Erik Charell
Erik Charell | |
---|---|
Born | Erich Karl Löwenberg 8 April 1894 Breslau, German Empire |
Died | 15 July 1974 | (aged 80)
Occupation(s) | Actor, director |
Erich Karl Löwenberg (8 April 1894 – 15 July 1974), known as Erik Charell, (Der Kongress tanzt).
Life and career
Charell was born as Erich Karl Löwenberg in Breslau. He was the first child of Jewish parents Markus Löwenberg and Ida Korach. He also had a sister, Betti, who was born in 1886, and a younger brother named Ludwig, who was born in 1889 and later became Charell's manager.
Charell studied dance in Berlin. He was discovered, according to his own account, by the press in 1913 during a performance of the ballet-pantomime Venezianische Abenteuer eines jungen Mannes by playwright Karl Vollmöller in a production of director Max Reinhardt at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin.[2] He founded his own company, the Charell-Ballett, and toured Europe during and after the World War I. The musical director of his company was the young Friedrich Hollaender (later a famous film composer.) In two silent movies, Paul Leni's Prince Cuckoo (1919) and Richard Oswald's Figures of the Night (1920) he demonstrated his brilliance as an actor. Reinhardt appointed Charell as assistant stage manager for the tour production of Vollmöller's The Miracle in New York in 1923. After his return to Germany in 1924, Charell and his brother Ludwig were offered to take over the management of the Großes Schauspielhaus in Berlin, which belonged to Reinhardt's theatre empire, the so called Reinhardt Bühnen.
In 1924 Charell presented his first revue, An Alle. He managed to engage the "Tiller Girls", an internationally famous girl group from London. His aim was to mix German operetta with exotic ingredients such as jazz, "negro music" and "the most enchanting Dancing-Girls with divine legs", in order to show that revue made in Berlin could be "as contemporary as the jazz band, that turns the Siegmund-jodeling and Siegfried-screaching to laughter" and is "as modern as Mozart or the mini-automobile", as Charell's personal friend and PR genius Alfred Flechtheim phrased it in the 1924 article "Vom Ballet zur Revue" in the magazine Der Querschnitt. "Charell wants us to witness the many different facets from all around the world".[3]
This show was followed by the revues Für Dich (1925) and Von Mund zu Mund (1926), which were arranged by composer Ralph Benatzky and contained music by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern and many others.
After the series of revues, Charell began adapting classic operettas such as
Many actors and singers, such as Marlene Dietrich, Joseph Schmidt, Max Hansen and Camilla Spira, who all became famous later, first appeared in major roles in Charell productions. Charell also discovered the boy group Comedian Harmonists and presented them for the first time in Casanova at the Große Schauspielhaus. The reaction of the international press was positive, the New York Times noting that "Erik Charell seems to have done it again. 'Casanova', his latest operetta production at the Grosses Schauspielhaus, is filling this huge circus to its stylized rafters".[4] After this string of stage successes, Charell moved on to the new and innovative genre of
When the
In 1936, Charell staged a successful
Spurred by the success of White Horse Inn, Charell adapted Shakespeare's
After the war, Charell returned to Europe. In Munich he had a big success with the musical comedy Feuerwerk (music by Paul Burkhard) at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz. The song O mein Papa became an international hit. In the 1950s, Charell created a stage version of Der Kongreß tanzt, which was performed in France, but the French public was not enthusiastic. His two big film productions were The White Horse Inn with Nazi operetta star Johannes Heesters in 1952, and Fireworks with Lilli Palmer and the young Romy Schneider in 1954. After failing to write a sequel to The White Horse Inn with his original librettist
In 1969 he received the German movie prize, the
His collection of Lautrec-lithographs was sold by Sotheby's in 1978.
The Schwules Museum Berlin dedicated an exhibition to Charell and his work from 7 July to 27 September 2010. It was curated by Kevin Clarke.
On 18 November 2015, Friedrichstadt-Palast Berlin inaugurated a memorial at Friedrichstraße 107 dedicated to the theatre's founders, Max Reinhardt, Hans Poelzig and Erik Charell.
Nudity on stage
When Charell visited New York for the first time, working at the Century Theatre for Max Reinhardt, he was impressed and inspired by the American revues, especially the
Especially the sexually provocative sketches between the songs made his reviews and revue operettas famous. The comedians Claire Waldoff and Wilhelm Bendow were hired to perform slapstick and dialectic humour similar of the likes of Charlie Chaplin and Karl Valentin. They provided an ironic view on different topics and cheeky 'hidden' references to e.g. sex practices of heteros and homosexuals. Besides, there were also jokes about sexuality woven into the song texts by the lyricists. This made the heterosexual audience laugh, especially those who understood the insider jokes, and it especially catered to the homosexual crowd. Bendow was particularly famous for his camp acting and double entendres. Furthermore, on Charell used sexually suggestive imagery, like in Von Mund zu Mund in which ancient Roman soldiers were portrayed semi-naked holding lances and swords.[21]
Charell revolutionized the German musical theatre by developing the idea of 'staged nudity' further than had been standard until then. He discovered modern female chorus lines in New York and was the first to bring them to Berlin, where they fuelled his stunning success. When the other theatre managers tried to copy Charell and also hired female chorus groups, they presented them as nude as possible. While the fight over who had the 'most naked' women in Berlin was raging, Charell's staging of nudity moved into a wholly different direction: when the audience became tired and bored of a straightforward display of naked bodies ("Yes, we are all pretty tired of those flesh exhibitions. The audience is sated with thighs. Not to mention, how fed up we are of the mass display of female bosoms."),[22] he started to artfully arrange the nudity. Charell wanted "to reawaken aesthetic feelings" in the spectator "by artistic composition".[23] In addition and as a contrast to the omnipresent female nudity, Charell also hired boy groups, e.g. the Tyrolean dancers, the "Schuhplattler and Watschentänzer", for Im weißen Rössl, or the "Jackson" and the "Sunshine Boys". In the first case homoeroticism is quite obvious, the tabloid newspaper BZ am Mittag noting "juicy guys in leather trousers, who slap each other in time. [...] My God, they have the right cheeks for it!"
Charell also used famous male sex symbols in his operettas, like
Even though Charell's revues were inspired by America and England, this kind of nudity and sexual liberation was only found in Berlin during the Roaring Twenties. After 1933, the Nazis suppressed such most of the sexual freedom in operetta, because it was seen as "Jewish" and "degenerate". Unfortunately, 1945 the German operetta scene never returned to the liberated ideals of the 1920s and adapted many of the famous shows from that era to fit the new 'innocent' style of the post-war period. This eventually led Charell to leave the theatre and film business entirely, and focus on his art collection instead.
Film and stage work
Actor
- 1919 Prince Cuckoo, Director: Paul Leni
- 1920 Figures of the Night, Director: Richard Oswald
Stage director
- 1924 An Alle! "Die große Schau im großen Schauspielhaus in zwei Akten und zwanzig Bildern", with music by Ralph Benatzky, Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern et al.
- 1925 Für Dich (revue)
- 1926 Von Mund zu Mund (revue)
- 1927 Der Mikado (adaptation of the Gilbert & Sullivan opera)
- 1927 Madame Pompadour (adaptation of the Leo Fall operetta)
- 1928 in the leading roles)
- 1928 Casanova, with music by Ralph Benatzky and Johann Strauss, at the Grosse Schauspielhaus Berlin, with Michael Bohnen in the title role
- 1929 Drei Musketiere, with music by Ralph Benatzky, at the Grosse Schauspielhaus Berlin, with Siegfried Arno
- 1930 Im weißen Rössl, with music by Ralph Benatzky, at the Grosse Schauspielhaus Berlin, with Max Hansen, Siegfried Arno and Camilla Spira
- 1936 The White Horse Inn, with Kitty Carlisle at the Center Theatre, New York
- 1939 Swingin' the Dream, with music by Jimmy Van Heusen
- 1950 Feuerwerk, with music by Paul Burkhard, at the Staatstheater am Gärtnerplatz
Film director
- 1931 Werner Richard Heymann
- 1934 Werner Richard Heymann
Producer
- 1952 The White Horse Inn (dir. Willi Forst), with Johannes Heesters
- 1954 Fireworks (dir. Kurt Hoffmann), with Lilli Palmer, Karl Schönböck and Romy Schneider
References
- ^ Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1960, 1963-1974 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009.
- ^ Hennenberg, Fritz, Ralph Benatzky. Operette auf dem Weg zum Musical, Wien 2009.
- ^ Flechtheim, Alfred, "Vom Ballett zur Revue", in: Alfred Flechtheim: »Nun mal Schluß mit den blauen Picassos!«. Sämtliche Schriften, published by Rudolf Schmitt-Föller, Bonn, Weidle Verlag 2010, p. 210-215. http://www.ralph-benatzky.com/main.php?cat=4&sub_cat=10&task=3&art_id=000333 Archived 1 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Trask, C. Hooper, "But the Germans Like It", in: The New York Times, 4 November 1928 http://www.ralph-benatzky.com/main.php?cat=4&sub_cat=10&task=3&art_id=000093 Archived 1 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
- ^ "The fictitious death of a non-arian", in: Pariser Tageszeitung, 3 October 1937.
- ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 30 September 2022.
- ^ Atkinson, Brooks, "'With Horse Inn', an Elaborate Musical Show, Opens the Season in Rockefeller City", in: The New York Times, 2 October 1936. http://www.ralph-benatzky.com/main.php?task=30&page=6&art_id=000069 Archived 1 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Coleman, Robert, "White Horse Inn", in: The Daily Mirror, 2 October 1936. http://www.ralph-benatzky.com/main.php?task=30&page=8&art_id=000040 Archived 1 March 2014 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ "Swingin' The Dream". Playbill.com. Playbill, Inc. 29 November 1939. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
Book: Erik Charell, Gilbert Seldes; Lyrics: Eddie De Lange
- ^ Berg, Marita, " »Det Jeschäft ist richtig!« Die Revueoperetten des Erik Charell", in: Musik-Konzepte, Heft 133/134. Im weißen Rössl. Zwischen Kunst und Kommerz, published by Ulrich Tadday, edition text + kritik in Richard Boorberg Verlag, 2006, p. 76-77.
- ^ "Swingin' The Dream". Playbill.com. Playbill, Inc. 29 November 1939. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
W. C. Handy: Music for "St. Louis Blues"; Thomas "Fats" Waller: Music for "Ain't Misbehavin'"; Count Basie: Music for "Jumpin' at the Woodside"; Lionel Hampton: Music for "Flying Home", etc.
- ^ Atkinson, Brooks, "Swingin' Shakespeare's Dream", in: The New York Times, 30 November 1939.
- ^ "How Swingin' the Dream began". rsc.org.uk. Royal Shakespeare Company. January 2021. Retrieved 26 January 2021.
Watch Kwame Kwei-Armah, Artistic Director of the Young Vic in London, Jeffrey Horowitz, Founding Artistic Director of the Theatre for a New Audience in New-York, and our Artistic Director Gregory Doran, talk about Swingin' The Dream and how it all came about.
- ^ https://www.gallery.ca/en/see/exhibitions/events/exhibition_details/1466/lang:en [bare URL]
- ^ Drews, Wolfgang, "Letzter Gruß für Eric [sic] Charell", in: Tagesspiegel, 24 July 1974.
- ^ Reports of Deaths of American Citizens Abroad, 1960, 1963-1974 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2009.
- ^ Berg, Marita, " »Det Jeschäft ist richtig!« Die Revueoperetten des Erik Charell", in: Musik-Konzepte, Heft 133/134. Im weißen Rössl. Zwischen Kunst und Kommerz, published by Ulrich Tadday, edition text + kritik in Richard Boorberg Verlag, 2006, p. 61-69.
- ^ Flechtheim, Alfred, "Vom Ballett zur Revue", in: Der Querschnitt: Facsimile Querschnitt durch den Querschnitt 1921-1936, published by Wilmont Haacke and Alexander von Baeyer, Frankfurt am Maain/Berlin/Wien, 1977.
- ^ Flechtheim, Alfred, "Vom Ballett zur Revue", in: Der Querschnitt: Facsimile Querschnitt durch den Querschnitt 1921-1936, published by Wilmont Haacke and Alexander von Baeyer, Frankfurt am Maain/Berlin/Wien, 1977.
- ^ Berg, Marita, " »Det Jeschäft ist richtig!« Die Revueoperetten des Erik Charell", in: Musik-Konzepte, Heft 133/134. Im weißen Rössl. Zwischen Kunst und Kommerz, published by Ulrich Tadday, edition text + kritik in Richard Boorberg Verlag, 2006, p. 61-69.
- ^ Berg, Marita, " »Det Jeschäft ist richtig!« Die Revueoperetten des Erik Charell", in: Musik-Konzepte, Heft 133/134. Im weißen Rössl. Zwischen Kunst und Kommerz, published by Ulrich Tadday, edition text + kritik in Richard Boorberg Verlag, 2006, p. 61-69.
- ^ Flechtheim, Alfred, "Vom Ballett zur Revue", in: Der Querschnitt: Facsimile Querschnitt durch den Querschnitt 1921-1936, published by Wilmont Haacke and Alexander von Baeyer, Frankfurt am Maain/Berlin/Wien, 1977.
External links
- Erik Charell at IMDb