Alexander Granach
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Alexander Granach (April 18, 1890 – March 14, 1945) was a popular German actor in the 1920s and 1930s who immigrated to the United States in 1938.
Granach was born Jessaja Gronach in Werbowitz (Wierzbowce/Werbiwci) (Horodenka district, Austrian Galicia then, now Verbivtsi, 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 the vampire classic Nosferatu (1922), in which the actor was cast as Knock, the lunatic counterpart to Renfield, effectively a substitute name for Dracula. He co-starred in such major early German talkies as Kameradschaft (1931).
The Jewish Granach fled to the Soviet Union when Hitler came to power. When the Soviet Union also proved inhospitable, he settled in Hollywood, where he made his first American film appearance as Kopalski in Ernst Lubitsch's Ninotchka (1939) for 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. Perhaps his best role was as 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.
Acting
Movie
Nosferatu
as Knock
1922
Movie
Foreign Correspondent
as Hotel Valet (uncredited)
1940
Movie
Ninotchka
as Comrade Kopalski
1939
Movie
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
as Soldier (uncredited)
1939
Movie
For Whom the Bell Tolls
as Paco
1943
Movie
Hangmen Also Die!
as Gestapo Insp. Alois Gruber
1943
Movie
The Seventh Cross
as Zillich
1944
Movie
Comradeship
as Kasper
1931
Movie
Warning Shadows
as Shadowplayer
1923
Movie
Mission to Moscow
as Russian Air Force Officer (uncredited)
1943
Movie
Accident
1928
Movie
Joan of Paris
as Gestapo Agent
1942
Movie
So Ends Our Night
as The Pole
1941
Movie
A Man Betrayed
as T. Amato
1941
Movie
Voice in the Wind
as Angelo
1944
Movie
The Hitler Gang
as Julius Streicher
1944
Movie
Lucrezia Borgia
as ein Gefangener
1922
Movie
I.N.R.I. – A Film of Humanity
as Judas Ischariot
1923
Movie
Earth Spirit
as Schigolch
1923
Movie
Danton
as Marat
1931
Movie
A Man's a Man
1931
Movie
Radiohead X Nosferatu: A Symphony of Horror
as Knock - ein Häusermakler
2025
Movie
The Theft of the Mona Lisa
as Redner
1931
Movie
Wrecking Crew
as Joe Poska
1942