Hollywood in the early 1940s was home to a remarkable community of European refugees who had fled fascism and brought with them talents, accents, and experiences that would leave an indelible mark on American cinema. Among them was Paul Henreid, an Austrian aristocrat turned actor whose performances in two films released in 1942 secured his permanent place in film history. He is remembered above all for a single gesture, the lighting of two cigarettes simultaneously in Now, Voyager, but his life story encompasses far more than any one cinematic moment.
He was born Paul Georg Julius Freiherr von Hernreid Ritter von Wasel-Waldingau on 10 January 1908 in Trieste, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. His father, Karl Alphons Hernreid, was a financial adviser to Emperor Franz Joseph I, and the family carried an aristocratic title. The religious background was complex: Karl had been born Jewish and converted to Catholicism in 1904 specifically to escape anti-Semitic discrimination in Austria-Hungary, taking the name Karl von Hernreid. This conversion would not protect his son from Nazi persecution in the following generation. Karl died in 1916, and by the time Paul finished his education, the family fortune had dwindled considerably.
Paul trained for the theatre in Vienna, pursuing a course his family did not initially favor, and attended the Theresianische Akademie while working at a publishing house to support himself. It was during a performance at the Akademie that he was discovered by Otto Preminger, who was then working for the legendary theatrical impresario Max Reinhardt. Henreid joined Reinhardt's theatre company, which was among the most prestigious in the German-speaking world, and built a career on stage through the early 1930s. In 1933 he played a minor role in a production of Faust, and he had starring roles in the Vienna stagings of Men in White and Mizzi.
The rise of National Socialism in Germany presented him with a practical obstacle. In 1933 he applied for membership in the NS-Reichsfilmkammer, the state body that controlled German film production, and was rejected because his father had been born a Jew. He tried again in 1935 and was cast in the Austrian film Jersey Lilly. In 1937 he went to London to portray Prince Albert in the first British stage production of Victoria Regina. That same year, he submitted another application for special permission to the NS-Reichsfilmkammer, which was personally rejected by Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. By the time Germany annexed Austria in 1938, Henreid had become an avowed anti-Nazi and had actively assisted a Jewish comedian in fleeing Germany. The German government responded by declaring him an official enemy of the Third Reich and confiscating all his assets in Germany.
He settled permanently in the United Kingdom, but the outbreak of war in 1939 placed him in a precarious position, as he was technically an enemy alien subject to potential internment. The German actor Conrad Veidt, himself a refugee from Nazism, vouched for Henreid's anti-Nazi credentials, and the British government allowed him to remain and work. In 1939, he appeared in a supporting role in Goodbye, Mr. Chips, and in 1940 he received third billing in the thriller Night Train to Munich, playing a German Gestapo agent named Captain Karl Marsen. The role required him to portray the very forces of oppression from which he had fled, a particular irony that was not lost on him.
In 1940 he relocated to New York City, where he appeared in the Broadway play Flight to the West, playing a doctor. That year he signed a contract with RKO Pictures in Hollywood, which dropped the aristocratic von from his name to make it sound less Germanic and more palatable to American audiences. He became a United States citizen the same year. His first RKO film, Joan of Paris released in 1942, cast him as a Free French flyer trying to escape Occupied France and was a considerable box office success.
He then moved to Warner Brothers, which cast him as Jeremiah Durrance in the romantic drama Now, Voyager alongside Bette Davis. The film contains one of the most famous scenes in the history of Hollywood cinema: Henreid's character lights two cigarettes simultaneously and hands one to Davis, a gesture of intimacy and sophistication that became immediately iconic. His next role was Victor Laszlo, an anti-Nazi resistance leader in Casablanca, the film that would prove to be the most celebrated of his career and one of the most beloved in the entire history of American cinema. The cast also included Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Conrad Veidt, the very man who had vouched for Henreid in Britain.
After this extraordinary burst of success in 1942, Henreid continued working steadily in Hollywood, taking on directing as well as acting projects in later years. He directed episodes of television series and several features, demonstrating a versatility that went beyond his image as a romantic leading man. He died on 29 March 1992 at the age of eighty-four, leaving behind a career that had begun in the imperial theatre of fin-de-siècle Vienna and ended in the golden age of American television. His journey from Austro-Hungarian aristocracy to Hollywood icon, driven at every stage by the pressures of European fascism, stands as one of the more extraordinary personal histories of the twentieth century.
