During World War II, no actor embodied the plight of the Europeans forced from their homes by the Nazis more than Paul Henreid, who had experienced it first-hand. Best known for his role of Victor Laszlo, the Czech freedom fighter whose wife falls in love with Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca (1942), Henreid’s own anti-Nazi (and later anti-fascist) views would have direct consequences on his career.
Born Paul Georg Julius Hernried Freiherr von Wassel-Waldingau on January 10, 1908 in Trieste, Italy (at that time part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire), the son of banker Baron Carl Alphons von Hernreid, Knight of Wassel-Waldingau and his wife Maria-Luise. His early years were spent in the milieu of Viennese aristocracy but when he was eight years old, Henreid’s father died and his Uncle Otto mismanaged their money until the family was left nearly penniless.
After being forced to repeat a year of school, Henreid decided to become an actor, influenced by a professor, he noted in his autobiography Ladies' Man: “ He was in charge of dramatics and something about me, my appearance or perhaps some latent ability, attracted his attention. He put me in every play he produced and introduced me to the work of Goethe and Schiller and planted an abiding love of the stage in my heart. After my last year at the Theresianium I became a ‘theatre bum’, saving up all my allowance and every spare cent I could borrow or cadge to attend the theatre or opera, usually sitting in the farthest gallery or standing in the rear.” His announcement to become an actor was not well received by his family. His Uncle Otto told him that ‘acting and syphilis are on the same rung of the social ladder’, while his mother suggested that he become a doctor, ‘After all, we’ve never had an actor in the family.’
Henreid’s medical studies only lasted a year, due to the spiraling cost of living that had crippled post-war Austria and he transferred to the Graphic Academy on the promise of a job in a publishing company on his graduation. Secure in a profession but unable to abandon his acting ambition, Henreid enrolled in night classes at the Neue Wiener Konservatorium. “Acting in Austria in those days was considered as much a profession as medicine or law. You had to attend school and study and eventually take an examination to determine not only whether you could act but also how much you knew about makeup and the theatre, its lore and history. You had to know the leading parts in eight plays by heart – four classical and four modern ones. Of the classics, two had to be in prose and two in verse. Of the modern plays, two must be comedies and two dramas.”
In 1933, after his first year, he was given the part of a captain in the play Esther by Franz Grillparzer and was spotted by the celebrated director Max Reinhardt who watched his performance and sent a card backstage to Henreid that read “I expect you tomorrow at three o’clock in my office.” Reinhardt signed him to a contract and Henreid found himself a professional actor; within a few years, he was a stage star.
In 1933 Henreid made his film debut in Morgenrot (using the name Paul von Hernreid – a name he continued to use until the 1942 film Joan of Paris when it was Americanized to Henreid, a decision he always regretted) and appeared in three other films between 1934 and 1936 when he was invited to join Germany’s largest film studio, UFA. Henreid had been a steadfast opponent of the Nazi Party, which had risen to power in 1933, but as an Austrian citizen, he was safe from their reach. That would end while he was in Berlin to sign the contract with UFA. As Aljean Harmetz wrote in The Making of Casablanca, “he was handed an extra paper in which he agreed to become a member of the National Socialist Actor’s Guild of Germany and to uphold Nazi ideology. He tore up the contracts and returned to Vienna.” It was a brave gesture and while it did not affect Henreid's stage career, when he went to England in 1938 to star in the play Victoria Regina he learned that Hitler had just annexed Austria as part of Germany and that he had been banned from returning to his homeland; he was officially listed as a “minorities sympathizer” and “enemy of the Third Reich.”
Stuck and by his own admission, broke in England, Henreid was able to secure a part in the Robert Donat 1939 classic Goodbye, Mr. Chips as Chips’ friend Staefel. The part attracted attention and he was cast as a Nazi in Night Train to Munich (1940). It was the ultimate irony that a man who had been driven from his country by the Nazis was hired to play Nazis on the screen in England, and then to be forced to register as an enemy alien when World War II broke out in 1939. He could not remain in England, so in 1940, Henreid found himself living in a foreign land – this time the United States. Once again he was broke (his English money had been frozen due to the war) and playing a Nazi, this time in a New York play Flight to the West. As with Max Reinhardt, his work on the stage attracted attention. This time it was RKO who signed him for the film Joan of Paris.
1942 was the year that Paul Henreid made the two films for which he is best remembered Now, Voyager and Casablanca. Now, Voyager came about when his agent, Lew Wasserman called with an offer from Warner Bros. which he described as “a small part.” Henreid read the script and decided to take it, rationalizing that “it could steal the movie if properly played. Small as it was, it was a fantastic role, I realized, and best of all, Bette Davis was to play opposite me. Davis was one of the top Hollywood stars, on a level with Garbo and Colbert.”
Davis was horrified at Henreid’s first makeup test which Henreid could not bear to watch. Where Henreid normally wore only a little base and brown pencil on his light eyebrows, the studio had him in full makeup with his hair plastered down in an attempt to make him look like Davis' frequent co-star George Brent. During his first day on the set he combed out the hair pomade and avoided the heavy makeup. “When Bette saw me for the first time, she came up to me and kissed me on both cheeks and said, “I just know I’m working a good actor! You were right not to come to the screening of the makeup test.” She drew back and looked at me wickedly, “You’re a pretty smart cookie, Paul!” There was something about her manner flirtatious, friendly, flattering, and yet honest, that made you think of her as an immediate friend, and a solid master of her craft. I found her a delight to work with, and we got along famously. In fact, a very close friendship started between us, and she has remained a dear, close friend – and always a very decent human being.”
The famous cigarette-lighting scene is one of the most iconic of any in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Henreid played a married man who falls in love with Davis during an ocean cruise, but unable to consummate their love, Davis and Henreid share a cigarette as a symbolic gesture. In the original script, Henreid was to light a cigarette and pass it to Davis to smoke, but while rehearsing it at home with his wife, Lisl, “the awkwardness of it made us both laugh, but the correct way to do it occurred to both of us at once. When we used to be in the Viva Grand Sport, a car without a lighter and the driver wanted a cigarette, the other would usually feel like smoking, too, and would light two and put one into the driver’s mouth. It was an intimate and sensual gesture, or it could be played that way.” He demonstrated it to Davis the next day and she agreed. The gesture became popular with young people across the United States and Henreid himself was convinced that this was what made him a star.
Henreid’s next assignment was not so pleasant. With the success of Now, Voyager, Warner Bros. quickly signed Henreid to a seven year contract, which Henreid was reluctant to sign because he knew it could be used to force him to make films he considered inferior. His agent argued that since Japanese-Americans were being interred in camps, Germans in the United States might be next and Warner Bros. could protect him better than a smaller studio like RKO. Casablanca was a film that no one believed in, especially the actors who were confused by constant script changes. “Shooting started before there was a finished screenplay, in fact, before there was more than the opening scenes. Since we were shooting in chronological order, we were able to do it.
Mike would apologize to us, saying, “Excuse me, I don’t know any more than you do about what follows or goes ahead. I’m directing each scene as best I know how!” Henreid didn’t want to play second fiddle to Humphrey Bogart but was mollified that he got Ingrid Bergman at the end of the film. Casablanca may have immortalized Paul Henreid with audiences, but it may have also ended any career as a top leading man.
Film critic Pauline Kael said, “He was such a pompous, earnest man in Casablanca that you think ‘Oh God, that poor girl going back to that guy.’ Before that he was sort of a romantic star in Europe, and he had played villains and he was the romantic lead in Now, Voyager. When you play a square it doesn’t do you much good.” Kael's description of Henreid's career was accurate. Henreid’s contract with Warner Bros. was dissolved in 1946 at his request.
Henreid did make several films as a leading man; he starred in RKO’s The Spanish Main (1945) playing a Dutch sea captain opposite Maureen O’Hara, and a remake of the Bette Davis/Leslie Howard film Of Human Bondage (1946) with Eleanor Parker, but now in his forties and with the war over, his roles began to devolve into historical melodramas. His personal life became a melodrama in the early 1950s when his anti-fascist activities brought him to the attention of the House Un-American Activities Committee who accused Henreid of being a Communist and he was subsequently blacklisted, which he said all but ruined his Hollywood career as an actor.
In 1952 Henreid became a director with the film For Men Only, an exposé of hazing on college campuses, in which he also starred. He did the same with his second film A Woman’s Devotion (1956) starring Janice Rule and Ralph Meeker. As the 1950s went on, Henreid alternated acting with directing, mostly television series such as Maverick, The Schlitz Playhouse, Johnny Ringo, The Goodyear Theater, and 28 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In the 1960s he directed television episodes of Bonanza, The Virginian and The Big Valley. In 1964 he directed his Now, Voyager co-star Bette Davis in Dead Ringer. His last directing effort was the 1971 TV show The Man and the City.
Henreid had become an American citizen in 1946 and lived for the rest of his life in southern California. A few days before the 50th anniversary re-release of Casablanca, Paul Henreid died on March 29, 1992 at Santa Monica Hospital in Los Angeles from pneumonia after suffering a stroke. He was 84 years old and was survived by his wife of 56 years and two daughters.