Charismatic film star of the “talkies”: Joseph Schmidt was considered to be too short for the opera stage, as he was only five foot two. But after he went “on the air” in April 1929, the tenor soon had thousands of fans. He took the medium of radio in his stride and in no time he was a star of early sound films. The climax and the turning-point of his career were marked by his 1933 hit “Ein Lied geht um die Welt” (a song goes round the world): as a Jew, the singer had no choice but to flee Germany. Engagements in Vienna and concert tours of Switzerland, Palestine and the USA allowed him to live up to his earlier success until war broke out. In 1942, already in poor health, he died in a Swiss internment camp.