“This time I know our side will win”
Paul Henreid (10 January 1908 to 29 March 1992)
Henreid crept through Hollywood in a long career, but he stands tall in two divine Hollywood soapies made during World War II.
After declining to sign the Nazi loyalty oath and skipping his native Austria, he became becalmed (like Victor Lazlo) till he obtained papers as an émigré to America.
He repaid them with interest in two films: Casablanca, where his rousing of the orchestra in Rick’s Café to play the Marseillaise in defiance of gathered Nazi and Vichy officers was one of the greatest propaganda tools in film history, and Now, Voyager, where he figuratively took the baton from Charles Boyer in his romantic gesture of lighting Bette Davis’ cigarette.
“I don’t like the way you got it.”
He wasn’t a bad villain when required, either. Whilst a ‘B’ effort, and B-minus at that, we relish his nasty Commandant Vogel in Rope of Sand (1949), showing co-star (and terrible actress) Corinne Calvert his purloined Sèvres vase and donning his dark blue blazer when he wants to ‘question’ someone in his torture chamber.
“Play it!”
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