The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre Book

Often typecast as a menacing figure, Peter Lorre achieved Hollywood fame first as a featured player and later as a character actor who trademarked his screen performances with a delicately strung balance between good and evil. His portrayal of the grisly child murderer in Fritz Lang?s masterpiece M (1931) catapulted him to international fame. Lang said of Lorre: "He gave one of the best performances in film history and certainly the best in his life." Today, the Hungarian-born actor is also recognized for his riveting performances in The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The Maltese Falcon (1941), and Casablanca (1942).

The first full biography of this major actor, The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre draws upon more than three hundred interviews, including conversations with directors Fritz Lang, Alfred Hitchcock, Billy Wilder, John Huston, Frank Capra, and Rouben Mamoulian, who speak candidly about Lorre, both the man and the actor. Author Stephen D. Youngkin examines for the first time Lorre?s pivotal relationship with German dramatist Bertolt Brecht, his experience as an émigré from Hitler?s Germany, his battle with drug addiction, and his struggle with the choice between celebrity and intellectual respectability.

Separating the enigmatic person from the persona long associated with one of classic Hollywood?s most recognizable faces, The Lost One is the definitive work of a life triumphant and yet tragically tangled with so many failed possibilities.