Ben Wright

Benjamin Huntington Wright (5 May 1915 — 2 July 1989) was an English actor. He was best known for playing Herr Zeller in The Sound of Music. He also played numerous roles in famous films and worked as voice actor, having roles in animated films by Disney Studios. Early life Ben Wright was born on 5 May 1915 in London to an American father and an English mother. At the age of 16, he entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Upon graduating, he acted in several West End stage productions. When World War II broke out, he enlisted and served in the Kings Royal Rifle Corps. He came to the U.S. in 1946 to attend a cousin's wedding and settled in Hollywood. Radio Wright worked as the radio incarnation of Sherlock Holmes (1949–1950) and Inspector Peter Black on Pursuit (1951–1952). He played Indian servant Tulku on The Green Lama, Chinese bellhop Hey Boy on the radio version of Have Gun Will Travel, various dialect roles on the U.K. radio program Nightbeat, and the anthology series, Escape, on which his roles ranged from the Cockney protagonist of The Man Who Worked Miracles to the famed Arabian hero of The Voyages of Sinbad. His other radio credits included Gunsmoke, Crime Classics, and Suspense. Film and television He achieved worldwide attention when he was seen as the Nazi Herr Zeller in The Sound of Music (1965), and he had small roles in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), My Fair Lady (1964), and Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie (1966). On television, he was a guest star on such series as My Three Sons, Hogan's Heroes (as various Nazi officers), McHale's Navy, Combat!, Get Smart, Bonanza, Gunsmoke (in a recurring role as billiard parlor owner “Dan Binney”, later as town barber “Birger Engdohl”, as Sgt. Pickens in “Wagon Girls”, as priest “Father Tom” in “Friend”, as storekeeper “Mr. Ross” in “Father’s Love” and finally as a dishonest land claim agent in “Two of a Kind” (S8E27), The Wild Wild West, The Twilight Zone, Mr. Adams and Eve, The Tab Hunter Show, Straightaway, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, It Takes a Thief, Mission: Impossible, as Mr. Rudolpho on the final episode of the 1964 series The Addams Family, and The Rockford Files. Wright made three guest appearances on Perry Mason, starring Raymond Burr.