Eddi Arent (1925-2013)

A few days ago became known that German actor, cabaret artist and comedian Eddi Arent (1925-2013) died on 28 May. The eccentric, self-deprecating comedian appeared in 104 films since 1956 and was best known as the comic sidekick in the Edgar Wallace and Karl May films of the 1960s. Eddi Arent was 88.


German postcard, no. R 28. Photo: publicity still for Winnetou 2. Teil/ Last of the Renegades (Harald Reinl, 1964).

Edgar Wallace

Eddi Arent was born Gebhardt Georg Arendt in Danzig, now Gdansk, Poland in 1925. His father was the head of the Danzig water plant. After high school, he had to serve in the army on the Eastern Front.

After the war, he began to work as a cabaret artist. He acted in Jürgen Henckell’s literary cabaret Der Widerspiegel, which was the first cabaret in the French occupation zone. He worked briefly together with Werner Finck in his Mausefalle (Mousetrap) in Stuttgart and was a contributor to Der Zwiebel (the Onion) in Munich.

The talented comedian was not attracted to the legitimate stage, and only incidentally made stage appearances. In 1958, Arent had his first major film role in the war drama Der Arzt von Stalingrad/The Doctor of Stalingrad (Géza von Radványi, 1958) with O.E. Hasse.

Eddi Arent first attracted attention in a series of quirky Edgar Wallace adaptations in the 1960s. He became known as a mannered butler in the Edgar Wallace Krimi Der Frosch mit der Maske/Faces of the Frog (Harald Reinl, 1959) starring Joachim Fuchsberger. Next, he was Germany's idea of the stereotypically blithering English lord in the Krimi Die seltsame Gräfin/The Strange Countess (Josef von Báky, Jürgen Roland, Ottokar Runze, 1961), as the aptly named Lord Selwyn Moron. 

He played a laconic butler in Das Rätsel der roten Orchidee/The Secret of the Red Orchid (Helmuth Ashley, 1962) opposite Christopher Lee and an obtuse, clumsy second-string Scotland Yard photographer in Die toten Augen von London/Dark Eyes of London (Alfred Vohrer, 1961) and Die Tür mit den 7 Schlössern/The Door with Seven Locks (Alfred Vohrer, 1962). Later, he even was the villain, a murderous monk in Der unheimliche Mönch/The Sinister Monk (Harald Reinl, 1965).



German photo from Karl May / Winnetou II Film-Bildbuch by Peter Korn / Phoenix Verlag (Scherz AG) / Bern, München, Wien, no. 23. Eddi Arent and Lex Barker in Winnetou - 2. Teil/Last of the Renegades (Harald Reinl, 1964). Collection: Michael Studt @ Flickr.


German photo from Karl May / Winnetou II Film-Bildbuch by Peter Korn / Phoenix Verlag (Scherz AG) / Bern, München, Wien, no. 46. Eddi Arent in Winnetou - 2. Teil/Last of the Renegades (Harald Reinl, 1964). Collection: Michael Studt @ Flickr.

Karl May

Eddi Arent appeared in three of the Karl May Westerns, Der Schatz im Silbersee/The Treasure of Silver Lake (Harald Reinl, 1962), Winnetou 2. Teil/Last of the Renegades (Harald Reinl, 1964) and Winnetou und Shatterhand im Tal der Toten/ Winnetou and Shatterhand in the Valley of Death (Harald Reinl, 1968). He became very popular as the mild-mannered, bumbling butterfly collector Lord Castlepool who travels with Winnetou (Pierre Brice) and Old Shatterhand (Lex Barker) through the Wild West.

The easy-going Arents was an effective and loyal trooper and many directors liked to work with him. On his film resume are thrillers, comedies and Schlagerfilms. Against character, he played a human trafficker masquerading as a priest in the fast-paced thriller Der Bucklige von Soho/The Hunchback of Soho (Alfred Vohrer, 1966), the first film of Rialto's Edgar Wallace series to be shot in colour. He also was a knife-throwing killer in the English-German co-production Circus of Fear (Werner Jacobs, John Llewellyn Moxey, 1966), which had Christopher Lee relegated to the role of the 'red herring'

I.S. Mowis at IMDb: "After his hey-day in the 1960s, his subsequent output was fairly unremarkable. For the most part, he fluttered around on the margins of youth-oriented low-brow pop-films. Some of his other pictures may have appealed to devotees of 'Heimatfilm' schmaltz." Then he moved over to television. in the 1980s, Arent acquired a new following. He was very successful with the sketch series Es ist angerichtet/It is done. He had his last major success on the side of Harald Juhnke in the television series Harald und Eddi/Harald and Eddi (1987). I.S. Mowis: "In conjunction with perennial audience favorite Harald Juhnke, he delighted audiences with his comedic versatility.

Leaving the limelight in the 1990s, Arent was awarded the Scharlih-Preis, the famous Karl May award, in 1997. Until the beginning of the 21st Century, he was still active as an actor. His final film was the German drama Manila (Romuald Karmakar, 2000) and on television, he appeared in a new series of Edgar Wallace TV films of which the final episode was Edgar Wallace - Whiteface (Wolfgang F. Henschel, 2002). Arent's feature was especially his subtle humour. With an almost immovable countenance, he could tear jokes - and let his audience laugh tears.

Since 1993, Eddi Arent and his wife Franziska Ganslmeier ran a hotel in Titisee-Neustadt in the Black Forest, but their Neustadter Hof went bankrupt in 2005. His wife died in 2011. In later years, Arent lived in a retirement home in the Oberpfalz (Upper Palatinate) and finally with his only son in Munich. Suffering from depression and increasingly afflicted by dementia, Arent died in 2013 in Munich at the age of 88.


Short scene from the Edgar Wallace thriller Der Zinker (1963). Source: Vandurkan (YouTube).


Harald Juhnke & Eddi Arent in the sketch Gast und Kellner (1987). Source: fritz51249 (YouTube).

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), T Online (German - now defunct), Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 21 April 2023.