- Max Schreck
-
Max Schreck 
Born Friedrich Gustav Max Schreck
6 September 1879
Berlin, GermanyDied 20 February 1936 (aged 56)[1]
Munich, GermanySpouse Fanny Normann (1910–1936)l Friedrich Gustav Max Schreck[2] (6 September 1879 – 20 February 1936)[1][3][4] was a German actor. He is most often remembered today for his lead role in the film Nosferatu (1922).
Contents
Early life
Max Schreck was born in Berlin-Friedenau, on 6 September 1879. Schreck received his training at the Berliner Staatstheater (the State Theatre of Berlin) which he completed in 1902.[3] He made his stage debut in Meseritz and Speyer, and then toured Germany for two years appearing at theatres in Zittau, Erfurt, Bremen,[3] Lucerne,[3] Gera,[3] and Frankfurt am Main.[3] Schreck then joined Max Reinhardt's company of performers in Berlin.[5] Many of Reinhardt's troupe made a significant contribution to the cinema.[5]
Career
Max Schreck in Nosferatu (1922).
For three years between 1919 and 1922, Schreck appeared at the Munich Kammerspiele,[5] including a role in the expressionist production of Bertolt Brecht's debut, Trommeln in der Nacht (Drums in the Night) (in which he played the "freakshow landlord" Glubb).[6] During this time he also worked on his first film Der Richter von Zalamea, adapted from a six act play, for Decla Bioscop.[5]
Max Schreck as Juana's father in Doña Juana (1927).In 1921, he was hired by Prana Film for their first and only production, Nosferatu. The company declared itself bankrupt after the film was released to avoid paying copyright infringement costs to Florence Stoker, Dracula author Bram Stoker's widow.[5] Schreck portrayed Count Orlok, a character analogous to Count Dracula.[5]
In 1923, while still in Munich, Schreck appeared in a 16-minute (one-reeler) slapstick, "surreal comedy" written by Bertolt Brecht with cabaret and stage actors Karl Valentin, Liesl Karlstadt, Erwin Faber, and Blandine Ebinger, entitled Mysterien eines Friseursalons (Mysteries of a Barbershop), directed by Erich Engel.[7] Also in 1923, Schreck appeared as a blind man in the film Die Straße (The Street).[1][5]
Schreck's second collaboration with Nosferatu director F. W. Murnau was the 1924 comedy Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs (The Grand Duke's Finances).[5] Even Murnau did not hesitate to declare his contempt for the picture.[5]
In 1926, Schreck returned to the Kammerspiele in Munich and continued to act in films surviving the advent of sound until his death in 1936 of heart failure.[8] On 19 February 1936, Schreck had just played The Grand Inquisitor in the play Don Carlos, standing in for Will Dohm. That evening he felt unwell and the doctor sent him to the hospital where he died early the next morning[9] of a heart attack. His obituary especially praised his role as The Miser in Molière's comedy play.[9] He was buried on 14 March 1936 at Wilmersdorfer Waldfriedhof in Berlin.[1]
Personal life
He was married to actress Fanny Normann,[5] who appeared in a few films, often credited as Fanny Schreck.
Max Schreck in Die Straße (1923).Curiously, the word schreck is also the German word for fright, or terror.[1] It comes from the Middle High German word schrecken: "to frighten, or terrify". Because of this, many authors who were unaware of Schreck's on-stage credits (and ignorant of the rather sparse details of his personal life) speculated that there was really no such person,[1] and that Schreck was, in fact, some well-known actor who had chosen to adopt a pseudonym for his role in Nosferatu. One of the prime "suspects" was Alfred Abel; however, a careful examination of the photographs of these two actors is sufficient to dispel such notions.
Schreck's contemporaries recalled he was a loner with an unusual sense of humor and skill in playing grotesque characters. One reported he lived in "a remote and strange world" and that he spent time walking through dark forests.[8]
Cultural references
The person and performance of Max Schreck in Nosferatu has been fictionalized by actor Willem Dafoe in E. Elias Merhige's Shadow of the Vampire.[8] In a sort of secret history, Shadow posits that Schreck actually was a vampire.[10]
Scriptwriter Daniel Waters created the character Max Shreck for the film Batman Returns and compared him to the character Max Schreck played in Nosferatu.[11] Variety claimed the name was an in-joke.[12] Shreck was a character created exclusively for the movie, absent from the comics, and serves as one of the main antagonists.
See also
- Category:Nosferatu for images related to the film
- Category:Images of Max Schreck for articles and wikipedia-hosted media related to Max Schreck
Notes
- ^ a b c d e f Brill, Olaf. 2004
- ^ Eickhoff, Stefan. 2007
- ^ a b c d e f Walk, Ines. 2006.
- ^ All reliable sources agree as to Schreck's actual date of birth and date of death.(Brill, Olaf. 2004, Walk, Ines. 2006) However, at least until 9 March 2009 the Internet Movie Database had incorrect and self-contradictory details. (IMDB bio: "Date of Birth: 6 September 1879," ... "born on June 11, 1879" ... "Date of Death 26 November 1936," ... "death from a heart attack on February 19, 1936")
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Enigmatic Max: The career of Max Schreck. Retrieved 26 December 2008
- ^ Brecht, Willett and Manheim (1970, ix)
- ^ McDowell, W. Stuart. "A Brecht-Valentin Production: Mysteries of a Barbershop", Performing Arts Journal, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Winter, 1977), pp. 2-14; and "Acting Brecht: The Munich Years," by W. Stuart McDowell, in The Brecht Sourcebook, Carol Martin, Henry Bial, editors (Routledge, 2000) p. 71 - 83.
- ^ a b c Graham 2008 Page 2. Retrieved 2008-12-26
- ^ a b Brill 2004, Peter Trumm: obituary in Münchner Neueste Nachrichten vol. 89, no. 52, on 21 February 1936. "am Donnerstag früh um einhalb neun Uhr im Schwabinger Krankenhaus gestorben" (ie. 08:30 in the morning of February 20, 1936)
- ^ Nugent, Phil (2008-05-13). "Digging Up Max Shreck, the Screen's Original Dracula". http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/screengrab/archive/2008/05/13/digging-up-max-shreck-the-screen-s-original-dracula.aspx. Retrieved 2009-05-21. "The 2000 film Shadow of the Vampire, starring John Malkovich as Murnau, was a darkly comic fantasy in which it was revealed that "Shreck" was an actual vampire (played by Willem Dafoe) that the director had brought in to lend his authenticity to the role. It was rooted in a film-scholar in-joke that went back decades."
- ^ "Batman YTB". http://www.batmanytb.com/movies/batmanreturns/bios/villians.php. Retrieved 2009-05-21. "The script gave the writer (Daniel Waters) license to create his own villain in the form of Christopher Walken's nefarious Max Shreck, named after Max Schreck, the star of F.W. Murnau's NOSFERATU (1922)."
- ^ McCarthy, Todd (1992-05-15). "Batman Returns Review". Variety. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117901465.html?categoryid=31&cs=1&p=0. Retrieved 2009-05-21. "Max Shreck, a character named, as an in-joke, after the German actor who starred as the screen's first Dracula in F.W. Murnau's 1922 "Nosferatu.""
References
- Brill, Olaf. 2004. filmhistoriker.de. Retrieved 26 December 2008
- Graham, Dave. Book lifts lid on star of eerie first Dracula film. 9 May 2008. Reuters. Retrieved 26 December 2008
- Walk, Ines. film-zeit.de. February 2006. (German) Retrieved 14 July 2008
- Brecht, Bertolt; John Willett; Ralph Manheim (1970). "Introduction". Collected plays: one. Plays, Poetry and Prose Ser.. London: Methuen. pp. vii-xvii. ISBN 041603280X.
- Eickhoff, Stefan (2007) (in German). Max Schreck - Gespenstertheater. Munich: Belleville Verlag Inh. Dr. Willi Michael Farin. ISBN 3-936298-54-8.
Further reading
- Eickhoff, Stefan (2007) (in German). Max Schreck - Gespenstertheater. Munich: Belleville Verlag Inh. Dr. Willi Michael Farin. ISBN 3-936298-54-8.
- Eickhoff, Stefan. "Max Schreck - Gespenstertheater" (in German). http://www.max-schreck.com/. Retrieved 2009-03-09. (summary of Eickhoff's biography/tribute of Schreck)
External links
- Max Schreck in the German National Library catalogue (German)
- Official Max Schreck Page
Categories:- Deaths from myocardial infarction
- German film actors
- German military personnel of World War I
- German silent film actors
- German stage actors
- Images of Max Schreck
- Actors from Berlin
- People from the Province of Brandenburg
- 1879 births
- 1936 deaths
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