Helmut Weiss (actor)

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Helmut Ludwig Johann-Georg Weiss (born January 25, 1907 in Göttingen , † January 13, 1969 in Berlin ) was a German actor , screenwriter and film director .

Life

Weiss' paternal grandfather was the Protestant theologian Bernhard Weiss . After high school, Helmut Weiss took acting lessons from Walther Kottenkamp in Dresden . From 1927 to 1932 he was engaged at the State Theater in Berlin .

Weiss began his film career in 1935 as an actor in comic and grotesque supporting roles. He had memorable appearances in the Shakespeare adaptation Die lustigen Weiber (1935), in the inheritance drama Familienparade and in the homeland film Dahinten in der Heide (both 1936). His greatest role followed in 1940 in the marital play Lauter Liebe , in which Weiss plays a boring son of wealthy parents, whom the parents of the main female character ( Hertha Feiler ) have chosen to be their daughter's groom.

After Helmut Weiss had previously worked repeatedly with Heinz Rühmann , he worked on the script for the Rühmann film I entrust my wife to you in 1942 . At the side of Kurt Hoffmann , Weiss also gained his first experience as an assistant director. In the following film, Sophienlund (1943), Rühmann directed himself, with Weiss in turn as screenwriter and assistant director. In the same year followed with the film Die Feuerzangenbowle Weiss' directorial debut. The film, which received the title “artistically valuable”, has remained his best-known and most successful work to this day. Weiss and Rühmann continued their successful collaboration with the films Der Engel mit dem Saitenspiel (1944) and Quax in Fahrt . Quax in Fahrt received approval from the film inspection agency in February 1945 , but was no longer shown in cinemas before the end of the war. Because it was not free from propagandistic and racist statements, the film - like its predecessor Quax, the Bruchpilot - was banned from showing after the Allied invasion. The world premiere was cut and only took place in 1953 under the title "Quax in Afrika".

Helmut Weiss was the first director who was allowed to make a film again in West Germany after the end of the war: Tell the truth . The starting point of this comedy, the production of which was taken over by the small and short-lived Berlin Studio 45-Film GmbH, was a feature film project that Rühmann had started in 1945 as a production group leader at Terra Film , but was unable to finish because of the war. Weiss, who directed, could only shoot three-quarters of the film, then the project had to be abandoned. In 1946 it was brought back to life with new cast members. Since Rühmann was banned from his profession by the Allies after the end of the war because of his lack of distance from the Nazi regime, he could not play the main role himself, but was replaced by Gustav Fröhlich .

As a director and often as a screenwriter, Helmut Weiss made numerous other films in the Federal Republic of Germany, and in 1949 he collaborated again with Heinz Rühmann ( The Secret of the Red Cat ). In addition, Weiss repeatedly shot with stars such as Sonja Ziemann , Olga Chechowa , Hans Söhnker and Curd Jürgens . Since 1954 he has often appeared in front of the camera as a supporting actor. His most successful post-war film as a director was the comedy Three Men in One Boat (1961), in which Hans-Joachim Kulenkampff , Heinz Erhardt and Walter Giller play three friends who run away from everyday life and their wives for a few days.

In addition to his film work, Weiss wrote several plays, including Sophienlund (together with Fritz von Woedtke ), After , Herzkönig (over 300 performances at the Berlin Theater am Schiffbauerdamm), Robert and his brothers and Talent fortunately , and translated French and English plays (partly under the pseudonym "Paul Berking").

The grave of Helmut Weiss is in the non-Catholic cemetery ( Cimitero Acattolico ) on the island of Capri .

Filmography (selection)

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Weiss, Helmut
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weiss, Helmut Ludwig Johann-Georg (full name); Berking, Paul (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German actor, screenwriter and film director
DATE OF BIRTH January 25, 1907
PLACE OF BIRTH Goettingen
DATE OF DEATH January 13, 1969
Place of death Berlin