Date of Birth : Nov 19th 1896
Austrian actor who settled in the United Kingdom. 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.
With the rise of oppression in Nazi Germany, Walbrook, who was half-Jewish and gay, settled in England instead of returning to Austria and continued working as a film actor. High points include the dashing, intense German officer Theo Kretschmar-Schuldorff in The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), the tyrannical impresario in The Red Shoes (1948) and the ringmaster in La Ronde (1950). One of his most unusual films 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.
Red Shoes co-star Moira Shearer said Walbrook was a loner on set, often wearing dark glasses and eating alone.[1] 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 Garatshausen, 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.
CAREER
Gaslight ( 1940 )
