profile image

Egon Brecher

Feb 15, 1880 - Aug 12, 1946 (66 years old) in Olmütz, Moravia, Austria-Hungary [now Olomouc, Czech Republic]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Egon Brecher (18 February 1880 – 12 August 1946) was an Austria-Hungary-born actor and director, who also served as the chief director of Vienna's Stadts Theatre, before entering the motion picture industry.

The son of a professor, Brecher began studying philosophy in 1900 at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He did not finish his studies, deciding to become an actor. He appeared on several provincial stages in Germany and Austria until 1910, and then played in Vienna on various occasions, directed by Josef Jarno until 1921.

In 1907, he founded an initiative (which lasted for something like one or two years) to play modern Yiddish theatre in German language with Siegfried Schmitz and members of the student club ‘Theodor Herzl’ like Hugo Zuckermann and Oskar Rosenfeld. In 1919 he was co-founder of the Freie Jüdische Volksbühne in Vienna, a Yiddish theatre, which existed for three years.

Then, in 1921, he moved to New York to act on Broadway. He moved to Hollywood in the late 1920s to appear in foreign-language versions of American films. In the mid-1930s he appeared in classic horror films The Black Cat, Werewolf of London, The Black Room, Mark of the Vampire and The Devil-Doll, and worked steadily in the espionage films of the 1930s/40s, his Slavic accent landing him roles both noble and villainous. One of his largest screen roles was in 1946's So Dark the Night. He died later in 1946, aged 66, of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California.

Known For

poster
Rebecca
Hotel Desk Clerk (uncredited)
poster
The Black Cat
The Majordomo
poster
Charlie Chan's Secret
Ulrich
poster
To the Last Man
Mark Hayden
poster
Suez
Doctor
poster
Heidi
Inn Keeper
poster
You and Me
Mr. Levine
poster
Underground
Herr Director
poster
Mission to Moscow
Heinrich Sahm (uncredited)
poster
Man Hunt
Jeweler

Credits