Harry Piel

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Harry Piel around 1928 on a photograph by Alexander Binder

Harry Piel (born July 12, 1892 in Benrath ; † March 27, 1963 in Munich ; actually Heinrich Piel ) was a German director and actor .

Life

Advertisement for the cinema release in Vienna, 1927

After attending the elementary school in Benrath and the grammar school in Derendorf , in 1909 Piel first became a cadet on a sailing training ship , the Grand Duchess Elisabeth , today's Duchesse Anne (a sailing training ship of the same name is now based in the Lower Weser town of Elsfleth ). This was followed by a commercial apprenticeship, which he broke off in 1911 to become an aerobatic pilot in Paris . But a year later he started something new again. In Berlin he founded the “Kunst-Film-Verlags-Gesellschaft” and shot his first feature film Black Blood (1912) with Curt Goetz in the leading role as director, screenwriter and producer in one person . Piel can therefore be regarded as one of the earliest auteur filmmakers .

Further films in the adventure and sensational genre should follow, in which more and more "action" was incorporated. Soon Piel was nicknamed "dynamite director" because he knew a demolition expert who provided him with information about imminent object explosions, which Piel knew how to cleverly incorporate into his films. In 1915, Piel became too bored to be behind the camera and began to act in front of the camera. His attempt to gain a foothold with his own production company Harry Piel & Co. Berlin began and ended in 1915 with the film The Disappeared Los (1915), to which he also contributed the script. The first film with him as the main actor, The Big Bet , can be assigned to the science fiction subject, as he had to deal with so-called “machine people”.

Daredevil scenes of predators were incorporated for the first time in Unter hoter Zone (1916), which Piel was to take up again and again in other films, sometimes after his own training. This was followed by a series of films (1918-1919) about the detective " Joe Deebs " portrayed by Heinrich Schroth . With the film The Great Unknown (1919) he began to become internationally known under the name "Harry Peel". In 1927 he even played a double role with Marlene Dietrich in the film His Biggest Bluff . Also in 1927, Piel married the actress Dary Holm (1897-1960), who also played the leading female role in some of his films. In 1928 Piel founded his fifth company, Ariel-Film, which existed until the nationalization in 1939.

In the war and post-war years there was a popular rhyme: Harry Piel / sits on the Nile / washes the beene (legs) with Persil .

The transition to sound film made Piel no problems with the doppelganger comedy Er oder Ich (1930). Many successful adventure films were to follow by 1939 , such as Shadows of the Underworld (1931), Jonny steals Europe (1932), The ship without a harbor (1932, partly shot in Bremerhaven ), An Invisible Man Goes Through the City (1933), The Dschungel calls (1935) and his best friend (1937). Then, however, difficulties began when the film Panik (1940-43) was banned because of the overly realistic portrayal of air strikes . 72 negatives from his films, including almost all silent films , were destroyed in an air raid. In the final phase of the Second World War , Joseph Goebbels added him to the God-gifted list of actors he needed for his propaganda films . This saved Piel from being deployed in war, including on the home front .

After the collapse of the Third Reich, Harry Piel, who had not only been a member of the NSDAP since 1933 , but had also been a supporting member of the SS and had initially kept this silent, was given six months' imprisonment and a five-year professional ban. After his denazification , Harry Piel then re-founded “Ariel-Film” in Hamburg in 1950, with which, however, he had only moderate success. After one of his last films, Busted Grid (1953), which was shot from a reworked script by Panik , Piel withdrew from the film business. He is buried in the old part of the forest cemetery in Munich .

The actor Ralph Morgenstern (* 1956) is a great-nephew of Harry Piel.

Filmography

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gerhard Lamprecht: German silent films 1915-1916 . Deutsche Kinemathek eV, Berlin 1969, p. 41 .
  2. ^ A b Ernst Klee : The cultural lexicon for the Third Reich. Who was what before and after 1945. S. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 2007, ISBN 978-3-10-039326-5 , p. 457.

Remarks

  1. ↑ During the studio recordings of Panik , 1927, Piel was attacked by a tiger and fell from a height of over five meters. - See: The film actor Harry Piel attacked by a tiger .. In:  Neue Freie Presse , Abendblatt, No. 22708/1927, December 5, 1927, p. 5 middle. (Online at ANNO ).Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nfp
personal data
SURNAME Piel, Harry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Piel, Heinrich (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German director and actor
DATE OF BIRTH July 12, 1892
PLACE OF BIRTH Benrath
DATE OF DEATH March 27, 1963
Place of death Munich