He featured in several hundred films starting from the age of silent movies, he successfully made the transition to sound and he was also involved with American TV. He played straight-talking heartthrobs and sneaky villains as well as major historical figures, but mainly he was known for his portrayals of enigmatic outsiders. From this astonishingly rich oeuvre we begin to discern the image of a charismatic individual who pursued a career with enormous talent and consistent hard work.

Mihály Várkonyi was born the family’s seventh child in Kisvárda on 31 March 1891. His father, Herman Weisz, was a cattle trader who had his smart son well educated. His talent as a performer became evident in the Sunday reading circle of the local elementary school. Although the lad was more in thrall to poems than numbers, he soon moved to a commercial school in Kosice and from there to Budapest. After leaving school he worked as a bookkeeper and then in an insurance firm, but here, too, he found most pleasure in entertaining his colleagues. Encouraged by a favourite teacher, he finally applied to the Academy of Drama and, despite the huge number of applicants, he still managed to be selected as one of the 10 students offered places. From here it was a direct path to the National Theatre where, for instance, he excelled as Romeo, a part made for him.

Jenő Janovics, director of the Cluj-Napoca National Theatre, saw this performance and immediately signed the young talent. Várkonyi was delighted to leave for Transylvania where not only the stage but motion pictures awaited him. Thanks to the organizational genius of Janovics, who was always open to innovations, there was a burgeoning film production hub in Cluj-Napoca in the 1910s. Várkonyi made regular appearances. His first film role was in Sárga csikó by French director Félix Vanyl. This became the first significant international success in Hungarian film history.

He played the lead role in A tolonc (The Exile, 1914) that by great fortune has survived to this day, he took the part of Prince Otto in Hungary’s first historical film, the opulent Bánk bán (1914), that has since been lost, while he also appeared in Szent Péter esernyője (St. Peter’s Umbrella, 1917) and the spy movie Hotel Imperial (1917). He was the first male genuine film star in Hungary and was even exempt from military service in order to continue acting.

However, in the confusion following the overthrow of the Republic of Councils this great talent could not find his own place so he quit the country. In 1920 he moved to Berlin, where he had the role of lover of Pola Negri playing a poor French girl in Arme Violetta (The Red Peacock, 1920). Vienna was the next stop where he met many old colleagues at Sascha Film. He loved the exacting but high-standard and good-willed audience of the imperial capital, so much so that even in his years in America he frequently referred to Vienna as the one place unlike anywhere else. His most memorable movie in Vienna was the epic Mihály Kertész production Sodom und Gomorrha (Sodom and Gomorrah, 1922), in which he played both a priest and an archangel. The film was a massive hit in Europe and attracted the attention of studio moguls in the United States. Cecil B. DeMille, Paramount’s chief director, quickly recognized the talent of this good-looking actor and he sent a telegram offering Várkonyi a part in his own Bible-inspired movie, The Ten Commandments. However, agreement was never reached because Sascha Film was in no hurry to pass on the message since they feared losing their money-making star.

Mihály Várkonyi and his wife in Budapest (source: Színházi Élet 1928/2)

Finally, Várkonyi only departed Cherbourg for America in the following year, but he did not travel alone since another Hungarian actor, Pufi Huszár, had booked a ticket on the very same ocean liner. The two travellers arrived in New York on 24 October 1923, and a few days later Várkonyi went on to Hollywood. There he was met by his old friend, the director Ernst Lubitsch, who didn’t mince his words when it came to the ‘American Dream’. He warned him that “popularity, success and reputation in Europe are only worth anything when they have true knowledge and genuine willpower behind them. Here, one has to break through all the conventions and, with clenched teeth, forget what one was over there and start again – that’s America…” Várkonyi recalled. Lubitsch was proven correct in that in the beginning Várkonyi, considered a star in Europe, had to work hard for roles. His poor English caused quite a bit of confusion. When, for instance, he wanted to say ‘bad luck’, which in Hungarian is ‘pech’ (and which of course nobody would have understood), he used the closest word he knew in English, ‘peach’, and when during shooting it turned out that he couldn’t drive, this caused much hilarity among the film crew. His foreign-sounding name was changed and from this date he was always credited as Victor Varconi; Paramount’s PR department billed him as the first European film actor to receive an opportunity in Hollywood.

Luckily for Varconi, he was one of the few who got on with the strict but brilliant Cecil B. De Mille. They both recognized each other’s talent and Varconi did everything he could to excel in his roles. He played the poor but likeable rival to Rod La Rocque in the romantic film Triumph (1924), then the Russian prince losing his status amidst revolutionary fervour in The Volga Boatman (1926). His athletic build, finely proportioned face and open look primarily suited lover characters but he also enjoyed playing villains, in the figures of whom he could instil such profundity that he totally carried the audience with him. His acting was occasionally likened to the restrained but powerful style of the Japanese Sessue Hayakawa, who instead of dramatic movements worked with primarily his forceful look and refined mimicry. The real breakthrough came with The King of Kings (1927) depicting Christ’s Passion, in which he gave a potent rendition as Pilate. Several million paid to see the extravagant, deeply moving film at its premiere and it has since been screened in many countries at Easter. From this moment, Varconi’s star quickly rose as he became the favourite of cinemagoers and critics also recognized his talent.

His next great success was as Admiral Nelson partnering Corinne Griffith in The Divine Lady (1928). However, by that time he and his colleagues were already well aware that the film industry faced fundamental changes because Warner studio had already released The Jazz Singer (1927), its first sound film. The appearance of sound turned the global film profession upside down and brought dramatic change to the lives of countless actors and actresses. Several European stars of Hollywood could not continue their careers because their strong accents ruled them out. Vilma Bánky, Hollywood’s uncrowned queen, was also forced to retire, thus of those Hungarians who had moved to the US in the 1920s only Varconi and Paul Lukas, formerly Pál Lukács, remained on the screen. These two were among those who picked up the gauntlet and worked hard to perfect their English accent.

And yet the personalities of the two stars differed in many respects: whereas Paul Lukas radiated the atmosphere of decadent, elegant European metropolises, the nature-loving Varconi conjured up images of romantic and mysterious Eastern Europe.

1930. Captain Thunder (source: Wikipedia)

He played the part of the irresistible Mexican bandit in Captain Thunder (1930), the charming Russian prince in the film version of the popular Broadway musical made with Fred Astaire, Roberta (1935), the Caribbean dictator in Men in Exile (1937), the Spanish guerrilla Primitivo in For Whom the Bells Toll (1943) starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman, and an Indian in the film The Plainsman (1936) by Cecil B. De Mille. He also worked alongside Hungarian colleagues. He appeared with Bela Lugosi in The Black Camel (1931) and he had a part in the legendary adventure film by Michael Curtiz, The Sea Hawk (1940). Meanwhile, he frequently returned to his beloved Europe. One of the memorable Italian films of the silent movie era is Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei (The Last Days of Pompeii, 1926), in which his partner was the Hungarian Maria Corda. In the winter of 1928 he visited Budapest, an event newsreels also covered and he was delighted to see that his name was advertised on a massive illuminated hoarding on the façade of UFA cinema in the city. In 1933, at the very same time that Hitler came to power, he was acting in the film Der Rebell in Berlin, which is about the people of Tirol rising up against Napoleon’s conquest and at the same time was the last film role Vilma Bánky ever played. Adolf Hitler was invited to the German premiere of the patriotic film but Varconi did not attend this event. However, not long after this he came across the character of Hitler on screen when he was offered the part of Rudolph Hess in John Farrow’s 1944 anti-Nazi film The Hitler Gang. In a movie transforming the dictator’s rise to power into a gangster story, Varconi was brilliant, looking frighteningly like the number two in the Reich with his shaggy eyebrows and fanatic adoration of Hitler.

1944. The Hitler Gang (source: Motion Picture Herald, 1944, Media History Digital Library)

Victor Varconi’s astonishingly rich oeuvre is that of a dedicated and multifaceted actor. In the 1950s, he returned to his treasured stage and took on roles in Broadway theatres, he worked in television productions and he greatly enjoyed teaching young actors. Although he never returned to Hungary, in his biography Not Enough To Be Hungarian he admits that he never forgot his Hungarian teachers and in the United States he taught his students as if he had done so at the Academy of Drama in Budapest. Varconi died in Santa Barbara, where he had lived his final years happily with his second wife Lillianne, on 16 June 1976. He met his first wife, Anna ‘Nusi’ Aranyossy, in Cluj-Napoca and they
remained faithful partners until her death in 1949. Their Hollywood home was an important centre of society and their Hungarian-style dinners attracted many acquaintances. Vilma Bánky and her husband, Rod La Rocque, Mihály Kertész, Sándor Korda, Steffi Duna, Ernst Lubitsch, Emil Jannings and many more were all considered close acquaintances.

1924. Hollywood Hungarians (source: Színházi Élet 1924/45.)

At that time the Hungarian colony in Hollywood was extremely cohesive, generously sharing not only in films and in entertainment but in their homesickness as well. In 1924, Varconi wrote in his diary sent to Színházi Élet: "Pufi Huszár is here as well and we spend a lot of time together. We frequently drive out to the sea and spend half the night chatting about our poor, downtrodden Europe… and the poverty there… Here, wealth and welfare are everywhere… […] Here we ponder, on the shores of America, two Hungarian actors on the shore of the Pacific Ocean. How odd life is! Occasionally our hearts ache because of the great distance… But at least we are not dreaming of the homeland alone."

IMDb