Home >

Egon Brecher

Egon Brecher

Birthday: 1880-02-16 | Place of Birth: Olmütz, Moravia, Austria-Hungary [now Olomouc, Czech Republic]

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Egon Brecher (18 February 1880 – 12 August 1946) was an Austria-Hungary-born actor and director, who also served as the chief director of Vienna's Stadts Theatre, before entering the motion picture industry. The son of a professor, Brecher began studying philosophy in 1900 at the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He did not finish his studies, deciding to become an actor. He appeared on several provincial stages in Germany and Austria until 1910, and then played in Vienna on various occasions, directed by Josef Jarno until 1921. In 1907, he founded an initiative (which lasted for something like one or two years) to play modern Yiddish theatre in German language with Siegfried Schmitz and members of the student club ‘Theodor Herzl’ like Hugo Zuckermann and Oskar Rosenfeld. In 1919 he was co-founder of the Freie Jüdische Volksbühne in Vienna, a Yiddish theatre, which existed for three years. Then, in 1921, he moved to New York to act on Broadway. He moved to Hollywood in the late 1920s to appear in foreign-language versions of American films. In the mid-1930s he appeared in classic horror films The Black Cat, Werewolf of London, The Black Room, Mark of the Vampire and The Devil-Doll, and worked steadily in the espionage films of the 1930s/40s, his Slavic accent landing him roles both noble and villainous. One of his largest screen roles was in 1946's So Dark the Night. He died later in 1946, aged 66, of a heart attack in Los Angeles, California.

...

Known For

Acting

Year
Title

Role

1946
So Dark the Night

as    Dr. Boncourt

1946
Just Before Dawn

as    Dr. Evans (uncredited)

1946
The Diary of a Chambermaid

as    The Postman (Uncredited)

1945
White Pongo

as    Dr. Gerig

1945
Voice of the Whistler

as    Dr. Rose (replaced by Frank Reicher) (uncredited)

1942
For the Common Defense!

as    Adolph (uncredited)

1942
Isle of Missing Men

as    Richard Heller

1940
I Was an Adventuress

as    Jacques Dubois

1936
Boulder Dam

as    Pa Vangarick

1936
Till We Meet Again

as    Schultz

1936
Alibi for Murder

as    Sir Conrad Stava

1936
Charlie Chan's Secret

as    Ulrich

1934
The Black Cat

as    The Majordomo

1933
To the Last Man

as    Mark Hayden