Felix Bressart

Felix Bressart (March 2, 1895 – March 17, 1949) was a German-born actor whose career encompassed stage and screen work across Europe and Hollywood. He was born in Eydtkuhnen, East Prussia, Germany, a city now located in the Nesterovsky District of Russia.

Bressart made his acting debut in 1914 playing Malvolio in Twelfth Night and subsequently performed in Austria, Denmark, England, France, Germany, Hungary, and Yugoslavia. His film career began in 1927, and he accumulated credits in approximately 40 German-language pictures. Early on he appeared in supporting parts, among them the role of the bailiff in the commercially successful Die Drei von der Tankstelle (The Three from the Filling Station), before taking on leading roles in smaller productions. When the Nazi regime came to power in 1933, Bressart, who was Jewish, departed Germany and continued working in German-language films in Austria. He immigrated to the United States in 1936.

In America, Bressart benefited from connections within the German émigré community in Hollywood. His first American film was Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), a Universal Pictures vehicle starring Deanna Durbin. Producer Joe Pasternak, a former European colleague, selected Bressart to appear in a screen test opposite his newest discovery, Gloria Jean. Several of Bressart's earliest American films were directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Henry Koster, and Wilhelm Thiele, the last of whom had previously directed him in The Three from the Filling Station. MGM signed Bressart to a contract, and he appeared in Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939) as one of the Soviet emissaries who follows Greta Garbo's character to Paris. His MGM work continued with featured supporting roles in Edison, the Man, Comrade X, and Lubitsch's The Shop Around the Corner, all released in 1940. In Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be (1942), Bressart delivered Shylock's "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech from The Merchant of Venice. Additional MGM credits include Blossoms in the Dust (1941), Three Hearts for Julia (1943), The Seventh Cross (1944), and Without Love (1945).

Bressart departed MGM in 1945 to work independently. His first freelance project gave him his largest screen role: he received third billing in the RKO musical comedy Ding Dong Williams, filmed in April 1945, playing the bemused supervisor of a movie studio's music department. The role included a sequence in which he appeared in formal wear to conduct an orchestral arrangement of Chopin's Fantaisie-Impromptu, and he received special mention for his performance. In total, Bressart appeared in nearly 40 Hollywood productions.

Bressart also returned to the stage during this period, appearing on Broadway in 1947 in The Big Two. His final film role was in My Friend Irma (1949), an adaptation of a popular radio program. Bressart died of leukemia during production at the age of 57, compelling the studio to reshoot his completed scenes with Hans Conried, who had been playing the same character, Professor Kropotkin, on the radio version. Bressart remains visible in long shots in the finished film.