Conrad Veidt born 22 January 1893 (d. 1943)Conrad Veidt was a German actor, well known for his roles in such films as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari (1920) and Casablanca (1942).
He was born Hans Walter Conrad Veidt in Potsdam, Germany. In the 27 years between 1916 and his death, he managed to act in well over 100 movies, some of them classics, several of them highly significant cinema landmarks.
His starring role in The Man Who Laughs (1928) [left] was the inspiration for Batman's greatest enemy, The Joker. Veidt appeared in Magnus Hirschfeld's pioneering homosexual-rights film Anders als die Andern (Different from the Others, 1919) - credited as being the first gay movie - and in Das Land ohne Frauen (1929), Germany's first talking picture.
Veidt was vehemently anti-Nazi in his beliefs and he fled Germany in 1933, no longer safe. Bisexual but married twice before, he married a Jewish woman, Illona Prager, and a week afterward departed Germany forever. For a man so actively opposed to the Third Reich it is ironic that he is best known for playing Nazis in both All Through The Night and Casablanca. Settling in Britain he continued making films, notably three with director Michael Powell: The Spy in Black (1939), Contraband (1940) and The Thief of Bagdad (1940). Perhaps most tellingly, he also made the movie Jew Suss which was a satire of Nazi anti-Semitism. Although it was not a success with audiences, it did succeed in angering Josef Goebbels who banned all of Veidt's films from Germany.
He later moved to Hollywood, and starred in a few films but he is most well known in this period for playing the Nazi Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (1943). He died of a heart attack a year later, while playing golf in Los Angeles, possibly as a result of his heavy smoking, aged just 50.