STAGE TUBE: On This Day 9/07/16 - We Remember Albert Bassermann

Hello and welcome to BWW's ON THIS DAY Series! Please read along as, each day, we celebrate birthdays, shows' openings and all kinds of theatrical events that have happened on this date.

Today was the birthday of Albert Bassermann, a German who actor who had an unusually prolific stage and then screen career - the the extent that he is now considered the first German actor to achieve such crossover.

Bassermann trained classically (though he initially studied Chemistry!) and then worked for the companies including the Deutsche Theatre, for whom he played Othello and Shylock, and performed in then modern plays like August Strindberg's The Storm. Though his wife, Elsa Bassermann was Jewish, the chose to move to Switzerland rather than divorce

Despite his limited English, Bassermann managed to learn lines phonetically (with the help of his wife!) and gained parts in movies including Once Upon a Honeymoon and Alfred Hitchcock's The Foreign Correspondent - he was even nominated for the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award for his work in the Hitchcock.

To remember his impressive and inspirational work, here's an excerpt from one of his better-known films, The Red Shoes.