Gert Fröbe

(1966), as Colonel Manfred von Holstein in Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), and as Inspector Bauer in Ingmar Bergman's The Serpent's Egg (1977). Fröbe was a three-time German Film Award nominee, twice for Best Leading Actor and once for Best Supporting Actor. In 1978, he won an honorary award for "outstanding individual contributions to the German cinema over the years."

Karl Gerhart Fröbe was born on 25 February 1913 in Oberplanitz, today part of Zwickau. His father was a ropemaker. He was initially a violinist, but he abandoned it for Kabarett and theatre work. He joined the Nazi Party in 1929 at the age of 16 and left in 1937, before the outbreak of the Second World War. After his party membership became known after the war, Israel banned Fröbe's films until Mario Blumenau, a Jewish Holocaust survivor, revealed just eight weeks later that his life and his mother's were probably saved when Fröbe hid them from the Nazis in his basement. Fröbe became a stage decorator in the 1930s and made his acting debut in Wuppertal in 1937. In September 1944, theatres in Germany were closed down and Fröbe was drafted into the German Army, where he served until the end of the war.

Fröbe gained fame in one of the first German films made after the war, called Berliner Ballade (The Ballad of Berlin, 1948). His character's name, "Otto Normalverbraucher" (lit. Otto Average Consumer), became the German term equivalent to "Average Joe". He was cast as the villain in the Swiss-West German-Spanish film Es geschah am hellichten Tag (It Happened in Broad Daylight, 1958), with the original screenplay written by Friedrich Dürrenmatt. His role as a serial killer of children drew the attention of the producers of the James Bond movie Goldfinger (1964) and he was chosen to play one of the best remembered villains of the series, gold tycoon Auric Goldfinger. He later remarked, "The ridiculous thing is that since I played Goldfinger in the James Bond film there are some people who still insist on seeing me as a cold, ruthless villain – a man without laughs." Fröbe made several appearances in all-star casts in the 1960s, including the films The Longest Day (1962), Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965), Is Paris Burning? (1966),Triple Cross (1966), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and Monte Carlo or Bust (1969). During the 1980s, Fröbe was a spokesman in Mercedes Benz W123 commercials, helping to promote the coupé and the sedan.

Fröbe had surgery for cancer in 1986 but continued to make limited television appearances. He was due to head the jury at the 38th Berlin International Film Festival in February 1988 but pulled out due to illness. He died in Munich on 5 September 1988 at age 75 from a heart attack. He was buried at the Waldfriedhof cemetery in Icking.