JANNINGS, EMIL

born July 23, 1884, Rorschach, Switz. died Jan. 2, 1950, Strobl, near Salzburg, Austria original name Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz internationally known German actor famous for his tragic roles in motion pictures. Jannings was reared in Grlitz, Austria, where he began his stage career. He joined a traveling stock company and in 1906 began acting for Max Reinhardt, the leading German theatrical director, in Berlin. He started appearing in motion pictures in about 1915. In 1924 the film The Last Laugh, directed by F.W. Murnau, brought him his best-remembered role as an aging hotel doorman demoted to the position of washroom attendant; in Variety (1925) he was a married sideshow operator deceived by a woman trapeze artist; and in The Blue Angel (1930), which introduced the sultry leading lady Marlene Dietrich, he was an aging professor hopelessly in love with a young nightclub singer. Critics acclaimed Jannings as one of the finest actors in the world on the basis of these three motion pictures. In 1929 Jannings won the first Academy Award for acting for his performances in the American-made films The Way of All Flesh (1928), in which he played an embittered family man, and The Last Command (1928), in which he was an exiled Russian general reduced to playing bit parts in war films. Returning to Germany, Jannings continued to work in films during the Nazi regime and afterward.