Richard Ryen

Biography

Richard Revy studied in Vienna philosophy and was trained as stage actor in Munich, Vienna and Zurich. He later became a well respected senior director at Stadttheater Zurich and Munich Kammerspiele. Revy furthermore directed plays in Bohemia, Berlin, Breslaw, Dresden and Frankfurt/Main. In the early 30s he became busy as an actor in a couple of German movies. He also worked as an acting trainer, such as promoting Lotte Lenya. In 1934 he fled the Nazis into Switzerland before emigrating to Hollywood in 1938, where he assumed the name of Richard Ryen. He became an US citizen in November 1944. Ironically, as was the fate for so many German-speaking actors and actresses of that time, he was mainly casted in Nazi roles, which kept him alive during the war years. His most renowned performance was that of Col. Heinze in Casablanca (1942), where he constantly had to tail his superior Major Strasser and thus was quite often visible in the picture. It was the importance of this movie that kept his appearance in the mind of the audience. Reportedly, his scenes took four weeks to shoot, earning him $400 a week. In almost all of his Hollywood performances Richard Ryen had short and sometimes hardly noticeable roles. In The Cross of Lorraine (1943) for a change, his part as Lieutenant Schmidt of a POW camp in Germany is more distinctive. He appears as a comic relief in three scenes with a number of dialogue in German and English. He orders his subordinates Sgt. Berger and Cpl. Daxer to organize for catering and clothing across the French border. In his last sequence he is upset with Peter Lorre for delivering him French lingerie which is much too small for his opulent wife. An amusing scene. After his last US performance in 1948 (A Foreign Affair) Richard Ryen was left unemployed and returned to Switzerland in order to take up theater work again. His retiring years were spent back in California.