Anton Walbrook

Adolf Anton Wilhelm Wohlbrück (19 November 18969 August 1967) was an Austrian actor who settled in the United Kingdom under the name Anton Walbrook. A popular performer in Austria and pre-war Germany, he left in 1936 out of concerns for his own safety and established a career in British cinema. Walbrook is perhaps best known for his roles in the original British film of Gaslight, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp and The Red Shoes. Early life Walbrook was born in Vienna, Austria, as Adolf Wohlbrück. He was the son of Gisela Rosa (Cohn) and Adolf Ferdinand Bernhard Hermann Wohlbrück. He was descended from ten generations of actors, though his father broke with tradition and was a circus clown. Career Walbrook studied with the director Max Reinhardt and built up a career in Austrian theatre and cinema. In 1936, he went to Hollywood to reshoot dialogue for the 1937 multinational The Soldier and the Lady and changed his name from Adolf to Anton. Rather than returning to Germany, where he risked persecution because he was a "Mischling ersten Grades" (mixed race in the first degree) under the Nuremberg Laws as his mother was Jewish and because he was homosexual, he settled in England where he continued working as an actor, making a speciality of playing continental Europeans.