Monday, February 25, 2008

Conrad Veidt

A new DVD of The Thief of Bagdad is being released soon - the 1940 version starring Conrad Veidt, which is a must see. To some he is the villain in the movie, to me he is the tragic hero!



to see a tribute to Veidt at YouTube.
Who was Conrad Veidt? Born in Germany in 1893, he served during WWI, then got into acting. A staunch opponent of anti-Semitism, although he himself was not Jewish, he left Germany at the height of his fame in 1933, when Hitler came to power, and moved to England with his Jewish wife, whom he married just a few days before he left.

Within a year or so of arriving in England, he appeared in two pro-Jewish movies - The Wandering jewew and Jew Suss, which so infuriated Goebbels that all of his movies were banned in Germany.

When WWII broke out he and other German emigres headed for the States (there name was on a List and it wasn't safe to remain in England) where he was typecast in roles as Nazis...although his Nazi Agent has him playimh twins, one a Good German and the other a Nazi, and in Above Suspicion he is a sympathetic Austrian.

See a website for him at Conrad Veidt Society.

The Patrick Barlow Experience

Whenever I find an actor who interests me, I have the urge to create a "fansite" for them. (As indeed, I have done for British actor Clive Francis, which you can find at The Clive Francis Files.

However, time is no longer my friend, and I don't have time to assemble photos and info into a nice looking website, so instead I'll just upload everything here at this blog, and fellow fans are free to download photos, etc. (Please don't reupload them on your own site without permission, however. Or at least give a link to this site!)



Anyway, I'm currently obsessed with a British writer/actor named Patrick Barlow. A comedian for the most part, though he has done some dramatic stuff.

Thanks to the magic of YouTube, I was able to see him in the first episode of a show called Is It Legal, from 1995. He plays Bob, and he is sooooo cute. (The actor in the "freeze frame" below is NOT Barlow...he comes on the scene later.)



There's also a 1993 commercial of his - a Rolo commercial. Unfortunately the video quality of that is very poor.

Sunday, February 24, 2008

The Manifesto

In this blog, I'll be discussing actors and their roles, and writers and illustrators their creations.

The name comes from an episode of the George Reeves Superman TV show, "The Face and the Voice," in which George Reeves plays both Clark Kent/Superman, and a criminal hired to impersonate him.

I've long been fascinated by actors who play dual roles in movies, plays and TV shows, as they're invariably poles apart, giving the actor a chance to really display his or her acting skill.