Trivia

Bald character actor, a Polish Jew, who acquired the skills of his trade under the tutelage of Max Reinhardt in Vienna. Though he was often destined to be cast in Hollywood as monocled Nazis, he himself left Poland after Hitler's rise to power and found his way to the U.S. in 1937.

Former player in Yiddish theater who became a Hollywood character actor of the 40's and 50's, often in sinister roles.

Isser Katsch (also known as Katz) was originally active in the wine trade. At the outbreak of World War I, Katsch was drafted into the Russian Tsarist army. In the same year, 1914, he was taken prisoner by the Germans.

Based in Hollywood since 1941, Katsch now Americanized himself into "Katch.".

After his release from captivity, Katsch attended the Max Reinhardt School in Berlin and made his debut as Kurt Katsch at the Bremen City Theatre in 1917.

From September 1, 1929, Katsch was engaged as an actor with the artistic specialization "Character Roles and Roles Based on Individuality" at the Städtische Bühnen in Frankfurt. He was dismissed on May 22, 1933, due to the Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service (BBG). This law, constituted one of the earliest instances of anti-Semitic and racist legislation in Germany.

In the last decade of his life, Kurt Katch also appeared in a number of unremarkable US television productions, including the first film adaptation of Casino Royale in 1954 for the Climax! TV show , in which he once again played a despicable villain.

In late autumn 1939, Max Reinhardt's former right-hand man, Otto Preminger, cast him in the anti-Nazi play "Margin for Error" in the role of German consul Karl Baumer, a role that Preminger himself had previously played.

After being banned from performing on German stages, Katsch joined the Jewish Cultural Association. In its first Berlin performance on October 1, 1933, Katsch played the title role in Lessing's Nathan the Wise, directed by Karl Loewenberg. Eventually, Katsch went to Poland, where he continued his theater work and also appeared in two Yiddish-language films.

Having lived in the United States since August 20, 1937, Kurt Katsch also acted in Yiddish-language plays in New York (1937 in The Brothers Ashkenazi, 1939 in Parnosseh), there under the direction of the theater director Maurice Schwartz.