Anton Walbrook is an Austrian actor who lived in Great Britain under the name Anton Walbrook. He was a very popular actor in Austria and in pre-war Germany, but left his homeland in 1936 for reasons of his own safety and continued his career in English cinema. Anton is best known for his films The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and The Red Shoes.
Biography
Anton's real full name is Adolf Anton Wilhelm Volbrück. He was born on November 19, 1896 in Vienna, Austria. Father - Adolf Ferdinand Bernhard Hermann Volbrück, mother - Gisela Rosa. The Wolbrück family consisted of ten generations of actors, and only Anton's father was not an actor, but a circus clown. Grandfather Adolf Wollbrück was a variety artist.
Anton received his education at the monastery school in Vienna and at the secondary school in Berlin.
Thanks to his parental connections, Anton became a personal student of the then famous director Max Reinhardt and made a career in Austrian theater and cinema.
During the First World War, Anton was captured by the French. While in captivity, Wolbrück founded the Aucher Capture Theater, which would later perform on the stages of Munich, Dresden and Berlin.
In pre-war Germany, he began to play in silent films and new films with sound. His role is as an elegant cosmopolitan gentleman. And he often performed with Renata Müller.
Since 1933, he changed his appearance and grew a mustache.
In 1936, Wolbrück traveled to Hollywood to re-shoot some scenes and dialogues for the multinational film Soldier and Lady (1937). In the US, he removed both his full names "Adolph" and "Wilhelm" and became simply Anton Volbrück.
But, neither to Austria, nor to Germany, Anton never returned. The fact is that Wolbrück was a homosexual, and people like him were persecuted by the Nazis. Moreover, according to the classification of the Nuremberg Laws, Wohlbrück was recognized as half-Jewish (his mother was Jewish) and was a fierce opponent of National Socialism.
Therefore, after visiting America, Wolbrück settled in England since 1936 and changed his surname to Walbrook, as it is convenient from the point of view of English pronunciation. He soon found himself a job as a film actor. His creative roles were the roles of the elegant or sinister continental Europeans. Working as an actor, Anton campaigned for Jewish actors and "non-Aryan" German actors at every opportunity, often provided them with financial assistance, and saved them from the Nazi regime.
Anton Walbrook received the passport of a citizen of the United Kingdom only in 1947.
Anton Walbrook died on August 9, 1967 at the age of 70 from a heart attack in Garazhausen, Bavaria, Germany. The attack happened during his performance on stage. According to his will, his ashes are buried in the cemetery of St. John's Church in Hampstead near London.
Career in Germany
Martin Luther (1923) is a silent film directed by Karl Wüstenhagen.
Mater Dolorosa (1924) is a silent film by Joseph Delmont.
"The Secret of Elmshoch Castle" (1925) - a silent film by Max Obahl, the role of Axel.
In 1931, Anton starred in three films at once: "Flip Mortale" directed by Henri Dupont, "Company Pride No. 3" directed by Fred Sauer as Prince Willibald and the role of Max Binder in the film "Three from the Unemployment Bureau" directed by Eugene Thiele.
In 1932, three more films with Walbrook were released: "Five Damned Gentlemen" - the German version of the French film directed by Julien Duvivier, "Melody of Love" by director Georg Jacobi and "Child" by Karel Lamach.
1933 was also marked by three films: "Waltz War" directed by Ludwig Berger, "Kane Angst thief Liebe" directed by Hans Steinhoff and "Victor and Victoria" directed by Reinhold Schünzel.
In 1934 Anton starred in five different films: "George and Georgette" - the French version of the film "Victor and Victoria" directed by Roger Le Bon, "Die vertauschte Braut" directed by Karel Lamach, "Masquerade" directed by Willy Forst, "A woman who knows What She Wants, directed by Viktor Janson and English Marriage, directed by Reinhold Schünzel.
1935: Regina, directed by Erich Waschneck, The Gypsy Baron, directed by Karl Hartl, its French version, La Baron Tsigane, directed by Henri Chaumette, I Was Jack Mortimer, directed by Karl Froelich, and Student of Prague, directed by Arthur Robinson …
1936 was the last year for Anton as a German-speaking actor. This year he starred in Richard Eichberg's The Tsar's Courier, Jacques de Baroncelli's Michelle Strogoff, directed by Willie Forst, and the French film Port Arthur by Nicholas Farkas.
Career in theater and cinema
Unlike most German-speaking actors, Anton has made an excellent career for himself in English-language cinema.
Anton Wilbrook made his debut in English cinema in 1937 in The Soldier and Lady as Michael Strogoff. It was the English version of the German film The Tsar's Courier.
In 1937, Anton starred as Prince Albert in Victoria the Great, directed by Herbert Wilcox. The next year, 1938, the same director would shoot a sequel to the film, Sixty Glorious Years, and invite Wilbruck to play the same role.
Walbrück made his English theater debut in January 1939. He played the role of Otto in Design for Life at the Haymarket Theater. After that, Anton moved to the Savoy Theater and took part in more than 233 different performances.
In the thriller Gas Lanterns (1940) directed by Thorold Dickinson, he portrayed Charles Boyer, the murderer of her husband.
In the romantic melodrama Dangerous Moonlight (1941) he played a Polish pianist who was worried about returning home to Poland.
In the same 1941 he appears in the film "49th Parallel" with Powell and Pressburger. In 1943 he played in the film "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp" the positive role of the dashing and impulsive German officer Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorf. What both of these films have in common is that Walbrook played in them the positive roles of Germans rejecting National Socialism.
1945 saw the release of The Man from Morocco, directed by Mutz Greenbaum, in which Anton played the role of Karel Langer.
In the film Red Shoes (1948) he plays the role of the cruel choreographer and tyrannical impresario Boris Lermontov.
One of the most unusual films with Anton's participation is the gothic thriller based on Alexander Pushkin, The Queen of Spades. Walbrook got the main role of Captain Herman Suvorin.
In the 1950s, he briefly returned to the stages of German theaters in Dusseldorf, Hamburg and Stuttgart, as well as to the screens of German films.
With the German director Max Ophulst, Anton starred in La Ronde (1950) as a master of ceremonies, in Lola Montes (1955) as King Ludwig I of Bavaria, and in Der Reigen as the all-knowing confessor.
In 1950, he starred in the French film King for One Night directed by Paul May as Count von Lerchenbach.
In 1951 he took part in the German film Viennese Waltzes as Johann Strauss. The film was directed by Emil-Edwin Reinert.
In 1952 he appeared at the Colosseum Theater in the production Call Me Madame as Konstantin Cosmo.
In 1954, he played the role of Gregoire Varem in the French film Chargé d'Affaires Mauricius, directed by Julien Duvivier.
In 1955 he starred in the English film "Oh … Rosalind !!!" as Dr. Falke.
In 1957 he played the role of Cauchon, Bishop of Beauvais in the film "Saint Joan" by the English director Otto Preminger.
Anton's last work was the role of Major Esterhazy in the English film I Accuse, directed by Jose Ferrer.
One and his co-stars on set, Moira Shearer, recalls that Walbrook was a very lonely person. Outside of filming, he constantly wore sunglasses and ate alone.
In the late 1950s, Anton finally retired from the cinema, only occasionally began to appear on television shows.
In 1960, he starred in the show Venus im Licht, a German astronomical show dedicated to the observation of Venus. In 1962 he appeared on the English show "Laura". In 1964 - on the German TV show "Der Arzt am Scheideweg" and in 1966 - on the English show "Robert and Elizabeth".
