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Anton Walbrook
A Life of Masks and Mirrors
by James Downs
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Book Presentation:
Viennese-born actor Adolf Wohlbrück enjoyed huge success on both stage and screen in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, becoming one of the first truly international stars. After leaving Nazi Germany for Hollywood in 1936, he changed his name to Anton Walbrook and then settled in Britain, where he won filmgoers’ hearts with his portrayal of Prince Albert in two lavish biopics of Queen Victoria. Further film success followed with Dangerous Moonlight and Gaslight, several collaborations with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger – including his striking performance as Lermontov in The Red Shoes – and later work with Max Ophuls and Otto Preminger.
Despite great popularity and a prolifi c career of some forty films, alongside theatre, radio and television work, Walbrook was an intensely private individual who kept much of his personal life hidden from view. His reticence created an aura of mystery and «otherness» about him, which coloured both his acting performances and the way he was perceived by the public – an image that was reinforced in Britain by his continental background.
Remarkably, this is the first full-length biography of Walbrook, drawing on over a decade of extensive archival research to document his life and acting career.
About the Author:
Dr James Downs is an archivist in the University of Exeter’s Special Collections Department, also home to the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum, where he previously worked for almost a decade. He has written and presented conference papers about Walbrook on several occasions as well as being interviewed at the actor’s grave for the «Life and Death in Hampstead Sound Trail» and curating the 2013 exhibition «Anton Walbrook – Star and Enigma.» In addition to teaching film adaptation and cataloguing archival material relating to other German émigrés, he has written two books and over thirty articles on a range of topics relating to the history of film and photography, visual culture and religious history, and since 2018 he has been the editor of the magazine Photographica World.
Press Reviews:
«James Downs presents a fascinating and meticulously researched biography of a charming and darkly beguiling star who deserves our attention. It is enriched by archival evidence and images that illuminate Walbrook’s work as well as his equally intriguing, but carefully sequestered, private life; all refracted through his experience of exile.» (Professor Michael Williams, University of Southampton)
«It is often difficult to separate the elements of personal life and dramatic performance that create the star persona, but that of the stage and screen actor Anton Walbrook presents a unique and fascinating challenge. In his richly researched biography, James Downs brings a scholar’s authority and a fan’s enthusiasm to his subject, illuminating not only the career of one of British cinema’s most reserved stars, but the political and production background of his stage, screen and television performances in the UK and Germany.» (Mandy Merck, author of Cinema’s Melodramatic Celebrity: Film, Fame and Personal Worth (BFI 2020))
See the publisher website: Peter Lang
See the complete filmography of Anton Walbrook on the website: IMDB ...
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