The Lost One – A life of Peter Lorre

(Stephen Youngkin)

Standard, almost obsessively detailed reference book on the whispering menace.

Peter (born: Lazlo Loewenstein) was perfect in the film roles of the 1930s and 1940s, the smartest person in the room but always with a touch of sadness.

Peter gets to stroll the green lanes of Paradise for his work in M, Mad Love, Crime and Punishment, Strange Cargo, The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca  The Beast with Five Fingers, The Mask of Dimitrios, and Beat the Devil. He gets censured for taking work away from actors of certain nations and ethnicities, e.g., Japanese (the Mr Moto films), Chinese (They Met in Bombay, where his slimy ship’s captain declares, “I love money…I’ll do anything for money…heh heh…anything“) ‘Mexican’ (Secret Agent), Russian (Crime and Punishment), Dutch (The Mask of Dimitrios) and Irish (although we doubt the authenticity of that last one, from Beat the Devil, where Peter keeps insisting his name’s ‘O’Hara’ – a likely story).