Lionel Royce

Lionel Royce , known also during his European career as Leo Reuss, was an AustrianAmerican actor of stage and screen. He began his career in theater in Vienna, Austria in 1919, before moving to Berlin in 1925. Being Jewish, his work began to be restricted in the 1930s in Nazi Germany. Fleeing the Nazis he returned to Austria in 1936, where to hide his heritage, he created the persona of Kaspar Brandhofer, a Tyrolian peasant, and became a sensation as a natural actor on the stage in Vienna. When he admitted his ruse, he became blacklisted in Austria, after which he immigrated to the United States in 1937. He had an active film career in the United States, appearing in almostfilms between 1938 and 1946. While on tour with the USO, he died in Manila in 1946.

He was born Leon Moriz Reiss on March 30, 1891, in the city of Dolyna, in what is now the Ukraine, to Jewish parents. In 1913 he entered the Academy of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. At the outbreak of World War I, he volunteered for the AustroHungarian Army and served in the Hoch und Deutschmeistern No.unit. In 1916 he married his first wife, with whom he had two children. He entered the war as a private in 1914, and rose to the rank of lieutenant by the wars end. Wounded several times, he received a medal for valor.

Source: Wikipedia