Gert Frobe

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Gert Fröbe at the premiere party of Reckless Men in their Flying Chests (1965)

Karl Gerhart "Gert" Fröbe (born February 25, 1913 in Oberplanitz near Zwickau , † September 5, 1988 in Munich ) was a German actor . Fröbe is considered one of the most important German character actors of the 20th century. He was also involved in many international productions. The actor gained fame in the role of the child killer in the crime classic It Happened in Broad Daylight of 1958 and as the villain Auric Goldfinger in the film James Bond 007 - Goldfinger from 1964.

Life

Frobe caricature by Hans Pfannmüller , 1976

Fröbe was the son of the alcoholic master rope master, leather merchant and shoemaker Otto Johannes Fröbe (1886–1947) and his wife Helene Alma (1884–1972), née. Sagewitz, who was a seamstress. Following his artistic urge, he began as a set shifter and handyman in the Zwickau City Theater . He also earned money as a standing violinist in Zwickau and the surrounding area and was known here as Dor rode Geicher von Zwigge (The Red Violinist of Zwickau) because of his reddish hair shimmer . In doing so, he discovered his acting talent. From 1933 to 1935 he trained as a theater painter at the Saxon State Opera in Dresden . He then took acting lessons and soon got extra and supporting roles. It was his teacher Erich Ponto who recognized his comedic talent. Fröbe had gathered up all the courage to speak to Erich Ponto. He initially waved him off because of Frobe's unmistakable Saxon dialect , but later accepted him as a student. Ponto commented on Gert Fröbe's audition with the words: "Mephisto was not a Saxon."

When all German theaters and stages had to close in the fall of 1944 as part of the " total war ", Fröbe was assigned to the Wehrmacht, where he served as a medical soldier in the army until the end of the war.

After an engagement at the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna under Walter Bruno Iltz , he became known in 1948 in the role of " Otto normal consumer " in the film Berliner Ballade . With increasing body he often used the cliché of the typical German in the course of his film career and later also in international productions. B. the uniform wearer vacillating between joviality and brutality .

Fröbe mastered a wide range of roles, from heavyweight comedians to sophisticated character actors. Despite his corpulent physique, he was able to create differentiated character studies through posture, movement and facial expressions. He was also an outstanding reciter and on his recitation tours staged the works of Christian Morgenstern , Joachim Ringelnatz and Erich Kästner not only verbally, but also mimed and gestural.

Gert Fröbe as the old Dag in the film And the forests sing forever ; Illustration by Helmuth Ellgaard , 1959
Memorial plaque on the house where Gert Fröbe was born in Oberplanitz .

After almost 40 German-language films, Gert Fröbe played - alongside Heinz Rühmann - in 1958, It happened in broad daylight based on a script by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, a child murderer. This film became a classic, and Fröbe achieved lasting fame in the role of the mentally disturbed murderer Schrott. His performance also impressed the English producers of the James Bond films, who signed the actor in 1964 for the third Bond film James Bond 007 - Goldfinger . Here Fröbe played the eponymous villain Auric Goldfinger, a sadistic megalomaniac. The success of the film made Fröbe known worldwide and earned him numerous roles in international cinema productions. As early as 1962 he appeared in a smaller role as "Sergeant Coffee Pot" in the epic war film The Longest Day , in which the later Bond actor Sean Connery was seen (the two actors, however, did not have a common scene).

During the Bond production, Fröbe had to accept that it was dubbed by the English actor Michael Collins in the original version due to its strong German accent . But already in his next film, The daredevil men in their flying boxes from 1965, Fröbe's original voice could also be heard in the original English. In this comedy, however, he played a German officer of the Wilhelmine era. An important film of this time was Via Mala, produced in 1961 based on the novel of the same name by John Knittel , where Fröbe played the brutal landowner "Jonas Lauretz" at Edith Schultze-Westrum's side . In addition, Fröbe was regularly seen in French films, for example in The Night of the Lovers (1960), $ 100,000 in the Sun (1964), The Man Without a Face (1974) or The Thing with the Umbrella (1980).

After Fröbe admitted in an interview with the Daily Mail in 1965 that he had become a member of the NSDAP in 1929 (from which he had resigned in 1937), his films were put on the index in Israel . However, the ban was lifted eight weeks later when it became known that Fröbe had housed a Jewish family and supported them with food during the Nazi era.

Gert Fröbe's grave in the Icking forest cemetery

Gert Fröbe was married a total of five times. His biological son Utz (1940-2014) came from his first marriage to Clara Peter. From 1953 to 1959 Fröbe was married to the film critic Hannelore Görtz. His third wife, the actress and singer Tatjana Iwanow , brought her son Andreas Seyferth into the marriage, whom Fröbe adopted. He was married to the RIAS journalist Beate Bach from 1962 until her death in 1968. In 1970 Fröbe married Karin Pistorius, whose daughter Beate was also adopted by him. In the early 1970s, Gert Fröbe paid Utz Fröbe and Andreas Seyferth with 25,000 marks each. After that he only saw both sons sporadically.

Fröbe's last television role was in the ZDF television series Die Schwarzwaldklinik . The episode "Wedding with Obstacles", in which he participated, was not broadcast until after his death on March 25, 1989.

After years of illness from carcinoma of the oral cavity , from which he appeared to have recovered, Gert Frobe died unexpectedly in 1988 after an evening of recitation as a result of a heart attack that he suffered on the morning of his last performance. He was buried in the forest cemetery in Icking .

Filmography

movie theater

watch TV

  • 1973: Morgenstern in the evening
  • 1974: Histoires insolites (TV series, episode Parcelle brillante )
  • 1976: Sunday Stories
  • 1976: The guilty with the clean hands
  • 1981: A stubborn goat
  • 1982: the garden
  • 1982: The robbery of the Sabine women
  • 1984: August the Strong
  • 1984: Old sins don't rust
  • 1986: The Little Vampire (TV series)
  • 1988: The Black Forest Clinic (TV series)

Documentaries

  • 1978: Gert Fröbe - As if it had been today, NDR
  • 2015: Gert Fröbe - the Hollywood star from Zwickau. Documentary with game scenes, Germany, 42:27 min., Script and director: Christian Schulz, director of the game scenes: Rene Pippig, production: MDR , series: Geschichte Mitteldeutschlands , first broadcast: August 9, 2015 on MDR, synopsis by MDR.
  • 2010: Gert Fröbe. The man with a thousand faces. Documentation, Germany, 43:34 min., Script and director: Michael Strauven , production: CineCentrum , SWR , series: Legenden , first broadcast: August 16, 2010 on ARD , summary of ARD, review:.

Synchronous roles

Fröbe also worked as a voice actor and dubbed himself in the films:

And in the TV series:

Fröbe was also the German voice actor for Mickey Shaughnessy in the military drama Damned in All Eternity .

Radio plays

Tours

Awards

The American Film Institute drew up a list of the 100 best villains in film history and selected the character of "Auric Goldfinger" at number 49.

Publications

  • Gert Fröbe: Morgenstern in the evening , after Christian Morgenstern, with drawings by Hans Pfannmüller , Verlag RS Schulz, Percha am Starnberger See 1981.
  • Gert Fröbe: Again, he said ... and the old one came to mind: Stories from my life. Ullstein, Frankfurt / M. / Berlin 1988, ISBN 3-548-20995-5 .

literature

Web links

Commons : Gert Fröbe  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gert Fröbe - The Hollywood star from Zwickau. In: MDR Zeitreise , January 4, 2016.
  2. ↑ http://articles.latimes.com/1988-09-07/news/mn-1578_1_gert-frobe
  3. ↑ FRÖBE-BOYCOTT: wickedly pointed . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1966 ( online ).
  4. ↑ Frobe boycott. Badly pointed . In: Der Spiegel . No. 9 , 1966 ( online ).
  5. ↑ King County Deaths, July 2, 2014. In: Seattlepi.com , July 3, 2014, accessed August 21, 2017.
  6. ↑ Gert Fröbe biography at steffi-line.de
  7. ↑ I am the secret adoptive son of Gert Fröbe BZ ; May 18, 2007
  8. ↑ "Yes, you are a world star" in: focus.de No. 9 from February 25, 2013
  9. ↑ Die Schwarzwaldklinik (73) Season 3, Episode 24 "Wedding with Obstacles" on Fernsehserien.de , accessed on December 31, 2018
  10. ↑ Photo: The grave of Gert Fröbe. In: knerger.de .
  11. ↑ Der Grüne Archer D, 1960 from Wishlist.de , accessed on December 31, 2018
  12. ↑ The Longest Day USA, 1961 from Wishlist.de , accessed December 31, 2018
  13. ↑ Spy Between Two Fronts (Triple Cross) GB / F, 1966 on Wishlist.de , accessed on December 31, 2018
  14. ↑ The Black Forest Clinic (73) Season 3, Episode 24 Wedding with Obstacles. In: Fernsehserien.de . Accessed December 31, 2018.
  15. ↑ Obese and popular. ( Memento from April 14, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). In: Berliner Morgenpost . 17th August 2010.
  16. ↑ Mickey Shaughnessy filmography. In: OFDb.de . OFDb.de e. K. Retrieved August 17, 2020.
  17. ↑ Announcement of awards of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In: Federal Gazette . Vol. 25, No. 111, June 16, 1973.
personal data
SURNAME Frobe, Gert
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fröbe, Karl Gerhart (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor
DATE OF BIRTH February 25, 1913
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberplanitz
DATE OF DEATH 5th September 1988
Place of death Munich