Lorre Lookalike

"You satirize me, don't you?"^note Clockwise from top-left: "Hollywood Steps Out", Carrotblanca, SpongeBob SquarePants, and Horton Hatches the Egg.

"All that anyone needs to imitate me is two soft-boiled eggs and a bedroom voice."

— Peter Lorre

Peter Lorre (1904-1964) was a Hungarian-born character actor popular during The Golden Age of Hollywood. Although best known nowadays for playing Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon and Signor Ugarte in Casablanca, his contemporary claims to fame were the German Expressionist film M, Alfred Hitchcock thrillers like The Man Who Knew Too Much, and horror films with Roger Corman and Vincent Price. Like many other Golden Age stars, Lorre was a ripe target for caricature by the animators of the time, which was greatly helped by his distinct appearance and demeanor. His slight build, large eyes, and soft-spoken tone made characters based on him immediately recognizable to audiences, even when exaggerated to grotesque proportions.

As a Stock Parody archetype, Lorre Lookalikes have long outlasted Lorre himself, with new ones being made well into the 21st century. As the films he starred in have largely faded from the general public consciousness, he's increasingly suffered from Parody Displacement, with hardly anyone outside of classic cinephiles knowing that these reedy-voiced, weepy-eyed characters are based on a real actor. Tim Burton admitted he didn't even know Peter Lorre's name when he first created the character of Maggot for Corpse Bride.^note Which seems odd— as a big Vincent Price fan you'd think he must have seen Tales of Terror, The Raven (1963) or The Comedy of Terrors!He's also been largely Lost in Imitation, with most later parodies being based on those by Looney Tunes — Mel Blanc's impression of his voice in "Hair-Raising Hare" and his appearance in Tex Avery's "Hollywood Steps Out" being the most common sources.

A typical Lorre Lookalike can best be recognized by his face: he has large, bulbous, Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes, which are often a bit wall-eyed too. He typically has large Gag Lips, Goofy Buckteeth, persistent Overly-Nervous Flop Sweat on his brow, and the hair on his head is greased back or parted down the middle. His build is usually slender and always short. He speaks in a raspy, reedy, half-whispering voice, tinged with a nondescript European accent. Works taking cues from his noir roles may portray him as an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain, with Ambiguously Gay affection for a boss who's typically patterned after Lorre's regular co-star Sydney Greenstreet. Works in need of a horror villain often make him a Mad Scientist à la Dr. Gogol in Mad Love, or pastiche it with his villainous lackey roles and make him The Igor or The Renfield (though the real Lorre never played such a role). Comedic works may give him the latter role in a Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey duo, but more serious works may make him a Soft-Spoken Sadist, with leering, lewd, and uncanny behavior that drives up his creep factor to eleven.

The Lorre Lookalike has not been without a fraught legal history. The first person to take advantage of it was German-born actor Eugene Weingand, who banked on his resemblance to Lorre to pass himself off as Lorre's son, even changing his name to "Peter Lorie Jr." in 1963. The real Peter Lorre filed legal injunction to stop the name change, though Weingand would appeal and overturn it after Lorre's death a year later. He had a brief period of professional success under the name "Peter Lorre Jr.," but a second lawsuit—this time from Peter's brother Andrew Lorre—stopped it for good. Several decades later, in 2017, the Lorre estate filed a cease and desist against Warner Brothers using Lorre's likeness; while it is unclear how it will affect the rerelease of classic Looney Tunes shorts featuring Lorre Lookalikes, this will likely put an end to any appearances in future cartoons.

A subtrope of No Celebrities Were Harmed and Stock Parodies. See Maurice Chevalier Accent, Shirley Template, Charlie Chaplin Shout-Out, Mr. Alt Disney, and Mumbling Brando for other parodies of Golden Age Hollywood, as well as Looks Like Cesare and Looks Like Orlok for Expies of other German expressionist characters. Also compare with Karloff Kopy, another trope covering stand-ins for an iconic actor famous for dabbling in the horror genre.

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Examples:

Advertising

• Monster Cereals' Boo Berry was based on Peter Lorre, with a short stature, droopy-lidded eyes, and a German accent. His top hat and bow tie in early ads are reminiscent of Lorre's costume in the 1949 film Rope of Sand. His original voice in the 1973 commercials was Eugene Weingand, AKA "Peter Lorre Jr.," until Lorre's estate pressured General Mills to drop him.
• "Big Shots," a 1991 ad for the British cereal Weetabix, features gangsters shooting cartoon bullets inspired by famous noir actors—one looking like Edward G. Robinson, one looking like James Cagney, and one with giant bug eyes looking like Peter Lorre.

Audio Plays

• Big Finish Doctor Who: In The Maltese Penguin, one of the first antagonists the shapeshifting detective protagonist encounters is Elroy Chandler, a Dirty Cop clearly modelled on Peter Lorre. For added comedy, Frobisher's Private Eye Monologue claims that he's "almost entirely unlike Peter Lorre."
• The Further Adventures of Nick Danger: Being a parody of noir media, there's unsurprisingly a parody of Peter Lorre's characters in The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, a Gayngster named Rocky Rococo. He even lampshades the similarity in his final lines.
  "Oh no! I've been killed! this hasn't happened to me since M!"

Anime and Manga

• Bobobo-bo Bo-bobo: In the English dub, one of the hair hunters of the former Chrome Dome Empire, the tv head guy who fights alongside Not Nice Cream was given a Peter Lorre impression.
• Digimon: In the English dub of both Digimon Adventure and Digimon Adventure 02, Digitamamon speaks with a Peter Lorre impression.
• Kinnikuman/Ultimate Muscle: The evil cell phone wrestler, Tel-Tel Boy/Dialbolic, has a Peter Lorre voice in the English dub — with a phone filter over it, of course.

Comic Books

• The Tick: One of the associates of Chairface Chippendale (who all had the Dick Tracy-esque tendency of villains to have a caricatured appearance taken to extremes, such as Chairface himself having a chair for a head) is a villain known as The Guy Who Looks Just Like Peter Lorre, whose physical quirk is being a dead ringer for Peter Lorre.

Comic Strips

• The Addams Family: The father of the family was modeled off of Lorre, with his dark parted hair, drooping eyelids, round head, and short build. However, all of Lorre's influence has since been erased by Adaptation Displacement—nearly every trait associated with the character today comes from John Astin's portrayal of him on the television show, including the name Gomez Addams.

Film — Animated

• Aladdin: Among the many celebrity impressions the Genie gives, he imitates Lorre's voice and appearance when telling Aladdin about how he can't use the wishes to bring people back from the dead. Aladdin is visibly disgusted by Genie's appearance (though the fact that Genie has made himself look green and decaying surely doesn't help).
• The Brave Little Toaster: The ceiling lamp in Elmo St. Peters' stock room, who ominously warns the protagonists that he disassembles appliances for parts and taunts their hopes for escape, is a Lorre Lookalike (with Phil Hartman doing the Peter Lorre impression) with droopy eyes and gap teeth.
• Corpse Bride: Maggot, who lives in Emily's eye cavity and offers advice, is a Lorre Lookalike strongly modeled after the classic Looney Tunes design. Amusingly, Tim Burton did not know who Peter Lorre even was before making this film.
• Frankenweenie: E. Gore (who only resembles a stereotypical Igor superficially) has the eyelids, greasy hair, gap teeth, and voice of a Lorre Lookalike.
• The Haunted World of El Superbeasto: The emcee at The Haunted Palace is an obvious parody of Lorre, with his soft voice and heavy eyelids.
• Mad Monster Party?: The zombie Yetch is essentially a blue-skinned Peter Lorre who constantly (and literally) goes to pieces.
• Scooby-Doo and the Ghoul School: Phantasma's dad speaks with a blatant Peter Lorre impression, which is accentuated by his big round eyes.
• The Super Mario Bros. Movie: In the first work where the character has a substantial speaking role, the wizard Kamek is voiced with a Peter Lorre impression and mannerisms, befitting his short stature and giant bespectacled eyes.

Film — Live-Action

• Looney Tunes: Back in Action: The Lorre Lookalike Mad Scientist first seen in the short "Hair-Raising Hare" makes an appearance, voiced this time by Billy West.
• Overdrawn at the Memory Bank: After an accident at a rehab clinic results in programmer Aram Fingal getting his consciousness uploaded to Novicorp's central computer, then he uses his programming skill to reshape his simulated environment into recreations of his favorite classic movies, primarily Casablanca. Naturally, there's an expy of Lorre's character Ugarte—who has a bigger role here than in the original Casablanca, hanging around for the entire movie before pulling a Heroic Sacrifice just before the climax.
• Toht, one of Nazi villains of Raiders of the Lost Ark, seems to have been loosely modeled on Lorre's villainous characters, being a short, round-faced Soft-Spoken Sadist. The real Peter Lorre did play Nazi villains from time to time, in films like The Cross Of Lorraine and All Through the Night. ^note Most Hollywood Nazis from the War era were in fact refugees fleeing the real Nazis, taking the roles in part to spread awareness about what was happening in Europe. Peter Lorre, a Hungarian Jew, was a prime example.

Literature

• Discussed extensively in Matthew Hahn's 2020 book The Animated Peter Lorre, an authoritative encyclopedia of over 700 different references, impressions, and parodies of Lorre in popular media.
  "Peter Lorre's posthumous career, as performed by animated and living surrogates, is already longer than his actual one. In a few years, it will be longer than his lifetime. It shows no signs of stopping, as new generations are delighted by his impersonators, even as the memory of Peter Lorre himself slips further and further away. What will happen then? Will mimics mimic other mimics, like clones of clones?
  Clones. I think Peter would like that."

  —Epilogue
• Drachenfels: A creepy-looking actor named Laszlo Lowenstein (Lorre's birth name) plays the Great Enchanter Drachenfels in a stage play.
• The Great Game: Two of the villains are Gottfried Kaspar and his obsequious servant Ugarti, based on Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre's characters from The Maltese Falcon (with Urgarti's name coming from Lorre's character in Casablanca).
• In a “Creator/Richard Matheson” short story ‘Shipshape Home,’ a sinister janitor was described as looking like Peter Lorre. Naturally when the story was adapted for the anthology series ‘Studio 57’ (as the episode ‘Young Couples Only’), Lorre played the character.

Live-Action TV

• Engelbert von Smallhausen in 'Allo 'Allo! is occasionally berated by his superior, Herr Flick, for his numerous Peter Lorre impressions.
• A Series of Unfortunate Events (2017): One of the villain Count Olaf's alter-egos, Stefano, was confirmed by Olaf's actor to be an impression of Peter Lorre; while the accent is different, being distinctly Italian instead of vaguely Eastern-European, Stefano still has the same reedy voice, unusual body language, and creepy mannerisms of a typical Lorre character.
• Stingray (1964): The villainous Aquaphibian henchman Surface Agent X-2-0 is a pastiche of Claude Rains and Peter Lorre, notably having Lorre's oversized, drooping eyes and voice.

Music

• The Spike Jones version of "My Old Flame" features a Lorre imitation done by Paul Frees.
• In the Fortunes song "The Ghoul in School", the voice of the titular ghoul is an obvious Peter Lorre impression.
• The subject of Don Hinson's "That Little Old Graverobber Me" is a Peter Lorre soundalike who informs the singer that he's digging up bodies for a project planned by Baron Frankenstein.
• "When I Grow Up I Want To Be Peter Lorre" is a filk song by Tom Smith that affectionately parodies the Peter Lorre character while letting the listener know a bit about his acting career.

Puppet Shows

• Fraggle Rock: Marlon, the least moral of the Fraggles and an Ineffectual Sympathetic Villain who constantly tries to rope others into ill-fated schemes, has droopy eyelids and is voiced with a Peter Lorre impression.

Radio

• John Finnemore's Souvenir Programme:
  • The "foreign guy" who works for the Big Bad in the Noir Episode sounds like Lorre. And his boss, of course, sounds like Sydney Greenstreet.
  • A very similar voice is used for the counterpart of Bruno in the Strangers on a Train parody, even though Bruno wasn't played by Lorre and Robert Walker didn't sound like that at all. But it still gets across "classic black and white movie villain" pretty efficiently.

Video Games

• In the Crash Bandicoot games, the large-eyed, diminutive, and deranged Mad Scientist Dr. N. Gin is a Lorre Lookalike who acts as The Igor to Dr. Neo Cortex.
• Grim Fandango: Rubacava is a Whole-Plot Reference to Casablanca, and Chowchilla Charlie is the skeletal stand-in for Lorre's character Signor Ugarte. He's short, has a few slicked-back strands of hair on his skull, giant eye sockets, and speaks with an obvious Peter Lorre impression.
• JumpStart Adventures 4th Grade: Haunted Island: Flap, a bug-eyed purple bat, is voiced with a Peter Lorre impression.
• Puppeteer (2013): Yin Yang, the cat assistant of the witch Ezma Pott speaks in a voice that is very much a Peter Lorre impression, but with cat puns thrown in the mix.
• The Quest for Glory series:
  • Quest for Glory II: Ugarte is a composite of Peter Lorre's characters from Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon.
  • Quest for Glory IV: Lorre Petrovich, the Chief Thief of Mordavia, was drawn and voiced like Peter Lorre as Ugarte in Casablanca. He is, in fact, Ugarte's uncle, as Ugarte will inform you in the fifth game.

Web Animation

• The DAVE School Animation student film based on Applehead Factory's Tofu the Vegan Zombie depicts Tofu's creator Dr. Vost as resembling Peter Lorre, with Billy West voicing him using an impression of Lorre.

Western Animation

• The Adventures of Sam & Max: Freelance Police: In "Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang", the titular duo meet up with a contact who's a dead ringer for Peter Lorre. Max, being Max, annoys the little guy by asking Sam if they can keep him.
• The Adventures of Super Mario Bros. 3: The cartoon's interpretation of Larry Koopa, here named Cheatsy Koopa, has very large Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes as his stand-out trait and has his muzzle extend longer than the other Koopalings, making his two front teeth much more pronounced than the others. He usually plays second fiddle to his father, King Koopa, and shares many of Lorre's mannerisms.
• Aladdin: The Series: Xerxes the flying eel has giant bug eyes and speaks with a Lorre-esque voice.
• All Hail King Julien: Doctor S is a creepy Mad Scientist cobra and the kingdom's highly enthusiastic but grossly incompetent doctor, who also sounds like Peter Lorre.
• Animaniacs: A photo of Peter Lorre's caricature from "Hollywood Steps Out" can be seen hanging on the wall of Dr. Scratchansniff's office.
• Beany and Cecil: The episode "Beany and Cecil Meet the Monstrous Monster" features Staring Herring, a giant-eyed fish with a Peter Lorre voice.
• Boos in the Nite: The Monster and his blue-skinned companion are a parody of the characters Jonathan and Dr. Einstein in Arsenic and Old Lace—Boris Karloff's Broadway depiction of Jonathan and Lorre's film depiction of Dr. Einstein, to be specific.
• Bozo: The World's Most Famous Clown: The episode "Manhunt Stunts" has a Lorre Lookalike Villain of the Week who's voiced by Paul Frees (who had also provided a Lorre imitation for the Spike Jones version of "My Old Flame").
• Chip 'n Dale: Rescue Rangers: One of Fat Cat (a Fat Bastard villain partially inspired by Sydney Greenstreet)'s mooks is a droopy-eyed lizard named Wart who sounds like Peter Lorre.
• Columbia ''Color Rhapsodies'': The Missing Episode "Cockatoos for Two" features a Lorre Lookalike named Mr. Sidney of Green Street, heavily inspired by Lorre's comedic rendition of a mad doctor in Arsenic and Old Lace, who conspires to cook and eat the title bird.
• Courage the Cowardly Dog: The King of Flan may be rather fat, but he's a Lorre Lookalike in every other way—the Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes, the voice, the greasy hair, and the gap teeth.
• Drak Pack: Toad, the amphibian Bumbling Sidekick to Dr. Dred, has a short stature, droopy eyes, and is voiced with a Peter Lorre impression.
• Duckman: The episode "Noir Gang," parodies Casablanca and features caricatures of many of the film's characters in Klasky-Csupo's signature style, including a giant-eyed, gap-toothed Peter Lorre.
• Gravedale High, an early '90s Saturday-Morning Cartoon about an All-Ghouls School, has the character J.P. Ghastly III, who is essentially a teenage monster version of Lorre, including his signature voice.
• The Jack Rabbit Story: Easter Fever shows a bug-eyed bat speaking with a Peter Lorre impression among those auditioning to be the Easter Bunny.
• Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies:
  • "Birth of a Notion": A Lorre Lookalike is a Mad Scientist who, when Daffy Duck cons his way into his house, conspires to kill him and use his wishbone as part of an arcane scientific experiment.
  • "Boston Quackie": The Consul of West Slobovia at the end of the short is a Lorre Lookalike, with half-lidded eyes, a short build (he's about as tall as Daffy), thinning hair, and a Lorre-esque accent.
  • "Carrotblanca": Tweety Bird takes the role of Signor Ugarte, with his appearance changing to include exaggerated eyelids, forehead wrinkles, buckteeth, a Brief Accent Imitation, and a sleazy demeanor when he directly references some of Lorre's lines.
  • "Hair-Raising Hare": The Mad Scientist who wants to catch Bugs Bunny and feed him to the monster is one, and is notably the first time Mel Blanc voiced him.
  • "Hollywood Steps Out": The Trope Codifier. Lorre's appearance in this—fish-eyed, fat-lipped, buck-toothed, and greasy-haired—served as the template for nearly every other Lorre Lookalike Looney Tunes would do, as well as many other creators' parodies.
  • "Horton Hatches the Egg": A Lorre Lookalike fish sees Horton the elephant being carried by a boat, remarks "Well, now I've seen everything!" and promptly shoots himself.
  • "Racketeer Rabbit": Hugo the gangster is a Lorre Lookalike who serves as Rocky (an Expy of Edward G. Robinson)'s diminutive and effete partner in crime.
• Mighty Magiswords: The Zombie Pumpkin Magisword, or "ZP" for short, has giant eyes and speaks with a Peter Lorre impression.
• Mighty Mouse: The New Adventures:
  • The series features recurring antagonists in the form of three mice in a street gang: Bub, Moe, and Frawley. Bub has half-lidded eyes and speaks with a Peter Lorre impression.
  • In the episode "Mundane Voyage," Pearl Pureheart is tortured by the Mad Scientist Cardigan in a method similar to "The Pit and the Pendulum"—but instead of a blade on the end, it's a creepy Lorre Lookalike who's trying to grope Pearl as he swings by. He even whistles "In the Hall of the Mountain King" like Hans Beckert in M.
• Mina and The Count: Igor, like many hunchbacked assistants who share his name, takes after Peter Lorre. His voice is an impression of Lorre and he has huge round eyes as well.
• Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist: The eponymous Mr. Scientist, a short and sleepy-eyed Mad Scientist, is based on Lorre—specifically, a character he played on a skit in The Red Skelton Show that was a cross between Gomez Addams and Ralph Kramden. They were originally side characters in Snooper and Blabber, but briefly got their own show. It was cancelled shortly after, but the character designs were recycled for other Hanna-Barbera cartoons:
  • The Flintstones and The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show as Mr. and Mrs. Gruesome, the Flintstones' eerie neighbors.
  • Laff-A-Lympics as Mr. and Mrs. Creeply.
  • The New Fred and Barney Show as Mr. and Mrs. Ghoulstone, thus making them a recycling of a recycling.
• Ren & Stimpy: Ren Höek's bulbous eyes, raspy voice, bizarre accent, and neurotic mannerisms are all meant to be "a bad impression of Peter Lorre," per Word of God.
• Scooby-Doo:
  • Scooby-Doo, Where Are You!: The episode "That's Snow Ghost" features a Lorre Lookalike named Mr. Leech, who's part of a scheme to smuggle stolen jewels as the sidekick of Mr. Greenway (an expy of Sydney Greenstreet).
  • The New Scooby-Doo and Scrappy-Doo Show: The episode "Where's Scooby-Doo?" is set aboard the Orient Express, where the villains are revealed to be characters Sidney Kaspar (another Greenstreet expy) and his Lorre Lookalike sidekick, who's only referred to as the Little Guy.
  • A Pup Named Scooby-Doo: The episode "Snow Place Like Home" features Mr. Morganson, a Lorre Lookalike who runs a mountain lodge. Interestingly, he's not the villain or the lackey this time; instead, he's being targeted by a "Scooby-Doo" Hoax in hopes of forcing him to sell his lodge to build a diamond mine.
• The Simpsons:
  • In "Homer Simpson In: 'Kidney Trouble'," there's a Lorre Lookalike (albeit a Downplayed example, with his only exaggerated feature being somewhat larger eyes) aboard the Ship of Lost Souls who is constantly in an existential crisis.
  • In "The Burns Cage," Springfield Elementary puts on a production of Casablanca. Ralph plays the part of Ugarte; when he quotes the line "You despise me, don't you?" and does a (poor) Peter Lorre impression, his eyes are drawn as larger than normal.
• The Speed Buggy episode "Secret Safari" had a pair of mad scientists named Varzak and Emil as the villains, who were respectively based on Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet in both appearances and voices.
• SpongeBob SquarePants:
  • A Lorre Lookalike fish named Slappy appears in "SpongeBob's Big Birthday Blowout," where he mostly just unnerves other party guests. He appears a few more times as The Renfield to Nosferatu, even getting A Day in the Limelight in the episode "Slappy Daze."
  • Slappy would become a recurring character in The Patrick Star Show, being a dedicated fan of Patrick's show, as well as generally showing up in random places.
  • A Distaff Counterpart to Slappy named Slippy (thus far the only known female Lorre Lookalike) appears in the episode "Mid-Season Finale" of The Patrick Star Show.
• The Super 6: The Episode "The Mummy Caper" has the villain Mr. X (a Sydney Greenstreet expy) and his henchman Asp (a Lorre Lookalike) try to steal a precious idol and are stopped by Elevator Man.
• The Superhero Squad Show: Space Phantom is a Lorre Lookalike in this series. He possesses bulbous eyes, a hunched back, overbite and a Lorre-like voice provided by Tom Kenny. Interestingly in this version Space Phantoms aren't evil, but misunderstood.
• The Sylvester and Tweety Mysteries: The episode "The Maltese Canary" is (unsurprisingly) a parody of The Maltese Falcon, with a Lorre Lookalike resembling the one from "Hair-Raising Hare" standing in for Lorre's role.
• Teen Titans: The Puppet King is a Soft-Spoken Sadist with oversized eyes.
• Timon & Pumbaa: The Jeweler, who likes capturing wildlife to turn them into jewelry or displays, is a squat, fat, Lorre Lookalike with greasy hair and Dreary Half-Lidded Eyes.
• Tiny Toon Adventures: In "Sawdust and Toonsil," Gogo Dodo takes on a Lorre Lookalike appearance when doing a Brief Accent Imitation.
• T.U.F.F. Puppy: Recurring villain the Chameleon has a Lorre-esque voice and comically oversized, bulging eyes.
• TUGS: Zug the Z-Stack is a Lorre Lookalike in tugboat form, having a short height, wide eyes, a European accent, and serving as part of a Bumbling Henchman Duo with a slavish desire to please Zorran.
• Wacky Races: The racers Big Gruesome and Little Gruesome (collectively called the Gruesome Twosome) are based on Boris Karloff's rendition of Frankenstein's Monster, and a pastiche of Peter Lorre and Herman Munster, respectively.

Other

• Phil Hartman's Flat TV, a 2002 posthumous album that's a compilation of unreleased voice work from 1978, features the vignette "Monday Night Mystery Theater: The Luther Krupp File," where the eponymous Luther Krupp (featuring Hartmann doing his Peter Lorre impression) is accused of the murder of criminal Fingers Purcell. Hartman's brother Paul has been trying to get Flat TV adapted into a feature-length cartoon since 2013 with varying success; character designs for Luther Krupp depict him as a Lorre Lookalike in the classic Looney Tunes style, while Fingers Purcell seems to be a Sydney Greenstreet expy.

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