Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt born 22 January 1893 (d. 1943)Conrad Veidt was a German actor, well known for his roles in such films as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) and Casablanca (1942).
He was born Hans Walter Conrad Veidt in Potsdam, Germany. In the 27 years between 1916 and his death, he managed to act in well over 100 movies, some of them classics, several of them highly significant cinema landmarks.
His starring role in The Man Who Laughs (1928) [left] was the inspiration for Batman's greatest enemy, The Joker. Veidt appeared in Magnus Hirschfeld's pioneering homosexual-rights film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919) - credited as being the first gay movie - and in Das Land ohne Frauen (1929), Germany's first talking picture.
Veidt was vehemently anti-Nazi in his beliefs and he fled Germany in 1933, no longer safe. Bisexual but married twice before, he married a Jewish woman, Illona Prager, and a week afterward departed Germany forever. For a man so actively opposed to the Third Reich it is ironic that he is best known for playing Nazis in both All Through The Night and Casablanca. Settling in Britain he continued making films, notably three with director Michael Powell: The Spy in Black (1939), Contraband (1940) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Perhaps most tellingly, he also made the movie Jew Suss which was a satire of Nazi anti-Semitism. Although it was not a success with audiences, it did succeed in angering Josef Goebbels who banned all of Veidt's films from Germany.
He later moved to Hollywood, and starred in a few films but he is most well known in this period for playing the Nazi Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (1943). He died of a heart attack a year later, while playing golf in Los Angeles, possibly as a result of his heavy smoking, aged just 50.Labels: Actors, Film, German Cinema, Hollywood, Silent Movies
posted by Peter Jacobs at 12:01 am
4 Comments:
Weidt left Germany with a Gestapo hit squad on his heels. So "emigrated" is a bit of a euphemism.
His name at birth really was spelled Veidt, not Weidt. (I saw a copy of his birth certificate while doing research at a film archive). And there's no "question" about whether he was Jewish or not, just confusion on the interwebs. He wasn't Jewish; his third wife was.
Thanks for the quality info!
Thanks for the article. Extra thanks for not claiming Veidt as completely gay like some sources have done (ah, good old bisexual erasure). I've devoured pretty much everything I've been able to get my hands on when it comes to him, and he really seems to have been legitimately attracted to both women and men. He did have the most amazing androgynous, gender-bending presence whenever he was on the screen, although in the sound era you have to see him move and hear him speak to get it because it's more subtle. That, and he's definitely one of cinema's great queer heroes. I just showed Different From the Others to a straight friend and she was in tears at the end because she couldn't believe how amazing this guy was. To star in a pro-LGBT film when homosexual acts could send you to jail took guts. But to think he got death threats from the far right for the film in 1919 and didn't care and *then* put on a dress and went to a gay bar in the evening to flirt with both men and women--apparently his leanings were pretty much an open secret in the Berlin days--this guy seriously had balls of steel.
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