Felix Bressart
Actor · 1892 – 1949 · Eydtkuhnen, East Prussia, Germany [now Chernyshevskoe, Russia]
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Felix Bressart (March 2, 1892 – March 17, 1949) was a German-American actor of stage and screen. Felix Bressart (pronounced "BRESS-ert") was born in East Prussia, Germany (now part of Russia) and was already a very experienced stage actor when he had his film debut in 1928. He started off as a supporting actor, e.g. as the Bailiff in the box-office hit Die Drei von der Tankstelle (1930), but had soon established himself in leading roles of minor movies. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Jewish-born Bressart had to leave Germany and continued his career in German-speaking movies in Austria, where Jewish artists were still relatively safe. After no fewer than 30 films in eight years, he emigrated to the United States. One of Bressart's former European colleagues was Joe Pasternak, now a successful Hollywood producer. Bressart's first American film was Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939), a vehicle for Universal Pictures' top attraction, Deanna Durbin. Pasternak also selected the reliable Bressart to perform in a screen test opposite Pasternak's newest discovery, Gloria Jean. The influential German community in Hollywood helped to establish Bressart in America, as his earliest American movies were directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Henry Koster, and Wilhelm Thiele (director of Die Drei von der Tankstelle). Bressart scored a great success in Lubitsch's Ninotchka, produced at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. MGM signed Bressart to a studio contract in 1939. Most of his MGM work consisted of featured roles in major films like Edison, the Man. He combined his mildly inflected East European accent with a soft-spoken delivery to create kindly, friendly characters, as in Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be, in which he sensitively recites Shylock's famous "Hath not a Jew eyes?" speech from The Merchant of Venice. Lubitsch also directed Bressart to similar effect in The Shop Around the Corner. Bressart soon became a popular character actor in films like Blossoms in the Dust (1941), The Seventh Cross (1944), and Without Love (1945). Perhaps his largest role was in RKO Radio Pictures' "B" musical comedy Ding Dong Williams, filmed in 1945. Bressart, billed third, played the bemused supervisor of a movie studio's music department, and appeared in formal wear to conduct Chopin's "Fantasie Impromptu." After almost 40 Hollywood pictures, Felix Bressart suddenly died of leukemia at the age of 57. His last film was My Friend Irma (1949), the movie version of a popular radio show. Bressart died during production, forcing the producers to finish the film with Hans Conried. In the final film, Conried speaks throughout, but Bressart is still seen in the long shots. Description above from the Wikipedia article Felix Bressart, licensed under CC-BY-SA,full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Movies24
Movie7.8ComedyWarDuring the Nazi occupation of Poland, an acting troupe becomes embroiled in a Polish soldier's efforts to track down a German spy.
To Be or Not to Be
1942 · 860 votes
Movie8.1ComedyDramaTwo employees at a gift shop can barely stand one another, without realising that they are falling in love through the post as each other's anonymous pen pal.
The Shop Around the Corner
1940 · 867 votes
Movie7.5ComedyRomanceA stern Russian woman sent to Paris on official business finds herself attracted to a man who represents everything she is supposed to detest.
Ninotchka
1939 · 449 votes
Movie6.6DramaMusicDiscovery by Flo Ziegfeld changes a girl's life but not necessarily for the better, as three beautiful women find out when they join the spectacle on Broadway: Susan, the singer who must leave behind her ageing vaudevillian father; vulnerable Sheila, the working girl pursued both by a millionaire and by her loyal boyfriend from Flatbush; and the mysterious European beauty Sandra, whose concert violinist husband cannot endure the thought of their escaping from poverty by promenading her glamor in skimpy costumes.
Ziegfeld Girl
1941 · 39 votes
Movie7.2DramaRomanceA mysterious girl inspires a struggling artist.
Portrait of Jennie
1948 · 125 votes
Movie6.8DramaWarIn Nazi Germany in 1936 seven men escape from a concentration camp. The camp commander puts up seven crosses and, as the Gestapo returns each escapee he is put to death on a cross. The seventh cross is still empty as George Heisler attempts an escape to freedom in Holland.
The Seventh Cross
1944 · 43 votes
Movie6.4ComedyMusicThe story of seven scholars in search of an expert to teach them about swing music. They seem to have found the perfect candidate in winsome nightclub singer Honey Swanson. But Honey's gangster boyfriend doesn't want to give her up.
A Song Is Born
1948 · 47 votes
Movie6.2ThrillerTwo newlyweds spy on the Nazis for the British Secret Service during their honeymoon in Europe.
Above Suspicion
1943 · 39 votes
Movie6.8HistoryDramaIn flashback, fifty years after inventing the light bulb, an 82-year-old Edison tells his story starting at age twenty-two with his arrival in New York. He's on his way with the invention of an early form of the stock market ticker.
Edison, the Man
1940 · 27 votes
Movie5.8ComedyCrimeAfter crooked nightclub owner murders a police informant, he blackmails his piano player to allow him to stay at his eccentric mother's boarding house.
It All Came True
1940 · 22 votes
Movie6.6DramaRomanceEdna marries Texan Sam Gladney, operator of a wheat mill. They have a son, who is killed when very young. Edna discovers by chance how the law treats children who are without parents and decides to do something about it. She opens a home for foundlings and orphans and begins to place children in good homes, despite the opposition of "conservative" citizens, who would condemn illegitimate children for being born out of wedlock. Eventually Edna leads a fight in the Texas legislature to remove the stigma of illegitimacy from birth records in that state, while continuing to be an advocate for homeless children.
Blossoms in the Dust
1941 · 38 votes
Movie7.0RomanceComedyIn World War II Washington DC, scientist Pat Jamieson's assistant, Jamie Rowan, enters a loveless marriage with him. Struggles bring them closer together.
Without Love
1945 · 29 votes
Movie6.1ComedyRomanceAn American reporter smuggling news out of Soviet Moscow is blackmailed into helping a beautiful Communist leave the country.
Comrade X
1940 · 27 votes
Movie7.2ComedyDramaThree sisters who believe life is going to be easy, now that their parents are back together, until one sister falls in love with another's fiancé, and the youngest sister plays matchmaker.
Three Smart Girls Grow Up
1939 · 8 votes
Movie6.5RomanceComedyWhen his wife threatens him with divorce, a reporter courts her again.
Three Hearts for Julia
1943 · 2 votes
Movie5.9DramaMysteryA French diplomat who's recovered from amnesia is blackmailed over crimes he can't remember.
Crossroads
1942 · 39 votes
Movie6.0DramaMusicA woman runs away with her music teacher in order to escape an arranged marriage, but they struggle to make ends meet.
Bitter Sweet
1940 · 8 votes
Movie5.4CrimeDramaCatherine Sykes disappears after a midnight drive with Professor Andrew Gentling . When she's presumed murdered, his friend Martha convinces him that he's a prime suspect and should investigate before he's arrested.
Take One False Step
1949 · 18 votes
Movie6.7ComedyMusicIn 1922, a would-be classical composer gets involved with people putting on a musical revue.
Greenwich Village
1944 · 6 votes
Movie6.2MusicSteve, revue producer in Rio de Janeiro, is still in love with his ex-wife Vicki, his star Linda is in love with Steve and Tito is in love with Linda. Because of this they all get small problems.
The Thrill of Brazil
1946 · 4 votes
Movie6.1ComedyDramaWilly, Kurt and Hans are broke, so they sell their car and open a filling station. Then, they all fall in love with the same girl.
Movie10.0ComedyA Hungarian-Austrian comedy and one of the last emigrant films made in Austria before the industry submitted to pressure from Nazi Germany and ceased to employ Jewish filmmakers.
Movie7.0DramaAt a mine on the shared edge of France and Germany, an underground explosion leads to the entrapment of a group of French miners. In an effort to save the trapped Frenchmen, German miners Wittkopp and Kasper take it upon themselves to traverse a crumbling war tunnel leading down into the mines. Yet, though the workers harbor no political biases against one another, their callous, less tolerant bosses hope to halt this cross-cultural rescue mission.
Movie7.5DramaThrillerAn American goes to pre-war Germany to find his mother and discovers her in a concentration camp. With the help of an American-born widowed countess he seeks to engineer her escape.
Escape
1940 · 16 votes