Recommended Reading on Emil Jannings?

[Claus H.]

Hi All,

Forgive me if this is 'old ground' for you, but being relatively new here, I would love to know what you would recommend as far as quality writing on the man.

I will hasten to add that I did read Sternberg's "Chinese Laundry" memoirs, and while it was a rousing fun time, I have been told that Mr. S was a lot more of a raconteur than he was a documentarian in this book, so hence my search for some more balanced info on this great actor.
Was he in fact this combination of overgrown baby and thundering primadonna that Sternberg puts forth?

Claus.

[rollot24]

Apparently Jannings wrote an autobiography but all I can find are German editions, which I can't read.
Check ABEbooks

[Arndt]

I have read the autobiography. It's pretty run of the mill, nothing spectacular.

[JFK]

CONTENT REMOVED COPYRIGHT CONCERN

[Arndt]

His autobiography ought to come out of copyright in 2020. As I said in an earlier post, it is not that exciting. He covers the whole why and wherefore of his involvement in Nazi propaganda in two sentences. If - however - someone is interested in publishing it, I'd be more than happy to translate it. For a fee.

[Scoundrel]

" b. THE MID-CENTURY HUAC - WITH THE GOP ON THE RISE-
CENTERED THEIR INVESTIGATIONS ON HIDDEN COMMUNISTS AND OPEN LEFTISTS,
AND NOT ON HOLLYWOOD'S PRE-WAR FASCIST SUPPORTERS/ENABLERS...
HAL ROACH AMONG THEM...."


Don't forget Joseph P. Kennedy.

[Arndt]

The renowned German film critic Frank Noack has just published his biography of Emil Jannings. Of course it is in German (for now at least):

http://www.collection-rolf-heyne.de/ver ... el536.html

http://www.amazon.de/Jannings-Der-erste ... 219&sr=8-1

[didi-5]

His autobiography ought to come out of copyright in 2020. As I said in an earlier post, it is not that exciting. He covers the whole why and wherefore of his involvement in Nazi propaganda in two sentences. If - however - someone is interested in publishing it, I'd be more than happy to translate it. For a fee.

Did he try to justify his support of the Nazis in any way, or did he just remain devoted to the cause to the end?

[Rollo Treadway]

From Filmwoche #13, 1939: A two-page article on Jannings' 25 years in films. Even those who don't sprechen-Sie-Deutsch may find the images of interest, not the least the toddler Emil:

http://www.virtual-history.com/movie/magazine/nr617

[Arndt]

His autobiography ought to come out of copyright in 2020. As I said in an earlier post, it is not that exciting. He covers the whole why and wherefore of his involvement in Nazi propaganda in two sentences. If - however - someone is interested in publishing it, I'd be more than happy to translate it. For a fee.

Did he try to justify his support of the Nazis in any way, or did he just remain devoted to the cause to the end?

From what I know Jannings was not a devoted Nazi. He was one of the majority of German film stars that stayed and played along. The regime needed them, especially those with an international reputation, to publicly endorse it. This was great propaganda and Goebbels, the unchallenged despot of the German film industry, wielded both a tempting carrot and a formidable stick. So Jannings, George, Rühmann and many others stayed and became instruments of Nazi propaganda. Werner Krauss seems to have been an actual Nazi sympathizer. Others left, many because they had to and some because they chose to, like Veidt. It was hard for an actor with a thick German accent to find work in sound films abroad. Ironically it was the outbreak of the war that gave many actors that had been persecuted and driven out by the Nazis work in foreign films, where they had to portray the Nazi villains.
In his autobiography Jannings only has this to say: "There are things one cannot talk about - things that pull us in opposite directions at the same time, as they appear to the head in a different way from the way they appear to the heart, which would like to be in unison with the soul. As my heart and soul belonged to the art of acting, they ordered my head not to worry about things that were none of its concern." (Emil Jannings, Das Leben und ich, Berchtesgarden 1951, p. 205).
I have now got the new Jannings biography by Frank Noack. Once I know his verdict I'll post it here.

[Arndt]

I have read Frank Noack's new Jannings biography now. It is a revisionist book inasmuch as he tries to move away from the image of Jannings as a Nazi puppet previously prevalent in literature about film in the Third Reich. That does not mean that he makes him out to be an opponent of the regime. These are some of the points he makes:

In 1933 Jannings was living in Austria. He was not in the best of health, mainly due to his overindulgence in food and booze. Despite being an international star and box office draw he had not worked in a while. Internationally he had been replaced by Charles Laughton and Paul Muni, who actually spoke English, and he was too expensive for the purely domestic market. When the Nazis came to power it was a godsend for Jannings. They were keen to use his international reputation and he no longer had to look for work. Goebbels made Jannings head of the Tobis film company, so Emil could choose his own subjects, directors, co-stars and writers, subject to Goebbels' approval of course. Jannings' relationship with Goebbels was often an uneasy one, but they made good use of each other for their own ends. For Jannings it meant he was able to sustain the lavish lifestyle he was by now accustomed to without chasing film roles.
Noack does not exonerate Jannings, but makes a valid point when he compares his uneasy truce with the Third Reich to the behaviour of Hollywood actors at the time of the McCarthy hearings. And while these were only ever in danger of losing their swimming pools (to quote Orson Welles), it turns out Jannings was a lot more vulnerable. Apparently his Russian-born mother, who was living in Berlin at the time, was Jewish. This was never openly discussed in the German press, but - according to Noack - was pretty much common knowledge and much bandied about by Jannings' detractors at various times.
Noack paints a plausible picture of a fairly sorry figure, whose often arrogant and brash personality had made him few friends and many enemies over the years, living a splendid yet solitary life at the Wolfgangsee with a wife that was liked by even fewer people and a stepdaughter with a bad alcohol problem.
It is a good book, well-researched and eminently readable. Some statements are on the sweeping side and sometimes Noack allows his anger at what he perceives as oversimplification by previous films historians to get the better of him - Kracauer being a particular bugbear of his. But for that I certainly do not blame him.