Jannings, Emil

born Janenz (1884-1950)

   actor, director, and film* pro-ducer; Weimar's premier character actor, best remembered as Professor Unrat in Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel). He was born in Rorschach am Bodensee, Switzerland; his parents moved to Gorlitz when he was a child. Leaving school to work as a cabin boy, he discovered provincial theater* in the course of his travels. At eighteen he joined the Gardelegen theater company; in 1906 he went to Berlin* in hopes of gaining appointment with Max Reinhardt's* Deutsches Theater.

   Berlin provided Jannings enormous opportunity. He worked with Reinhardt and Georg Altmann of the Kleines Theater unter den Linden. His vitality, cre-ativity, and comedic talent were such that he soon matured as a character actor. Discovered by Ernst Lubitsch,* he made his film debut in Im Schutzengraben (1914). He was already widely popular when his stage breakthrough came in 1915 as a headmaster in Christian Dietrich Grabbe's Scherz, Satire, Ironie, und tiefere Bedeutung (Joke, satire, irony, and deeper significance). Thereafter he increasingly mixed stage work with film. As the male lead, he built a solid reputation in such acclaimed silent films as Madame du Barry (1919), Die Bru-der Karamasoff (1920), Anna Boleyn (1920), Danton (1921), and Peter der Grosse (1923). From 1923 he was regularly cast in key roles, notably as an old hotel doorman in F. W. Murnau's* 1924 film Der letzte Mann and as Mephisto in Murnau's Faust (1926).

   Film did not remove Jannings from the stage; he performed in numerous theater productions in both Berlin and Vienna, and he was praised for his earthy 1918 portrayal of a village judge in Kleist's Zerbrochener Krug (Broken pitcher). Under Reinhardt he appeared in Gerhart Hauptmann's* Und Pippa tanzt (1919), Walter Hasenclever's* Antigone (1920), and Hauptmann's Der weisse Heiland (1920). But film success brought a three-year sojourn (1927-1930) in Hollywood, during which he won two Academy Awards—one under the director Josef von Sternberg. With the introduction of sound, he returned to Berlin to appear in Sternberg's 1930 production The Blue Angel. Thereafter he portrayed historical figures on stage and in film and, despite financial indepen-dence, took full advantage of opportunities during the Third Reich. His 1945 retirement was as much due to failing health as to the changed political situation. Although he was justly blacklisted for his Nazi-era activity, his superlative ca-reer was deservedly marked by his two Oscars.

   REFERENCES:Benz and Graml, Biographisches Lexikon; International Dictionary of Films and Filmmakers; Kracauer, From Caligari to Hitler; NDB, vol. 10.