You are invited to an Emeritus Academy Lecture
Helen Fehervary
“Peter Lorre and Bertolt Brecht:
a working relationship and friendship beyond Hollywood”
Born László Löwenstein in Hungary in 1904, Lorre had his Hollywood film persona embody an uncanny strangeness: a soft, disarming, voice; an unidentifiable foreign accent; a face that expressed emotions from menacing shrewdness to sudden disquiet and alarm; a pliant body that executed quick transitions from stealth to shrinking cowardice. If Lorre lives on in the popular imagination as the sinister alien, his significance for Brecht, on which this paper focuses, was entirely different. Based on Lorre’s unique gestic speech and physical stage presence, the playwright and director Brecht considered him to be the greatest interpreter of epic theater, an opinion that only grew stronger during their shared exile in Los Angeles in the 1940s. As for Lorre, two years before his death in 1964 he told an interviewer from Newsweek: “The only compliment I’ve ever had about my acting that meant anything to me was from Brecht.”
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ABOUT THE LECTURE SERIES:
The Emeritus Academy hosts a monthly lecture series in which members discuss their current research and creative activities. Lectures are free and open to the public, occurring at 4 p.m. on the first Wednesday of each month during the academic year. Though normally held in the Grand Lounge of the Faculty Club, the lectures will be delivered online via Zoom until further notice.