Willi Forst

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Willi Forst on September 15, 1947
Willi Forst sings Bel Ami , 1939
Villa in Dehnepark

Willi Forst , actually Wilhelm Anton Frohs , (born April 7, 1903 in Vienna ; † August 11, 1980 there ) was an Austrian actor , screenwriter , director , producer and singer . As an actor he was a darling of the audience, as a director he was one of the most important representatives of the musical and comedic Viennese films of the 1930s. He has made numerous recordings, including charming Viennese chansons for the Odeon brand of Carl Lindström AG since the mid-1930s.

Life

Willi Forst was born in Vienna as the son of a porcelain painter. He gained his first experience on stage as an amateur player. In 1919 he received an engagement in Teschen , although he had no professional acting training . He received his first film role in 1922 as an extra in the Austrian monumental film Sodom and Gomorrah . Gradually he climbed the career ladder over several provincial stages and in 1925 received a contract for operettas and revues at the Metropoltheater in Berlin as a lyric tenor . In between he also played in Vienna at the Carltheater and the Apollotheater. He came to the Deutsches Theater in 1928 through Max Reinhardt .

He received his first major role in 1927 alongside Marlene Dietrich in Café Elektric . Like Marlene Dietrich, he owed this leading role to the film producer Sascha Kolowrat-Krakowsky , who thus helped the two to break through as acting stars. Willi Forst quickly became a star of Viennese film, whose characteristic was the similarity to the comic operetta. He played many different characters, often with vocal interludes, from pimps and murderers to composers and artists to gallant officers.

The 1930s and 1940s were the high point of his film career, which he also made as a director from 1933. That year he directed his first film, Schubert's biography Leise flehen meine Lieder (1933). This was followed in loose succession by his best-known and most popular feature films: Masquerade (1934), Allotria (1936), Burgtheater (1936), Bel Ami (1939) , Operetta (1940), Wiener Blut (1942) and Wiener Mädeln (1945). With his atmospheric musical comedies, which the city of Vienna often used as a backdrop at the turn of the century, he became the darling of the audience.

Since 1936 Forst ran his own film company, the Viennese Willi Forst-Film , which had a second branch in Berlin . In 1937 Forst, who was highly valued by the National Socialists , was appointed to the supervisory board of the nationalized Tobis AG and in 1938 also to the supervisory board of the newly founded Wien-Film . In accordance with the motto “ Strength through Joy ” given for the Viennese films , Willi Forst was able to continue to stage carefree comedies. However, he tried to keep political issues out of his films to a large extent, which is why he only directed four films during the seven years of National Socialist rule. He is said to have once said to his film colleague Curd Jürgens : “Curd, just don't make a film in which a political situation is to be shown. One day you will have to give an answer. "

After the war, Forst declared his films, such as Wiener Blut (1942), which had been staged and produced at the time and had been awarded film ratings by the Nazi Film Inspectorate, as a subtle protest: “My homeland was occupied by the National Socialists, and my work became a silent protest; it sounds grotesque, but it is true: I made my most Austrian films at the time when Austria ceased to exist. "

In the post-war period, there were no great successes. The only exception was the film Die Sünderin (1950) with Hildegard Knef in the lead role, which became a scandal due to protests by the Catholic Church , but drew seven million people to the cinema. Vienna, you city of my dreams (1957) was his last film. After that, Forst withdrew from the film business because, as he resignedly, his style was no longer in demand. He withdrew to a ruined villa in Dehnepark in Vienna.

After the death of his wife in 1973, he lived completely withdrawn from the public, suffered from cancer and spent the last years of his life in Ticino, Switzerland . He died in Vienna in 1980 and was buried in the Neustift cemetery (group L, row 10, number 24) in an honorary grave .

In 1993, the Willi-Forst-Weg in Vienna- Döbling (19th district) was named after him.

Filmography

actor

Director

production

Awards

literature

  • Francesco Bono: Willi Forst. A film critical portrait. Edition Text + Criticism, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-86916-054-2 .
  • Kirsten Burghardt: work, scandal, example. Breaking the taboo through fictional models: Willi Forst's “Die Sünderin” (Federal Republic of Germany, 1951) (= Discourse Film. Vol. 11). Diskurs-Film-Verlag Schaudig & Ledig, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-926372-61-3 (also: Munich, University, dissertation, 1995).
  • Robert Dachs : Willi Forst. A biography. Kremayr and Scheriau, Vienna 1986, ISBN 3-218-00437-3 .
  • Armin Loacker (Ed.): Willi Forst. A film style from Vienna. Film-Archiv Austria, Vienna 2003, ISBN 3-901932-24-0 .

Web links

Commons : Willi Forst  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Curd Jürgens in Austrian film history (s). 10-part television series, ORF , 1970–1972
  2. ^ Willi Forst (1903-1980). In: Virtual History . Retrieved April 16, 2019 .