By Gary Deane
“Everyone has a chance. Mine came today and I won’t let go of it.”
It’s a shadowy and harrowing tale, passionately told by its author, Austrian Alexander Lernet-Holenia, in his best-selling novel, Ich war Jack Mortimer (1933).
Ferdinand ‘Fred’ Sponer, a Budapest taxi-driver, picks up a wealthy American passenger, Jack Mortimer, at the train station on New Year’s Eve. While Sponer is inside, retrieving his fare’s bags, Mortimer is shot. Because he’s about to start a new job as a chauffeur, Sponer doesn’t want to get involved with the police. He drives off and dumps the body in the woods. But, still worrying he could be connected with Mortimer’s disappearance, he decides to fake his arrival by checking into the man's hotel wearing his clothes and assuming his identity.
Waiting for Mortimer is Winifred Montemayor, who’s about to leave her husband, a renowned orchestra conductor, Pedro Montemayor, and run away with the American. When she goes to Mortimer’s room and finds Fred there with her lover’s bags, she threatens to expose him. He flees, but only to learn that his is not the only deception and that he has far more to fear than just the police.
In 1935, the book became a film, Ich war Jack Mortimer, directed by Carl Froelich from an elegant script by Thea von Harbou (a fascinating profile of whom featured in the Fall 2015 edition of NOIR CITY e-magazine). Anton Walbrook stars as the ill-tempered Fred, a prole who’s increasingly bitter about the hand he’s been dealt as he toils away with little hope of bettering himself. He takes out his frustration on Marie, his fiancée, whose affection he doesn’t deserve.
Though Fred is not a particularly likeable character, he's not without charm. Walbrook was an engaging actor, an Austrian who in 1936 settled in England after changing his name from Adolph to Anton (Walbrook was gay and also classified under the Nuremberg Laws as half-Jewish). In Britain, he continued to work, specializing in imperious continentals such the tyrannical impresario, Lermontov, in The Red Shoes, 1948 (a highlight of the 2016 NOIR CITY festival screenings in San Francisco).
Ich war Jack Morimer shares some of the saturnine expressiveness of the great silent melodramas. Formal, Teutonic, and gloomy, it’s a compelling proto-noir. However, a second movie version of the tale, Abentueur in Wein aka Adventures in Vienna was released in 1952, starring Gustav Fröhlich (Metropolis, 1927) as ‘Toni’ Sponer and Francis Lederer as the husband, now Claude Manelli. Then, a year later, Lederer reprised his part in an Austrian/ US co-production, Stolen Identity, 1953, a near shot-for-shot remake of Abentueur in Wein, this time featuring an all-English-speaking cast in the main roles.
Produced by Turhan Bey (The Mysterious Mr. X, 1948; Parole Inc., 1948) and directed by Gunther Von Fritsch (The Curse of the Cat People, 1944), Stolen Identity remains set in Vienna amid the destruction of WWII. Like The Third Man, 1950, the movie is a deeply atmospheric suspense thriller that plays like a post-war spy/ espionage drama without actually being one.
American actor Donald Buka plays Toni Sponer, now an undocumented refugee from Eastern Europe who has fled to Austria. But no papers means no work permit and no permit means no passport. Toni is desperate to leave Vienna and to get to the US where he once lived as a child. Meantime, he survives by driving a taxi illegally. When Jack Mortimer is murdered in his cab, Toni takes his passport and cash, seeing them as a way out.
Again, problems arise when Toni goes to the hotel impersonating Mortimer and is met by Karen Manelli (Joan Camden), Claude Manelli's beleaguered wife. But this time Karen reports Toni to the police and they pick him up on suspicion of identity theft. However, Manelli, for his own reasons, identifies Toni as Jack Mortimer, telling the police that his wife has a history of mental illness and is always making up stories. Karen is released to her husband but escapes, realizing Toni has been set up.
Though based on the same story, Ich War Jack Mortimer and Stolen Identity are very different movies – as could be expected having been made nearly twenty years apart, one prior to WWII, the other following. Diverging dramatically in tone and style, Ich War Jack Mortimer is a contained crime drama while Stolen Identity is an expansive thriller that provides its characters with backstories as well as giving attention to their development. Toni, as played by Buka, a handsome and forceful actor (The Street with No Name, 1948; Between Midnight and Dawn, 1950) is a more sympathetic protagonist than his morose, self-absorbed predecessor, Fred. While there are actors who would have turned Stolen Identity into a florid melodrama, Buka gives a restrained and believable performance.
Likewise, Joan Camden (The Captive City, 1952), a more responsive actress than Jack Mortimer's enigmatic Sybille Schmitz who committed suicide by barbiturate overdose while under the ‘care’ of her doctor. Camden was a fragile beauty, never a show-off, who made an impact in a gentle way, often portraying wholesome, devoted wives and girlfriends. She shared a quality with the likes of Margaret Sullivan, June Allyson, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and Teresa Wright, though without ever managing to share their star power.
Lederer began on stage and with a half-dozen films made in Europe – including the silent classic Pandora’s Box (1929) starring Louis Brooks - before being brought to America by RKO as a romantic European lead. However, Lederer, in his many appearances as assorted rogues, charmers, horror villains and Nazi spies never really fulfilled his potential in Hollywood. Though Ginger Rogers wrote of him, “The studios didn’t know how to handle Francis or buy stories for him”, Lederer believed that it was his inherent shyness and reluctance to do publicity that worked against his becoming a big romantic star like Charles Boyer. Nevertheless, he was a fine actor and even in unsympathetic roles like that of Claude Manelli, was able to imbue his characters with humanity. He was impressive in the classic noir The Madonna’s Secret as a troubled artist who might be trusted one second but never the next.
And though there’s no real mystery to Stolen Identity, there is still tremendous suspense, built upon small incidents and many surprises including a memorable finale. The stolen/ mistaken identity trope is common in film noir but Stolen Identity’s uncommon reckoning is not.
