British postcard by Danjaq, LLC and United Artists Corporation. Photo: Gert Fröbe in Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964).
Dutch postcard. Sent by mail in 1966. Sean Connery and Gert Fröbe in Goldfinger (1964).
The red violinist of Zwickau
Gert Fröbe was born Karl-Gerhart Fröbe in Oberplanitz near Zwickau, Germany, in 1913. He was the son of the alcoholic master ropemaker, leather merchant and cobbler Otto Johannes Fröbe and his wife Helene Alma née Sagewitz, who was a seamstress. Following his artistic urge, he began working as a scenery pusher and handyman at the Zwickau municipal theatre. On the side, he earned money as a stand-up violinist in Zwickau and became known as 'Der rode Geicher von Zwigge' (The Red Violinist of Zwickau) because of his reddish hair. Here he discovered his acting talent.
From 1933 to 1935, he trained as a theatre painter at the Saxon State Opera in Dresden. He then took acting lessons and was soon given extra and supporting roles. His teacher Erich Ponto recognised his comedic talent. Ponto initially waved him off because of Fröbe's unmistakable Saxon dialect, but later accepted him as a pupil. He joined the NSDAP in 1934 at 21 (or in 1929 at 16 - the sources differ) and left again in 1937. Fröbe moved to Wuppertal in 1937 and received his first engagement at the local theatre.
At the beginning of his stage career, he initially achieved success in humorous and cabaret pieces. In 1939 he was hired permanently at the Frankfurt Opera House and Playhouse. From 1940, Fröbe was seen at the Vienna Volkstheater. When all German theatres and stages were forced to close in the autumn of 1944 as part of the 'total war', Fröbe was seconded to the Wehrmacht, where he served as a medical orderly in the army until the end of the war. After the war, he was engaged at the cabaret theatre Der Bunte Würfel in Munich and in 1946 got a job at the Munich Kammerspiele.
In 1948, he had his breakthrough in the role of Otto Normalverbraucher (the German term equivalent to 'Average Joe') in the film Berliner Ballade/The Ballad of Berlin (R. A. Stemmle, 1948). With his overweight physique, he often played the cliché of the typical German both in German and international films. He portrayed the uniform wearer who vacillates between joviality and brutality. In Germany, he often played comic roles such as in the comedy Der Tag vor der Hochzeit/The Day Before the Wedding (Rolf Thiele, 1952). He found small parts in such international productions as the war drama Decision Before Dawn (Anatole Litvak, 1951), which was nominated for the Oscar for Best Film, Man on a Tightrope (Elia Kazan, 1953) and Mr Arkadin/Confidential Report (Orson Welles, 1955).
He received a bigger role in Celui qui doit mourir/He Who Must Die (1957), a French-Italian film by Jules Dassin. Fröbe portrayed dogged detective Kriminalkommissar Kras pursuing the evil Dr Mabuse in Die 1000 Augen des Dr Mabuse/The Thousand Eyes of Dr Mabuse (Fritz Lang, 1960) with Peter van Eyck. It spawned a film series of German Mabuse films that were released over the following years. He had his final breakthrough in the film Es geschah am hellichten Tag/It Happened in Broad Daylight (Ladislao Vajda, 1958), based on an original script by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. Fröbe played the mentally disturbed child murderer Schrott opposite Heinz Rühmann. The film became a classic of German cinema and the corpulent German actor caught the eyes of the producers of the James Bond films.
German collectors card in the Unsere Bambi-Lieblinge Series by Penny-Bildbände, no. 41. Photo: Gert Fröbe in Der Gauner und der Lieber Gott/The Crook and the Cross (Axel von Ambesser, 1960).
German collectors card by Schüle Frisch-Ei, no. 13. Photo: Arthur Grimm.
A large round pale head with ruddy hair on a thick body
During Gert Fröbe's first meeting with British director Guy Hamilton, it turned out that the German spoke only a few words of English. His rugged appearance proved to be his greatest asset. Fröbe perfectly matched the description author Ian Fleming had given the Auric Goldfinger character: a large round pale head with ruddy hair on a thick body. The megalomaniac Goldfinger tries to kill 007 (Sean Connery) and irradiate the vast US gold reserves within Fort Knox. Although the character is an Englishman, he was given a voice with a German-sounding accent by voice actor Michael Collins.
Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964), the third James Bond film, became a huge success. It made Fröbe famous worldwide and gave him numerous offers for roles in international cinema productions. However, after Fröbe admitted in an interview with The Daily Mail in 1965 that he had been a member of the NSDAP, Goldfinger and his other films were banned in Israel. Eight weeks later, the ban was lifted after Jewish witnesses came forward claiming that Fröbe had sheltered a Jewish family during the Nazi era and supported them with food. Fröbe had saved their lives by using his membership to hide them from the Gestapo in Vienna. Goldfinger was released in Israel in 1965.
His role as J.J. Peachum in Wolfgang Staudte's Brecht film adaptation Die Dreigroschenoper/Threepenny Opera (1963) with Curd Jürgens was one of Fröbe's best acting achievements. International productions in which Fröbe starred include The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Darryl F. Zanuck, 1962), the British epic period comedy Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines - or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours and 11 Minutes (Ken Annakin, 1965), the war film Paris brûle-t-il ?/Is Paris Burning? (René Clément, 1966), and the Spy film Triple Cross (Terence Young, 1966). He also played the child-hating villain Baron Bomburst in the children's film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (Ken Hughes, 1968) starring Dick van Dyke and Sally Ann Howes. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was based on a story by Bond author Ian Fleming and was also produced by Bond producer Albert R. Broccoli.
In the 1970s, he played a supporting part in Luchino Visconti's epic biographical drama Ludwig (1973), starring Helmut Berger as King Ludwig II of Bavaria and Romy Schneider as Empress Elisabeth of Austria. He also appeared in Claude Chabrol's psychological thriller Les Magiciens/Death Rite (1976) and Ingmar Bergman's drama The Serpent's Egg (1977) starring David Carradine and Liv Ullmann. In France, he co-starred with Pierre Richard in the comedy Le Coup du parapluie/The Umbrella Coup (Gérard Oury, 1980). During the 1980s, Fröbe was a spokesman in Mercedes Benz W123 commercials, helping to promote the coupé and the sedan. Fröbe's last screen role was in the television series Die Schwarzwaldklinik/The Black Forest Hospital. The episode Hochzeit mit Hindernissen/Marriage With Obstacles (Hans-Jürgen Tögel, 1989) was broadcast posthumously.
Fröbe was married five times. His biological son Utz Fröbe came from his first marriage to Clara Peter. From 1953 to 1959, Fröbe was married to the film critic Hannelore Görtz. His third wife, the actress and singer Tatjana Iwanow, brought their son Andreas Seyferth into the marriage, whom Fröbe adopted. He was married to the RIAS journalist Beate Bach from 1962 until she died in 1968. In 1970, Fröbe married Karin Pistorius, whose daughter Beate was also adopted by him. At the beginning of the 1970s, Gert Fröbe paid off Utz Fröbe and Andreas Seyferth with 25,000 marks each. He only saw both sons sporadically after that. He suffered from salivary gland cancer for several years. Gert Fröbe died from the effects of a heart attack in Munich, Germany, in 1988. The actor was 75. He was buried at the Waldfriedhof in Icking.
Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. AX 6262. Gert Fröbe, Honor Blackman, Martin Benson and Sean Connery in Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964).
Dutch postcard. Photo: Gert Fröbe, Sean Connery and Harold Sakata in Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964).
Sources: Christian Wolfgang Barth (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch, English and German) and IMDb.
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