Paul Lukas

Paul Lukas (born Pál Lukács; 26 May 1894 – 15 August 1971) was a Hungarian actor. He won the Academy Award for Best Actor, and the first Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, for his performance in the film Watch on the Rhine (1943), reprising the role he created on the Broadway stage. Biography Lukas was born Pál Lukács in Budapest into a Hungarian-Jewish family, the son of Adolf Munkácsi and Mária Schneckendorf. He was later adopted by Mária (née Zilahy) and János Lukács, an advertising executive. Lukas made his stage debut in Budapest in 1916, and his film debut in 1917. At first, he played elegant, smooth womanizers, but increasingly, he became typecast as a villain. He had a successful stage and film career in Hungary, Germany, and Austria, where he worked with Max Reinhardt. He arrived in Hollywood in 1927, and became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1937. In 1935, he built a home near the new Racquet Club of Palm Springs, California. Lukas was busy in the 1930s, appearing in such films as the melodrama Rockabye, the crime caper Grumpy, Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, the comedy Ladies in Love, and the drama Dodsworth. He followed William Powell and Basil Rathbone, portraying the series detective Philo Vance, a cosmopolitan New Yorker, once in The Casino Murder Case (1935).