- His home town of Rorschach, Switzerland, honored him with a special star (similar to the ones on the Walk of Fame in L.A.), which was revealed on November 12, 2004. Only hours prior to the ceremony, the town's council learned of Jannings' efforts on behalf of the Nazis during World War II. A few days later, the star was removed.
- He is the first winner of an Academy Award, as after being announced as a winner, he was presented his Academy statuette a month before the actual ceremony. This also makes him the first no-show winner at an Academy Award presentation.
- Of the five U.S. films Jannings made (all silent, all for Paramount), only the Oscar-winning The Last Command (1928) has survived intact. Of two films [The Way of All Flesh (1927) and The Patriot (1928)], only brief clips remain. The other two; Street of Sin (1928) and Betrayal (1929) [the latter also starring a young Gary Cooper] are thought to be completely lost.
- Because of his thick German accent, the advent of sound ended his American career. Returning to Germany, he became an enthusiastic supporter of the Nazis; thus, he spent the next decade-plus making films that supported Nazi ideology.
- He was the very first actor to win the Academy Award for Best Actor. Back then, actors received one Oscar for multiple films and Jannings won for The Way of All Flesh (1927) and The Last Command (1928). The Award is exhibited in the Berlin Film Museum.
- The first non-American actor to win an Oscar (he is from Switzerland).
- Jannings was a versatile actor whose enormous emotional range was well-suited to an array of character roles. Although he occasionally lapsed into the unbridled hamminess that was characteristic of acting styles of the era, he was also capable of great subtlety and nuance, even in such grandiose roles as Mephistopheles in Faust (1926), wherein he projected inner rage and turmoil beneath a cool, cynical exterior.
- He continued to work in German films, but his support of the Nazi regime made him a pariah elsewhere in the world. He continues to be a subject of great controversy, though many of his detractors begrudgingly admit that he was one of the finest actors of his generation.
- According to Susan Orlean, author of Rin Tin Tin: The Life and The Legend (Simon and Schuster, 2011), Jannings was not actually the winner of the first best actor vote, but the runner-up. While researching her book, Orlean discovered that it was in fact Rin Tin Tin, the German Shepherd dog, one of the biggest movie stars of his time, who won the vote. The Academy, however, worried about not being taken seriously if they gave the first Oscar to a dog, chose to award the Oscar to the human runner-up.
- At war's end Jannings was blacklisted by the Allied authorities, and he never made another film. He died five years later, lonely and bitter.
- The shooting of his last film Wo ist Herr Belling? (1945) was aborted when troops of the Allied Powers entered Germany in spring 1945.
- He died in 1950, aged 65, from liver cancer.
- Emil Jannings' second marriage was to Hanna Ralph, his third to Lucie Höflich and his fourth to Gussy Holl.
- Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels named Jannings an "Artist of the State" (Staatsschauspieler) in 1936.
- Was portrayed by the German actor Hilmar Eichhorn in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds (2009). In it, Jannings died a fictional death, shot and then engulfed in flames along with Adolf Hitler.
- Is portrayed by Armin Rohde in Marlene (2000)
- Because of the huge success of his early movies such as Variety (1925) and Faust (1926), he got a three-year contract with Paramount.
- After 1930 he wasn't able to repeat his earlier successes, and only received star parts in National Socialist Germany. In these years he often played historical personalities and participated in some high-profile Nazi movies.
- He was denazified in 1946 and took Austrian nationality one year later.
- From 1900 he came in touch with the theater for the first time, when he temped as a unpaid trainee. Later he acted for touring companies. In the following years he worked his way up constantly and played in Nuremberg, Darmstadt, Bremen and finally for Max Reinhardt in Berlin.
- He was the son of Emil Janenz, an American businessman from St. Louis, and his wife Margarethe née Schwabe, a German migrant.
- It is said in the book Hollywood Babylon that Emil Jannings, during his short Hollywood career, kept all his money hidden in his pillow.
- During the Third Reich, he starred in several films which were intended to promote Nazism, particularly the Führerprinzip by presenting unyielding historical characters, such as The Making of a King (1935), Der Herrscher (1937) directed by Veit Harlan, Robert Koch: The Battle Against Death (1939), Ohm Krüger (1941) and Die Entlassung (1942).
- First bigger roles at the theater followed in 1917.
- Jannings was a theater actor who went into films, though he remained dissatisfied with the limited expressive possibilities in the silent era.
- From 1901 onwards he worked with several theatre companies in Bremen, Nuremberg, Leipzig, Königsberg, and Glogau before joining the Deutsches Theater ensemble under director Max Reinhardt in Berlin.
- Jannings made his breakthrough in 1918 with his role as Judge Adam in Heinrich von Kleist's Broken Jug at the Schauspielhaus.
- Jannings ran away from school and went to sea. When he returned to Görlitz, his mother finally allowed him to begin a trainee ship at the town state theatre, where Jannings started his stage career.
- Permanently employed since 1915, Jannings met with playwright Karl Vollmöller, fellow actor Ernst Lubitsch, and photographer Frieda Riess, who after World War I all were at the heart of the Weimar Culture in 1920s Berlin.
- Was born in Rorschach, Switzerland, at the Lake of Constance. This is just a few minutes away from Au, where Academy Award-winning actress Renée Zellweger's family comes from.
- Jannings reportedly carried his Oscar statuette with him as proof of his former association with Hollywood. However, his active role in Nazi propaganda meant that he was subject to denazification, and a comeback attempt would not be legal.
- His Best Actor Oscar is now on display at the Berlin Filmmuseum.
- Although it is inaccurate to say he is actually a character in Peter Handke's "anti-play," "The Ride Across Lake Constance," his name is used as a designation of a character, as are the names of other celebrated actors of the German cinema, Elisabeth Bergner, Heinrich George, Erich von Stroheim, Henny Porten and the twins Alice Kessler and Ellen Kessler.
- Jannings held German citizenship; while he was still young the family moved to Leipzig in the German Empire and further to Görlitz after the early death of his father.
- The role of Louis XV in Passion (1919), directed by Ernst Lubitsch, was the great breakthrough in his film career.
- In the USA he shot among others the movies The Way of All Flesh (1927), The Last Command (1928), The Patriot (1928) and Betrayal (1929).
- Emil Jannings ran away from home at age 16 to become a sailor, and ended up working as an assistant cook on a ocean liner. He returned home disillusioned, but soon took up the theater; at 18 he made his professional stage debut, going on to tour with several companies in numerous provincial towns.
- For his performances in The Way of All Flesh (1927) and The Last Command (1928) he won the first ever Oscar in film history.
- When the sound film rang in a new era, Jannings feared his limited knowledge of English would make a continued career in Hollywood impossible and went back to Germany. His first film upon returning, The Blue Angel (1930), caused a sensation and is often considered among the best movies of the '30s, while also launching the Hollywood career of Marlene Dietrich.
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