Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving. God, I’m full. So I got to spend the holiday with my parents and my husband. Was fun. At my parents’ house it is a ritual to watch some old movies. Lots of them. My husband is not so tolerant of our addiction so we broke it up with a little Hitler..uh, I mean The History Channel. They had a great series on WWII in HD my Dad recorded. Lots of really interesting footage in color taken by the military and by people in the military. I’m not a huge fan of this kind of stuff but it was very good. Very moving and candid. Ugh…Obama is about to speak about the troop deployment. It’s so terrible what these families have to go thru. Thoughts are with you.
On a lighter note, Casablanca was on (we won’t talk about the exchange between my husband and I when he turned off the TV right before Humphrey Bogart says to Claude Rains “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”).
Fritz Mannheimer
Here’s a great bit of dialogue that is a bit timely..
Woman: What makes saloonkeepers so snobbish?
Banker: Perhaps if you told him I ran the second largest banking house in Amsterdam.
Carl: Second largest? That wouldn’t impress Rick. The leading banker in Amsterdam is now the pastry chef in our kitchen.
Banker: We have something to look forward to.
Ok that was fun. So now for Conrad Veidt. My mom was reeling over my find Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others 1919). She was an admirer of Veidt, but now she was fascinated, she saw a whole new level to his performances and how versitile he was. He wasn’t just that tough guy who played evil Nazi’s anymore.
“Did you know he gave his paychecks to the war effort?”, my Dad said. “He hated Nazi’s so much he donated all of his earnings he made from his films to the war effort to fight the Nazi’s.”
I have no idea if this is true but it made sense. I mean they destroyed at least one great film of his that I am aware of. According to Wikipedia he was strongly opposed to the Nazi’s and fled Germany after he married a Jewish woman. I liked him enough when I saw him in the film Anders al die Andern, now I just think he’s seriously cool.
Amazing that he ended up being famous for playing Maj. Strasser the big bad Nazi in Casablanca.
Why else is Conrad Veidt a bad ass? He was the model for the Batman character The Joker!
Take a look at The Man Who Laughs.
What is also interesting about him is how he flourished on the bookends of the Pre-Code era films. He made many films before 1929 and then again in 1938-his death in 1943. During the Pre-Code film era he had Nazi problems. So he is the inverse Pre-Code star.
Filed under: Anders als die Andern, Anders als die Andern, Batman, Casablanca, Conrad Veidt, Maj. Strasser, Nazi, The History Channel, The Joker, The Man Who Laughs
Before the Hays 
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