| Anton Walbrook | |
| Birth Name: | Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbrück |
| Birth Date: | 19 November 1896 |
| Birth Place: | Vienna, Austria-Hungary |
| Death Place: | Starnberger See, Bavaria, West Germany |
| Occupation: | Actor |
| Yearsactive: | 1915–1966 |
Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbrück (19 November 18969 August 1967) was an Austrian actor who settled in the United Kingdom under the name Anton Walbrook. A popular performer in Austria and pre-war Germany, he left Germany in 1936 out of concerns for his own safety and established a career in British cinema. Walbrook is perhaps best known for his roles in the original British film of Gaslight, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp, The Red Shoes and Victoria the Great (as Prince Albert).
Walbrook was born in Vienna, Austria, as Adolf Wohlbrück.[1] He was the son of Gisela Rosa (Cohn) and Adolf Ferdinand Bernhard Hermann Wohlbrück.[2] [3] He was descended from ten generations of actors, though his father broke with tradition and was a circus clown.[4] He attended a monastery school and considered becoming a monk, but eventually decided to become an actor.
Wohlbrück moved to Berlin to study at the Deutsches Theater under Austro-German director Max Reinhardt. His career was temporarily interrupted by the First World War, during which he was captured in France and spent time in a POW camp.[5]
After the war, Wohlbrück built up a career in German theatre and cinema, with the support of his friend Hermine Körner.[6] In the 1930s he was one of Germany's most popular actors.[7] However, as the Nazis came to power, Wohlbrück realized that he could not stay in Germany for long, as he risked being persecuted by the Nazis due to his Jewish mother[8] and his homosexuality.[9] When Nazi Germany absorbed Austria in the 1938 Anschluss, the Austrian option was taken off the table as well.
In 1936, Wohlbrück went to Hollywood to reshoot dialogue for the 1937 multinational The Soldier and the Lady, in which he portrayed the Jules Verne hero Michael Strogoff, and changed his name from Adolf Wohlbrück to Anton Walbrook. Ironically, due in part to his popularity in Germany (which persisted through the early parts of the Nazi regime), some German emigres in Hollywood suspected that he was a Nazi spy, and some Jewish-American groups threatened to boycott his films. Although RKO convinced the Jewish organizations to lift the boycott by pointing out Walbrook's actual ethnic heritage, the damage was done.[10] He moved to London in 1937, settling down in an area with many German-speaking emigres. One of his neighbours was director Emeric Pressburger, who later cast him in some of his most famous roles. He acquired British citizenship in 1947.
In Britain, Walbrook continued working as an actor, specialising in playing continental Europeans. He "steer[ed] away from the dangerously sexy screen persona of his German career to the image of a passionate spokesman for pan-European liberalism."[11] He played Otto in the first London production of Design for Living at the Haymarket Theatre in January 1939 (later transferring to the Savoy Theatre), and running for 233 performances, opposite Diana Wynyard as Gilda and Rex Harrison as Leo.[12] In 1952 he appeared at the Coliseum as Cosmo Constantine in Call Me Madam, also participating alongside Billie Worth, Jeff Warren and Shani Wallis on the EMI cast recording.[13] Producer-director Herbert Wilcox cast him as Prince Albert in Victoria the Great (1937) and its sequel Sixty Glorious Years (1938). In Dangerous Moonlight (1941), a romantic melodrama, he was a Polish pianist torn over whether to return home.
Thorold Dickinson cast Walbrook in Gaslight (1940), in the role played by Charles Boyer in the later Hollywood remake. One of Walbrook's most unusual films was Dickinson's The Queen of Spades (1949), a Gothic thriller based on the Alexander Pushkin short story, in which he co-starred with Edith Evans.
In 1941 Walbrook began collaborating with Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, for which he is now best remembered. In 49th Parallel (1941) he played a leader of a Hutterite community in Canada. In The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943) he played the role of the dashing, intense military officer Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff, a sympathetic German refugee from the Nazi regime. He also portrayed the tyrannical ballet impresario Lermontov in The Red Shoes (1948). His Red Shoes co-star Moira Shearer recalled Walbrook was a loner on set, often wearing dark glasses, as in his character costume in the film, and eating alone.[14]
After the war, he worked in some continental productions, working with Max Ophüls as the ringmaster in La Ronde (1950) and Ludwig I, King of Bavaria in Lola Montès.
Walbrook retired from feature films in 1958 and moved to Germany, where he worked as a stage and television actor during the 1960s.
In 1967, Walbrook suffered a heart attack on stage while acting in a theatrical production. He survived but later died at the home of actress Hansi Burg in the Garatshausen district of Feldafing, Bavaria, Germany.[15] His ashes were interred in the churchyard of St. John's Church, Hampstead, London, as he had wished in his will.[16] He is buried with his partner Eugene Edwards, a London florist, although Edwards' name is not on the tombstone.[17]
A biography of Walbrook, penned by James Downs, was published in 2020.
American director Wes Anderson is a great fan of The Red Shoes, and once boasted that he knew all of Walbrook's dialogue in that film by heart.[18] Ralph Fiennes, who played the dandyish hotel concierge Gustave H. in Anderson's film The Grand Budapest Hotel, said that Anderson asked him to study Walbrook's work in The Red Shoes to prepare for his performance.[19] In addition, Gustave's mustache is based on Walbrook's.[20]
| Year | TV Show | Role | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1960 | The Duke of Altair | based on Venus Observed | ||
| 1962 | Waldo Lydecker | based on Laura | ||
| 1963 | Sir Colenso Ridgeon | based on The Doctor's Dilemma | ||
| 1966 | Robert und Elisabeth | (final film role) |