Mischa Auer (17 November 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia - 5 March 1967 in Rome) was a Russian actor, born Mischa Ounskowsky. Young Ounskowsky renamed himself Auer after his grandfather, violinist Leopold Auer. He began stage work in the 1920s, then moved to Hollywood, where he first appeared in 1928 in Something Always Happens. He appeared in several small and mostly uncredited roles into the 1930s, appearing in such films as Rasputin and the Empress, Viva Villa!, Gershwin musical Delicious, and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer.

But in 1936, Auer was cast as Alice Brady's protégé in the comedy My Man Godfrey, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. From then on, he was regularly cast in zany comedy roles. Auer is at his zenith in such roles as the ballet instructor, Kolenkov, in the Best Picture-winning You Can't Take It With You (wherein he instructs Jean Arthur with the line, "Ah, my little Rubishka!") and the prince turned fashion designer in Walter Wanger's Vogues of 1938. Auer can also be seen cavorting in such films as: 100 Men and a Girl, Destry Rides Again, Spring Parade, Hellzapoppin', Cracked Nuts and Lady in the Dark. He was also one of the large cast of And Then There Were None, as well as the vehicles for Lily Pons.

In the 1950s, Auer appeared on several episodic television series, like Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse, Studio One, Broadway Television Theatre and The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre. In the 1960s, he made several films in France and Italy including The Christmas That Almost Wasn't.

Auer married four times, and had three children. He died of cardiovascular disease in Rome in 1967.

Auer appears to have been the model/inspiration for the animated character, "Skinner" in the popular hit film, Ratatouille.

Mischa Auer, the American screen's supreme exponent of the "Mad Russian" stereotype so dear to Yankee hears before and after World War II, was born Mischa Ounskowsky on November 17, 1905 in St. Petersburg, Russia, the grandson of violinist Leopold Auer, whose surname he took when he became a professional actor in the U.S. during the 1920s. Mischa's father, an officer in the Imperial Russian Navy, died in the Russo-Japanese war while was he was still a baby, which wiped the family out financially. After the November 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, the Ounskowsky family disintegrated and Mischa became a "Street Arab", living with homeless youths and barely scraping by in appalling poverty. He eventually was reunited with his mother, who had nursing experience and became a caregiver in the nascent Soviet Union. But Lenin's socialist dream wasn't for her, and she fled to Turkey with Mischa. In Constantinople, Mischa's mother contracted typhus from the patients she was tending to and died. The young boy had to dig a grave with his own hands to bury her. He then began wandering, winding up in Italy when Leopold Auer, his mother's father, discovered his whereabouts. Subsequently, young Ounskowsky emigrated to the United States to join Auer, who lived in New York. Leopold Auer encouraged his grandson to become a musician, and Mischa matriculated at New York City's Ethical Culture School to please his grandsire. He became an accomplished musician, able to play multiple instruments, including the violin and piano. However, young Mischa soon became smitten with acting and, through his grandfather's contacts, was able to turn professional in the 1920s. Mischa Auer made his Broadway debut on February 24, 1925 in a walk on role as an elderly guest in the Actors Theatre production of Henrik Ibsen (I)'s "The Wild Duck", which starred Helen Chandler as Hedvig. He also appeared in the Actors Theatre's Broadway production of the play "Morals" in 1925, before continuing his his apprenticeship in small roles, including an appearance with the great Walter Hampden in "Cyrano de Bergerac". While acting, Mischa also performed as a musician. As an actor, he eventually caught on with Eva Le Gallienne's touring theatrical company before joining Bertha Kalich's company, which toured the provinces after Kalich -- a stalwart of the Yiddish theater -- made her last appearance as the eponymous "Magda" on Broadway in January & February 1926. Kalich cast Auer as Max in the touring production of "Magda". Director Frank Tuttle (I) hired Auer for a role in the comedy Something Always Happens (1928) after he saw the Russian perform with the Bertha Kalich Company in Los Angeles. This lead to a decade of screen-work in many films, where the tall, unusual-looking actor was typecast as foreigners, often of a villainous bent as befits the prejudices of the time, which were actively catered to by the movies. The films he appeared in, usually in small, uncredited parts, included _Rasputin and the Empress (1932) with the three Barrymmores, _Viva Villa! (1933)_ with superstar Wallace Beery, and Lives of a Bengal Lancer, The (1935), one of Gary Cooper (I)'s best, early sound films. One year after signing a long-term contract with Universal, Auer broke through into the realm of featured character actors with his Academy Award-nominated turn as the fake nobleman/freeloader/gigolo Carlo, in the classic screwball comedy My Man Godfrey (1936), over at Columbia. Nineteen-thirty-six was the first year that Oscars were awarded to supporting players, and although he lost to eventual three-time Best Supporting Actor Academy Award winner Walter Brennan, it made him as a popular character actor. Auer -- the Mad Russian -- became a fixture in comedies of the late 1930 and early '40s. Of the role of Carlo, he said: "That one role made a comedian out of me. I haven't been anything else since. It's paid off very well. Do you wonder that I am flattered when people say I am mad?" He turned in a memorable appearance as the Russian ballet-master Boris Kolenkhov in Frank Capra's Oscar-winning classic You Can't Take It with You (1938) opposite Jean Arthur (I) and Ann Miller (I). Other memorable parts in the "Golden Years of Hollywood" phase of his career came in the musical One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) in support of Deanna Durbin, as Boris Callahan, who touches off a cantina cat-fight between Marlene Dietrich and Una Merkel in the classic Destry Rides Again (1939). After appearing in the musical comedy "The Lady Comes Across" in early 1942, a flop which lasted three performances, he toured with vaudeville before acting in the summer radio series "Mischa the Magnificent". In the radio show, he played a man writing his memoirs, but after the summer run he returned to the movies. His last appearance on Broadway, "Lovely Me", opened on Christmas Day 1946 and closed 37 performances later, on January 25, 1947. Between movies, he appeared in touring shows, and on vaudeville. During the 1950s, an era when the post-Paramount decision Hollywood first experienced runaway production as American producers turned to the cheaper European film studios to save money, Auder decamped for Europe. He and his family settled in Salzberg, Austria, where he made broadcasts for Radio Free Europe between appearing in foreign movies, mostly made in France. He achieved acclaim in Paris for his appearance in the title role of the 1953 revival of the comedy "Tovarich". On the Continent, he was typecast as elderly eccentrics, most notably in Orson Welles's Mr. Arkadin (1955). He also appeared frequently on American television during the '50s. He was praised for his appearance in a 1953 "Omnibus" presentation of George Bernard Shaw's play "Arms and the Man". He suffered a heart-attack in 1957, but continued to make movies in Europea and appear in television in the U.S. In 1964, he appeared as Baron Popoff in the New York Lincoln Center Music Theater's revival of "The Merry Widow". It was not a success, but the New York Times review praised him: "Mischa Auer is, after all, one of the great comics. With his head down a little, jowls flapping, his ripe Marsovian accent rolling through the house, his eyes popping--he dominates the performance." Suffering from cardiovascular disease, Auer suffered a second heart attack and died in Rome on March 5, 1967, at the age of 61. He will long be remembered as one of the inimitable character actors who graced t he classic films of the Golden Age of Hollywood.