Paul Lukas

Biography

Paul Lukas, born Pál Lukács, was a Hungarian actor who built a reputation on the stage and screen of Hungary, Germany and Austria before settling in Hollywood in the late 1920s. His career spans the silent era, the 1930s, the wartime dramas of the 1940s and the international productions of the 1960s, and he is remembered above all for his villains and for his anti-Nazi roles.

He was born in Budapest in 1894 into a Hungarian-Jewish family and was later adopted by János Lukács, an advertising executive, and his wife Mária. He made his stage debut in Budapest in 1916 and his film debut in 1917. Early on he played elegant, charming womanizers, but he was increasingly typecast as a villain. He worked with Max Reinhardt in Central European theatre before arriving in Hollywood in 1927. He became an American citizen in 1937, and by 1935 he had already built a house near the Racquet Club of Palm Springs, California.

In the 1930s he was in constant demand. He appeared in Little Women (1933), the drama Dodsworth (1936) and Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). He also played the detective Philo Vance in The Casino Murder Case (1935), a role that had earlier gone to William Powell and Basil Rathbone.

His most celebrated role came in 1943 with Watch on the Rhine, a play he had already performed on Broadway in 1941. He played a German exile fighting the Nazis opposite Bette Davis, and critics praised his performance. For it he won the Academy Award for Best Actor and the first Golden Globe for Best Actor in a Motion Picture Drama, along with New York Film Critics Circle honours.

During the 1940s he was a charter member of the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals, a conservative lobby opposed to possible Communist influence in Hollywood. In the 1950s and 1960s his films included Kim (1950), Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954), in which he played Professor Aronnax in Walt Disney's version, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962), 55 Days at Peking (1963), Fun in Acapulco (1963) with Elvis Presley, and Lord Jim (1965). His last film, The Challenge, was released in 1970.

His only singing role came in the original 1950 Broadway production of Irving Berlin's Call Me Madam, opposite Ethel Merman. His later years were spent in theatre and television. He died in 1971 in Tangier, Morocco, reportedly while looking for a place to spend his retirement, and he is buried in Spain. In 1960 he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Key films

• Little Women (1933): a supporting role in the adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's novel.
• The Lady Vanishes (1938): his appearance in Hitchcock's thriller places him in one of the best-known British films of the decade.
• Watch on the Rhine (1943): the role that won him the Oscar for Best Actor, an anti-Nazi exile.
• Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1954): Professor Aronnax in Disney's version, one of his most recognizable parts for young audiences.
• Dodsworth (1936): William Wyler's drama, in which he shares the lead with Walter Huston.