Biography for
Emil Jannings

Birth name

Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz

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Height

6' (1.83 m)

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Spouse

Lucie Höflich	(? - ?) (divorced)
Hanna Ralph	(? - ?) (divorced)
Gussy Holl	(? - ?) (divorced)

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Trivia

Because of his thick German accent, the advent of sound ended his American career. Returning to his native Germany, he became an enthenthusiastic supporter of the Nazis, he spent the next decade-plus making films that supported Nazi ideology.

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" and "The Last Command".

Was born in Rorschach (Switzerland) at the Lake of Constance. This is just a few minutes away from Au, where Academy Award-winning actress Renée Zellwegers family comes from.

His birth town of Rorschach honoured him with a special star (similar to the ones on the Walk of Fame in L.A.), which was revealed on November 12th 2004. Only hours prior to the ceremony the towns council learned of his role in WWII. A few days later, the star was removed.

He is the first winner of an Academy Award, as after being announced as a winner, he was presented his Academy statuette a month before the actual ceremony. This also makes him the first no-show winner at an Academy Award presentation.

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Biography from Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia:

At one time a major star of the international screen, this imposing, Oscar-winning actor spent the WW2 years in Germany, where he made numerous pro-Nazi films, virtually guaranteeing his exile by moviemakers after the Allied victory. A bearlike man whose stern features made him most effective as rigid authoritarians (most often unsympathetic), Jannings became a professional actor while still in his teens, making a name for himself as a member of the distinguished Max Reinhardt com- pany in Berlin in the years before World War 1. Although he made his film debut in 1914's Arme Eva Jannings got mostly unrewarding parts until the end of the decade, when he began playing prominent historical figures in elaborate German and Italian films, including Madame DuBarry (1919, as Louis XV), Anne Boleyn (1920, as Henry VIII), Peter the Great (1921, in the title role), and Quo Vadis? (1924, as Nero).

During this period Jannings also essayed many great characters from legend and literature, including Dimitri Karamazov in The Brothers Karamazov (1920), Othello (1922), and Faust (1926, as Mephistopheles). These roles, along with his star turns in two classics-Murnau's The Last Laugh (1924, as the proud doorman at a posh hotel who is suddenly demoted and subsequently humiliated) and Dupont's Variety (1925)-eventually brought Jannings to the attention of American filmmakers. He came to Hollywood in 1927, signing a Paramount contract and winning the first Best Actor Oscar ever awarded for his work in The Way of All Flesh (1927) and The Last Command (1928, as a refugee Russian general working as an extra in Hollywood costume dramas), his first two American films.

Jannings made several more silents in Hollywood before the talkie revolution, of which the thickly accented actor was an early casualty. But he scored an amazing triumph back in Germany, playing a pompous college professor enraptured by nightclub singer Marlene Dietrich in Josef von Sternberg's The Blue Angel (1930, which was produced in both German- and English-language versions). After Hitler's rise to power in 1933, an enthusiastic Jannings eagerly accepted an offer from propaganda minister Goebbels to appear in pro-German, anti-Semitic movies. He appeared in a number of such films throughout the 1930s and early 1940s, and was named "Artist of the State" by Goebbels in 1941. Illness forced Jannings to abandon work on Where Is Mr. Belling? (1945), and when Hitler's regime was destroyed shortly thereafter, Jannings found himself persona non grata with the international filmmaking community. He never made another film, and died from cancer five years later.

Copyright © 1994 Leonard Maltin, used by arrangement with Signet, a division of Penguin Putnam, Inc.

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