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Paul Henreid was born Paul Georg Julius Hernreid Ritter von Wassel-Waldingau (!) in Austria in 1905, in Trieste, which was then in Austria-Hungary, but is today in Italy. He worked as a translator and was discovered by Otto Preminger at the start of his career, and had some roles in German movies, billed as "Paul Von Hernried". He went to England in 1935 and had some relatively small roles there. He got a major role as a German villain in Night Train to Munich in 1940, and perhaps realizing that if he stayed in Europe he would be forced to only play Nazis, he moved to the U.S. and "Americanized his name to "Paul Henreid" and he got the lead role in RKO's Joan of Paris in 1942, as an RAF flyer stranded in occupied France. Although the movie and Henreid were well received, RKO did not sign him to a contract, but Warners did, and he got the kind of break actors dream of every day, playing the lead role of Jerry Durrance opposite Bette Davis' Charlotte Vail in the doomed romance Now, Voyager, surely one of the most romantic (and best movies of its kind) ever. In it is the most memorable scene where Henreid lights two cigarettes and gives Davis one, and men all over the world have copied that ever since! That same year, Henreid had an even more amazing break. Warners needed someone to play the key role of Czech freedom fighter Victor Laszlo, in their war movie Casablanca, and since they had cast great German actor Conrad Veidt as the lead Nazi villain, Major Strasser, they needed someone who could hold his own opposite the imposing Veidt (both mentally and physically, as Veidt was 6'3"). Henreid, with his aristocratic air and large size (he was 6'3" as well) fit the bill perfectly, and he was wonderful as Laszlo. Two odd bits of trivia are that it was Veidt who had kept Henreid from being deported from England when WWII broke out, and that Veidt could only be obtained for Casablanca by paying him the most of any actor on the movie, making twice what Bogart (under contract to Warner's) made!. After these two great successes Henreid continued at Warners, playing the leads in a variety of movies, but he could not of course equal those two earlier great successes. Perhaps his best role was in a remake of another doomed romance, playing noble tortured Philip Carey in Warners first remake of Bette Davis great hit Of Human Bondage, opposite Eleanor Parker as the vile Mildred. In the early 1950s Henreid was caught up in the Hollywood blacklisting, and he began acting in low budget movies, but the film roles he got were way beneath him. He carved out a new career as a director, of a few movies, but mostly of TV, and he directed 28 episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In 1964 old friend Bette Davis helped him get signed as the directer of her identical twin murder thriller, Dead Ringer, and it is an enjoyable movie and quite good of its type. Henreid passed away in 1992 at the age of 84. While he likely did not have the career he might have hoped for, Henreid did have two of the greatest film roles ever, ironically both in the very same year, in two of the finest movies ever made!

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Important Added Info: Note that starting in the very early 1910s (around 1912, when studios realized that people were more likely to go to a movie if it had a star they liked in it), studios created sets of special "personality" posters, which theaters that showed their movies could hang in their lobbies. These had a big advantage over posters for specific movies, because they could be used whenever a movie with that star was shown, which meant they could be used over and over! Because studios realized this, they made these posters on a high quality paper stock, sometimes with a "linen" texture, and sometimes with elaborate border designs, and almost always with great quality color printing. They almost always measured exactly 22" x 28", the same as "half-sheets" (which were then known as "displays", except that they were taller than they were wide, and that the images almost always had a "full bleed", meaning that there were no blank borders. They almost always showed a head and shoulders image of the star, and the image on these posters is often very close to actual life-size! They almost always have the name of the star and the studio they worked for at the bottom. Even though there were many sets of these from many studios over a period of approximately 30 years (they were rarely made after the early 1940s), very few survive, likely partially due to World War II paper drives, and partially due to the fact that they were never folded and the paper they were made of sometimes aged poorly. We at eMoviePoster.com were just consigned a very special collection of 99 of these "personality" posters, which we are auctioning in separate auctions. They were collected starting in the mid 1980s, and the collector who assembled this collection tried to "upgrade" condition whenever possible over the years, so many of them are in excellent condition (sometimes likely the best surviving example), and on the ones where they are in lesser condition, it is because the collector never could find one in better condition! Now he has consigned them to us, and they will find new owners. If they were kept together, they would surely make an incredible display for the walls of any place where lots of people gather, like a museum, a restaurant, or any similar place. Of course, it is more likely that these will find many, many separate new homes, but we hope that they end up publicly displayed wherever they end up!
Note that Warner Bros. became a major Hollywood studio after merging with First National and having massive success with "The Jazz Singer" in the late 1920s, and remained at the forefront of Hollywood through the late 1940s. During this time, they had a great lineup of stars, and they created two sets of personality posters to promote their stars (one in the mid 1930s, and one in the late 1930s or very early 1940s, and there may have been others, but if so, we have not seen them). You can tell their two different sets apart in three ways. One is that all of the posters from a set have the same border design and the stars and studio names are written in the same font and layout. The other is that you can look at the age of the star in the image (although that might possibly be deceptive, because they might have sometimes used a slightly younger version of a star!). Also, the second set from Warner Bros. is on a "linen-like" paper (the same that they used for their lobby cards and some half-sheets and inserts in 1938 to 1941, which is why we know the second set dates from that time). Some of their major stars carried over from the first set to the second one, and in the second set, some stars were dropped and new stars were added. These posters are extremely rare as it is likely few theaters ordered them, and fewer still saved them, and in addition, they could be easily torn, and if they were not stored carefully, they would become fragile, and it is likely many were damaged and discarded for that reason! Note that the high quality paper stock these posters were printed on does not always age very well, and can become fragile (usually resulting in chips around the edges of the poster). This is especially true of those from the second set printed on the linen-like paper, because, just as with the linen lobby cards, these posters aged quickly if they were not stored really well. Because of their fragile nature and their age, we intend to send all of these personality posters in large flat packages, and never roll them into tubes (unless the buyer insists)! PLEASE DO NOT BID ON THIS POSTER, UNLESS YOU ARE WILLING TO PAY THE COST OF SHIPPING IT IN A LARGE FLAT PACKAGE!