Customer Reviews (1)

Peter Lorre: Great book of rare photos
This book, though thin, contains many great pictures of the legendary character actor Peter Lorre as well as some decent mini biographical information. Particularly interesting is the picture of him as Napoleon, a person he desperately wanted to portray on film yet sadly the opportunity naver materialized. Highly recommended to any fan of Lorre's. ... Read more

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4 AUDIO CASSETTE TAPES ... Read more

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A small collection of 5 nice original 8" x 10" stills & portrait photographs of Peter Lorre. There is 1 nice portrait of him holding a gun, from an unidentified film, portrait of him and Brian Donlevy from "Crack-Up" 1 scene still of him with Raymond Massey, Josephine Hull & Jean Adair in "Arsenic And Old Lace" & 1 still of him with Sydney Greenstreet in "The Mask Of Dimitrios" which has a old tape mend to the verso and 1 scene still of him drinking as an unknown actor looks on from "Hotel Berlin". All the stills are vg. Sold as a collection only. ... Read more

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Imagination runs riot in this dramatic collection of chillers that will have the family huddled around the radio. This volume’s episodes include “‘Til Death Do Us Part” (12/15/42), with Peter Lorre; “I Won’t Take a Minute” (12/6/46), with Lee Bowman; “A Friend to Alexander” (8/3/43), with Robert Young; “Chicken Feed” (9/8/49), with Ray Milland; “Marry for Murder” (9/9/43), with Lillian Gish; “Tree of Life” (1/2/47), with Mark Stevens; “The Pit and the Pendulum” (11/28/47), with Jose Ferrer; and “Sell Me Your Life” (2/15/45), with Lee Bowman. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Tales of Suspense!
Those ominous chimes! Each week listeners of old time radio awaited them eagerly for what they knew would be another solid tale of mystery and suspense. "Suspense" was certainly one of the finest radio shows ever broadcast into homes. Roma Wines and Autolite became houshold names because they sponsored radio's best written show of its kind.

Famous stars of the day were always delighted to appear on "Suspense." It was not only great exposure between film releases, but offered a chance to stretch their acting skills. Those stars are in evidence here in this collection. Even stars associated with silent film, such as Lillian Gish, thrilled audiences in dark tales of crime and sometimes the supernatural.

The eight shows in volume 10 are as follows: The Pit and the Pendulum -- (Jose Ferrer), Sell Me Your Life -- (Lee Bowman), Chicken Feed -- (Ray Milland), A Friend to Alexander -- (Robert Young and Geraldine Fitzgerald), Marry for Murder -- (Lillian Gish), Tree of Life -- (Marc Stevens), Till Death Do Us Part -- (Peter Lorre), I Won't Take a Minute -- (Lee Bowman)

Star power and tense and involving stories combined to make "Suspense" one of the most enduring shows ever to rule the airwaves. A fantastic starter kit for those new to the medium or a nice addition to the radio buff's collection. ... Read more

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9" x 12 " From the RKO-Radio Picture (In a Mystery With Music) "You'll Find Out" starring Kay Kyser. Featured on the cover: Peter Lorre, Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, Ginny Simms and Kay Kyser. ... Read more

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An epic tale of a powerful Hollywood in the 1940s assembles a huge collection of moguls, agents, directors, starlets, writers, gossip columnists, and a great film director named Rudolf Von Beckmann, all of whom converge on a small town to make a film. First serial, Partisan Review. Amazon.com Review
Pandaemonium was John Milton's invention, the capital of Hell where one of literature's great antiheroes, Satan, ruled his mob of fallen angels. Pandaemonium is Leslie Epstein's invention, a fevered mix of highbrow literary references wrapped in lowbrow comedy, a place where Hollywood directors mingle with German dictators, resulting in--well, you know. The novel's narrators are pulled straight from Hollywood history; the first, actor Peter Lorre, relates the events surrounding a performance of Antigone scheduled to be staged in Salzburg shortly before the Anschluss. Lorre, cast as Antigone's groom opposite the alluring Magda Mezaray, hopes this performance will release him from the string of B movies in which he starred as Japanese detective Mr. Moto. His hopes are dashed when the play is interrupted by an assassination attempt on one of the spectators, Adolph Hitler himself. The play's director, Rudolph Von Beckmann, is held responsible and taken to Vienna to explain things to Joseph Goebbels.

Pandaemonium then returns to Hollywood where, upon his return from an internment camp in Europe, Von Beckmann's plans to make a great Western become inextricably tangled with labyrinthine studio politics and Lorre's attempts to shed his association with Mr. Moto. The second narrator, gossip columnist Louella Parsons, takes up the tale, chronicling Lorre and Von Beckmann's return to Europe in search of Magda. By the time Epstein reaches the filming of Von Beckmann's Western, his fictional landscape resembles Milton's Hell very closely indeed. Pandaemonium is funny, ambitious, and makes for wickedly good reading. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (7)

Not even worth that dollar
Putting the stain of shame on his forbears (Julius & Phil Epstein, authors of such classic screenplays as Casablanca, The Male Animal, Arsenic & Old Lace, etc.), Leslie Epstein's Pandaemonium purports to be the story of the disaster-filled movie of that name, which in turn is actually Sophocles' Antigone done as a Western!, in the desert town of the same name, "as told by" (sometimes) one Lazlo Lowenstein, better known to most of us as Peter Lorre.This allows Epstein to continue perpetrating the lie of Lorre's alleged cocaine addiction, with Lorre always reaching into his pockets for his "magic dust".However, Stephen Youngkin's biography of Lorre, The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre, exhaustively researched for over 25 years, proves such claims are lies - Lorre was actually addicted to morphine & Youngkin's book has the proof as provided from FOI docs involvingHarry J. Anslinger & the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (precursor to today's DEA).But there are many more inaccuracies in this book than space to mention them all. The plot: Film pioneer gone mad wants to make a film in the middle of the desert, and the cast and crew seem to go crazy from the heat and thirst & there seems to be a murder or two but the film gets made, after a fashion. Hitler-era Germany & Austria figure in the book and the decimation of Jews during the 1930's and 1940's is offensively symbolized within the movie in the form of cowboys (Nazis) versus Injuns (Jews). On board a plane flying out to the desert location a Japanese coroner from L A tells Lorre of the plot to bomb Pearl Harbor, claiming a Mr Moto movie has inspired Emperor Hirohito! Then some other stuff happens.Can the reader care about it?No. The End.Celia Lovsky, Lorre's wife at the time, is missing here so that faux-Lorre can get boringly fondled by Rochelle Hudson.Plenty of other real-life film stars of the era are maligned as characters besides Lorre. The 1934 film Mrs Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch is supposedly going into production in 1942 in this book.And so on. If you're going to involve historical events and people who actually walked the earth not too long ago, Mr. Epstein, do a little research! But alas, the writing is the main problem here.Epstein is so pedestrian, uninteresting, dull, plodding, filled with page after page of excessive descriptions that make Dostoyevsky seem like an author of blank verse.Nearly 400 pages of stultifying snooze-fuel.Less than one star.

Aptly titled -- chaos, indeed
Boy, I really wanted to like it much more than I did.Novels about Hollywood which feature actual personalities are rarely successful, no matter how much insider knowledge is involved.I found that I couldn't finish it, even though I had less than 50 pages left to go.Life is too short.

It could have been SO MUCH BETTER
Casting Peter Lorre as the cynical voice of Hollywood was a brilliant stroke in Epstein's part. Unfortunately, the execution fails, as his depiction of Lorre, and for that matter ALL THE CHARACTERS, leave much to be desired.
I agree with a few reviews already written about this book: Epstein tries WAY TO HARD to get his message across, and in the process falls flat. For me this book was heavy and dull, up until they get to the cult-like town of Pandaemonium, where it does pick up the pace and becomes quite the page turner. And I did feel much sympathy for poor Peter Lorre, when he turns from being a Japanesse sleuth to a Cassandra, preaching of destructions to come.
The POV switch was as much an annoyance as (I'm sorry to say this) the Epstein twins. And the "it smells like almonds" jokes were not funny to begin with. The fact that this joke pops up quite frequently throughout the whole book is enough to make you cringe.
One last rant: every single character in this book is selfish and despicable. I hated each and every one of them. Now there's nothing wrong with hating characters. The Maltese Falcon is a prime example of characters you LOVE to hate.
But no, these characters you just simply hate.
Epstein did good when he penned King of the Jews. What happened here is a mystery.

Not as much fun as one might expect
The idea of Peter Lorre as narrator of this book promises to be a funny one. But I think those of a certain age, who have the hysterical voice of Rocky Rococo indelibly ringing in our ears, will be disappointed. I was. The author doesn't really capture that Peter Lorre. His coyness about his drug abuse and sexual hi-jinks lacked an expected leering quality. His cringings were ordinary rather than epic. I won't say the portrayal is a failure as he has a certain presence. But for someone so colorful in our memory he is rather flat on the page. Most of the alleged humor in the book is similarly drab.

This is a pretty good book nonetheless. The events leading to those set in the dessert provide many a memorable occasion for compulsive reading. The intricate episode when, as he is being interrogated by Goebbels the imperious Von Beckmann, flashes back to his travels into the Jewish villages of Europe revealing his true origins to us, is masterfully done.

But the culmination of the book, the grim antics on location in Death Valley are outlandish and unbelievable. The cult atmosphere as described is jarringly anachronistic; more reminiscent of Charlie Manson than Hitler. Yet we are explicitly directed by the author to take these as analogous to the Nazi madness of the era.

I wrote this to try and understand what to make of this book. My expectations for it were disappointed at every turn. Yet it held my interest right up to the final chapters. But these desert episodes seem totally misguided; And worse, predictable. Yet I admired much of the writing. I guess those who read of my still unresolved dilemma regarding this book may take it as a warning.

Funny, wicked look at pre WWII Hollywood
A really human portrait of mixing the personal and the political in the name of artistic endeavors, I found this book to be a wonderful read about Hollywood in its heyday. In the same way the author was unafraid to take onthe Holocaust and protray it in the language of human survival for King ofthe Jews, Epstein is also unafraid to be both funny and frightening in thisnovel. ... Read more

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Radio program from the 1940's starring Peter Lorre.This episode,written by Herbert Clyde Lewis,begins with Lorre playing a criminal who walks into a police station and pulls a gun on all the police! ... Read more