Emil Jannings

Emil Jannings was married in second marriage with actress Hanna Ralph (1885-1978), in third marriage with actress Lucie Höflich and in fourth marriage with actress Gussy Holl.

His real name was Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, and in the early 1900s, he was already working in the theater under Max Reinhardt's company.

From 1901 onwards he worked with several theatre companies in Bremen, Nuremberg, Leipzig, Königsberg, and Glogau before joining the Deutsches Theater ensemble under director Max Reinhardt in Berlin.

Permanently employed since 1915, Jannings met with playwright Karl Vollmöller, fellow actor Ernst Lubitsch, and photographer Frieda Riess, who after World War I all were at the heart of the Weimar Culture in 1920s Berlin.

First bigger roles at the theater followed in 1917.

Jannings made his breakthrough in 1918 with his role as Judge Adam in Kleist's Broken Jug at the Schauspielhaus.

Important movies where he defined himself as a convincing actor were Passion (1919) and Quo Vadis? (1924), followed by The Last Laugh (1924)(aka The Last Laugh) in 1924 and Variety (1925) (aka Variety) in 1925.

Because of his huge successes of his movies as "Varieté" (1925) and "Faust" (1926) he got a three-year contract with Paramount.

Jannings was a versatile actor whose enormous emotional range was well-suited to an array of character roles. Although he occasionally lapsed into the unbridled hamminess that was characteristic of acting styles of the era, he was also capable of great subtlety and nuance, even in such grandiose roles as Mephistopheles in Faust (1926), wherein he projected inner rage and turmoil beneath a cool, cynical exterior.

He was the very first actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Back then, actors received one Oscar for multiple films and Jannings won for The Way of All Flesh (1927) and The Last Command (1928). The Award is exhibited in the Berlin Film Museum.

In 1928, he became the first male leading actor to receive the academy award for The Last Command (1928) directed by Josef von Sternberg.

In 1929, Stenberg directed him in his world famous movie Der blaue Engel (1930) (aka The Blue Angel) co-starring the young Marlene Dietrich (her first role).

After 1930 he wasn't able to go on from his earlier successes, only in the National Socialist Germany he became again a great star. In these years he played often historical personalities and was participated in some of important movies, which worked for the National Socialism.

During the Third Reich, he starred in several films which were intended to promote Nazism, particularly the Führerprinzip by presenting unyielding historical characters, such as Der alte und der junge König (1934), Der Herrscher (The Ruler 1937) directed by Veit Harlan, Robert Koch (1939), Ohm Krüger (Uncle Kruger, 1941) and Die Entlassung (Bismarck's Dismissal, 1942).

Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels named Jannings an "Artist of the State" (Staatsschauspieler) in 1936.

The shooting of his last film Wo ist Herr Belling? was aborted, when troops of the Allied Powers entered Germany in Spring 1945.

After the war he was denazified in 1946 and got the Austrian nationality one year later.

His home town of Rorschach, Switzerland, honored him with a special star (similar to the ones on the Walk of Fame in L.A.), which was revealed on November 12, 2004. Only hours prior to the ceremony, the town's council learned of Jannings' efforts on behalf of the Nazis during World War II. A few days later, the star was removed.

Was portrayed by the German actor Hilmar Eichhorn in Tarantino's 2009 film "Inglorious Basterds." In it, Jannings died a fictional death, shot and then engulfed in flames along with Adolph Hitler.

According to Susan Orlean, author of Rin Tin Tin: The Life and The Legend (Simon and Schuster, 2011), Jannings was not actually the winner of the first best actor vote, but the runner-up. While researching her book, Orlean discovered that it was in fact Rin Tin Tin, the German Shepherd dog, one of the biggest movie stars of his time, who won the vote. The Academy, however, worried about not being taken seriously if they gave the first Oscar to a dog, chose to award the Oscar to the human runner-up.