Fred Essler

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Fred Essler , born as Friedrich Eduard Josef Eßler , (born February 13, 1895 in Vienna , Austria-Hungary ; † January 17, 1973 in Woodland Hills , California , United States ) was an Austrian-American stage and film actor and theater director .

Live and act

Fritz Eßler began his theater career in Katowice, Upper Silesia, right after the First World War in 1919. His next stage positions were the Deutsches Theater in Berlin (where he only stayed for one season), the Thalia Theater and the Kammerspiele in Hamburg (both in the years 1921 to 1925), the United Theaters of Breslau, where Eßler in the 1925 season / 26 also worked as a director, and the United City Theater Duisburg-Bochum. From 1928 to 1937 Fritz Eßler was a member of the Zurich Schauspielhaus. The native Viennese took part in an abundance of plays and was also responsible as a director for around 50 productions, mostly comedies and comedies. Eßler's directorial work includes the plays Arm wie eine Kirchenmaus (Ladislaus Fodor), Professor Bernhardi (Arthur Schnitzler), Intimacies (Noel Coward), Regen (Somerset Maugham), Candida (George Bernard Shaw) and The Girl in the Shadow (Walter Ellis). As an actor, Eßler was seen both in serious and funny pieces, his role repertoire was fed by works as diverse as Professor Mamlock (Friedrich Wolf), Back and forth (Ödon von Horvath), Arthur Aronymus and his fathers (Else Lasker-Schüler) and The Imaginary Sick (Molière). During these nine years, Fritz Eßler worked several times with star director Leopold Lindtberg . After the end of his time in Zurich, Eßler returned to his Austrian homeland.

Here he was surprised by the Anschluss in March 1938 . From then on, being excluded from gaming operations as a Jew, Eßler left the country and traveled to Rotterdam to embark on a ship to North America. He met in New York on October 9, 1938 and applied for US citizenship two months later. Initially, Fritz Eßler, who was now called Fred Essler, had to struggle with great difficulties. At first he appeared almost exclusively in emigrant performances, for example in the revue From Vienna (June to August 1939) set up by the Refugee Artists Group , and joined Ernst Lothar's Austrian stage in New York. Until November 1942 he worked in New York in various plays, mostly by German-speaking authors, including Anton Wildgans , Arthur Schnitzler , Bruno Granichstaedten and Bruno Frank . Fred Essler then went to Hollywood, where he appeared over the next two decades, beginning with minor appearances by villainous Nazis in Warner Bros. propaganda productions, with supporting roles in a large number of cinema and, since the early 1950s, television films. In the mid-1960s, Essler stopped all acting.

Filmography

literature

  • Trapp, Frithjof; Mittenzwei, Werner; Rischbieter, Henning; Schneider, Hansjörg: Handbook of the German-speaking Exile Theater 1933–1945 / Biographical Lexicon of Theater Artists . Volume 2, part 1, p. 229 f., Munich 1999

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Essler, Fred
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Eßler, Friedrich Eduard Josef (full name at birth); Eßler, Fritz (theater name in Germany)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Austrian-American stage and film actor and theater director
DATE OF BIRTH February 13, 1895
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna , Austria-Hungary
DATE OF DEATH 17th January 1973
Place of death Woodland Hills , United States