What Emil Jannings Fears (1926) 🇺🇸

Clothed in a glamour of mystery because he worked far away in Germany, Emil Jannings has always been to us in America a sort of magic character of another world.

by Alma Talley

Every one knows him to be one of the greatest artists of the screen, but few in America have known just what he is really like as a human being. We haven't even known what color his eyes are, or what is his favorite flower, or any of those quaint little facts of which we are so lavishly informed in the case of our own stars.

Yes, Mr. Jannings has always seemed a most remote person. So it was with a feeling of extraordinary pleasure that I met and talked to him right on his own home grounds — the Ufa lot in Berlin. And I found him quite enthusiastic over his anticipated sojourn in America — except for one thing, about which he was as distressed as a small boy whose mother has told him he can't go out and play baseball. He is really worried about our prohibition, the only word of English that he knows! To ask a German to go without his wine and beer — well, that's a lot to ask of any European, even for "art's sake."

He was standing in front of one of the studio buildings when I first saw him — and smoking a cigarette.

"That," said my guide, a representative of Ufa, "is the only man who is allowed to smoke on the Ufa lot — Emil Jannings."

One look at the man, and you feel that he should be allowed almost anything! Mr. Jannings has never played the sort of roles which make of an actor a matinee idol, but it isn't because he couldn't. He wore a brown suit which made him look as though he had just stepped out of one of those Bond Street tailoring establishments which boast of their appointment by or with His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. And this in Germany, where most men's clothes look as if they had been cut by the tailor's apprentice on his way to catch a train.

As we approached, he gave us a flashing smile, which began with a twinkle in his eye and lit up his whole face. He acknowledged the introduction with the proper German words, whatever they are. So, with the representative as interpreter, I asked him how he felt about coming to America for the fall and winter — Famous Players, you know, having bought an interest in Ufa, had arranged for Mr. Jannings to make a few pictures over here.

There were a number of gschlugts and schlabens and a fluent collection of other German words, which undoubtedly meant something — though not to me — and that one familiar word, "prohibition."

"He says," explained the interpreter, "that he's worried about prohibition. He doesn't know how he can enjoy his meals without beer or wine with them."

"Ah," I said, being fresh from Broadway, "I know a place!" (This, however, is no place to mention the name of it.)

There was more German on the part of Mr. Jannings after this reassurance.

"In New York, yes, so I understand," was the gist of his answer, "but I’m told that it's harder to get in Los Angeles. And I don't know where I shall have to work — I hope in New York." Indeed, I got the impression that he really is a little worried about being sent to Los Angeles, where beer and wine are not so easy to get.

He gave us another delightfully infectious smile, which made it seem altogether incongruous that this same sunny countenance was the one which had leered so diabolically at his shuddering audiences in "Quo Vadis." Truly, the man is remarkable that he can change his expression at will from that of the gallant gentleman to the cruel mask of a Nero, or the pomposity and wistful pathos of the doorman in The Last Laugh.

Mr. Jannings feels quite strongly about our American clamor for better and happier endings.

"Why," he wanted to know, "are you Americans always demanding that we have our films conventionalized like yours? Isn't it better to try to create something different and unusual, as we do, instead of having films cut all from the same pattern? Not only do we prefer to achieve originality in our stories, but it is better business for us; it is just because our films are different that they find a market in the United States. Why else should America trouble to import our productions when they make so many pictures themselves?"

He shrugged his massive shoulders in a gesture of interrogation. His shoulders are massive; indeed, though he is only moderately tall, he is so powerfully built that he gives the impression of great size, so that it is easy to understand why he seemed a huge man in such roles as Nero and Peter the Great.

Emil Jannings is very eager to compare our American methods of film production with those employed in Germany. He feels naturally that the Germans have a great deal to learn from us, but that we also could learn much from them.

"I think," said Mr. Jannings, "you do not make use of mirrors in your lighting as we have started to do."

Mirrors, by the way, are an innovation recently evolved by the Ufa company which remarkably lessen production expenses. Instead of building a skyscraper or going away on location to find one, the German company builds the first three or four stories. Then, by surrounding the structure with a series of mirrors, by reflection and counter-reflection, they can make that building seem as tall as the Woolworth tower, if necessary. In the same way, they can build the base of a church and throw the reflection of a steeple on top of it. Of even greater advantage, perhaps — though not to those who seek jobs as extras — is the use of mirrors in mob scenes. Instead of employing five hundred extras, a handful or so can be engaged and, surrounded by mirrors, be made to look like several hundred. Not only, of course, does this save a great deal of money for the company in salaries, but as every one knows, large mobs are very hard to direct.

"So we really have got something to teach you, as well as to learn from you," Mr. Jannings said. "You can see how Ufa's experiments with mirrors work out in our new picture, Metropolis, for which the director, Fritz Lang, and his wife, conceived the idea."

The actor stopped at this point to offer us cigarettes and to light one himself. Forming, as it were, a sort of magic circle around the privileged person of Emil Jannings, we were also permitted to smoke on the Ufa lot. One of the prop men passed by at this moment and exchanged cordial greetings with the actor.

"It's remarkable," my English-speaking friend assured me, "how much liked Mr. Jannings is among all the workmen and minor actors. He is the king of the Ufa lot. Instead of resenting the fact that he can smoke when no one else can, every one in the place would do anything for him."

Well, as I said, you have only to look at him, at that sunny, twinkling smile, to understand why! This magic character from another world is really a very human person after all.

Mr. Jannings went on, then, to tell us of the new film he was making before his departure for America. It was temporarily called, I believe, "The Black Man," and it has to do with a negro with a recipe for a potion which turns him white for a certain period. He falls in love with a white woman, and the climax of the film occurs when he loses the magic formula, turns black again, and is unable to change his color.

"Do you think they will like that in America?" he asked, with another smile, and with the eagerness of one who wishes to please. That, of course, no one could really predict, but there is no doubt, certainly, of the originality of the film. They have imagination, there in Germany, and nowhere is it revealed more clearly than on the Ufa lot.

As to what plans had been made for him in America. Mr. Jannings was unable to say. But from the star of such masterpieces as "Deception." "Passion," "Peter the Great," "Variety," "The Last Laugh," certainly great things should be expected.

And now that we are to learn to know him better, it can be told that he has been married for three years to Gussie Holl, who has herself been famous on the German stage, but who gave up her career in order to concentrate on the furtherance of his.

As for the Ufa studio, that is certainly a fitting kingdom for him — it is a city in itself. To begin with, it occupies a whole town, just outside Berlin, which is called, suitably enough, Neubabelsberg. Not only does it consist of numerous studio buildings, with acres and acres of land, but it is a manufacturing center. Most studios, of course, have their own power plants, and all of them their own wardrobe departments, but Ufa has even its own factory for the arc lights and electrical equipment used in the making of its films.

Then there is the workroom, in which expert artists are engaged in the making of sculpture. The fauns and satyrs and laughing cherubs which gurgle in the fountains on the estate of the rich Mr. So-and-so — all these things are made right in the studio laboratories.

Like many another city, Neubabelsberg has its zoo. One strolls along a little path by a wire inclosure and sees a furred or feathered representative of almost every known country. In one corner, a gaudy peacock spreads its green-and-blue-and-purple tail, while near by is its blond cousin, a white peacock. There are, of course, swans and ducks and pigeons and canaries — all sorts of feathered animals.

There are no signs, as in most zoos, warning you not to feed the monkeys, who chatter up and down their cages. And, if you like, you can pet the little porcupine, who obligingly keeps its quills to itself and, when you put it down, rolls itself up into a little brown ball so that you can't see its head or feet. And there are sheep, and there is a big black sow rooting around in a pen.

It seems that the Germans like animal pictures, and Ufa produces innumerable educational films in which the animals reveal their private lives. There is, for example, a whole cage of butterflies, which was being watched carefully so that cameras would be on hand whenever one started to emerge from its cocoon to begin its flighty career.

Adjacent to the studio grounds are the houses in which many of the workmen live — sculptors, architects, carpenters, electricians, gardeners — and the studio has its own flower and vegetable gardens. Everything one could possibly think of is there.

And in this amazing environment, Emil Jannings is the shining light — the only man who may smoke on the Ufa lot! It is here that he has been working to make you laugh, or to make you cry, or to send shivers of horror down your spine. This is that "other world" in which he lives, where everything is made to order, from the vegetables to the sculpture, where the studio creates everything else, but Jannings creates emotions.

Emil Jannings quite logically reigns as king of the Ufa studio in Berlin. His wife, formerly Gussie Holl of the stage, is here seen with him.

By many Jannings is thought to have created his most impressive characterization in ''Variety," even though his other roles are unforgettable.

So strict are the rules at the Ufa studio that smoking is absolutely forbidden to everyone — but Jannings. And no one resents his especial privilege.

Emil Jannings' great character portrayals in various German films that have been shown in this country are the talk of the screen. His Mephisto in the film version of "Faust," soon to be released, should make history.

Collection: Picture Play Magazine, October 1926