Paul Henreid

Paul Henreid was an Austrian-American actor, director, producer, and writer born on January 10, 1908, in Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His full birth name was Paul Georg Julius Freiherr von Hernreid Ritter von Wasel-Waldingau. His father, Karl Alphons Hernreid, served as a financial adviser to Emperor Franz Joseph I and had converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1904. Karl died in 1916, leaving the family in diminished financial circumstances by the time Henreid completed his studies. Henreid died on March 29, 1992.

Over his family's objections, Henreid pursued theatrical training in Vienna at the Theresianische Akademie, supporting himself by working at a publishing house during his studies. While performing in a production at the Akademie, he was discovered by Otto Preminger, who was then working with director Max Reinhardt. Henreid subsequently joined Reinhardt's theater company, and in 1933 took a minor role in a stage production of Faust. He went on to star in the Vienna stagings of Men in White and Mizzi. In 1937, he traveled to London to portray Prince Albert in the first British stage production of Victoria Regina.

Henreid's path out of Europe was shaped by the rise of National Socialism. He had applied twice for membership in the NS-Reichsfilmkammer, the body controlling German film production, and was rejected both times because his father had been born Jewish. His second application was personally denied by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Henreid, by then fervently anti-Nazi, helped a Jewish comedian flee Germany. The German government designated him an official enemy of the Third Reich and confiscated his assets in Germany, after which he relocated permanently to the United Kingdom.

When the Second World War began in 1939, Henreid faced potential deportation or internment as an enemy alien in Britain. German actor Conrad Veidt vouched for him, allowing him to remain and work. During this period he appeared in a major supporting role as German teacher Max Staefel in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), received third billing as a Gestapo agent in Night Train to Munich (1940), played a minor role in the British musical comedy Under Your Hat (1940), and portrayed a German army officer in Madman of Europe (1940).

In 1940, Henreid relocated to New York City, where he made his Broadway debut in Flight to the West, playing a doctor. That same year he signed a contract with RKO Pictures, which dropped the "von" from his name to make it sound less Germanic. He also became a United States citizen. His first RKO film was the 1942 war drama Joan of Paris, in which he played a Free French flyer. Moving to Warner Brothers that same year, he was cast as Jeremiah Durrance opposite Bette Davis in Now, Voyager, and then as Victor Laszlo, an anti-Nazi resistance leader, in Casablanca, alongside Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, Claude Rains, and Conrad Veidt.

Henreid's subsequent Warner Brothers work included the 1944 romantic drama In Our Time with Ida Lupino, Between Two Worlds with Eleanor Parker that same year, and The Conspirators (1944), in which he played a Dutch resistance leader pursued by Nazi agents in Lisbon, with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre in supporting roles. He briefly returned to RKO for the 1945 swashbuckler The Spanish Main with Maureen O'Hara, then went back to Warner Brothers for Devotion (1946), in which he portrayed Arthur Bell Nicholls, husband of Charlotte Brontë, and Of Human Bondage (1946) with Eleanor Parker, based on the Somerset Maugham novel. MGM borrowed him from Warners to play composer Robert Schumann opposite Katharine Hepburn in Song of Love (1947). In his 1984 autobiography Ladies Man, Henreid stated that he subsequently bought out his Warner Brothers contract for $75,000 and declined a long-term MGM contract worth $150,000 per year.

In the late 1940s, Henreid participated in a Hollywood protest in Washington, D.C., against the anti-Communist activities of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He recounted that the major studios blacklisted him as a result. He produced the film noir Hollow Triumph in 1948 and spent the following years working in lower-budget independent productions, including Rope of Sand (1949) with Burt Lancaster, So Young, So Bad (1950), Last of the Buccaneers (1950), Pardon My French (1951), Thief of Damascus (1952), Stolen Face (1952), Mantrap (1953), and Siren of Bagdad (1953). He also directed and starred in the college drama For Men Only (1952).

Henreid returned to major studio work in 1954 with a minor role in MGM's Deep in My Heart, a biopic about composer Sigmund Romberg. He appeared in Pirates of Tripoli for Columbia Pictures in 1955 and made a cameo in Meet Me in Las Vegas in 1956. It was also during this period that he appeared on Broadway in the play Festival. Beginning in the early 1950s, Henreid built a parallel career as a director, helming episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Maverick, Bonanza, The Virginian, and The Big Valley, as well as the films A Woman's Devotion (1956), Girls on the Loose (1958), Live Fast, Die Young (1958), and Dead Ringer (1964), the last of which starred Bette Davis and featured Henreid's daughter Monika Henreid in a minor role.

Henreid's Broadway career spanned 1940 to 1973 and included appearances in Flight to the West, Festival, and Don Juan in Hell. Born in what was then Austria-Hungary, he remained one of the more distinctive figures to move between the European stage, Hollywood film, and American theater across more than three decades.