Willy Fritsch

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German theatre and film actor, a popular leading man and character actor from the silent-film era to the early 1960s. He made his feature film debut as a supporting player in 1921's Miß Venus. In 1925, Fritsch gained international attention by playing the leading character in A Waltz Dream directed by Ludwig Berger. Afterwards he was offered a United Artists contract but refused to move to the United States due to his lack of English language knowledge. At the end of the 1920s, Fritsch was also starring in two action films directed by Fritz Lang, Spies and Woman in the Moon where he played serious characters. However, his breakthrough came as a juvenile lover after being paired with Käthe von Nagy (i.e. in Billy Wilder's script debut Her Grace Commands, 1931) or Lilian Harvey, when they appeared regularly together in UFA movies like The Three from the Filling Station (1930) or Congress Dances by Erik Charell (1931), released almost every year thereafter until Harvey's emigration in 1939. He mainly starred in the German versions and was often replaced by Henri Garat until his movies were dubbed during the mid-1930s. He continued to appear in movies like Film Without A Name together with Hildegard Knef or Wenn der weiße Flieder wieder blüht (When the White Lilacs Bloom Again) side by side with a young Romy Schneider. In 1958, Fritsch starred in the German version of Mit Eva fing die Sünde an, which was later adapted and filled with additional scenes by Francis Ford Coppola for his debut release as The Bellboy And The Playgirls (1962). Fritsch's final film was 1964's I Learned It from Father (Das hab' ich von Papa gelernt) directed by Axel von Ambesser, in which he performed together with his son Thomas. Fritsch was married to artistic dancer Dinah Grace in 1937 and became a father of two sons. The younger one, Thomas Fritsch, is a successful actor as well. Fritsch died of a heart attack on 13 July 1973, aged 72. Link to Wikipedia biography