New Picture
Watch on the Rhine (Warner) is Lillian Hellman's successful anti-Nazi play without a Nazi in it,* transferred almost bodily to celluloid. That play and film are alike as two swastikas is small wonder.
Herman Shumlin, who produced and directed the play, directed the picture. He knew he had a good thing in his stage cast, moved most of the principals from footlights to Kleig lights.
This smart move permanently preserves one of the notable performances of recent years--Paul Lukas' portrayal of Kurt Muller, the mild-looking German engineer who has long been risking his neck in Europe's anti-Nazi underground, but is patronized by his wife's rich Washington family when he visits the U.S. In the film his wife is Bette Davis. Muller's highhanded socialite mother-in-law is Lucile Watson. Donald Woods is her son, who is bursting with warm American optimism when he isn't ogling pretty House Guest Geraldine Fitzgerald.
The dramatic crisis develops when another house guest, pro-Nazi Rumanian Count Teck de Brancovis (George Coulouris), discovers that Muller is about to slip back to Germany with money for the anti-Fascist cause, tries to blackmail him. Muller shoots the count, bids his wife & children farewell, leaves for Europe on what looks like a one-way trip.
When Watch on the Rhine was casting, Paul Lukas had to talk his way out of the part of the man he shoots. Originally, Producer Shumlin had Lukas down for the Rumanian villain. Lukas' on-&-offstage persuasiveness subsequently won him 1) the New York Drama League's coveted Delia Austrian medal for 1941's most distinguished performance, 2) nine out of nine votes in Variety's critics' poll of the season's best acting. The National Fathers' Day Committee presented Lukas with a plaque (for the year's best portrayal of a stage father).
This recognition followed a long period of Hollywood roles uninteresting to Lukas; he has never bothered to go to see most of the pictures he has played in.
Bits to Big-Time. Paul Lukas (real name Lucacs Pal) was born in 1895 on a train pulling into the Budapest station. His father was a Hungarian advertising man. By the end of World War I Lukas was a Hungarian aviator. Then for two years he was a bit player and chorus man. Spotted by the Comedy Theater in Budapest, Lukas made his big-time Budapest debut as Liliom.
Soon he was guest-acting under Max Reinhardt in Vienna and Berlin, appeared in one UFA film. In 1927 Adolph Zukor signed up Pola Negri and Lukas as a potential team. When Lukas arrived in the U.S. with his bride (small, blonde Gisella Benes, to whom he is still married), he was required to post a $500 bond. It was not until five years later that he collected his bond from the Government. Lukas thought the $500 was an admission fee.
Films were silent when Lukas reached Hollywood. When sound arrived, Lukas was still talking Hungarian. Paramount offered him $5,000 to call off their contract. Instead, Lukas hired a University of Southern California boy to teach him U.S.C. English, hung on to Hollywood.
Since then he has oscillated between villainy and chivalry in such films as Little Women, Concessions of a Nazi Spy, The Lady Vanishes, The Three Musketeers, Strictly Dishonorable. He played Kurt Muller in the stage production of Watch on the Rhine for two years. Says Lukas, who prefers repertory to long runs: "After a while I was no longer an actor, I was just part of the theater, like the seats."
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