Oskar Karlweis

Oskar Leopold Karlweis (often credited Oscar Karlweis; 10 July 1894 – 24 January 1956) was an Austrian-American stage and film actor, active internationally. Career Born in Hinterbrühl, Austria-Hungary, he was the son of playwright Carl Karlweis and younger brother of the writer . Karlweis abandoned his youthful law studies for the stage, first for eight years at Vienna's Stadttheater. After service in World War I, he was active with Max Reinhardt's Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna, followed by engagements at various theaters in Munich and Vienna, and then to the Berlin stage where he had a popular following playing singing and dancing roles, including as Prinz Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus. His general manner was humorous, charming, naive, and cheerful. In Berlin between 1930 and 1933 he worked as a recording artist and acted in more than a dozen German light comedy and musical films, most famously as one of Lilian Harvey's suitors in the hugely successful operetta film The Three from the Filling Station. With Hitler's rise to power in 1933, Karlweis, who was Jewish, returned to the Austrian stage; but with the Nazi Anschluss in 1938 he was again forced to flee, first to Switzerland and then Paris where, at both locations, he took to the stage with fellow Austrian law school dropout, writer/director, and cabaret performer Karl Farkas. When German forces took Paris in 1940, Karlweis, along with his friend Austrian writer Friedrich Torberg, fled via Spain to Portugal, whence they made their way to New York.