Celebrity Birthday of the Day

Happy Birthday, Peter Lorre!

There has never been anyone in the movies quite like Peter Lorre. Born Lazlo Lowenstein in modern day Slovakia in 1904, the 5'5" Lorre carved out a singular niche as a creepy nervous villain -- the kind of guy you expect to find in a room full of scattered body parts. 

In 1933, in only his second movie, Lorre delivered a terrific performance in Fritz Lang's legendary M. Though I must say that in general I find M boring, Lorre is undeniably great in it, playing a creepy childlike child molester and murderer. In the last scene, where he's captured and confronted by the town, Lorre comes completely unhinged, terrified to the point he almost ceases to be human. 

Lorre fled the Nazis and moved to Hollywood in the late 1930s, eventually landing supporting roles in some of the best movies ever made (The Maltese Falcon, Casablanca) and some of the worst (Muscle Beach Party). Lorre was quickly teamed with 300-pound Sydney Greenstreet, a man so huge and evil looking his appearance was the original inspiration for the look of Jabba the Hutt (early on, Jabba wore a fez, the same way Greenstreet does in Casablanca). Appearing together in nine movies, Lorre and Greenstreet proved one of the great Bad Guy/Henchman combinations in movie history -- a kind of Laurel and Hardy, only sinister. 

Though he was at one point labeled by Charlie Chaplin the "greatest living actor" (presumably, while he was still alive), Lorre was typecast as a villain (co-starring in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea as a benign scientist, Lorre said that the octopus who attacks the ship had gotten the part usually reserved for him). Combined with health problems that eventually descended into an addiction to morphine and weight gain, this typecasting led to career decline after WWII. 

Lorre kept his sense of humor, however. Called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee and report on anyone suspicious he had met since arriving in the United States, Lorre simply wrote down everyone he had ever met -- hundreds of names . Lorre also attended the funeral of former co-star Bela Lugosi in 1956. Upon seeing Lugosi was to be buried in his Dracula costume, Lorre turned to fellow attendee Boris Karloff and said, "do you think we should stab him in the heart, just in case?"  

Plagued by gall bladder difficulties and in generally bad health, Lorre died in 1964 of a stroke. Personally, I'll always remember him in Casablaca as the amoral Ugarte. 

Very Important News: 

"So, it turns out Michael Jackson didn't die of a heart attack. They say now it was food poisoning. Yeah, apparently they found 12-year-old nuts in his mouth." 

I'll admit that when told this by someone in a serious tone of voice, it took me several seconds to realize it was a joke. 

The identity of that person? 

You guessed it: Frank Stallone.