Wilhelm Dieterle in Die Weber (1927)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin. Photo: Zelnik-Film. Wilhelm Dieterle in Die Weber/The Weavers (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927).
Wilhelm Dieterle (later: William Dieterle) (1893-1972) was a German actor and director who started out in Weimar cinema, before becoming a well-known Hollywood director.
Wilhelm Dieterle was born in 1893 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein and of humble descendants, 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 an 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, and 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. He had his breakthrough 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, the Persian baker and the 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, Wilhelm 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 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 up in jail, where he is seduced by an inmate, while his wife gives in to another man as well. After his liberation, the couple feels guilty and commits 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 sound 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 later, Hitler would take over and ban all Jews from the film industry.
In the US, William Dieterle quickly adapted and was permitted to start directing his 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 of 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 for 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, William 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 that 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 a 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 the 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 on 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 (English and German), Filmportal.de, Cinegraph, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Wilhelm Dieterle in Die Weber (1927)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin. Photo: Zelnik-Film. Wilhelm Dieterle in Die Weber/The Weavers (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927).
Wilhelm Dieterle (later: William Dieterle) (1893-1972) was a German actor and director who started out in Weimar cinema, before becoming a well-known Hollywood director.
Wilhelm Dieterle was born in 1893 in Ludwigshafen am Rhein and of humble descendants, 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 an 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, and 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. He had his breakthrough 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, the Persian baker and the 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, Wilhelm 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 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 up in jail, where he is seduced by an inmate, while his wife gives in to another man as well. After his liberation, the couple feels guilty and commits 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 sound 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 later, Hitler would take over and ban all Jews from the film industry.
In the US, William Dieterle quickly adapted and was permitted to start directing his 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 of 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 for 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, William 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 that 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 a 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 the 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 on 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 (English and German), Filmportal.de, Cinegraph, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.