Could you imagine living out your golden years without
your favorite stuffed animal? Well, the
most eccentric filmmaker of the 20th century, Fritz Lang, certainly couldn’t!
He had Peter the monkey with him everywhere,
night and day. If you don’t believe me, just ask Peter Bogdanovich: the damn
monkey was present during his famous interview with that legendary enigmatic
cinematic ‘Master of Darkness’. But while Lang’s curious fetish for Peter the monkey was blatant and his affection
for him was bizarrely and tenderly cute, his
other fetishes were more secretively creepy and downright perverse!
Yes, this is a sweet picture, indeed! Peter was able to tame the beast because if you
read ‘Fritz Lang: The Nature of the Beast’ by Patrick McGilligan, you’ll learn about
all the dark sides of Lang the Fang. Fritz preferred the company of ‘ladies of
the night’, had a foot fetish and a reputation for organizing Hollywood orgies,
and collected macabre objects like tribal shrunken heads and weird masks from around the world. Lang wore a monocle like fellow director Erich von
Stroheim, a fashion that could be perceived at the time as aristocratic Nazi, and his
Germanic accent didn't help matters. He was sadistic to some of his actors, in
particular the 18-year-old Brigitte Helm who played the hot robot in his 1927
masterpiece, ‘Metropolis’. By the way, that movie cost 7 million German marks
(which would be $200 million today) and kick-started the science fiction genre.
Even by today’s standards of super- duper special effects, ‘Metropolis’ remains
a mind-blowing cinematic experience.
But getting back to poor Brigitte, during the making
of ‘Metropolis’, the ordeal she experienced and the physical pain she felt (her
robot armor left her with bruises and scars, and the heat of the fire scene was
real) for her first role reminds me of what Tippi Hedren went through on the
set of Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds’. Did the Masters of Suspense or Darkness want to
destroy what they couldn’t have? Well, let just say that reading ‘Fritz Lang: The
Nature of the Beast’ gave me an eerie idea for a sordid story for my book Sinemania!
Lang wasn’t really understood in the Hollywood community and
the Austrian expatriate was far from a saint. To illustrate what I mean, in my
story, Fritz orders the company of a prostitute to show her his movie scrapbook
and describes its pictures in his own peculiar way. I had read that towards the
end of his life he paid prostitutes, not for sex, but simply for some female
company to avoid loneliness.
I’ll let you discover the twist of that creepy tale on
your own, but I’m gonna use this post to open the curtain on the real scandals
and murders that plagued Fritz Lang’s life. Yes, dear reader, life can copy art and Fritz and his monkey could be to
blame! Move over, Polanski!
Lang was born in Vienna in 1890 from a Jewish mother who
converted to Catholicism when Fritz was ten. He was raised in that faith and
cherished it until his death in 1976. The first scandal and enigmatic mystery to
involve the ‘Master of Darkness’ was the death of his first wife, Lisa
Rosenthal. She is now known as ‘Lang’s suicidal first wife’ who found the idea of
being replaced by a hot new mistress too hard to take. The facts are that in
1921, Lisa died from a gunshot to her chest while she was in her bathtub. Lang’s
mistress, Thea von Harbou, moved in with him not long after. Was it suicide or
murder? Only Fritz, Thea, or Peter the monkey knew for certain.
Lang made several excellent film noirs in the US. My
favorite is ‘Scarlet Street’ from 1945. Joan Bennett played a manipulative femme
fatale who took the character portrayed by Edward G. Robinson for a sucker. Dan
Duryea played her loser con artist lover and it’s a pleasure watching the evil couple
up to no good and sucking their victim dry! This movie is a must and the
experience of seeing it is even more powerful knowing that Bennett was Fritz
Lang’s American muse (they made a few films together). On top of that, Joan
Bennett was a femme fatale in real life!
On the fatal day of December 13, 1951, Bennett, Lang’s film
noir bitch, made a rendezvous with her Hollywood agent of twelve years, Jennings
Lang (no relation to Fritz, just a bloody coincidence) in a parking lot at the
MCA offices. Little did Bennett know that her jealous husband, Walter Wanger, was
following her with a gun. He shot what he assumed was her secret lover twice.
Her words after realizing that her hubby was a murderer were: “Get away and
leave us alone!” Wanger tossed his pistol into his wife’s car. Lang survived,
Wanger pled insanity and served only four months in prison. Was the ‘Master of
Darkness’ doomed with a plague of crimes of passion? Well, I’m definitely
starting to see a pattern here.
In Lang’s 1931 classic, ‘M’,
Peter Lorre played a child killer or, between the lines, an active sexual
predator/pedophile. That was a very taboo subject for the time. But three years
earlier, Germany was really shaken by the gruesome murders of child serial killer,
Peter Kürten, who became known as the Monster of Düsseldorf. Lang’s depiction of
this unthinkable true story and Lorre’s quirky childlike performance made that
film mandatory for the curriculum of any Film 101 university course. Peter Lorre
became Peter Kürten and I believe Peter the monkey was around at that time, too. Or
his murderous spirit was… Peter Kürten was executed in 1931 after nine murders
and seven attempted murders, 1931 also being the year ‘M’ hit the theatres. Mmm…
Could Peter the monkey have previously belonged to one of Kürten’s child
victims and taken as a trophy? And did Lang adopt him as a good luck charm
after the mega-success of ‘M’?
Peter Lorre delivered a magnificent tormented portrait of
Kürten’s evil and, fortunately for him, that wasn’t a curse. Hollywood warmly opened
its doors to his vivid and undeniable acting talent. In 1935, his movie ‘Mad
Love’ (fuck, not another M!) catapulted
him to the top and he became a household name as a scene-stealing creepy
character actor. If you watch a flick with Peter Lorre in it, his presence is
what you’ll remember most about the film ten years later. Besides being known
for his huge bulging sad eyes and distinctive slimy voice, he was a complex individual
in real life, addicted to morphine to deal with gallbladder problems. During
his ‘Mr. Moto’ years (enough with the goddamn M’s already!!) he managed to kick
his ‘M’orphine habit, but put on a hundred pounds in return. In 1964, Peter Lorre
died of a stroke at the age of 60.
The serial killer Peter Kürten inspired the beginning of
Lorre’s fantastic career. Weirdly enough, his role in ‘M’ saved the life of his
daughter when she almost became the victim of two other serial killers, ‘The
Hillside Stranglers’! In 1977, the diabolical duo, Buono and Bianchi, confessed
that they spared the life of Lorre’s daughter, Catharine. After giving her a
ride in Los Angeles (while dressed up as cops), they intended for her to become their next victim until
she happened to mention the name of her famous father to them. ‘M’ could in
this case also mean ‘Miracle’. After seeing the faces of Buono and Bianchi on
the TV news, Catharine realized that her dad saved her life and she was also grateful that those two lowlifes had some knowledge of the history of sinema and admired
‘M’!
Was Peter the monkey really buried with Fritz Lang in
1976 like he had requested? I doubt it. I suspect that in 1988, the king of
zombie films, George A. Romero, hired that ‘M’other fucker’ without even auditioning
him for the main role in his film, ‘Monkey Shines’!
Where is Peter the monkey now? Who knows, but if I were
you I would lock my door, day and night! I certainly do.
Is he real or not? Is he guilty or not? All I know is that
he gives the letter ‘M’ new meaning!
That’s my conspiracy theory, but I know that other movie and
art lovers have their own perspective. In May last year, I had the pleasure of
seeing an exhibit by two fabulous artists, Kevin Broughton and Fiona Birnie, at
the Crypt Gallery in London. They had a totally different and valid version of
the meaning of ‘M’.
‘M’ for McDonalds! The ‘meat is murder’ sin can also fit
the bill, but then Hitler was a vegetarian, so who knows? Anyway, I’m up for a debate! But McDonald’s sure
is a monkey business, they got that
right!
In their exhibit, ‘Berlin: The Forgers Tale’, Broughton
and Birnie’s art is a pure delight for any lover of German culture of the 1920s
and ‘30s. Their spoofing of Fritz Lang’s movies of that era is simply magical
and the mix of contemporary icons and vintage visual aesthetics is brilliant. See for yourself here:
If I was rich, now you know what I’d do with my monkey… I
mean my money! I’d buy their art and follow their exhibits from town to town! With
a triple shot of pure absinthe! I can’t wait to see what that wonderful duo comes
up with next!
Alright, I should stop monkeying around and conclude this
silly post about the ‘M’aster of Darkness’. Fritz Lang’s life and personality are
as interesting as his cinematographic art, his vision, and noir tales. Discovering
the fact that his real life was surrounded by actual ‘M’urder, ‘M’ayhem,
‘M’ystery, M’orphine, and ‘M’onkey was ‘M’agic for ‘M’e and I thought that
sharing that with you could be ‘M’arvelously entertaining! Mmm… 'M’azeltov!
(Lang made a cameo in Jean-Luc Godard’s ‘Le Mépris’ with
Brigitte Bardot. Godard was a huge fan of the director and this is a sweet and tongue-in-cheek scene from that movie, followed by a great Lang tribute in French with
English subtitles. Enjoy!)
