About three years ago, an extraordinary German film called M was shown here in America, where it duplicated the distinguished critical triumph it had already achieved over the period of a year in Europe. Based on the horrendous child murders in Dusseldorf, the leading role was portrayed by one Peter Lorre, who gave a magnificent and chilling portrayal of the pathological killer. It was his cinema debut. Born in Hungary's Carpathian mountains, Lorre never entered a theatre until he became an actor. He ran away from home at seventeen, slept in public parks, nearly starved, worked briefly in a Viennese bank, finally got a walk-on part, with no lines, in a Breslau production of Danton. Thereafter, he appeared on the stage in Vienna, Zurich and Berlin, until Fritz Lang chose him for the part in M. This last year he came to America, after his brilliant success in The Man Who Knew Too Much, the British Gaumont picture. In Hollywood, for Columbia, he made Mad Love and Dostoievsky's Crime and Punishment. The screen's foremost exponent of unhealthy and curious terror, he is, in private life, quiet, friendly, unassuming and intelligent. He is now thirty-one, is married to a German actress, likes to sketch in charcoal, and is an ardent wrestling fan.