Early Work
Karl Valentin came from a reasonably well-off middle-class family; his father had a partnership in a furniture-transport business. Valentin first worked as a carpenter's apprentice, and this experience proved useful in the construction of his sets and props later in life. In 1902, he began his comic career, enrolling for three months at a variety school in Munich, under the guidance of Hermann Strebel. His first job as a performer was at the Zeughaus in Nürnberg (Nuremberg). In the wake of his father's death Valentin took three-year break from performing, during which he constructed his own twenty-piece one-man band (with which he eventually toured in 1906).
Soon Valentin was performing regularly in the cabarets and beerhalls of München (Munich). He developed a reputation for writing and performing short comic routines, which he performed in a strong Bavarian dialect, usually with his female partner, Liesl Karlstadt. Valentin also made numerous films, both silent and with audio; but it was as a stage performer in cabarets that Valentin built a reputation as one of the leading comic performers in Germany during the Weimar Republic.
Read more about this topic: Karl Valentin
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or work:
“Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and organize.”
—Albert Gore, Jr. (b. 1948)
“Irish was a man of parts even if some of them didn’t work too well.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)