Karel Štěpánek

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Karel Štěpánek (born October 29, 1899 in Brno , † January 5, 1981 in Los Angeles ) was a Czech actor .

Life

After training as a singer and actor, he began his theater career in Brno in 1920. In 1921 he went to Vienna, where he worked at the Raimund Theater until 1923 . He then went on tours for four years until he came to Berlin in 1927.

Here he played at the Komische Oper , the cabaret of comedians and at the Metropol-Theater . At this time he got his first film roles. At that time he was a mostly inconspicuous supporting actor who was also regularly used in German film during the Nazi regime.

Only in 1939 did he move to Italy and from there to Great Britain in 1940. Here he worked for the BBC as a political commentator on propaganda broadcasts in Czech and German. On the stage he had success here in Franz Werfels Jakobowski and the Colonel . With this piece he also appeared in New York in 1945, where he could be seen in 1941 with Close Quarters and in 1943 with The Moon is Down .

In British film, Stepanek received important roles in war and espionage dramas from 1942, in which he was preferred as a deluded, arrogant National Socialist. He also retained his negative image as Admiral Günther Lütjens in The Last Voyage of Bismarck and as a communist agent and scientist in other films.

Filmography (selection)

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Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Date and place of death according to Filmportal.de and Kay Less : The large personal dictionary of the film . IMDb and others, however, give the date of death December 25, 1980 and the place of death London.
personal data
SURNAME Štěpánek, Karel
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Stepanek, Karl; Stepanek, Carl
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Czech actor
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1899
PLACE OF BIRTH Brno
DATE OF DEATH 5th January 1981
Place of death los Angeles