> From: Christopher Camfield (ccamfiel@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca)
> Subject: Peter Lorre question
> I was typing up the lyrics for Peter Lorre earlier and a question
> floated into my mind - Is the song supposed to be serious or sarcastic?
> I've only seen Peter Lorre in _Casablanca_, _The Maltese Falcon_,
> and _All through the night_. In _Falcon_ and _All through..._ he is
> rather NOT like he's described in the song - he's NOT the guy you'd
> want to trust, like the song says, and in _Falcon_ he is scared of
> Sydney Greenstreet's character. Is anyone on the list a b&w film buff,
> who can say a bit more about Peter Lorre? I presume the song was written
> because he died not long before? I don't know.
> Chris
He looks really cool. I was not fully sober when I first had the idea of writing about him. It's an imaginative thing; yeah, he was the bad guy, but imagine some scary-intrigue-casbah type picture where he was your pal. Yeah?