Jannings, Emil

(1884-1950)

   Actor. Jannings was among the most distinctive character actors the German theater ever produced, though he is remembered in the main for his outstanding body of film work. He began acting in small restaurant theaters in Bohemia prior to World War I. From there he moved on to theaters in Bremen, Leipzig, Nuremberg, Mainz, Darmstadt, and finally Berlin, where Max Reinhardt cast him in several productions. Even as a young man, Jannings was usually cast as an urwüchsiger Kraftkerl, a somewhat primitive, barrel-chested type whose impetuosity usually got him in trouble; in most cases, the type was overly sensitive. Jannings's film breakthrough came in 1924 with F. W. Murnau's Der letzte Mann (The Last Laugh), which led to several Hollywood offers; the most significant of those were two Paramount films, Victor Fleming's The Way of All Flesh in 1927 and Josef von Sternberg's The Last Command in 1928. For both films, Jannings won the first Academy Award ever given to an actor. His difficulty with spoken English, however, precluded continued work in Hollywood sound films and forced him to return to Berlin, where he concentrated on film work. His international reputation solidified in 1931 with Sternberg's Der blaue Engel (The Blue Angel).