Wilhelm Dieterle
Vintage Austrian postcard. Iris Verlag 5445. Defina. DEFU. Verleih Philipp & Co.
Wilhelm Dieterle aka William Dieterle was a German actor and director who started out in Weimar cinema, before becoming a well-known Hollywood director.
Wilhelm Dieterle (later on: William Dieterle) (1893-1972), born in Ludwigshafen am Rhein and of humble descendant, took acting lessons at a young age, and began his career as a stage actor in 1911 at the theatre in Arnsberg, which also included work as extra, singer, dancer and stagehand; hence his white gloves, which he continued to wear in Hollywood. In 1912-1914 he worked at theatres in Heilbronn, Plauen and Bad Dürkheim, in 1914-1917 in Mainz (under the direction of future film director Ludwig Berger). In 1917-1918 he played in Zürich, in 1918-1919 in Berlin and 1919-1920 in Munich. His breakthrough he had in 1920-1923 with Max Reinhardt’s Deutschen Theater in Berlin. In this era he mainly worked there, next to sidesteps with the companies of Leopold Jessner, Viktor Barnowsky and Karlheinz Martin. In 1924 Dieterle had his own theatre company, but it was short-lived.
After an incidental film performance in the Schiller adaptation Fiesko (Phil Jutzi 1913), Dieterle’s acting became numerous from 1919 on, all through the 1920s. Dieterle appeared in major films of the Weimar era. He was Henny Porten’s ill-fated fiancé and Fritz Kortner’s rival in love in Leopold Jessner’s classic Kammerspiel Hintertreppe/ Backstairs (1921). Actually, in those years Dieterle was often paired with Porten, before Hintertreppe in Die Geier-Wally (E.A. Dupont 1921), and afterwards in Frauenopfer (Karl Grune 1921). Dieterle also was the poet, and the Persian baker and Russian prince in the Harun al Raschid and Iwan the Terrible sequences, in Paul Leni’s Wachsfigurenkabinett/ Waxworks (1923/1924). He was Henny Porten’s young husband in the internationally popular Mutter und Kind (Carl Froehlich 1924). And he was Gretchen’s brother Valentin in F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1926), killed by Mephisto.
From 1923 on, Dieterle directed his first films, in which he always had the lead; starting with the Heimat-film Der Mensch am Wege (1923), in which Marlene Dietrich had one of her first roles. The major example of his own output was Geschlecht in Fesseln/ Sex in Chains (1928), one of the films produced by his own company Charha (1927), which he ran with his wife, scriptwriter and actress Charlotte Hagenbruch. A man (Dieterle) accidentally kills another who tried to harass his wife (Mary Johnson) and ends in jail, where he is seduced by an inmate, while his wife gives in to another man as well. After his liberation, the couple feel guilt and commit suicide. In particular between 1928 and 1930, Dieterle directed many films for his own company, in which he starred and for which his wife signed the script, such as the melodrama Die Heilige und ihr Narr (1928), with Lien Deyers and Gina Manès, and the mountain film Das Schweigen im Walde (1929).
Dieterle’s work in Germany was internationally so successful, that he was offered a contract by Warner Bros. in 1930 to make German versions of American sounds films for the German department of Warner’s subsidiary First National, Deutsche First National Pictures GmbH (Defina). An example is Die heilige Flamme (1930/31), co-directed with Berthold Viertel and starring Salka Viertel. In the States Dieterle stopped acting and focused on directing. As Dieterle was Jewish, he was lucky to get away from the slowly worsening situation in Germany; three years Hitler would take over and ban all Jews from the film industry. In the US, Dieterle quickly adapted and was permitted to start directing hs own films. With Michael Curtiz, Dieterle soon became the regular Warner film director, working in every possible genre, such as comedies with Kay Francis and the melodrama The Crash with Ruth Chatterton. Together with Max Reinhardt, with whom Dieterle had played in Germany, he adapted Midsummer Night’s Dream for cinema, but the result failed to convince the critics. In the early 1930s Dieterle was highly productive with Warner, turning out 6 films per year in 1933 and 1934. He probably had to: in 1933 he had received a seven-year contract from Warner. From the mid-1930s on Dieterle became well-known for his bio-pics. The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) won him an Oscar nomination while The Life of Emile Zola (1937) got him the Oscar; in both films Paul Muni played the lead. Other memorable titles were the Mark Twain adaptation The Prince and the Pauper (1937) with Errol Flynn, Juarez (1939) with Bette Davis as the empress Carlotta, and The Hunchback of the Notre Dame (1939) with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo. In 1937 Warner offered Dieterle, by now an American citizen, the opportunity to study Russian production methods during four months at Lenfilm in Moscow. In 1938-1940 he taught theatre lessons at the Max Reinhardt Workshop of Stage, Screen and Radio, and in 1939 he co-founded the antifascist cultural magazine The Hollywood Tribune and the English spoken exile theatre company The Continental Players, directed by Jessner.
After his contract with Warner expired, Dieterle broke with them and tried his own film company at RKO. When that failed, he mainly made films with MGM, Selznick and Paramount. During the 1940s, Dieterle focused on romantic, lush melodramas such as the Technicolor exotic tale Kismet (1944) with Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich, and Love Letters (1945) and Portrait of Jennie (1948), both with Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones. Love Letters became an enormous success and earned Jones an Oscar. In the 1950s, Dieterle’s career declined because of McCarthyism. In 1950 he went to Italy to shoot Vulcano, the rival to Rossellini’s Stromboli. When Anna Magnani knew that her former lover planned to make a film with his new girlfriend Ingrid Bergman on an Italian island near Sicily, Magnani pushed a Sicilian producer to make a rivalling film which had to come out before Rossellini’s. The affair was known as ‘la guerra dei vulcani’, also referring to Magnani’s tempestuous character. Around the same time, Dieterle also shot in Italy the highly romantic September Affair (1950), with Joseph Cotten and Joan Fontaine, about a married man and a woman who start an affair in Naples and Capri. After they decide to split, they are believed to have been killed in a plane crash and start a second life, but responsibility calls.
Returned to Hollywood, Dieterle made crime films like Dark City (1950) with Charlton Heston, Boots Malone (1952) and The Turning Point (1952), both with William Holden. but also epic melodramas such as Salome (1953), starring Rita Hayworth and partly shot in Jerusalem, and Omar Khayyam (1956), starring Cornel Wilde and shot in the Bronson Canyon. In 1958 Dieterle returned to Germany and worked till his death as stage director for various companies in Germany, Switzerland and Austria; he also worked for German (Sender Freies Berlin) and Austrian television and (co-) directed two features: a remake of Joe May’s classic Herrin der Welt (1959/60) and Die Fastnachtsbeichte (1960). From 1961 to 1965, he was manager of the theatre at Bad Hersfeld. After his failed attempt to make a comeback in Hollywood with The Confession (1964), Dieterle’s last film direction, he remained in Germany, working at the stage. Wilhelm Dieterle died in 1972 and was buried in Munich.
From 1921 on, Dieterle was married to Charlotte Hagenbruch; after she died in 1968, his second wife was Elisabeth Daum.
Sources: Wikipedia (En/Du), filmportal.de, Cinegraph, IMDB
Wilhelm Dieterle
Vintage Austrian postcard. Iris Verlag 5445. Defina. DEFU. Verleih Philipp & Co.
Wilhelm Dieterle aka William Dieterle was a German actor and director who started out in Weimar cinema, before becoming a well-known Hollywood director.
Wilhelm Dieterle (later on: William Dieterle) (1893-1972), born in Ludwigshafen am Rhein and of humble descendant, took acting lessons at a young age, and began his career as a stage actor in 1911 at the theatre in Arnsberg, which also included work as extra, singer, dancer and stagehand; hence his white gloves, which he continued to wear in Hollywood. In 1912-1914 he worked at theatres in Heilbronn, Plauen and Bad Dürkheim, in 1914-1917 in Mainz (under the direction of future film director Ludwig Berger). In 1917-1918 he played in Zürich, in 1918-1919 in Berlin and 1919-1920 in Munich. His breakthrough he had in 1920-1923 with Max Reinhardt’s Deutschen Theater in Berlin. In this era he mainly worked there, next to sidesteps with the companies of Leopold Jessner, Viktor Barnowsky and Karlheinz Martin. In 1924 Dieterle had his own theatre company, but it was short-lived.
After an incidental film performance in the Schiller adaptation Fiesko (Phil Jutzi 1913), Dieterle’s acting became numerous from 1919 on, all through the 1920s. Dieterle appeared in major films of the Weimar era. He was Henny Porten’s ill-fated fiancé and Fritz Kortner’s rival in love in Leopold Jessner’s classic Kammerspiel Hintertreppe/ Backstairs (1921). Actually, in those years Dieterle was often paired with Porten, before Hintertreppe in Die Geier-Wally (E.A. Dupont 1921), and afterwards in Frauenopfer (Karl Grune 1921). Dieterle also was the poet, and the Persian baker and Russian prince in the Harun al Raschid and Iwan the Terrible sequences, in Paul Leni’s Wachsfigurenkabinett/ Waxworks (1923/1924). He was Henny Porten’s young husband in the internationally popular Mutter und Kind (Carl Froehlich 1924). And he was Gretchen’s brother Valentin in F.W. Murnau’s Faust (1926), killed by Mephisto.
From 1923 on, Dieterle directed his first films, in which he always had the lead; starting with the Heimat-film Der Mensch am Wege (1923), in which Marlene Dietrich had one of her first roles. The major example of his own output was Geschlecht in Fesseln/ Sex in Chains (1928), one of the films produced by his own company Charha (1927), which he ran with his wife, scriptwriter and actress Charlotte Hagenbruch. A man (Dieterle) accidentally kills another who tried to harass his wife (Mary Johnson) and ends in jail, where he is seduced by an inmate, while his wife gives in to another man as well. After his liberation, the couple feel guilt and commit suicide. In particular between 1928 and 1930, Dieterle directed many films for his own company, in which he starred and for which his wife signed the script, such as the melodrama Die Heilige und ihr Narr (1928), with Lien Deyers and Gina Manès, and the mountain film Das Schweigen im Walde (1929).
Dieterle’s work in Germany was internationally so successful, that he was offered a contract by Warner Bros. in 1930 to make German versions of American sounds films for the German department of Warner’s subsidiary First National, Deutsche First National Pictures GmbH (Defina). An example is Die heilige Flamme (1930/31), co-directed with Berthold Viertel and starring Salka Viertel. In the States Dieterle stopped acting and focused on directing. As Dieterle was Jewish, he was lucky to get away from the slowly worsening situation in Germany; three years Hitler would take over and ban all Jews from the film industry. In the US, Dieterle quickly adapted and was permitted to start directing hs own films. With Michael Curtiz, Dieterle soon became the regular Warner film director, working in every possible genre, such as comedies with Kay Francis and the melodrama The Crash with Ruth Chatterton. Together with Max Reinhardt, with whom Dieterle had played in Germany, he adapted Midsummer Night’s Dream for cinema, but the result failed to convince the critics. In the early 1930s Dieterle was highly productive with Warner, turning out 6 films per year in 1933 and 1934. He probably had to: in 1933 he had received a seven-year contract from Warner. From the mid-1930s on Dieterle became well-known for his bio-pics. The Story of Louis Pasteur (1936) won him an Oscar nomination while The Life of Emile Zola (1937) got him the Oscar; in both films Paul Muni played the lead. Other memorable titles were the Mark Twain adaptation The Prince and the Pauper (1937) with Errol Flynn, Juarez (1939) with Bette Davis as the empress Carlotta, and The Hunchback of the Notre Dame (1939) with Charles Laughton as Quasimodo. In 1937 Warner offered Dieterle, by now an American citizen, the opportunity to study Russian production methods during four months at Lenfilm in Moscow. In 1938-1940 he taught theatre lessons at the Max Reinhardt Workshop of Stage, Screen and Radio, and in 1939 he co-founded the antifascist cultural magazine The Hollywood Tribune and the English spoken exile theatre company The Continental Players, directed by Jessner.
After his contract with Warner expired, Dieterle broke with them and tried his own film company at RKO. When that failed, he mainly made films with MGM, Selznick and Paramount. During the 1940s, Dieterle focused on romantic, lush melodramas such as the Technicolor exotic tale Kismet (1944) with Ronald Colman and Marlene Dietrich, and Love Letters (1945) and Portrait of Jennie (1948), both with Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones. Love Letters became an enormous success and earned Jones an Oscar. In the 1950s, Dieterle’s career declined because of McCarthyism. In 1950 he went to Italy to shoot Vulcano, the rival to Rossellini’s Stromboli. When Anna Magnani knew that her former lover planned to make a film with his new girlfriend Ingrid Bergman on an Italian island near Sicily, Magnani pushed a Sicilian producer to make a rivalling film which had to come out before Rossellini’s. The affair was known as ‘la guerra dei vulcani’, also referring to Magnani’s tempestuous character. Around the same time, Dieterle also shot in Italy the highly romantic September Affair (1950), with Joseph Cotten and Joan Fontaine, about a married man and a woman who start an affair in Naples and Capri. After they decide to split, they are believed to have been killed in a plane crash and start a second life, but responsibility calls.
Returned to Hollywood, Dieterle made crime films like Dark City (1950) with Charlton Heston, Boots Malone (1952) and The Turning Point (1952), both with William Holden. but also epic melodramas such as Salome (1953), starring Rita Hayworth and partly shot in Jerusalem, and Omar Khayyam (1956), starring Cornel Wilde and shot in the Bronson Canyon. In 1958 Dieterle returned to Germany and worked till his death as stage director for various companies in Germany, Switzerland and Austria; he also worked for German (Sender Freies Berlin) and Austrian television and (co-) directed two features: a remake of Joe May’s classic Herrin der Welt (1959/60) and Die Fastnachtsbeichte (1960). From 1961 to 1965, he was manager of the theatre at Bad Hersfeld. After his failed attempt to make a comeback in Hollywood with The Confession (1964), Dieterle’s last film direction, he remained in Germany, working at the stage. Wilhelm Dieterle died in 1972 and was buried in Munich.
From 1921 on, Dieterle was married to Charlotte Hagenbruch; after she died in 1968, his second wife was Elisabeth Daum.
Sources: Wikipedia (En/Du), filmportal.de, Cinegraph, IMDB