Kortner, Fritz

Description

Pagination: [title], reel one 1–8, [blank, 1], 9–13, reel two 1–14, reel three 1–12, reel four 1–11, reel five 1–17, reel six 1–5, [blank, 1], 6–9, reel seven 1–14, reel eight 1–8, [blank, 2].

Annotations: [title], “Shanghai” in pencil to top right. Rare. At the time of cataloguing, no other copies for sale; no copies found in OCLC; and surprisingly, no copy found at the Academy.

A man who does Hitler impersonations is forced by the Gestapo to be a decoy for Hitler assassination attempts. His life is in danger, because his anti-Nazi wife does not know that her missing husband is now the faux Hitler. One of only a handful of movies made during World War II that directly reference Adolf Hitler. This one, with significant exile talent.

Shot on location at Universal Studios, California.

EXILE:
Ludwig Donath (1900–1967). Austrian actor born to a Jewish family. He emigrated to the United States shortly after the 1938 Anschluss. In this movie, he played Hitler.
Ludwig Stössel (1883–1973). Also an Austrian actor. He lived in Germany when Hitler came to power. In 1933 he was forced back to Austria because he was Jewish. In 1938 during the Anschluss he was imprisoned. Stössel managed to escape to Paris, from where he made his way to the United States (over London).

Willy Trenk-Trebitsch (1902–1983). Also an Austrian actor. He fled in 1940 with forged French papers over Trinidad to the United States.

Fritz Kortner (1892–1970) was one of Austria’s best-known character actors and the nation’s foremost performer of Expressionist work. In 1933 he went on a performance tour of Scandinavia—and as a Jew—decided not to return. Over London, he fled to the United States. By 1941 he was living in Hollywood writing scripts, including this one.