Oscar Homolka Movies and Career Information

Oskar Homolka (August 12, 1898 – January 27, 1978) was an Austrian film and theatre actor. Homolka's strong accent, stocky appearance, bushy eyebrows and Slavic-sounding name led many to believe he was Eastern European or Russian, but he was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. After serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I, Homolka attended the Imperial Academy of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna and began his career on the Austrian stage. Success there led to work in the much more prestigious German theatrical community in Munich where in 1924 he played Mortimer in the premiere of Brecht's play The Life of Edward II of England at the Munich Kammerspiele, and since 1925 in Berlin where he worked under Max Reinhardt. His first films were Die Abenteuer eines Zehnmarkscheins (The Adventures of a Ten Mark Note, 1926), Hokuspokus (Hocuspocus, 1930), and Dreyfus (The Dreyfus Case, 1930). After the Nazi rise to power, Homolka moved to Britain and later was one of the many Austrian and specifically Viennese actors and theatrical people (many of them Jews) who fled Europe for the U.S. In 1936, he played the bomber in Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage. Although he often played