Conrad Veidt

Conrad Veidt

Birth : 1893-01-22, Berlin, Germany

Death : 1943-04-03

History

Hans Walter Conrad Veidt (22 January 1893 – 3 April 1943) was a German actor best remembered for his roles in films such as Different from the Others (1919), The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), and The Man Who Laughs (1928). After a successful career in German silent film, where he was one of the best-paid stars of Ufa, he was forced to leave Germany in 1933 with his new Jewish wife after the Nazis came to power. They settled in Britain, where he participated in a number of films, including The Thief of Bagdad (1940), before emigrating to the United States around 1941, which lead to him having a supporting role in Casablanca (1942). From 1916 until his death, Veidt appeared in more than 100 films. One of his earliest performances was as the murderous somnambulist Cesare in director Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920), a classic of German Expressionist cinema, with Werner Krauss and Lil Dagover. His starring role in The Man Who Laughs (1928), as a disfigured circus performer whose face is cut into a permanent grin, provided the (visual) inspiration for the Batman villain the Joker, created in 1940 by Bill Finger. Veidt also starred in other silent horror films such as The Hands of Orlac (1924), another film directed by Robert Wiene, The Student of Prague (1926) and Waxworks (1924) where he played Ivan the Terrible. Veidt also appeared in Magnus Hirschfeld's film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919), one of the first films to sympathetically portray homosexuality, although the characters in it do not end up happily. He had a leading role in Germany's first talking picture, Das Land ohne Frauen (Land Without Women, 1929). He moved to Hollywood in the late 1920s and made a few films, but the advent of talking pictures and his difficulty with speaking English led him to return to Germany. During this period he lent his expertise to tutoring aspiring performers, one of whom was the later American character actress Lisa Golm.

Profile

Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt

Movies

Universal Horror
(archive footage)
A documentary about the era of classic monster movies that were made at Universal Studios during the 1930s and 1940s.
The Horror Hall of Fame: A Monster Salute
(archive footage)
In this made-for-TV production, Vincent Price and his hunchback sidekick (Billy Van) host a pun-filled salute to the horror film genre from its earliest beginnings all the way up to The Exorcist. Featuring clips from classic horror films and interviews with genre greats like Frank Gorshin, John Carradine, John Astin and SFX legend Bill Tuttle, among others.
Above Suspicion
Hassert Seidel
Two newlyweds spy on the Nazis for the British Secret Service during their honeymoon in Europe.
Casablanca
Major Heinrich Strasser
In Casablanca, Morocco in December 1941, a cynical American expatriate meets a former lover, with unforeseen complications.
Nazi Agent
Otto Becker / Baron Hugo von Detner
Humble stamp dealer Otto Becker has little to do with international politics, so when he receives a surprise visit from his estranged twin brother and Nazi spy, Baron Hugo von Detner, his world is thrown into turmoil. Threatening Becker with deportation, Hugo forces him to use his shop as a front for espionage.
All Through the Night
Franz Ebbing
Broadway gamblers stumble across a plan by Nazi saboteurs to blow up an American battleship.
The Men in Her Life
Stanislas Rosing
A circus performer becomes a ballerina and then begins her life of a career versus marriage and a home-life. She marries her first husband, her mentor and instructor, primarily out of gratitude. After his death, she marries an American thinking that can be her escape from the world of ballet. But she leaves him to return the dancing. She has a child but does not tell her husband. When her daughter is two-years-old, the husband finds out and takes the child to America. The ballerina continues to dance until her best dancing days have gone by.
Whistling in the Dark
Joseph Jones
The operators of 'Silver Haven', a cultish group bilking gullible rich people out of money, is set to inherit a large sum after the deceased woman's heir also dies. Leader Joesph Jones decides to hurry the process along and kidnaps Wally Benton, his fiancé, and a friend, to further this goal. Wally, 'The Fox', is a radio sleuth who solves murders on the air. Jones wants him to devise a perfect murder, and isn't above killing others sloppily along the way to get his foolproof murder plot.
A Woman's Face
Torsten Barring
A female blackmailer with a disfiguring facial scar meets a plastic surgeon who offers her the possibility of looking like a normal woman.
The Thief of Bagdad
Jaffar
When Prince Ahmad is blinded and cast out of Bagdad by the nefarious Jaffar, he joins forces with the scrappy thief Abu to win back his royal place, as well as the heart of a beautiful princess.
Escape
General Kurt von Kolb
An American goes to Germany to find his mother and discovers her in a concentration camp. With the help of an American-born widowed countess he seeks to engineer her escape.
A New Romance of Celluloid: The Miracle of Sound
Self
This short documentary, presented and directed by MGM sound engineer Douglas Shearer, goes behind the scenes to look at how the sound portion of a talking picture is created.
Contraband
Capt. Andersen
When a neutral Danish merchant ship is forced to put into port after trying to evade British wartime contraband control, its captain becomes involved in a beautiful British Naval Intelligent agent's efforts to capture a group of German spies operating from a London cinema.
The Spy in Black
Captain Ernst Hardt
A German submarine is sent to the Orkney Isles in 1917 to sink the British fleet.
The Chess Player
Le baron de Kempelen
A toymaker in Poland specializes in building lifesize mechanical men. He builds a chess-playing "automaton" to hide a pretty young Polish activist who is being hunted by occupying Russian forces.
Tempête sur l'Asie
Erich Keith
An adventurer tries to seize oil deposits in Mongolia .
Dark Journey
Baron Karl Von Marwitz
Madeline Goddard, is a British double agent who meets and falls in love with a German spy Baron Karl Von Marwitz during World War I. This tale of espionage blends high adventure and romance making perfect order from wartime chaos and growing in faith from despair.
Under the Red Robe
Gil de Berault
In 1620s France, dreaded swordsman Gil de Berault returns from carrying out a mission for Cardinal Richelieu, and finds the Cardinal worried about growing opposition from the Huguenots in the south. The Cardinal also warns de Berault that dueling has been outlawed, and will henceforth be punishable by death. Gil, however, promptly disobeys the law and is indeed sentenced to death. The Cardinal offers to cancel the sentence if de Berault is able to capture the duke who is organizing plans for an uprising. Gil travels to the duke's castle and is allowed to stay as a guest, but the duke's wife and sister immediately suspect that he is a spy. He and his servant still make good progress, until he falls in love with the duke's sister, which complicates everything.
King of the Damned
Convict 83
Revolt on a prison island is a parable of workers revolution. A cruel and repressive penal colony is the setting for a prison revolt with a special twist...the prisoners want to stay on and govern themselves in a humane and productive working community. Well that's the theory anyway but circumstances make their venture a lot more complicated than that.
The Passing of the Third Floor Back
The Stranger
The tenants of an old London boarding house spend their time in petty bickering and sniping until a mysterious stranger arrives at their door.
Bella Donna
Mahmoud Baroudi
That old theatrical war-horse Bella Donna (previously filmed in America by Alla Nazimova) was resurrected by Britain's Twickenham Studios in 1934. Conrad Veidt stars as sinister Egyptian Mahmoud Baroundi, who even before the film gets under way has left a long trail of ruined women behind him. His latest victim is American girl Mona Chepstow (Mary Ellis), whom Baroundi treats like dirt and makes her like it. The plot centers around a murder by poison, as evidenced by the film's deliberately exotic title. Critics in 1934 praised newcomer Mary Ellis for underplaying her role, but many film fans preferred Nazimova's arm-waving histrionics in the earlier version.
Jew Süss
Josef 'Jew Süss' Oppenheimer
A historical satire critical of the rising tide of Anti-Semitism in Germany. Based on the novel by Lionel Feuchtwanger, Jew Süss is the story of life in the 18th century Jewish ghetto of Württemberg. Süss (Veidt) works himself out of the ghetto and into a position of power himself with the help of an evil Duke.
Wilhelm Tell
Gessler
The Wandering Jew
Matathias / The Unknown Knight / Dr Matteos Battadios
Old Jerusalem: Matathias, spiteful over his lover's illness, spits on Jesus along the road to Calvary, and is cursed to live endlessly until His return. The Crusades, 1150: Matathias, now an anonymous knight, competes for glory in combat and for the wife of a soldier. Palermo, 1290: Matteos Battadios witnesses the death of his young son, leading to conflict with his wife over whether to take comfort in Christianity. Seville, 1560: Dr Matteos Battadios dedicates himself to the treatment and comfort of the poor, but his life and work are endangered by the arrival of the Spanish Inquisition.
I Was A Spy
Commandant Oberaertz
During World War I, a young nurse in a hospital in German-occupied Belgium is secretly feeding military information to the British. Complicating matters is the guilt she feels when she has to treat the German casualties inflicted as a result of the information she's passed on, and the fact that the local German commandant is falling in love with her.
F.P.1
Maj. Ellissen
Urged by famous airman Ellissen the Lennartz Company puts into reality the project proposed by his friend Droste: F.P.1, a huge floating platform in the Atlantic that makes long-distance flights viable. Ellissen is in love with company heiress Claire, but when he returns from his adventures to save the endangered F.P.1 he finds out that he has lost her to Droste. English version of F.P.1 antwortet nicht with Conrad Veidt replacing Hans Albers as the jaded pilot Ellissen.
The Only Girl
Marquis de Pontignac
A dashing marquis bends from his horse when he discovers a lost garter in the woods and falls. During his delirium he is serenaded by a little hairdresser. She is the person who lost the garter to begin with and has only come to get it back having borrowed it from her employer--the empress of France. The marquis mistakenly thinks he was nursed by the empress, herself, and decides to woo her.
Rome Express
Zurta
The theft of a famous painting leads to murder and many suspects on a plush train speeding from Paris to Rome.
The Black Hussar
Captain Hansgeorg von Hochberg
In 1812, during the French period, large parts of Germany are occupied by the troops of Napoleon. Several paramilitary Freikorps units battle the French forces, among them the Black Brunswickers led by the 'Black Duke' Frederick William of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. After the War of the Fifth Coalition, the Black Hussars are pursued by Napoleon throughout the country, but frequently take refuge with the noble-minded German people.
Rasputin, Demon of the Women
Grigori Rasputin
The demonic Rasputin is poisoned but survives to continue seducing in evil ways, in this historical thriller.
Congress Dances
Prince Metternich
In 1815, Tsar Alexander I romances a working-class glove seller, while his double takes his place at the Vienna Congress. English-language version of Der Kongreß tanzt.
The Other Side
Hauptmann Stanhope
The First World War. The young, English Lieutenant Raleigh is sent to the company of a disillusioned Captain Stanhope. Stanhope is secretly engaged to Raleigh's sister and is intent on protecting his image of an exemplary officer. An attack on the German lines, in which Raleigh also takes part, has turned into a bloody fiasco. Now Raleigh, too, knows the horrors of war, which have already taken their toll on Stanhope.
The Congress Dances
Fürst Metternich
Vienna glove-sales-lady Christel falls in love with Russian Czar Alexander. Austrian Prince Metternich tries to use this and other pleasant diversions to keep him out of the negotiation conferences of the 1815 Vienna Congress.
The Night of the Decision
German language version of The Virtuous Sin (1930).
The Man Who Committed the Murder
Oberst Marquis de Sévigné
The story is about Conrad Veidt as military attache in Turkey where he learns to know an English consul (Heinrich George) and his attractive wife who is treated badly. They begin an affair and soon the husband proves to be an obstacle that has to be disposed of.
The Love Storm
Kingsley
This is the German-language version of the British film The Love Storm (1931).
The Great Longing
Himself
During lunch break at the movie studio, the extras rush to the canteen Hans Adalbert Schlettow, Maria Paudler and Luis Trenker are chatting. Eva von Loe a beautiful young extra rushes past; she is looking for her fiancé, Paul Wessel, who is also an extra. She has to return to the set where the famous director Regisseur Hall is shooting a scen. He is dissatisfied with his star, Carla Marventa, who is wrong for the scene he must photograph. Hall notices Eva, but laughs at her desire to replace Marventa. At that moment Conrad Veidt comes on the scene and assumes that Eva is the star.
The Last Company
Hauptmann Burk
13 German soldiers have to fight off a French regiment.
The Last Performance
Erik the Great
A middle-aged magician is in love with his beautiful young assistant. She, on the other hand, is in love with the magician's young protege, who turns out to be a bum and a thief.
Das Land ohne Frauen
The Movie City of Hollywood
German documentary about Hollywood
The Man Who Laughs
Gwynplaine
Gwynplaine, son of Lord Clancharlie, has a permanent smile carved on his face by the King, in revenge for Gwynplaine's father's treachery. Gwynplaine is adopted by a travelling showman and becomes a popular idol. He falls in love with the blind Dea. The king dies, and his evil jester tries to destroy or corrupt Gwynplaine.
Laws of Love: Innocently Outlawed!
A documentary by Magnus Hirschfeld, which contains a shortened version of Different From the Others (1919).
A Man's Past
Paul La Roche
A Man's Past (1927)
The Beloved Rogue
King Louis XI
François Villon, in his lifetime the most renowned poet in France, is also a prankster, an occasional criminal, and an ardent patriot.
The Flight in the Night
Count di Nolli, Heinrich IV
Based on the play Henry IV by Luigi Pirandello. Conrad Veidt plays Count di Nolli, a nobleman who, after a head injury, imagines he is the medieval emperor. His friends and relatives choose to play along, dressing up as medieval courtiers, but is di Nolli truly mad, or just pretending? The art direction was by Hermann Warm. It was shot on location in Italy. 6 acts, 1856 meters.
The Student of Prague
Balduin, Student
For Balduin, going out to beer parties with his fellow students and fighting out disputes at the tip of the sword have lost their charms. He wants to find love; but how would he, a penniless student, ever dare looking up to any woman worth of loving? Absorbed in his dreary thoughts and indifferent to the advances of Lyduschka, Balduin is unexpectedly offered a fortune by the mysterious money-lender Scapinelli - but on a strange condition...
Liebe macht blind
Should We Be Silent?
Paul Hartwig, Maler
Two Brothers
Wenzel Schellenberg / Michael Schellenberg
Two brothers follow very different paths after an accident at the factory where they both work.
Impetuous Youth
Renées Vater
Girl dressed up as a boy falls in love with a painter.
The Wife's Crusade
Der Staatsanwalt
Directed by Martin Berger.
The Ingmar Inheritance
Hellgum
"The Ingmar Inheritance". The story of a group of farmers who choose to leave their homes and follow the preacher Helgum to the Holy Land.
Le comte Kostia
Comte Kostia
Schicksal
Husbands or Lovers
Der Liebhaber, ein Dichter
A wife, bored by her overweight slob of a husband, gives in to the temptation of a slickly seductive poet.
Waxworks
Ivan the Terrible
A poet is hired by the owner of a wax museum in a circus to write tales about Harun al Raschid, Ivan the Terrible and Jack the Ripper. While writing, the poet and the daughter of the owner, Eva, fantasize the fantastic stories and fall in love for each other.
The Hands of Orlac
Paul Orlac
A world-famous pianist loses both hands in an accident. When new hands are grafted on, he is horrified to learn they once belonged to a murderer.
The Film in the Film
Himself
The only surviving excerpt of a documentary on film production in Weimar Germany, featuring the different personalities of several famous directors of the era at work on the set including Fritz Lang, Robert Wiene, and E.A. Dupont.
Don Carlos und Elisabeth
Don Carlos
Wilhelm Tell
Hermann Gessler
William Tell (German: Wilhelm Tell) is a 1923 German silent adventure film directed by Rudolf Dworsky and Rudolf Walther-Fein and starring Hans Marr, Conrad Veidt and Erich Kaiser-Titz. The film portrays the story of the legendary Swiss national hero William Tell.
Paganini
Niccolo Paganini
Historical film about Italian musician Niccolo Paganini.
Lucrezia Borgia
Cesare Borgia
Rodrigo Borgia, Pope Alexander VI, has three adult children: Juan, who is virtuous and has a sweetheart who is a woman of the people, Lucrezia, who is virtuous and wants to marry Alfonso, and Cesare, who is wicked and lusts after Lucrezia, Juan's girlfriend, and probably others. Cesare has vowed to kill any suitor for Lucrezia's love, and he has three thugs to carry out his wishes. Bodies fall into the Tiber, into the Colosseum (with lions prowling), and onto the Vatican floors.
The Indian Tomb, Part II: The Tiger of Bengal
Ayan, Majarajah of Eschnapur
Rowland falls sick with leprosy while Mac Allan is captured by the Maharajah, who offers Irene a deal: one night with him in exchange for letting Rowland to be cured. She accepts, but tries to commit suicide.
The Indian Tomb, Part I: The Mission of the Yogi
Ayan, Majarajah of Eschnapur
Ayan, Maharajah of Eschnapur, believes that his wife, Princess Savitri, has been unfaithful to him with officer Mac Allan. He decides to bury her alive, so he sends the Yogi Ramigani to England to look for Herbert Rowland, an architect; but when he orders him to build a tomb, Rowland refuses.
Lady Hamilton
Lord Nelson
The married Lady Emma Hamilton has an ill fated romance with Admiral Horatio Nelson.
Christian Wahnschaffe II: Escape from the Golden Dungeon
Christian Wahnschaffe
Escape from the Golden Dungeon is the second part of the two-part silent movie Christian Wahnschaffe.
Der Leidensweg der Inge Krafft
Die Liebschaften des Hektor Dalmore
Hektor Dalmore
Liebestaumel
Jalenko
Sehnsucht
Ivan
Ivan, a poor Russian student, lives in Switzerland. He is unexpectedly invited to Russia by a distant relative, Princess Wirsky. To finance the journey, he works as a messenger for revolutionaries who want to depose Grand Duke Wirsky. In Moscow, he delivers the message and falls in love with Marja, the daughter of the revolutionary, but Marja's father loves Princess Wirsky and wants to betray the revolutionaries. The princess falls in love with Ivan, and jealously deports Marja to Siberia. In revenge, Ivan strangles the princess. He spends the rest of his life yearning for Marja, whom he has never kissed. When he receives the news of Marja's death, he commits suicide.
Journey Into the Night
Der Maler
Dr. Egil Börne, an eminent physician, comes under the spell of an unscrupulous cabaret dancer and deserts his fiancée. The plot finds echoes throughout the Weimar period, including Sternberg’s The Blue Angel. Conrad Veidt appears in a supporting role as a sinister blind painter, whose entrance eerily presages Murnau’s Nosferatu. Der Gang in die Nacht, the earliest surviving film by F. W. Murnau, is also, paradoxically, the only Murnau film for which the original camera negative exists.
Menschen im Rausch
Das Geheimnis von Bombay
Tossi
Gabriela Farnese, a famous singer, visits Bombay to find her mysterious doppelganger, the dancer Concha.
Der Graf von Cagliostro
Minister
Christian Wahnschaffe I: Weltbrand
Christian Wahnschaffe
Weltbrand is the first part of the two-part silent movie Christian Wahnschaffe.
Manolescu's Memoirs
Manolescu
Evening - Night - Morning
Brilburn - Maud's brother
Cheston, a millionaire, is looking after Maud, a beautiful woman from the 'demimonde'. Her brother, Brilburn, forces her to ask her rich admirer for an expensive piece of jewelry. Cheston buys a precious pearl necklace.
Moriturus
Wilmos, sanatorium director
A doctor who cannot figure out what is wrong with his patient refers him to a detective, whom he hopes will be able to discern the cause of his mysterious illness.
The Head of Janus
Dr. Warren
The film was an unauthorized adaptation of Robert Louis Stevenson's novel The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, but the source material went unrecognized by some of the German media due to changes in the characters' names. Released in 1920, this is one of Murnau's lost films. While the film itself does not survive, the scripts and related production notes do. Because the film is lost, its full length is unknown. Dr. Warren is the Dr. Jekyll character who changes into Mr. O'Connor, a parallel of Mr. Hyde. This transformation is brought about, not by experimentation with chemicals as in Stevenson's original, but through the supernatural agency of a bust of Janus (the Roman god of the doorway), which Warren / O'Connor purchases in the opening sequence as a gift for his sweetheart, Jane. When she refuses the gift, horrified, Warren / O'Connor is forced to keep the statuette himself...
Kurfürstendamm
The devil
The Devil decides to go and visit Kurfürstendamm, where all his clients seem to come from. He settles at "Pension Elvira", where everybody cheats and deceives him. He comes to the conclusion, that Hell is a much better place.
The Merry-Go-Round
Petre Karvan
Drama about street walker Elena who marries shop keeper Albert. When her former pimp Peter shows up, her life is ruined. She shoots him and poisons herself.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Cesare
Francis, a young man, recalls in his memory the horrible experiences he and his fiancée Jane recently went through. Francis and his friend Alan visit The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, an exhibit where the mysterious doctor shows the somnambulist Cesare, and awakens him for some moments from his death-like sleep.
Nachtgestalten
The clown
"Night people". Thomas Bezug, the richest man in the world, is a solitary, domineering and cruel cripple, who hardly can move on his crutches. He dwells a fanatical love for his son, whom he holds like a monkey in a cage. His servants are defaced dwarfs. His secretary is trying to steal Bezugs assets. These are the night people.
Eerie Tales
Der Tod / Various Other Roles
After the old-books shop closes, portraits of the Strumpet, Death, and the Devil come to life and amuse themselves by reading stories--about themselves.
Wahnsinn
Bankier Lorenzen
A banker, after a prophetic meeting with a Gypsy fortune teller, becomes delusional as he searches for a trunk which the seer has told him holds the key to either his happiness or his death. This film is considered lost.
Wahnsinn
Director
A banker, after a prophetic meeting with a Gypsy fortune teller, becomes delusional as he searches for a trunk which the seer has told him holds the key to either his happiness or his death. This film is considered lost.
Prinz Kuckuck
Carl Kraker
The niece and nephew of an eccentric millionaire try to get a share of the now deceased millionaire's inheritance from his adopted son who delights in squandering it.
Prostitution II
Alfred Werner
About a deceptive bourgeois couple that blends their acquaintances into their dubious business.
Different from the Others
Paul Körner
Conrad Veidt plays a famous musician who is blackmailed for being gay. Eventually he stands trial and is convicted. At the end the film pleads for the abolition of §175 (the paragraph which punishes homosexuality).
Around the World in 80 Days
Phineas Fogg
Wealthy Englishman Phileas Fogg bets his friends that he can travel around the world in 80 days.
Prostitution
Alfred Werner
Hedwig and Lola, two sisters of opposite temperaments, have their lives upended in when Lola decides to pursue prostitution and Hedwig is forced into it.
Opium
Dr. Richard Armstrong Jr.
In China, Professor Gesellius has completed his long research on the many uses of opium. When he is about to return home, he hears about a special variety that produces fabulous sensations because of the way it is made, but can also cause the total destruction of the mind and body of the person who consumes it.
Jettchen Geberts Geschichte. 2. Henriette Jacoby
The Story of Dida Ibsen
Erik Norrensen
Dida Ibsen, daughter of impoverished farmers, has, according to her father's will, to marry the main creditor. But she refuses and decides to live with a married man as a mistress, till he gets his divorce. In the town she opens a restaurant with the money of her wealthy lover, from whom she soon gets pregnant, but their dreams of marriage fail, his wife refuses the divorce. After a while, she decides to marry one of the regular guests at her restaurant, van Galen, who spent quite some time in the tropics and because of this is at the brink of madness. Shortly after the marriage his condition worsens and life becomes hell for Dida.
Es werde Licht! 4. Teil: Sündige Mütter
Kramer
Jettchen Geberts Geschichte. 1. Jettchen Gebert
Colomba
Das Tagebuch einer Verlorenen
Dr. Julius
Not of the Woman Born
Satan
This film is believed to be lost.
Das Dreimäderlhaus
Das Rätsel von Bangalor
Der Spion
Steinau
An Italian spy infiltrates a weapons factory in the German Empire.
Wenn Tote sprechen
Fear
Indian Priest
A millionaire steals an ancient idol causing some natives call upon him a terrible curse.
Der Weg des Todes
A countess decides to get rid of a nosy stranger by luring him into a castle dungeon.