Gert Fröbe

Biography

Gert Fröbe (Oberplanitz, now part of Zwickau, 1913 – Munich, 1988) was a German actor who started out in theatre and cabaret. He is best known outside Germany for playing the title villain in the James Bond film Goldfinger (1964), but his career covered more than a hundred films, most of them made in Germany, from the postwar years to the European co-productions of the 1960s.

The son of a shoemaker, he first trained as a violinist before turning to the stage. His teacher, Erich Ponto, recognised his gift for comedy. Fröbe worked as a stage decorator before making his acting debut in Wuppertal in 1937. His political past is a delicate chapter. He briefly joined the Nazi Party, though sources disagree on the year. During the regime he helped two German Jews escape the Gestapo. After the war, Israel banned his films until a Holocaust survivor stated that Fröbe had hidden her family in his basement.

His breakthrough came with Berliner Ballade (1948), in which he played Otto Normalverbraucher, an ordinary man whose name entered German usage as a term for the average person. In 1958 he starred in It Happened in Broad Daylight, adapted from a novel by Friedrich Dürrenmatt, as a menacing villain that caught the attention of the producers of Goldfinger. Fröbe moved easily between drama and comedy and took part in all-star casts such as The Longest Day (1962), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), Is Paris Burning? (1966) and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968). His strong German accent led to dubbing on some titles: Roger C. Carmel voiced him in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and Michael Collins in Goldfinger.

Away from the screen he was a noted reciter of lyric poetry, especially the work of Christian Morgenstern, Joachim Ringelnatz and Erich Kästner. In the 1980s he appeared in commercials for the Mercedes-Benz W123. He underwent cancer surgery in 1986 and continued to make television appearances. His last role was in an episode of the series Die Schwarzwaldklinik, broadcast in March 1989, after his death. In 1978 he received an honorary award for his contributions to German cinema. He died in Munich in September 1988, aged 75, of a heart attack, and was buried at Icking.

Key films

• Berliner Ballade (1948): the Otto Normalverbraucher role that made him famous after the war.
• It Happened in Broad Daylight (1958): a child-murdering villain that foreshadows his screen image.
• The Longest Day (1962): one of many roles in the all-star cast of the Normandy landings film.
• Goldfinger (1964): the title villain that made him a household name internationally.
• Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968): Baron Bomburst in the popular family musical.
• Dollars (1971): one of his best-known European films of the period.