Anton Walbrook

Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbrück (19 November 18969 August 1967) was an Austrian actor who settled in the United Kingdom under the name Anton Walbrook. A popular performer in Austria and pre-war Germany, he left Germany in 1936 out of concerns for his own safety and established a career in British cinema. Walbrook is perhaps best known for his roles in the original British film of '' Gaslight'', ''The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp'', '' The Red Shoes'' and ''Victoria the Great'' (as Prince Albert).

Early life

Walbrook was born in Vienna, Austria, as Adolf Wohlbrück. He was the son of Gisela Rosa (Cohn) and Adolf Ferdinand Bernhard Hermann Wohlbrück. He was descended from ten generations of actors, though his father broke with tradition and was a circus clown. He attended a monastery school and considered becoming a monk, but eventually decided to become an actor.

Wohlbrück moved to Berlin to study at the Deutsches Theater under Austro-German director Max Reinhardt. His career was temporarily interrupted by the First World War, during which he was captured in France and spent time in a POW camp.

Career

After the war, Wohlbrück built up a career in German theatre and cinema, with the support of his friend Hermine Körner. In the 1930s he was one of Germany's most popular actors. However, as the Nazis came to power, Wohlbrück realized that he could not stay in Germany for long, as he risked being persecuted by the Nazis due to his Jewish mother and his homosexuality. When Nazi Germany absorbed Austria in the 1938 Anschluss, the Austrian option was taken off the table as well.

In 1936, Wohlbrück went to Hollywood to reshoot dialogue for the 1937 multinational '' The Soldier and the Lady'', in which he portrayed the Jules Verne hero ''Michael Strogoff'', and changed his name from Adolf Wohlbrück to Anton Walbrook. Ironically, due in part to his popularity in Germany (which persisted through the early parts of the Nazi regime), some German emigres in Hollywood suspected that he was a Nazi spy, and some Jewish-American groups threatened to boycott his films. Although RKO convinced the Jewish organizations to lift the boycott by pointing out Walbrook's actual ethnic heritage, the damage was done. He moved to London in 1937, settling down in an area with many German-speaking emigres. One of his neighbours was director Emeric Pressburger, who later cast him in some of his most famous roles. He acquired British citizenship in 1947.

In Britain, Walbrook continued working as an actor, specialising in playing continental Europeans. He "steer daway from the dangerously sexy screen persona of his German career to the image of a passionate spokesman for pan-European liberalism." He played Otto in the first London production of '' Design for Living'' at the Haymarket Theatre in January 1939 (later transferring to the Savoy Theatre), and running for 233 performances, opposite Diana Wynyard as Gilda and Rex Harrison as Leo. In 1952 he appeared at the Coliseum as Cosmo Constantine in '' Call Me Madam'', also participating alongside Billie Worth, Jeff Warren and Shani Wallis on the EMI cast recording. Producer-director Herbert Wilcox cast him as Prince Albert in ''Victoria the Great'' (1937) and its sequel ''Sixty Glorious Years'' (1938). In '' Dangerous Moonlight'' (1941), a romantic melodrama, he was a Polish pianist torn over whether to return home.

Thorold Dickinson cast Walbrook in '' Gaslight'' (1940), in the role played by Charles Boyer in the later Hollywood remake. One of Walbrook's most unusual films was Dickinson's '' The Queen of Spades'' (1949), a Gothic thriller based on the Alexander Pushkin short story, in which he co-starred with Edith Evans.

In 1941 Walbrook began collaborating with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, for which he is now best remembered. In '' 49th Parallel'' (1941) he played a leader of a Hutterite community in Canada. In ''The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp'' (1943) he played the role of the dashing, intense military officer Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, a sympathetic German refugee from the Nazi regime. He also portrayed the tyrannical ballet impresario Lermontov in '' The Red Shoes'' (1948). His ''Red Shoes'' co-star Moira Shearer recalled Walbrook was a loner on set, often wearing dark glasses, as in his character costume in the film, and eating alone.

After the war, he worked in some continental productions, working with Max Ophüls as the ringmaster in '' La Ronde'' (1950) and Ludwig I, King of Bavaria in '' Lola Montès''.

Walbrook retired from feature films in 1958 and moved to Germany, where he worked as a stage and television actor during the 1960s.

Private Life

Anton Walbrook was for a short time in a relationship with the painter and graphic artist Ferdinand Finne, whom he had met in 1938 on a train ride in France. The relationship ended in 1946 after Walbrook began an affair with the Englishman Eugene Edwards. Nevertheless, Walbrook set up a flower shop for the man, who was a good thirty years his junior, and continued to remain in contact with him, right up until his death.

Death

In 1967, Walbrook suffered a heart attack on stage while acting in a theatrical production. He survived but later died at the home of actress Hansi Burg in the Garatshausen district of Feldafing, Bavaria, Germany. His ashes were interred in the churchyard of St. John's Church, Hampstead, London, as he had wished in his will. He is buried with his partner Eugene Edwards, a London florist, although Edwards' name is not on the tombstone.

A biography of Walbrook, penned by James Downs, was published in 2020.

Legacy

American director Wes Anderson is a great fan of '' The Red Shoes'', and once boasted that he knew all of Walbrook's dialogue in that film by heart. Ralph Fiennes, who played the dandyish hotel concierge Gustave H. in Anderson's film '' The Grand Budapest Hotel'', said that Anderson asked him to study Walbrook's work in ''The Red Shoes'' to prepare for his performance. In addition, Gustave's mustache is based on Walbrook's.

Filmography

Television (West Germany)

See also

*

References

Citations

General sources

* Moor, Andrew, ''Dangerous Limelight: Anton Walbrook and the Seduction of the English'' (2001)
* ''Anton Walbrook. A Life of Masks and Mirrors'' by James Downs (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2020)

External links

*
* . Biography & filmography

Photographs of Anton Walbrook

{{DEFAULTSORT:Walbrook, Anton
1896 births
1967 deaths
20th-century Austrian male actors
20th-century British male actors
Austrian emigrants to the United Kingdom
Austrian expatriates in Germany
Austrian male film actors
Austrian male silent film actors
Austrian people of Jewish descent
British male film actors
British male silent film actors
Burials at St John-at-Hampstead
British gay actors
Jews who immigrated to the United Kingdom to escape Nazism
Austrian gay actors
Male actors from Vienna
20th-century Austrian LGBTQ people
20th-century British LGBTQ people