Like Broderick Crawford in
All the King's Men (Robert Rossen, 1949) or Cliff Robertson in
Charly (Ralph Nelson, 1968), Paul Lukas had the good fortune to land a movie role that won him the best actor Oscar on his one and only turn as a nominee. His competition included Gary Cooper in
For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood), Walter Pidgeon in
Madame Curie (Mervyn LeRoy), and Mickey Rooney in
The Human Comedy (Clarence Brown). Oh, and Humphrey Bogart in
Casablanca (Michael Curtiz), the one performance that everyone remembers. It's not like Lukas hadn't had plenty of opportunities to attract attention before: He had begun acting in movies in his native Hungary in 1915, and after coming to Hollywood had appeared in mostly supporting roles in numerous films, playing Professor Bhaer opposite Katharine Hepburn in
Little Women (George Cukor, 1933) and the sinister Dr. Hartz in
The Lady Vanishes (Alfred Hitchcock, 1938), for example. He had also played the role of Kurt Muller, the coordinator of resistance movements against the Nazis, in the original Broadway production of
Watch on the Rhine in 1941, so he was a natural choice for the film version -- though producer Hal Wallis wanted Charles Boyer instead. As often happens, the Oscar was no step toward better roles in movies, and Lukas spent much of his later career on stage, though he continued to appear on film and TV up till his death in 1971. The play was written by Lillian Hellman, whose lover, Dashiell Hammett, did the screenplay with some input from her. Unfortunately, the result is less a movie than a sermon about doing one's patriotic duty in the struggle against fascism. It didn't help that Wallis hired the play's director, Herman Shumlin, for the film: Shumlin had never directed a movie and had to be assisted throughout by cinematographer Hal Mohr. He was also unable to rein in Bette Davis, who is miscast as the noble and dutiful wife and has a tendency to slip into some of her familiar and caricaturable mannerisms in the film.
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