Milo Sparrowhawk

Milo Sperber (born March 20, 1911 in Zabłotów , Galicia , Austria-Hungary (today Oblast Ivano-Frankivsk , Ukraine ); † December 22, 1992 in London , United Kingdom ) was an Austrian-born, British actor on stage and film.

Live and act

Sparhawk came from an East Galician, relatively wealthy Jewish family and grew up in the tradition of Hasidism . In the summer of 1916 the family fled the chaos of war to Vienna , where he attended a Jewish school. As a young adult, Sparrowhawk began to study law, but at the same time, at the beginning of the 1930s, trained as an actor. Milo Sperber made his theater debut in July 1931 under Max Reinhardt . His early plays in which he was seen included Luigi Pirandello's Six People Looking for an Author and William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream . In the following years he was seen on theaters in Vienna and Salzburg, but also in cabarets such as Der liebe Augustin .

In 1939, one year after the annexation of Austria by Hitler's Germany, the Sperber family fled to England from the state-sanctioned anti-Semitism , without Milos, older brother active in other places of exile, the philosopher, writer and communist Manès Sperber . When war broke out in September 1939, like many other Germans and Austrians who had fled here, he was initially interned as an "enemy alien". Thanks to the help of fellow actor Martin Miller , who also fled here from Adolf Hitler , Milo Sperber was soon able to make a connection with British theater. Sparrowhawk joined the Oxford Pilgrim Players in the early 1940s and performed at Liverpool's Old Vic. At times he even worked as a theater director and also worked for a season at the Comedy Theater in London. His involvement in anti-Nazi programs of the BBC were just as natural for him as his appearances with tiny roles in propaganda-colored British films from 1942 to 1944.

Towards the end of the same decade, Milo Sperber also starred in a television film for the first time, and until shortly before his death he was seen with guest roles in a plethora of British television series and series, including The Man from Interpol, Paul Temple, The Law of Silence and Game , Set and match . His appearances in cinema productions were still quite small, and with his batch roles, Sparhawk covered the full range of (often opaque and villainous) foreigners. For some time, Milo Sperber taught students at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts , including future stars such as two-time Oscar winner Glenda Jackson , and signed up to Havima, Israel's national theater. He wrote some manuscripts for German-language broadcasts for the BBC. 1984 Sperber completed his last theater appearance at the Albany Theater in London's West End ( The Clandestine Marriage with Anthony Quayle as a partner). In the last years of his life, Milo Sperber also went on reading tours with texts by his brother Manès.

Filmography

• 1942: The Night Invader
• 1942: Thunder Rock
• 1944: Mr. Emmanuel
• 1947: Adventure in Brazil ( The End of the River )
• 1948: The silk noose ( Noose )
• 1949: Three Men and a Girl
• 1949: The Director (TV movie)
• 1950: The Cruise of the Toytown Belle (TV movie)
• 1953: The Gay Adventure
• 1954: The Dancing Bear (TV series)
• 1956: The Fifth Column ( Foreign Intrigue )
• 1957: Romantic Chapter (TV movie)
• 1959: Ten women disappeared in Paris ( Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons )
• 1961: The Adventures of Captain Grant ( In Search of the Castaways )
• 1963: The winners ( The Victors )
• 1964: Operation Crossbow ( Operation Crossbow )
• 1967: The billion dollar brain ( The Brain trillion dollars )
• 1976: Voyage of the Damned ( Voyage of the Damned )
• 1976: James Bond 007 - The Spy Who loved me ( The Spy Who Loved Me )
• 1977: Providence
• 1977: The mare ( The Stud )
• 1981: Are You Being Served? (TV series)
• 1988: Maigret (TV movie)
• 1990: The Kidnapped Prime Minister (TV series episode)

literature

• Kay Less : The large personal dictionary of films , Volume 7, p. 410 f. Berlin 2001

Web links

• Obituary in The Independent
• Milo Sperber in the Internet Movie Database (English)