Born into a middle-class family in Berlin in 1893, Veidt worked in the theatre with
Max Reinhardt before moving into silent film, where he became Germany's biggest male
star. From his second marriage, he had a daughter, Viola, who is now in her seventies
and living in the US.
When others might have dedicated themselves to their own stardom, Veidt made a series
of choices that still seem astonishingly courageous today. In 1919, the same year
as Dr Caligari he starred in what is held to be the first gay movie, Different From
All The others, as a concert pianist blackmailed because of his sexuality. Like most
of his German films, it was destroyed by the Nazis, who had tried, and failed, to
lure this most conscientious of liberals into making propaganda movies for Goebbels.
Veidt's principles went hand in hand with a certain recklessness: his third wife,
Lilli was half-Jewish. He was offered immunity for her, but refused it. Asked to
state his ethnic origins on a form, he scrawled ''Jew,'' and was slapped into detention,
to be released only when British-Gaumont Pictures sent a doctor to prove he was not
ill, as the Gestapo were insisting in order to justify his internment. He fled the
country and moved to Hampstead, where he became a naturalised citizen, putting money
from his royalties into British war relief and ensuring his place on the Nazi blacklist
with films such as The Wandering Jew and Jew Suss.
On set in Jew Suss, in 1934, he impressed Christopher Isherwood, who wrote tellingly
of a break in filming, when a technician offered him a sweet: ''He remained Suss,
and through the eyes of Suss he looked down from the cart upon this sweet Christian
girl, the only human being in this cruel city who had the heart and the courage to
show kindness to a condemned Jew. His eyes filled with tears. With his manacled hands
he took the candy from her and tried to eat it - for her sake, to show his gratitude
to her. But he couldn't. He was beyond hunger, too near death. And his emotion was
too great. He began to sob. He turned his face away.'' It sounds as if he had discovered
method acting a decade before Lee Strasburg. But by the late thirties, Veidt was
succumbing to the leaden casting that proved his downfall. After an appearance in
a Michael Powell film, Contraband, he was condemned by a film magazine: ''The man
who is built by nature to petrify kings and emperors with a look, rot the marrow
of their bones with a sibilant whisper, is bent on setting himself down in your memory
and mine as a commonplace, well-meaning ninny.''
In 1939, he was lured to Hollywood, where - ironically and inevitably - the bad casting
continued, with the defier of Fascism doomed always to appear as smooth Nazi villains.
In Casablanca, he played the last of them, and he died in 1943 before having a chance
to see the finished film. There, his story takes a bizarre turn. He was interred
at a Hollywood cemetery, but the urn was removed after the death of Lilli, who wanted
her ashes to be mingled with his. That was the last that was heard of them, until
- in the early nineties- the Rathlesbergers were contacted by Lilli's nephew, who
had learnt of the society and wanted to pass on the memorabilia he had inherited
from his aunt.
Along came posters, Veidt's cigarette case and a press cuttings book, kept by Lilli,
which poignantly ended with his obituaries. And along came the urn. ''I was quite
surprised,'' says Rathlesberger, who stashed the ashes in his garage and put out
an international appeal for ideas as to where they should go. There had been a plan
for them to be sent to Bablesberg, where Veidt had made his greatest films. But that
idea was rejected by members of the society who were concerned about the rise of
neo-Nazism in Germany. Then a fan from Hendon piped up. The Veidts had spent happy
years in Hampstead, so why not bring him to Golders Green crematorium, where he could
join his old muckers Alexander Korda and Vivien Leigh in the book of remembrance?
The society agreed. The $5 yearly subscriptions (now $10, web editor) secured a 10
year lease on a niche in the columbarium, and the Rathlesbergers brought him over:
What will happen to him once the 10 years is over is uncertain. It costs UKP 2,860
to secure a plot in perpetuity at Golders Green, and Veidt - for all his talent and
integrity - was, in his own words, "only an actor". In death, as in life, a man without
a place.
''The Unknown 1930s: An Alternative History Of The British Cinema 1929 - 1939,''
edited by Jeffrey Richards and published by IB Tauris, is out this week, price UKP
UK UKP 29.50.
(Illustrations in the article not reproduced here: A half-page spread of Veidt as
Major Strasser seated next to Claude Rains' Louis Renault. An insert of Veidt's Cesare
from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. )
Born into a middle-class family in Berlin in 1893, Veidt worked in the theatre with
Max Reinhardt before moving into silent film, where he became Germany's biggest male
star. From his second marriage, he had a daughter, Viola, who is now in her seventies
and living in the US.
When others might have dedicated themselves to their own stardom, Veidt made a series
of choices that still seem astonishingly courageous today. In 1919, the same year
as Dr Caligari he starred in what is held to be the first gay movie, Different From
All The others, as a concert pianist blackmailed because of his sexuality. Like most
of his German films, it was destroyed by the Nazis, who had tried, and failed, to
lure this most conscientious of liberals into making propaganda movies for Goebbels.
Veidt's principles went hand in hand with a certain recklessness: his third wife,
Lilli was half-Jewish. He was offered immunity for her, but refused it. Asked to
state his ethnic origins on a form, he scrawled ''Jew,'' and was slapped into detention,
to be released only when British-Gaumont Pictures sent a doctor to prove he was not
ill, as the Gestapo were insisting in order to justify his internment. He fled the
country and moved to Hampstead, where he became a naturalised citizen, putting money
from his royalties into British war relief and ensuring his place on the Nazi blacklist
with films such as The Wandering Jew and Jew Suss.
On set in Jew Suss, in 1934, he impressed Christopher Isherwood, who wrote tellingly
of a break in filming, when a technician offered him a sweet: ''He remained Suss,
and through the eyes of Suss he looked down from the cart upon this sweet Christian
girl, the only human being in this cruel city who had the heart and the courage to
show kindness to a condemned Jew. His eyes filled with tears. With his manacled hands
he took the candy from her and tried to eat it - for her sake, to show his gratitude
to her. But he couldn't. He was beyond hunger, too near death. And his emotion was
too great. He began to sob. He turned his face away.'' It sounds as if he had discovered
method acting a decade before Lee Strasburg. But by the late thirties, Veidt was
succumbing to the leaden casting that proved his downfall. After an appearance in
a Michael Powell film, Contraband, he was condemned by a film magazine: ''The man
who is built by nature to petrify kings and emperors with a look, rot the marrow
of their bones with a sibilant whisper, is bent on setting himself down in your memory
and mine as a commonplace, well-meaning ninny.''
In 1939, he was lured to Hollywood, where - ironically and inevitably - the bad casting
continued, with the defier of Fascism doomed always to appear as smooth Nazi villains.
In Casablanca, he played the last of them, and he died in 1943 before having a chance
to see the finished film. There, his story takes a bizarre turn. He was interred
at a Hollywood cemetery, but the urn was removed after the death of Lilli, who wanted
her ashes to be mingled with his. That was the last that was heard of them, until
- in the early nineties- the Rathlesbergers were contacted by Lilli's nephew, who
had learnt of the society and wanted to pass on the memorabilia he had inherited
from his aunt.
Along came posters, Veidt's cigarette case and a press cuttings book, kept by Lilli,
which poignantly ended with his obituaries. And along came the urn. ''I was quite
surprised,'' says Rathlesberger, who stashed the ashes in his garage and put out
an international appeal for ideas as to where they should go. There had been a plan
for them to be sent to Bablesberg, where Veidt had made his greatest films. But that
idea was rejected by members of the society who were concerned about the rise of
neo-Nazism in Germany. Then a fan from Hendon piped up. The Veidts had spent happy
years in Hampstead, so why not bring him to Golders Green crematorium, where he could
join his old muckers Alexander Korda and Vivien Leigh in the book of remembrance?
The society agreed. The $5 yearly subscriptions (now $10, web editor) secured a 10
year lease on a niche in the columbarium, and the Rathlesbergers brought him over:
What will happen to him once the 10 years is over is uncertain. It costs UKP 2,860
to secure a plot in perpetuity at Golders Green, and Veidt - for all his talent and
integrity - was, in his own words, "only an actor". In death, as in life, a man without
a place.
''The Unknown 1930s: An Alternative History Of The British Cinema 1929 - 1939,''
edited by Jeffrey Richards and published by IB Tauris, is out this week, price UKP
UK UKP 29.50.
(Illustrations in the article not reproduced here: A half-page spread of Veidt as
Major Strasser seated next to Claude Rains' Louis Renault. An insert of Veidt's Cesare
from Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. )
