…that German-born actor Conrad Veidt (1893-1943), best known for playing the odious Major Heinrich Strasser in Casablanca (‘42), was quite the impassioned anti-Nazi activist (he and Jewish wife Lily Greger left Germany when Hitler took power in ‘33) and was “perhaps” bisexual and certainly into occasional cross-dressing, at least during the Weimar era.

I had somehow completely forgotten that Veidt played a major role in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (‘20), the seminal German expressionist horror film.

Veidt’s Los Angeles pallies called him Connie. He stood six-foot-three.

During his final two or three years he lived smack dab in central Beverly Hills (617 No. Maple Drive) and for a time was into occult spirituality.

Having inherited a weak heart from his mother and having aggravated this condition with chain smoking, Veidt died while golfing at the Riviera Country Club on 4.3.43 — roughly three months after Casablanca opened in Los Angeles (it had premiered in NYC in November ‘42) and eleven months before it won the Best Picture Oscar on 3.2.44.