Paul Henreid: Austrian-American Star of Casablanca
Paul Henreid (10 January 1908 – 29 March 1992) was an Austrian and American actor and filmmaker. He is best known for his role as Victor Laszlo, the anti-Nazi resistance leader, in the 1942 romantic drama Casablanca, widely considered one of the best American films in history.
Early Life and Education
Paul Georg Julius Freiherr von Hernreid, Ritter von Wasel-Waldingau was born on January 10, 1908, in Trieste, then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Karl Alphons Hernreid, served as a financial adviser to Emperor Franz Joseph I. Karl had been born as Carl Hirsch and converted from Judaism to Catholicism in 1904 due to anti-semitism in Austria-Hungary, though this conversion did not protect his son from Nazi persecution decades later.
Henreid trained for the theatre in Vienna against his family’s wishes, attending the Theresianische Akademie while working at a publishing house. His father died in 1916, and the family fortune had diminished by the time Henreid graduated from the Akademie.
Career and Achievements
While performing in a play at the Akademie, Henreid was discovered by Otto Preminger, then working for director Max Reinhardt. He joined Reinhardt’s theater company and in 1933 played a minor role in a stage production of Faust. He received starring roles in the Vienna stagings of Men in White (1934) and Mizzi.
The rise of the Nazi regime in 1933 blocked Henreid’s film career in German-speaking territories. He applied for membership in the NS-Reichsfilmkammer but was rejected because his father had been born Jewish. A second application in 1937, submitted with a special permit, was personally rejected by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. In 1935, Henreid had been cast in the Austrian film Jersey Lilly. He moved to London in 1937 to portray Prince Albert in the first British stage production of Victoria Regina.
After Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Henreid became fervently anti-Nazi. He helped a Jewish comedian escape Germany, an act that led the German Government to designate him an “official enemy of the Third Reich” and confiscate his German assets. He relocated permanently to the United Kingdom.
During the Second World War, Henreid risked deportation or internment as an enemy alien in Britain, but actor Conrad Veidt vouched for him and the British Government permitted him to remain and work. In 1939, Henreid had a major supporting role as German teacher Max Staefel in Goodbye, Mr. Chips. The following year, he received third billing as a Gestapo agent in the thriller Night Train to Munich. He also appeared in the 1940 British musical comedy Under Your Hat and portrayed a German army officer in Madman of Europe.
In 1940, Henreid relocated to New York City and played a doctor in the 1941 Broadway play Flight to the West. He signed a contract with RKO Pictures in Hollywood that same year, becoming a U.S. citizen. RKO dropped the “von” from his name to make it sound less Germanic. His first RKO film was Joan of Paris (1942), a war drama in which he played a Free French flyer—a major commercial success.
Moving to Warner Brothers in 1942, Henreid played Jeremiah Durrance opposite Bette Davis in the romance Now, Voyager, portraying a married man who encounters Davis’s character on an ocean voyage. His next role was as Victor Laszlo in Casablanca (1942), opposite Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. After Casablanca, he turned down the male lead alongside Davis in Watch on the Rhine (1943). Warner Brothers paired him with Ida Lupino in In Our Time (1944) and with Eleanor Parker in Between Two Worlds (1944). That year he also played a lead role in The Conspirators, about a Dutch resistance leader, with Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre in supporting roles. He rejected another romantic lead with Davis in Mr Skeffington (1944).
Henreid briefly returned to RKO in 1945 to play a pirate opposite Maureen O’Hara in the swashbuckler The Spanish Main. Back at Warner Bros., he portrayed Arthur Bell Nicholls, Charlotte Brontë’s husband, in the 1946 biopic Devotion. He reunited with Eleanor Parker in the 1946 adaptation of Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, playing Philip Carey, a medical student with a clubfoot. MGM borrowed him from Warners to play composer Robert Schumann opposite Katharine Hepburn in Song of Love (1947).
After the Second World War, Henreid was blacklisted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) and worked primarily in independent films and in Europe. He eventually returned to Hollywood in 1954.
Notable Events and Milestones
Henreid’s career was shaped by major historical events. His rejection by the NS-Reichsfilmkammer in 1937 and his designation as an “official enemy of the Third Reich” marked turning points that forced his relocation to Britain and later America. His role in Casablanca (1942) became his most enduring achievement, securing his place in cinema history. The post-war blacklisting by HUAC significantly altered the trajectory of his later career, limiting his Hollywood opportunities until 1954.
Additional Resources
Henreid’s life and career are documented in greater detail through Wikipedia and other biographical archives. His 1984 autobiography, Ladies Man, offers firsthand accounts of his experiences in European theater, his escape from Nazi persecution, and his Hollywood career. Researchers interested in his contributions to cinema and theater, as well as the broader history of European artists who fled to America during the Nazi era, will find extensive material available through these sources.
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