Word: basserman
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...Alexander Korda, the British movie mogul, signed her to a seven-year, nonexclusive contract. The late great Albert Basserman dragged her off on a tour of Europe to play Gretchen to his Faust. By 1950 she was in a flood tide of some of the weepiest (and most popular) German pictures ever made. This was her Seelchenperiode as a leidender Engel (suffering angel), the shopgirl's ideal, when the Schell smile was as famous in Germany as the Monroe walkaway was in the U.S. Maria and Dieter Borsche, with whom she was starred in Es Kommt Ein Tag, were...
...plays Dreyfus. His acting style is so restrained that he just does not register any sort of emotion. Heinrich George, as Zola, has the same trouble; his performance consists almost entirely of grunts and a flood of impassioned but unconvincing oratory. Only one actor, the great German performer Albert Basserman, manages to bring his character to life. In the role of an officer who believes in Dreyfus' innoccence, he plays with a dignity that is entirely effective...
Died. Albert Basserman, 84, whose possession of the celebrated Iffland Ring* marked him as the foremost actor of German-speaking Europe; of a heart attack, soon after his plane from the U.S. landed in Zurich, Switzerland. In 1939, after the Nazis failed to persuade him to divorce his non-Aryan wife, Actress Else Schiff, Basserman at 72 fled with her to Switzerland and the U.S., started life all over again in Hollywood, acted with memorable brilliance in such movies as Dr. Ehrlich's Magic Bullet, The Moon and Sixpence, Rhapsody in Blue...
...Named for Vienna Actor August Wilhelm Iffland (1759-1814), who, smitten with a younger actor's performance, presented him with the ring, instructed him to name his own successor in the next generation. Although Iffland wanted his token of stage greatness passed on forever, Basserman, who got the ring in 1908, sadly decided that it was cursed after three actors, to whom he successively planned to give it, all died, shortly thereafter. In 1946 he gave the heirloom to Vienna's Municipal Museum...
Some of the secondary characters, such as music publisher Max Dreyfuss (Charles Coburn), and one of Gershwin's teachers (Albert Basserman), have been carefully reduced to outworn types. In these cases Dreyfuss represents the lure of financial success, and the old teacher stands for true art. Conversely, Papa Gershwin (Morris Carnovsky) has had his personal eccentricities exaggerated to the bursting point. There is no consistency in the incongruity...