Alexander Granach

Granach was born Schaje Granoch in Werbowitz (Wierzbowce/Werbiwci) (Austrian Galicia then, now Verbivtsi, Kolomyia Raion, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, Ukraine), to Jewish parents and rose to theatrical prominence at the Volksbühne in Berlin. Granach entered films in 1922; among the most widely exhibited of his silent efforts was Nosferatu (1922), F.W. Murnau's loose adaptation of Dracula, in which the actor was cast as Knock, the film's counterpart to Renfield. He co-starred in such major early German talkies as Kameradschaft (1931).

The Jewish Granach fled to the Soviet Union when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. When the Soviet Union also proved inhospitable, he settled in Hollywood, where he made his first American film appearance as Kopalski in Ninotchka (1939) starring Greta Garbo and directed by Ernst Lubitsch, released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Granach proved indispensable to film makers during the war years, effectively portraying both dedicated Nazis (he was Julius Streicher in The Hitler Gang, 1944) and loyal anti-fascists. He portrayed Gestapo Inspector Alois Gruber in Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! (1943). His last film appearance was in MGM's The Seventh Cross (1944), in which almost the entire supporting cast was prominent European refugees.

Granach died on March 14, 1945, in New York from a pulmonary embolism following an appendectomy. He was buried in Montefiore Cemetery in Springfield Gardens, Queens. Granach's autobiography, There Goes an Actor (1945) was republished in 2010 under the new title, From the Shtetl to the Stage: The Odyssey of a Wandering Actor (Transaction Publishers). He was survived by his long time partner, Lotte Lieven, and by his son, Gad Granach. His son, who lived in Jerusalem, wrote his own memoirs with many references to his father.