Anton Walbrook

Anton Walbrook
Anton Walbrook as Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, in the duel scene from The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
Born	Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbrück 19 November 1896(1896-11-19) Vienna, Austria
Died	9 August 1967(1967-08-09) (aged 70) (heart attack) Garatshausen, Bavaria, Germany
Occupation	Actor

Anton Walbrook, born German: (Adolf) Anton (Wilhelm) Wohlbrück (19 November 1896, Vienna, Austria – 9 August 1967, Geretshausen) was an Austrian actor who settled in the United Kingdom.

Life

Originally known as Adolf Wohlbrück, he was descended from ten generations of actors though his father broke with tradition and was a circus clown. Walbrook studied with the director Max Reinhardt and built up a career in Austrian theatre and cinema.

In 1936 he went to Hollywood to reshoot dialogue for the multinational The Soldier and the Lady (1937) and in the process changing his name from Adolf to Anton. Instead of returning to Austria, Walbrook, who was classified under the Nuremberg Laws as half-Jewish, settled in England and continued working as a film actor making a speciality of playing continental Europeans.

Producer-director Herbert Wilcox cast him as Prince Albert in Victoria the Great (1937) and Walbrook also appeared in the sequel, Sixty Glorious Years the following year. He was in director Thorold Dickinson's version of Gaslight (1940), in the role played by Charles Boyer in the later Hollywood remake. In Dangerous Moonlight (1941), a romantic melodrama, he was a Polish pianist torn over whether to return home. For the Powell and Pressburger team in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) he played the role of the dashing, intense "good German" officer Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, and the tyrannical impresario Lermontov in The Red Shoes (1948). One of his most unusual films, reuniting him with Dickinson, is The Queen of Spades (1949), an odd, Gothic thriller based on the Alexander Pushkin short story in which Walbrook co-starred with Edith Evans. For Max Ophüls he was the ringmaster in La Ronde (1950).

Red Shoes co-star Moira Shearer recalled Walbrook was a loner on set, often wearing dark glasses and eating alone. He retired from films at the end of the 1950s and in later years appeared on the European stage and television. He died of a heart attack in Geretshausen, Bavaria, Germany in 1967. His ashes were interred in the churchyard of St. John's Church, Hampstead, London, as he had wished in his testament.

The grave of Anton Walbrook in Hampstead Cemetery, London

Selected filmography

In Austria and Germany

• Walzerkrieg (1933), aka Waltz Time in Vienna, as Johann Strauss
• Viktor und Viktoria, aka Viktor and Viktoria (1933)
• Keine Angst Vor Liebe(1933)
• Die vertauschte Braut (1934)
• Maskerade, aka Masquerade in Vienna (1934)
• The English Marriage (1934)
• Regine (1935)
• Der Student von Prag (1935), aka The Student of Prague
• Ich war Jack Mortimer (1935)
• Der Zigeunerbaron (1935)
• Der Kurier des Zaren (1936)
• Allotria (1936)

After leaving Germany

• The Rat (1937)
• The Soldier and the Lady (1937)
• Victoria the Great (1937) as Prince Albert
• Sixty Glorious Years (1938) as Prince Albert
• Gaslight (1940)
• Dangerous Moonlight (1941)
• 49th Parallel (1941)
• The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943)
• The Man from Morocco (1945)
• The Red Shoes (1948)
• The Queen of Spades (1949)
• La Ronde (1950)
• Le Plaisir (1952) narrator in German version
• L'affaire Maurizius (1954)
• Lola Montès (1955) as King Ludwig I of Bavaria
• Oh... Rosalinda!! (1955)
• Saint Joan (1957)
• I Accuse! (1958) as Major Esterhazy

References

Bibliography

• Andrew Moor, Dangerous Limelight: Anton Walbrook and the Seduction of the English (2001)

External links

• Anton Walbrook at the Internet Movie Database
• Anton Walbrook at the British Film Institute's Screenonline. Biography & filmography
• Anton Walbrook fan site
• Photographs of Anton Walbrook
• Anton Walbrook at Find a Grave