in a second Hitchcock picture (
Secret Agent, 1936), he was offered and accepted a 3-year contract with
20th Century Fox. in
Think Fast, Mr. Moto (1937) Late in 1938,
Universal Pictures wanted to borrow Lorre from Fox for the top-billed titular role ultimately performed by
Basil Rathbone in
Son of Frankenstein (1939) starring
Boris Karloff as
Frankenstein's monster and
Bela Lugosi as
Ygor. Lorre declined the role because he thought his menacing parts were now behind him, although he was ill at this time. He tested successfully in 1937 for the role of
Quasimodo in an aborted MGM version of
The Hunchback of Notre-Dame, according to a Fox publicist one of two roles Lorre most wanted to play, the other was
Napoleon. Frustrated by broken promises from Fox, Lorre managed to end his contract. After a brief period as a freelance, he signed for two pictures at
RKO in May 1940. In the first of these, Lorre appeared as the anonymous lead in the B-picture
Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), reputedly the first
film noir. The second RKO film, also in 1940, was ''
You'll Find Out'', a musical comedy mystery vehicle for bandleader
Kay Kyser in which Lorre spoofed his sinister image alongside horror stars Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.
Mainly at Warner Bros. (1941–1946) (left) and Lorre in
The Maltese Falcon (1941), the first of their nine films together '' ,
Mary Astor,
Barton MacLane, Lorre, and
Ward Bond in
The Maltese Falcon In 1941, Lorre became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Director
John Huston saved him from more B-pictures by casting him in
The Maltese Falcon. Although
Warner Bros. was lukewarm, Huston was keen for him to play Joel Cairo, observing that Lorre "had that clear combination of braininess and real innocence, and sophistication... He's always doing two things at the same time, thinking one thing and saying something else." Lorre himself reminisced fondly in 1962 about the "stock company" he now found himself working with:
Humphrey Bogart,
Sydney Greenstreet and
Claude Rains. In his view, the four of them had the rare ability to "switch an audience from laughter to seriousness." Lorre was contracted to Warner on a picture-by-picture basis until 1943 when he signed a five-year contract, renewable each year, which lasted until 1946. Most of these motion pictures were variations on
Casablanca, including
Background to Danger (1943, with
George Raft);
Passage to Marseille (1944), reuniting them with Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains;
The Mask of Dimitrios (1944);
The Conspirators (1944, with
Hedy Lamarr and
Paul Henreid);
Hollywood Canteen (1944);
Three Strangers (1946), a suspense film about three people who are joint partners on a winning lottery ticket, with third-billed Lorre cast against type by director
Jean Negulesco as the romantic lead, also starring
Geraldine Fitzgerald. Greenstreet and Lorre's final film together, suspense thriller
The Verdict (1946), was director
Don Siegel's first feature, with Greenstreet and Lorre billed first and second respectively. In 1944, Lorre returned to comedy with the role of Dr. Einstein in
Frank Capra's version of
Arsenic and Old Lace, starring
Cary Grant and
Raymond Massey. Writing in 1944, film critic
Manny Farber described what he called Lorre's "double-take job", a characteristic dramatic flourish "where the actor's face changes rapidly from laughter, love or a security that he doesn't really feel to a face more sincerely menacing, fearful or deadpan." In 1946, Lorre's last film for Warner was
The Beast with Five Fingers, a horror film in which he played a crazed astrologer who falls in love with a character played by
Andrea King. Daniel Bubbeo, in
The Women of Warner Brothers, thought Lorre's "wildly over-the top performance" had "elevated the movie from minor horror to first-rate camp." Lorre said his continuing friendship with Bertolt Brecht, in exile in California since 1941, had led studio head
Jack L. Warner to 'graylist' him, and his contract with Warner Bros. was terminated on May 13, 1946. Warner was a "friendly" witness at his appearance before the
House Un-American Activities Committee in May 1947. Lorre himself was sympathetic to the short-lived
Committee for the First Amendment, set up by John Huston and others, and added his name to advertisements in the trade press in support of the committee.
After World War II (1947–1964) '', 1950 After World War II and the end of his Warner contract, Lorre's acting career in Hollywood experienced a downturn. He concentrated on radio and stage work. In 1949, he filed for bankruptcy. In the autumn of 1950, he traveled to
West Germany to make the film noir
Der Verlorene (
The Lost One, 1951) which Lorre co-wrote, directed and starred in. According to Gerd Gemünden in
Continental Strangers: German Exile Cinema, 1933–1951, with the exception of
Josef von Báky's
Der Ruf (
The Last Illusion, 1949), it is the only film by an emigrant from Germany which uses a return to the country "addressing questions of guilt and responsibility; of accountability and justice." While it gained some critical approval, audiences avoided it and it did badly at the box office. In February 1952, Lorre returned to the United States, as well as two episodes of
Alfred Hitchcock Presents broadcast in 1957 and 1960, the latter a version of the
Roald Dahl short story "
Man from the South" starring
Steve McQueen, Lorre and McQueen's wife
Neile Adams. He had a supporting role in the film
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). In Lorre's last years, he worked with
Roger Corman on several low-budget films, including two of the director's
Edgar Allan Poe cycle:
Tales of Terror (1962) with
Vincent Price and
Basil Rathbone; and
The Raven (1963), again with Price, as well as Boris Karloff and
Jack Nicholson. He again worked with Price, Karloff and Rathbone in the
Jacques Tourneur-directed
The Comedy of Terrors (1963). He also appeared in a memorable 1962 episode of
Route 66, "Lizard's Leg and Owlet's Wing", with
Lon Chaney Jr. and Boris Karloff. == Marriages and family ==