Hugo Haas

Haas was born in Brno, Austria-Hungary (now in the Czech Republic), and died in Vienna, Austria from complications of asthma. His brother Pavel Haas was a noted composer who died at Auschwitz in 1944.

Haas began acting as a character actor in American films during the mid-1940s. In 1951 he launched a successful if unacclaimed career as a film director in Hollywood with a string of B movie melodramas, usually starring blonde actresses in the role of a predatory mantrap. Haas usually cast himself as the male lead in the films although the female role almost always dominated the storyline and was usually exclusively promoted on film posters. His work also includes a touching human drama, The Girl on the Bridge (1951) - which he cowrote, directed and starred in - about a kindly watchmaker who after having lost his wife and family in the Holocaust, befriends, marries, and raises a second family with a young woman he saves from suicide.

Cleo Moore starred in seven films for Haas, becoming a well-known film star in that era. Other actresses who starred in Haas' films were Beverly Michaels and Carol Morris. The Haas pictures generally received poor reviews but were for the most part commercially successful, and on occasion featured such well-known names as Eleanor Parker, John Agar, Vince Edwards, Joan Blondell, Agnes Moorehead, Julie London, Corinne Griffith, and Marie Windsor. Haas' final film, Paradise Alley was rejected by the major studios and sat unreleased for over three years, finally surfacing in a limited run in 1962.

Grave of Hugo Haas at the Jewish Cemetery in Brno

As director/actor

• Paradise Alley (1962)
• Born to Be Loved (1959)
• Lizzie (1957)
• Hit and Run (1957)
• Edge of Hell (1956)
• The Other Woman (1954)
• Bait (1954)
• Thy Neighbor's Wife (1953)
• One Girl's Confession (1953)
• Strange Fascination (1952)
• The Girl on the Bridge (1951)
• Pickup (1951)
• The White Disease (1937)
• Skeleton on Horseback (1937)
• Co se šeptá (1938)
• Kvočna (1937)
• Děvčata, nedejte se! (1937)
• Okénko (1933)
• Velbloud uchem jehly (1933)

As director

• Night of the Quarter Moon (1958)
• Hold Back Tomorrow (1955)

As actor

• Bonanza (1960), Dark Star
• Vendetta (1950)
• King Solomon's Mines (1950)
• The Fighting Kentuckian (1949)
• For the Love of Mary (1948)
• Casbah (1948)
• Merton of the Movies (1947)
• The Foxes of Harrow (1947)
• Northwest Outpost (1947)
• Two Smart People (1946)
• Dakota (1945)
• Strange Affair (1944)
• Days of Glory (1944)
• Morality Above All Else (1937)
• Andula Won (1937)
• Camel Through the Eye of a Needle (1936)
• The Seamstress (1936)
• Paradise Road (1936)
• Long Live with Dearly Departed (1935)
• Jedenácté přikázání (1935)
• The Little Pet (1934)
• Poslední muž (1934)
• Life Is a Dog (1933)
• Sister Angelika (1932)
• The Last Bohemian (1931)