Trivia

A music arranger for such luminaries as Irving Berlin before he started working in Hollywood as an actor, he also served as Berlin's stage manager and production assistant. He also was an assistant at one time for Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre.

Initially found radio work through the help of Billy Wilder.

After World War II he was film officer for the Office of Military Government, United States (OMGUS) in Germany.

In his early days he also wrote cabaret revues and played piano at bars.

Father of Kristina van Eyck.

One of his most notable early film roles was as Lt. Schwegler in Billy Wilder's second American feature, Five Graves to Cairo (1943). Coincidentally, the star of Wilder's first American feature The Major and the Minor (1942) was Ginger Rogers, who was born the same day as Van Eyck.

Van Eyck went to Hollywood where he worked as a truck driver.

While studying music in Berlin, Van Eyck purportedly had a brief liaison with Jean Ross, a cabaret singer who inspired the fictional character of Sally Bowles. Ross became pregnant with Eyck's child and, when Eyck departed Weimar-era Berlin, Ross had an abortion authorized by gay author Christopher Isherwood who falsely claimed to be her impregnator. These factual events served as the genesis for a short story by Isherwood which later became the 1937 novella Sally Bowles and was later adapted into the 1966 Cabaret musical and the 1972 film of the same name.

In 1931, after leaving Berlin, Van Eyck lived in Paris, London, Tunis, Algiers and Cuba, before settling in New York. He earned a living playing the piano in a bar, and wrote and composed for revues and cabarets, including several songs for Madame Spivy with lyricist John LaTouche.

At the end of World War II, he returned to Germany as a control officer for film and remained there until 1948 as director of the film section. He completed training at Camp Ritchie and is considered to be one of the Ritchie Boys.