Hugo Haas

Hugo Haas was a Czech actor, director, and writer born on 19 February 1901 in Brno, Austria-Hungary, in what is now the Czech Republic. Over the course of a career spanning more than four decades, he appeared in more than 60 films between 1926 and 1962 and directed 20 films between 1933 and 1962. He also brought his theatrical background to Broadway, where he performed between 1942 and 1948 in productions including the comedy The First Crocus, Magdalena, and R. U. R. Haas died on 1 December 1968 in Vienna, Austria, from complications of asthma.

Haas and his brother Pavel studied voice at the Brno Conservatory under composer Leoš Janáček. Pavel would later become a noted composer before his death at Auschwitz in 1944. Hugo graduated from the conservatory in 1920 and began his acting career at the National Theater in Brno, subsequently working in Ostrava and Olomouc. In 1924 he relocated to Prague, where he performed regularly at the Vinohrady Theatre until 1929. The following year, Czech director, critic, and poet Karel Hugo Hilar brought Haas into the Prague National Theatre drama company, where he remained until his emigration in 1939. Among his most celebrated stage roles during this period was Doctor Galén in The White Disease, a part that Karel Čapek had written specifically for him. His final role at the National Theater was Director Busman in Čapek's R.U.R., a production he would later revisit on Broadway.

Haas made his film debut in 1923, playing Notary Voborský in the silent film Jedenácté přikázání, a role he reprised twelve years later in a sound version directed by Martin Frič. With the arrival of sound cinema, he applied his comedic abilities in Svatopluk Innemann's Muži v offsidu in 1931. In 1936 he co-directed his first film, Camel Through the Eye of a Needle, with Otakar Vávra. He subsequently directed Kvočna, for which his brother Pavel composed the score, as well as The White Disease and Co se šeptá. His final Czech comedy, Miroslav Cikán's Andula Won, reached cinemas in 1938.

Following the Munich Agreement of 1938 and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in early 1939, Haas was dismissed from the National Theater because of his Jewish origin. In April of that year he and his wife, Maria von Bibikoff, fled through Paris and Spain, departing from Lisbon and arriving in New York City between October and November 1940. Their son Ivan remained behind in the care of Pavel. Both Haas's father, Lipmann Haas, and his brother Pavel perished in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.

By the mid-1940s Haas had established himself as a character actor in American films, and his Broadway appearances during this period placed him within the New York theatrical world as well. In 1951 he launched a directing career in Hollywood, producing a series of low-budget melodramas through his independent company, Hugo Haas Productions, which he used to finance, produce, write, and direct 12 of his 14 American films between 1951 and 1959. He typically cast himself as the male lead while centering the narrative and promotional material on a female co-star, often a blonde actress in the role of a predatory figure. Cleo Moore appeared in six of his films, and other actresses including Beverly Michaels, Carol Morris, Eleanor Parker, Joan Blondell, Agnes Moorehead, Julie London, and Marie Windsor also featured in his work. Well-known male actors such as Rock Hudson, John Agar, and Vince Edwards appeared in his productions as well.

His film budgets generally ranged from $80,000 to $100,000, a fraction of the Hollywood average of $1.5 million in 1955. His first American film was financed entirely out of his own pocket for $85,000, and its financial success enabled the formation of Hugo Haas Productions. He did not arrange distribution deals with larger studios until after completing his films, a practice that sometimes delayed their release by months or years. Among his American works was The Girl on the Bridge (1951), a drama he co-wrote, directed, and starred in, concerning a watchmaker who, having lost his family in the Holocaust, befriends and marries a young woman he rescues from suicide. His final film, Paradise Alley, was rejected by major studios and went unreleased for more than three years before appearing in a limited run in 1962.

In the late 1950s Haas returned to Europe, spending a brief period in Italy before settling in Vienna in 1961, where he made occasional television appearances. He visited Prague in 1963 for the centennial celebrations of the National Theater but never permanently returned to his homeland. He was buried in Brno. His wife Maria survived him by more than four decades, dying in 2009 at the age of 92.