West German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 1937. Photo: Gabriela / NDF / Europa Film. Erich Ponto in Himmel ohne Sterne/Sky Without Stars (Helmut Käutner, 1955).
Dutch postcard. Filmex N.V. Romy Schneider as Maud and Erich Ponto as the writer Daniel Dafoe in Robinson soll nicht sterben/The Legend of Robinson Crusoe (Josef von Báky, 1957). The Dutch title was 'Droomeiland' (Island of Dreams).
The Threepenny Opera
Erich Johannes Bruno Ponto was born in Lübeck in 1884. He was the youngest of four children of a textile merchant, Heinrich Ludwig Ponto and his wife Ida, née Albers. They initially lived in Lübeck and later moved to Hamburg-Eimsbüttel.
Erich Ponto attended school in Altona. He studied pharmacy at the University of Munich and attended lectures delivered by physicist Wilhelm Röntgen. His discovery of X-rays or Röntgen rays, had earned him the inaugural Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901. Ponto worked for a few years as a pharmacist but was already passionate about acting during his university time.
He started to take acting lessons and eventually became a full-time actor. Ponto made his stage debut at the Stadttheater Passau in 1908. It was followed by engagements in Nordhausen, Reichenberg (Liberec), and Düsseldorf. From 1914 to 1947 he was a member of the Hoftheater Dresden ensemble (Staatstheater Dresden from 1918). In the season 1946/47 he also worked there as an intendant.
In 1920, Ponto made his first film appearance in the short film Hampelmanns Glückstag/Hampelmann's Lucky Day (N.N., 1920), which was followed by Der Geiger von Meißen/The Fiddler of Meissen (Ferdinand Roberti, 1921). However, Ponto's cinema career only began with the sound film at the end of the 1920s.
On stage, his most famous role was that of J.J. Peachum in the original production of Bertolt Brecht's 'Dreigroschenoper’ (The Threepenny Opera) in 1928. During the Third Reich, he won the title of Staatsschauspieler in 1938, the highest title that could be awarded to a stage actor in Nazi Germany. Later stage roles included 'Nathan the Wise' in 1945 and Willy Loman in 'Death of a Salesman' in 1950.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3243/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Haenchen / Tobis.
A nostalgic reminder of a lost past
Erich Ponto only started to appear in films regularly after the start of the sound film, when he was already middle-aged. He had a starring role in the Paramount drama Weib im Dschungel/Woman in the Jungle (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1931) opposite Charlotte Ander and Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur. The drama set in British Malaya was shot at the Joinville Studios in Paris as the German-language version of The Letter (Jean de Limur, 1929), based on the 1927 play 'The Letter' by W. Somerset Maugham.
Such multiple-language versions were common during the early years of sound before dubbing became widespread. He played supporting parts in the German crime drama Der Mann, der den Mord beging/The Man Who Murdered (Kurt a.k.a. Curtis Bernhardt, 1931) starring Conrad Veidt, and the melodrama Schlußakkord/Final Accord (1936) with Lil Dagover. It was the first melodrama directed by Detlef Sierck, who later as Douglas Sirk became the grand master of melodrama in Hollywood.
Ponto became a well-known character actor in German cinema in the 1930s and 1940s. He often played eccentric or villainous roles. Ponto played the title role in the historical comedy Schneider Wibbel/Wibbel the Tailor (Viktor de Kowa, 1939) co-starring Fita Benkhoff and Irene von Meyendorff. He appeared as Mayor Amschel Rothschild in the antisemitic Nazi film Die Rothschilds/The Rothschilds (Erich Waschneck, 1940).
He also played a stuffy school teacher in Die Feuerzangenbowle/The Punch Bowl (Heinz Weiss, 1944) with Heinz Rühmann. Rühmann’s transformation of the accomplished writer back to a not-so-innocent schoolboy is an example of the cheerful escapism popular in German films at the end of World War II. In 1942, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called for the production of predominantly entertaining films in Germany to distract the population from the political and moral debacle of the war.
The charm of the teachers in Die Feuerzangenbowle/The Punch Bowl lies in their old-fashioned attitudes and individual quirks. As representatives of an older, non-fascist generation, they were a nostalgic reminder of a lost past to the wartime generation in Germany. The film ridicules and at the same time celebrates this lost individuality through parody. Since the 1980s, the film has gained cult film status at many German universities. During party-like showings in university auditoriums in early December, thousands of students bring props to participate in the film's action similar to audience participation in showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (Jim Sharman, 1975).
German postcard by Photo-Kitt, München, no. 518. Photo: Camera Film / Kurt Julius. Erich Ponto in Film ohne titel/Film Without Title (Rudolf Jugert, 1948).
The Molander Case
When Erich Ponto’s house was searched during the Nazi era, original drawings by Käthe Kollwitz, who was frowned upon by the regime, were confiscated. Ponto claimed that he needed them for his work and so they remained in his possession. In 1944, Ponto was included in the Reich Ministry of Propaganda's list of so-called ‘Gottbegnadeten.
He appeared in the mysterious film Der Fall Molander/The Molander Case (1945) by Georg Wilhelm Pabst. In 1944, Pabst started shooting the film for Terra. As shooting was just completed at the Barrandov Studios in Prague, and the process of editing began, Prague was liberated by the Red Army and Pabst was forced to abandon the work. The remaining film is kept at the Národní Filmový Archiv in Prague.
After World War II, Erich Ponto had a supporting part in the drama Zwischen gestern und morgen/Between Yesterday and Tomorrow (Harald Braun, 1947) starring Hildegard Knef, Winnie Markus and Sybille Schmitz. It was part of the cycle of rubble films and examines issues of collective guilt and future rebuilding.
He then appeared in a supporting role in the classic British thriller The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949), playing a sinister physician. He played the lead in the dark drama Schicksal aus zweiter Hand/Second Hand Destiny (Wolfgang Staudte 1949) with Marianne Hoppe. Very successful was the family comedy Das fliegende Klassenzimmer/The Flying Classroom (Kurt Hoffmann, 1954) starring Paul Dahlke, Heliane Bei and Paul Klinger. It is an adaptation of Erich Kästner’s novel ‘The Flying Classroom’(1933). In 1955 Ponto won the German Film Award as the Best Male Actor in a Supporting Role for Himmel ohne Sterne/Sky Without Stars (Helmut Käutner, 1955) starring Erik Schumann and Horst Buchholz.
With Romy Schneider and Buchholz, he acted in the historical drama Robinson soll nicht sterben/The Girl and the Legend (Josef von Báky,1957). As a synchronisation actor, Ponto dubbed English-language actors like Lionel Barrymore, Charles Laughton and Charley Grapewin in several films between the mid-1930s and early 1950s. He worked as an actor until shortly before his death. In 1916 he married Tony Kresse, and they had two children. Ponto also worked as an acting teacher, among his students was Gert Fröbe. Ponto's final film was Der Stern von Afrika/The Star of Africa (Alfred Weidenmann, 1957) starring Joachim Hansen. Erich Ponto died at the age of 72 after a long cancerous illness. He was the uncle of Dresdner Bank general director Jürgen Ponto, who was murdered by the RAF in 1977.
Dutch postcard by Int. Filmpers (IFP), Amsterdam, no. 1091. Erich Ponto as Daniël Defoe, author of Robinson Crusoe, and Romy Schneider as Maud in Robinson soll nicht sterben/The Legend of Robinson Crusoe (Josef von Báky, 1957).
Sources: Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
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