Emil Jannings

Trivia

• His Best Actor Oscar is now on display at the Filmmuseum in Berlin, Germany.
• He then retired to his farm in Austria. Very proficient in financial matters, Jannings was one of the highest paid actors of his time.
• When troops of the Allied Powers entered Germany in 1945, Jannings reportedly carried his Oscar statuette with him as proof of his former association with Hollywood. However, Jannings' active role in Nazi propaganda meant he was subject to denazification, and any comeback attempt was doomed.
• Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels named him "Artist of the State" in 1941. His involvement with the Nazis ended any chance he may have had for a comeback in the United States.
• During the Third Reich, he starred in several films which were intended to promote Nazism, particularly the Führerprinzip: Der Herrscher ("The Ruler" 1937), The Youth of Frederick the Great (1935), and The Dismissal of Bismarck (1942).
• He returned to Europe, where he starred opposite Marlene Dietrich in the 1930 film The Blue Angel, filmed in English simultaneously with its German version Der blaue Engel.
• His Hollywood career came to an end with the advent of talkies; his thick German accent difficult to understand, and his dialogue was dubbed by another actor in the part-talkie The Patriot (1928), although after Jannings objected, his voice was restored.
• In 1929 he won the Oscar for two films, The Way of All Flesh and The Last Command.
• He eventually started a career in Hollywood.
• Jannings worked with Murnau on two other films, playing the title character in Herr Tartüff (1925) and Mephistopheles in Faust (1926).