Max Landa
Max Landa was a Russian-born Austrian silent film and stage actor. He attended the Handelsakademie in Vienna and took classes with acting teacher in the same city. After working as a bank clerk for a short period he decided to focus on his acting career in 1893. After working at various theatres in Austria and Germany for about twenty years he was discovered in Berlin as leading man by movie star Asta Nielsen with whom he played in several movies directed by Urban Gad.
When Joe May founded his own film production company in 1915 he formed a contract with Max Landa who became the first of a number of actors to play the role of the fictional British detective Joe Deebs, created as a rival to Sherlock Holmes during the silent era. The Jewish Landa and his wife Margot Walter fled Germany following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, and he committed suicide in exile in Yugoslavia.Selected filmography
