From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Egon Brecher 18 February 1880 12 August 1946 was an AustriaHungaryborn actor and director who also served as the chief director of Viennas 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 cofounder 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 foreignlanguage versions of American films In the mid1930s he appeared in classic horror films The Black Cat Werewolf of London The Black Room Mark of the Vampire and The DevilDoll and worked steadily in the espionage films of the 1930s40s his Slavic accent landing him roles both noble and villainous One of his largest screen roles was in 1946s So Dark the Night He died later in 1946 aged 66 of a heart attack in Los Angeles California