See also Biography Index (M) :: Filmography Index (M) :: Discography Index (M)

Mischa Auer, the American screen`s supreme exponent of the "Mad Russian" stereotype so dear to Yankee hearts before and after World War II, was born Mischa Ounskowsky on November 17, 1905, in St. Petersburg, Russia, the grandson of violinist Leopold Auer, whose surname he took when he became a professional actor in the U.S. during the 1920s. Mischa`s father, an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, died in the Russo-Japanese war while was he was still a baby, which wiped the family out financially. After the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Ounskowsky family disintegrated and Mischa became a "Street Arab", living with homeless youths and barely scraping by in appalling poverty. He eventually was reunited with his mother, who had nursing experience and became a caregiver in the nascent Soviet Union. But V.I. Lenin`s socialist dream wasn`t for her, and she fled to Turkey with Mischa.

In Constantinople Mischa`s mother contracted typhus from the patients she was tending and died. The young boy had to dig a grave with his own hands to bury her. He then began wandering, and was in Italy when Leopold Auer, his mother`s father, discovered his whereabouts. Subsequently, young Ounskowsky emigrated to the United States to join Auer, who lived in New York.

Leopold encouraged his grandson to become a musician, and Mischa matriculated at New York City`s Ethical Culture School to please his grandfather. He became an accomplished musician, able to play multiple instruments, including the violin and piano. However, young Mischa soon became smitten with acting and, through his grandfather`s contacts, was able to turn professional in the 1920s. Mischa Auer made his Broadway debut on February 24, 1925 in a walk on role as an elderly guest in the Actors Theatre production of Henrik Ibsen`s "The Wild Duck", which starred Helen Chandler as Hedvig. He also appeared in the Actors Theatre`s Broadway production of the play "Morals" in 1925, before continuing his his apprenticeship in small roles, including an appearance with the great Walter Hampden in "Cyrano de Bergerac".

While acting, Mischa also performed as a musician. As an actor, he eventually caught on with Eva Le Gallienne`s touring theatrical company before joining Bertha Kalich`s company, which toured the provinces after Kalich -- a stalwart of the Yiddish theater -- made her last appearance as the eponymous "Magda" on Broadway in January & February 1926. Kalich cast Auer as Max in the touring production of "Magda".

Director Frank Tuttle hired Auer for a role in the comedy Something Always Happens (1928) after he saw the Russian perform with the Bertha Kalich Company in Los Angeles. This lead to a decade of screen work in many films, where the tall, unusual-looking actor was typecast as foreigners, often of a villainous bent as befit the prejudices of the time, which were actively catered to by the movies. The films he appeared in, usually in small, uncredited parts, included _Rasputin and the Empress (1932) with the three Barrymores, _Viva Villa! (1933)_ with superstar Wallace Beery, and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), one of Gary Cooper`s best early films.

One year after signing a long-term contract with Universal, Auer broke through into the realm of featured character actors with his Academy Award-nominated turn as the fake nobleman/freeloader/gigolo Carlo, in the classic screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (1936), over at Columbia in 1936. That was the fi