Iván Petrovich (; 1 January 1894 – 18 October 1962) was a Serbian film actor and singer.
He was the first actor from Yugoslavia to have a successful international movie career. Petrovich mainly worked in German cinema, but also collaborated with established directors in some 100 Hungarian, French, Spanish, Czechoslovakian and Hollywood movies.
Early life
He was born Svetislav Petrović () on 1 January 1894 in Újvidék, Austria-Hungary, today Novi Sad in the Serbian province of Vojvodina. His father Mladen was a tailor who made uniforms for the Serbian army. After finishing the primary education in his hometown, he moved to Budapest, where he graduated from the Polytechnic academy.
He was a talented singer and violinist and was an accomplished athlete, who participated as a swimmer at the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden.
During the World War I he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army and after the war ended, he moved to Vienna to pursue a film career.
Career
Early career
In Vienna he met a film director Mihály Kertész, who fled Hungary after the war, and who will later make a major Hollywood career as Michael Curtiz. Kertész directed Petrovich in three movies: The Sunflower Woman in 1918 on the play by Ivo Vojnović, The Lady with the Black Gloves in 1919 and, the most successful, The Star of Damascus in 1920. Kertész thought that Petrovich's name Svetislav is too hard to remember, so he chose Iván for him. He later worked with a prominent Hungarian directors Paul Czinner (Homo immanis, 1918) and Béla Balogh (Under the Mountains, 1920), before moving to France.
France
In the mid 1920s he became an international star with a string of French movies, styled "the most cherished lover of the French cinema". He marked the period, mostly being typecast as a latin lover, in the movies of Léonce Perret (Koenigsmark, 1923; The Nude Woman, 1926; Morgane, the Enchantress, 1928), Germaine Dulac (Heart of an Actress, 1924) or Marco de Gastyne (The Lady of Lebanon, 1926). He was partnered on screen with the most popular French actresses of the day like Louise Lagrange, Nita Naldi and Arlette Marchal.
Hollywood
Petrovich was noticed by Hollywood director Rex Ingram who at the time lived and worked in Southern France, where he established a studio in Nice. Ingram directed Petrovich in three films, all co-starring Ingram's wife, Alice Terry: The Magician in 1926, and The Garden of Allah and The Three Passions, both in 1927. At one point, Petrovich was considered as one of the potential successors of Rudolf Valentino, who died prematurely in 1926.
Transition to sound
With the advent of sound, Petrovich's career did not seem to be hampered. Tall, handsome and good looking, with a sonorous voice, he even prospered, expanding his acting range to the more character roles, like the aristocrats, noblemen, officers and priests, in the "Slavic charm" manner. However, even though multilingual, his bad English accent turned out to be an insurmountable obstacle, so he had to scrap his Hollywood plans.
Germany
He made some 40 films in Germany before the outbreak of the war, under the direction of the best German directors and co-starring with the most popular actors of the period. As a good singer, he was frequently cast in filmed operettas.
He worked often with directorial couple Jacob and Luise Fleck (The Orlov in 1927, Doctor Schäfer in 1928, The Tsarevich in 1929) and Richard Oswald (Victoria and Her Hussar in 1931, The Flower of Hawaii in 1933, co-starring Marta Eggerth). Other movies from this period include 1928 Alraune by Henrik Galeen, co-starring Brigitte Helm and Paul Wegener, 1929 Latin Quarter by Augusto Genina, 1931 The Opera Ball by Max Neufeld, co-starring Liane Haid and Die Fledermaus by Karel Lamač, 1932 Grandstand for General Staff by Eugen Thiele, 1934 Paganini, in title role, by E. W. Emo, co-starring Theo Lingen, and The Last Waltz by Georg Jacoby, 1935 The Cossack and the Nightingale by Phil Jutzi, 1937 Unter Ausschluß der Öffentlichkeit by Paul Wegener and 1939 Zentrale Rio by Erich Engels, co-starring Ita Rina.