Peter Lorre & Sydney Greenstreet

Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet appear together in nine movies; sometimes comrades, sometimes not. The year 1944 proved very fruitful for their collaborations, garnering for the movie-going public four movies that combined the talents of these two. All but one of the total number of movies they made together are on the dark side (i.e. mystery, murder, intrigue, etc.). While Mr. Greenstreet and Mr. Lorre individually parlayed their personae as heavies in several movies made of lighter stuff and for laughs, their only collaboration that smacks of comedy is the all-star Hollywood Canteen (1944), which finds our two paired as themselves in a brief scene that draws from their portrayals of sinister characters as they playfully spook a soldier, played by character actor James Flavin, into not dancing Canteen hostess Patty Andrews’ “hips right out of their sockets.” It’s a very funny repartee, one that hints at the great wealth of untapped humor the two might have generated in pairing up even more often in similar ways.

Here is a list of the movies they appeared in together:

The Maltese Falcon (1941)
Casablanca (1942)
Background to Danger (1943)
The Conspirators (1944)
Hollywood Canteen (1944)
The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)
Passage to Marseille (1944)
Three Strangers (1946)
The Verdict (1946)