John van Dreelen

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John van Dreelen (1964)

John van Dreelen (born May 5, 1922 as Jacques Theodore van Drielen Gimberg in Amsterdam , † September 4, 1992 in Cap d'Agde , France ) was a Dutch actor , often cast as a pithy, smooth handsome, cultivated, cold, noble gangster in films or opaque foreigner.

The early years on the stage

The son of the actor Louis Gimberg (1880–1959) had received acting lessons in his hometown of Amsterdam for two years from 1939 and then made his stage debut in the play ' De Gel Nachtegaal ' at the age of 19 . Soon after, he played for the first time in Germany (for one season in Oldenburg ) and a little later set up his own cabaret troupe. In 1943 the National Socialists locked him in the Emsland camp .

Shortly after the end of the war, van Dreelen returned to the Netherlands and made his film debut there. In 1949 Laurence Olivier saw him as Romeo in ' Romeo and Juliet ' and engaged him the following year for the leading role in ' Daphne Laureola '. Van Dreelen played with Olivier's Old Vic ensemble in London and New York (1950). On Broadway he later also succeeded as Baron von Trapp in the musical ' The Sound of Music '.

Van Dreelen remained an acting cosmopolitan: The perfectly German-speaking Dutchman with the sonorous voice then played on stages in Paris and Rome , tours brought him to Austria , Switzerland and the Federal Republic . At the Vienna Theater in the Josefstadt van Dreelen landed successes with the plays ' Sabrina ' and ' Gigi ', in 1965 he performed with fireworks at the Deutsches Theater in Munich . He celebrated another notable success together with Hannelore Schroth in Kiss Me Kate .

Work in film and television

John van Dreelen was also regularly engaged in international films. In Germany in the 1950s he was often allowed to play smart lovers and noble charmers. Mostly active in the USA since the end of this decade , the attractive Dutchman was mostly cast as a slippery foreigner and sinister villain with ice cream gloves. Hollywood van Dreelen played Nazi officers several times. In the 60s and 70s he took on a considerable number of US series (including The Seaview - On A Secret Mission , Smoking Colts , Solo for ONCEL , FBI , Cobra, Take Over , 'Your Appearance, Al Mundy', 'Tarzan ', The Boss ,' Dr. med.Marcus Welby ', Charlie's Angels , Detective Rockford - just call , Knight Rider , The Denver Clan ) Guest roles.

He had a rare leading role in 1966 in the German television series From one o'clock to midnight - van Dreelen played an Interpol detective. Five years later he took on another leading role in Germany: in Niklaus Schilling's psychological thriller Nightshade . In 1974 he was seen as a signed factory owner and husband of Ulla Jacobsson , whose son turns out to be a call girl murderer in Wolfgang Petersen's famous crime scene episode 'Nachtfrost' and is caught by a mass police force in a forest.

Since then, van Dreelen has only appeared sporadically in German productions, most recently in 1991/92 in the series Our Hagenbecks . He played his last role in 1992 in the episode 'Dorneck gegen Dorneck' of the ZDF series marriages in court . He died shortly afterwards in the south of France.

Filmography (selection)

Web links

literature

  • Kay Less : The film's great personal dictionary . The actors, directors, cameramen, producers, composers, screenwriters, film architects, outfitters, costume designers, editors, sound engineers, make-up artists and special effects designers of the 20th century. Volume 2: C - F. John Paddy Carstairs - Peter Fritz. Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf, Berlin 2001, ISBN 3-89602-340-3 , p. 450.
personal data
SURNAME Dreelen, John van
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Dutch actor
DATE OF BIRTH May 5, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Amsterdam
DATE OF DEATH 4th September 1992
Place of death Cap d'Agde , France