Felix Bressart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Felix Bressart (March 2, 1892—March 17, 1949) was a German-American actor of stage and screen. He was born in East Prussia, Germany (which is now Russia) and was already a very experienced stage actor when he had his film debut in 1928. He started off as a supporting actor, eg. as the Bailiff in the box-office hit Die Drei von der Tankstelle (1930), but had soon established himself in leading roles of minor movies. After the Nazis seized power in 1933, Jewish-born Bressart had to leave Germany and continued his career in German-speaking movies in Austria where Jewish artists were still relatively safe. Finally in 1936, after no less than 30 films in eight years, he emigrated to the United States. The influential German community in Hollywood helped him at the start of his American career in 1939, as his first three American movies were directed by Ernst Lubitsch, Henry Koster and Wilhelm Thiele (director of Die Drei von der Tankstelle). As in Germany ten years before, Bressart soon became a popular character actor in films like Blossoms in the Dust (1941), The Seventh Cross (1944), A Song Is Born (1948) and Portrait of Jennie (1948). He also acted in three classic movies directed by his friend Ernst Lubitsch: Ninotchka (1939), The Shop Around the Corner (1940) and To Be or Not to Be (1942). After almost 40 Hollywood pictures and virtually at the peak of his career, Bressart suddenly died of leukemia at the age of 57.