Career Summary:
Age at first film: 43
Age at last film
Age at death: 89
Career Span: 1936-1955 (19 years); then comeback in 1966
Career Output: 26
Genre: crime, noir, thrillers
Highlights: The Lodger (1944), Guest in the House (1944), Hangover Square (1945)
John Brahm was born Hans Brahm in Hamburg, on August 17, 1893; he died October 12, 1982 at the age of 89.
He was the son of actor Ludwig Brahm and the nephew of theatrical impresario Otto Brahm.
He began his career in the theatre as an actor. After WWI, he moved between Vienna, Berlin and Paris. He was appointed resident director for acting troupes at the Deutsches Theater and the Lessing Theater, in Berlin.
After the rise of Hitler, Brahm Germany, first moving to England.
In 1936, he directed his first film, Broken Blossoms, a remake of D.W. Griffith’s 1919.
He began his Hollywood career at Columbia Pictures before moving to 20th Century-Fox. He directed the B-level Let Us Live, the true story of two men wrongly convicted of murder who were almost executed in Massachusetts. Authorities were embarrassed by the incident and put pressure on the studio to cancel the film, and the studio made the film on a smaller scale.
Brahm made numerous TV films during the 1950s and 1960s, directing episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone.
Brahm’s last feature film was Hot Rods to Hell.
He married his first wife Hanna, an actress, who ran off with an actor leaving him depressed. His second wife, actress and singer Dolly Haas, married Al Hirschfeld, the caricaturist after their divorce. In the 1950s he married his third wife, Anna, with whom he had two children.
Filmography:
1930s: 6 features
Broken Blossoms (1936)
Counsel for Crime (1937)
Penitentiary (1938)
Girls’ School (1938)
Let Us Live (1939)
Rio (1939)
1940s: 11 (plus 3 uncredited)
Escape to Glory (1940)
Wild Geese Calling (1941)
The Undying Monster (1942)
Tonight We Raid Calais (1943)
Bomber’s Moon (1943) (uncredited)
Wintertime (1943)
The Lodger (1944)
Guest in the House (1944)
Hangover Square (1945)
Three Little Girls in Blue (1946) (uncredited)
The Locket (1946)
The Brasher Doubloon (1947)
Singapore (1947)
Siren of Atlantis (1949) (uncredited)
1950s: 8 features
The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima (1952)
The Thief of Venice (1950)
Face to Face (1952)
The Diamond Queen (1953)
The Mad Magician (1954)
The Golden Plague (1954)
Special Delivery (1955)
Bengazi (1955)
1960s: 1
Hot Rods to Hell (1967)