Lothar Mendes

From Wikipedia the free encyclopedia Lothar Mendes 19 May 1894 25 February 1974 was a Germanborn screenwriter and film director who began his career as an actor in Vienna and Berlin in Max Reinhardts famous troupe He went to America in the early 1920s and there he remained until 1933 directing more than a dozen features mostly frothy comedies while under contract to Paramount His films included the last silent film made in America The Four Feathers 1929 and the murder mystery Payment Deferred 1933 starring British expatriate Charles Laughton After Hitler ascended to power Mendes travelled to Britain in 1934 to work at GaumontBritish Pictures directing films with Sir Michael Balcon producing Under that banner he directed Jew Süss 1934 starring one of Germanys most famous emigre actors Conrad Veidt Mendes Jew Suss is not to be confused with the later Nazi film of the same title 1940 which is a Reichmade virulently antiSemitic film that deliberately contorted the exiled GermanJewish writer Lion Feuchtwangers original novel of the same name on which Mendes film was based Mendes 1934 film version of Feuchtwangers novel received strong notices at the time and was considered an important and early film in exposing the origins of the violent antisemitism of the thennewly empowered Nazi Party in particular it was praised by Albert Einstein and the Jewish American leader Rabbi Stephen Wise who encouraged its distribution in America under the title Power though the film itself did not attract an audience in Depression America In 1936 Mendes directed his bestknown film the HG Wells short story The Man Who Could Work Miracles 1936 starring Sir Ralph Richardson for which Wells himself cowrote the adaptation His last British film was Moonlight Sonata aka The Charmer and starred the aging piano legend Paderewski as himself its notable for containing rare performance footage of the legendary pianist then in exile from his native Nazioccupied Poland By 1941 Mendes had returned to Hollywood where he codirected the proBritish International Squadron 1941 one of several films on the Eagle Squadron of American pilots who volunteered to fly in the Battle of Britain before the US entered the war His last feature films were patriotic World War II fare with such stars as Rosalind Russell as a Navy reconnaissance pilot who must fly one more mission before getting married in Flight for Freedom 1943 and Edward G Robinson as a man who may or may not have married a spy in Tampico 1944 He retired from films in 1946 and the remaining decades of his life remain murky A competent dependable director comments film historian Larry Langman he never achieved the critical success in America that came to some of his compatriots