Bois, Curt

(1901-1991)

   Actor. Bois is best known to English-speaking audiences as the pickpocket in the opening scenes of the 1942 Warner Bros. feature film Casablanca. His career, however, covered nearly eight decades in more than 100 movies and stage productions, both in English and in German. Bois began performing professionally at age 6 in cabaret acts and movies. During World War I, he worked as a dancer and comedian in cabarets and clubs throughout Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Switzerland. Beginning in 1924 he began doing operetta at the Theater am Kurfürstendamm in Berlin, and from 1925 to 1933 he worked steadily with Max Reinhardt, both in Berlin and in Vienna. Bois emigrated to Vienna in 1933 and in 1934 he left for New York, where he appeared in three Broadway shows. In 1937 Bois arrived in Hollywood, appearing in more than 40 films by 1950, when he returned to East Berlin to work for Bertolt Brecht at the Deutsches Theater. There he played Puntila in the 1950 production of Herr Pun-tila und sein Knecht Matti (Mr. Puntila and His Servant Matti) under Brecht's direction. Bois left East Berlin in 1953 to begin working in West Berlin, though his association with Brecht had damaged his career prospects. By 1959, however, he was working steadily at the Schiller and Schlosspark Theaters in West Berlin and directed a feature film, Ein Polterabend. In the last decade of his life, Bois gave two of his most interesting film performances, first in Das Boot ist voll (The Boat Is Full, 1981) and later in Der Himmel über Berlin (Wings of Desire, 1987) with Bruno Ganz and Otto Sander.