Hugo Haas

Hugo Haas (19 February 1901 – 1 December 1968) was a Czech film actor, director and writer. He appeared in more than 60 films between 1926 and 1962, as well as directing 20 films between 1933 and 1962.

Life and career

Haas was born in Brno, Austria-Hungary (now in the Czech Republic), and died in Vienna, Austria from complications of asthma. He and his brother, Pavel Haas, studied voice at the Brno Conservatory under composer Leoš Janáček. Pavel Haas went on to become a noted composer himself before he was killed in Auschwitz in 1944.

Czechoslovak theater and film

After graduating from the conservatory in 1920, Hugo Haas began acting at the National Theater in Brno, in Ostrava and in Olomouc. In 1924 he moved to Prague and regularly appeared at the Vinohrady Theatre, where he remained until 1929. In 1930,Kolektiv autorů: ''Národní divadlo a jeho předchůdci'', Academia, Prague, 1988, p. 128 Karel Hugo Hilar made Hugo Haas a member of the Prague National Theatre drama company, where he remained until his emigration in 1939. One of his most highly acclaimed roles was as Doctor Galén in ''The White Disease'', which Karel Čapek had written especially for him. His final role at the National Theater was as Director Busman in Čapek's '' R.U.R.''

Haas made his film debut as Notary Voborský in the silent film ''Jedenácté přikázání'' (The Eleventh Commandment) in 1923. (Twelve years later he played the same role again in '' Jedenácté přikázání'' directed by Martin Frič.) With the advent of sound film, Haas was able to apply his comedic talent in Svatopluk Innemann's '' Muži v offsidu'' in 1931. By 1938 Haas had acted in some thirty films.

In 1936 he directed his first film, '' Camel Through the Eye of a Needle'' (co-directed with Otakar Vávra). He later directed ''Kvočna'' (the film score was composed by his brother Pavel), ''The White Disease'' and ''Co se šeptá''. His final comedy in Czechoslovakia was Miroslav Cikán's '' Andula Won'', which appeared in cinemas in 1938.

Emigration

Following the 1938 Munich Agreement and the German occupation of Czechoslovakia in early 1939, Hugo Haas was dismissed from the National Theater due to his Jewish origin. In April he and his wife, Maria von Bibikoff ("Bibi"), fled via Paris, Spain, and then from the port of Lisbon, Portugal, to the port of New York in October–November 1940. Their son, Ivan, was taken in by his brother Pavel. Hugo Haas' father Lipmann (Zikmund) Haas and brother Pavel died at Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust.

United States

By the mid-1940s, Haas had become a character actor in American films. In 1951 he launched a successful if unacclaimed career as a film director in Hollywood with a string of B movie melodramas, usually starring blonde actresses in the role of a predatory mantrap. Haas usually cast himself as the male lead in the films although the female role almost always dominated the storyline and was usually exclusively promoted on film posters. His work also includes a touching human drama, '' The Girl on the Bridge'' (1951) – which he co-wrote, directed and starred in – about a kindly watchmaker who after having lost his wife and family in the Holocaust, befriends, marries, and raises a second family with a young woman he saves from suicide.

Cleo Moore

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