Kurt Katch

Foreboding, shaven-headed Polish actor Kurt Katch studied acting and directing with the fabled Viennese impresario Max Reinhardt. Katch went on to organize Berlin's Kulturbund Deutschen Juden Theater and a Yiddish-speaking troupe in Warsaw. When Hitler rose to power, the Jewish Katch saw the handwriting on the wall and came to the U.S. in 1937. He established himself as a movie villain in the 1940s, most often cast as a smirking, monocled Nazi. In films until 1958's The Young Lions, Kurt Katch is best remembered by boys of all ages as the unspeakable Hulagu Khan in that ultimate escapist adventure yarn Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944). - Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide