1897-1952
Prague born actor and director Karel Lamac (sometime credited as "Carl") was born on this day in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire in the cosmopolitan city of Prague. His mother was a well known opera singer, and his father was a successful pharmacist. As a child he had interests in both pharmacology and stage work. His first foray into the work of camera operations came as an apprentice to a German camera manufacturing company in Dresden; it would not only mark his beginnings as a photographer, but also his long association with Germany as a country. His work at the company came to close with the outbreak of World War I, during which he became an in-field combat photographer. After the war, he made his first steps toward becoming the well known director he is today remembered for; he went to work at a film laboratory as a technical director. He made his debut in films in the year 1919, his debut as director (in which he was also an actor) in the Czech language Akord smrti (August 1919) would have been his first professional film credit, if he had not first acted in the comedy Aloisuv los, which was released in February of 1919. He would act in five films before taking up the director's chair again in 1920. One of those films was the Joe Jencik film Palimpsest (1919) which had Lamac (credited as "Carl") acting opposite Anny Ondra--a fateful pairing, as he would go on to have both a personal and deep professional relationship with, becoming both her life partner, and her business partner for several years. His next turn in the directing chair was also his first solo outing as a director (a film that also saw his first screenplay produced); Gilly poprvé v Praze (1920) was comedy also starring Lamac and Ondra with Václav Prazsky as the only other cast member. In between this and his next directing job, he and Ondra appeared in several films together, including the Jan S. Kolár fantasy horror picture The Arrival from the Darkness (October 1921) based on novel by Czech language fantasy writer Karel Hloucha. Lamac was added to the direction of Kolár next film, the science fiction crime drama about an illusionist Otrávené svetlo in 1921, which he and Kolár also wrote. By the mid-1920's he was adept at directing himself and Ondra in a variety of different styles and genres, and had even written a book on how to write a good screenplay--which he called film librettos (love that!)--in 1923. An excellent example of his work during this time occupying actor/writer/director is Bíly ráj (White Paradise), which sported some scenes that were carefully tinted.
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| In White Paradise with Anny Ondra and Czech actress Sasa Dobrovolná as the mother. |
Lamac was equally at home (and probably more talented at) directing comedies and goodly portion of his films from the 1920's in Czechoslovakia were indeed comedy productions. They ranged from farces written directly by Lamac, to screen adaptations of successful plays. Also during this time, screenwriter Václav Wasserman became a writing partner. In 1926 he was the co-founder of a physical film studio in Kavalírka, where he made films until it was unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1929. During this time, the studio housed his personal production company that simply used his name as the company logo. Starting in 1928, he and Ondra also began making joint productions between Germany and Czechoslovakia, with Evas Töchter (April 1928) being the first. His very next film, Der erste Kuß (September 1928) was a fully German affair. Also in 1928, the pair had a run away success with Suzy Saxophone, an intensely physical comedy that was filmed very much like a musical without the actual singing; made all the more so with art direction by Carl Ludwig Kirmse (the film was remade twice by the pair in 1932/1933--one version in German, and the other in French). His last film of the 1920's was the fully silent German production The Virgin of Paris (Die Kaviarprinzessin), released in December of 1929. His first film in the decade, was also his first full sound film: Das Mädel aus U.S.A. another comedy and the last film that Lamac made before founding another familial production company. In early 1930, he and Ondra founded the company Ondra-Lamac-Film, releasing Fair People in August of that year. The two would only remain a together for as a couple for a few years after this. Though, the pair did continue to work together, and their production company remained in existence as well. His first film after their split was, I believe, his very first full sound Czech film Dobry tramp Bernásek in late 1933, starring...Karel Lamac. Ondra would go on to marry famed German boxer Max Schmeling...this is how Ondra, and by association Lamac, came to be associated with the Nazi cinema. The overtures made by the Nazi regime to the newly married couple are famous, many of the breath taking number of films Lamac made during the 1930's were in Germany or Austria and have become associated with the rising Nazi threat to the rest of Europe. But he also continued to make films in his native Czechoslovakia during this time; and, increasingly in France as well. Lamac, though, had to flee his home land for The Netherlands when the Nazi's occupied Czechoslovakia and he made one film there (I love train films and it sports one of my favorite film posters!): De spooktrein (September 1939) [The horror genre was not new for him, he was well known for making an expressionistic version of The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1937.] He then went to the U.K. where in wound up in the RAF from 1941 until 1946 and served, in part, by making war documentaries. He also made commerical films in Britain, the first of which was It Started at Midnight in 1943. He next directed James Mason in the mystery thriller They Met in the Dark (1943). After his discharge from the RAF, he left for post-war France, where he made Rita in 1947. Between 1948 and 1952, he spent time in the United States specifically studying innovations in color filmming and learning how to shoot with new color films, but he never made a film during his tenure in the States. He returned to the German speaking world, specifically to what was then West Germany, to make The Thief of Bagdad in 1952; all indications were that he wished the film to be a color extravaganza, but it wound up in black and white, most likely due to the state of the film industry there at the time. His last completed film, The Comedian, was released in November of 1953 in West Germany, posthumously. Lamac had died from cardiac arrest brought on by some sort of long lasting kidney ailment on the 2nd of August of 1952 in Hamburg. He was just 55. He is buried at the Ohlsdorfer Friedhof there. Six years after his death, some of his short film material was included as a segment in Unsterblicher Valentin (1958). Lamac never did get the chance to make that post-war color film he was working on.
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