Robert Graf (actor)

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Robert Graf (born November 18, 1923 in Witten , † February 4, 1966 in Munich ) was a German theater and film actor .

Grave of Robert Graf (1923–1966) at the Bogenhauser Friedhof in Munich

life and work

After graduating from high school in 1942, Robert Graf was drafted into military service on the Eastern Front . After he was no longer fit for use as a soldier due to a wound, he worked in the armaments industry. In 1944 Graf went to Munich to study philosophy , art history and theater studies .

From 1946 Graf played at stages in Straubing , Wiesbaden and Salzburg and finally accepted an engagement at the Münchner Kammerspiele . A few years later he was also active in the film business, initially from 1954 and then again increasingly in television films in the 1960s, often directed by Franz Peter Wirth or Ludwig Cremer . Apart from a small supporting role in Rudolf Jugert's Illusion in Moll (1952), Graf made his cinema debut in 1957 in the title role of the multiple award - winning avant - garde film Jonas by Ottomar Domnick , for which he immediately won the German Film Prize of the same year for a film tape in gold as best male Lead Actor was nominated. Graf became known to a broader audience primarily through his participation in Kurt Hoffmann's Wir Wunderkinder (1958) (in the antagonistic role of sinister opportunist Bruno Tiches) and a year later in Alfred Weidenmann's Buddenbrooks (as bankrupt and dowry hunter Bendix Grünlich). For his acting performance as Bruno Tiches, he was awarded a silver film ribbon as the best young male actor as part of the 1959 German Film Prize. In addition to Hoffmann and Weidenmann, with whom he made another film each, Graf also worked with some of the most renowned German-speaking film directors of the time, such as (in chronological order) Rolf Thiele , Gottfried Reinhardt , Robert Siodmak , Wolfgang Staudte and Michael Kehlmann . In John Sturges' Hollywood world hit Gebengte Ketten (1963) , he played the German guard Werner, known as "the ferret ". Graf often played villains and villains, always in a strangely subtle way.

Graf was married to his acting colleague Selma Urfer . Together they had three children, including the director Dominik Graf , who shot the documentary The Whispers in the Mountain of Things (1997) about his father together with Michael Althen . In 1965 Robert Graf had to have a foot amputated because of a vascular disease . A little later he died at the age of 42 in his home in Munich. His grave is in the Bogenhausen cemetery in Munich (grave no. 3-3-59).

Filmography

Radio plays

Awards

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Count, Robert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German theater and film actor
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH Witten
DATE OF DEATH 4th February 1966
Place of death Munich