Wolfgang Kieling | |
|---|---|
 Wolfgang Kieling (and his daughter), 20 March 1968 | |
| Born | 16 March 1924 |
| Died | 7 October 1985 (aged 61) |
| Occupation | Actor |
| Years active | 1936–1985 |
| Spouse(s) | Jola Jobst (1950–1952) (her death) Gisela Uhlen (1952–1957) (divorced) (1 child) Monika Gabriel (1969–1975) (divorced)[1] |
Wolfgang Kieling (16 March 1924 – 7 October 1985) was a German actor.
In films since childhood in his native Germany, Kieling appeared in a few American films, notably in Alfred Hitchcock's Torn Curtain (1966), where he played Gromek, an East German agent brutally slain by Paul Newman's character. He also played Gromek's brother in a scene that was deleted from the final print.[2]
Kieling had a small role in $ (aka, The Heist, 1971), starring Warren Beatty. In a British film, Amsterdam Affair (1968), he portrayed the fictional Dutch detective Van der Valk several years before Barry Foster (another Hitchcock alumnus) was cast in the same role for the British TV series. He did much work on West German TV, including the first episode of Derrick ("Waldweg", 1974).
The best of his later roles was in the film Out of Order (1984), originally titled Abwärts. In the German-language version of Disneys Alice in Wonderland he dubbed the Mad Hatter.
Early on, Kieling also became a dubbing actor for West German dubs of foreign films, serving as the standard dubbing voice of Glenn Ford, Frank Sinatra (in his 1950s films), and he also dubbed Charlton Heston in the first part of the Planet of the Apes franchise. Thanks to his voice's similarity to that of Gert Günther Hoffmann, he would also replace Hoffmann as the dubbing voice of Paul Newman when Hoffmann was not available. On TV, he was especially known as the German voice of Bert (see Bert and Ernie) from Sesame Street up until his death in 1985.
During World War II, Kieling was conscripted into the German Army in 1942, where he was severely wounded and captured in 1945. He was held in a Russian POW camp until 1949,[3] during which he organized plays at various prison camps.
In October 1952, his wife Jola Jobst (ex-wife of German Luftwaffe ace Hermann Graf), whom he had married in 1950, committed suicide.[4]
In March 1968, he moved from West Germany to East Germany because of West German support for the United States, which he became disillusioned with after witnessing the Watts riots firsthand during the filming of Torn Curtain. After defecting he called the United States "the most dangerous enemy of humanity in the world today" with its "crimes against the Negro and the people of Vietnam".[5]
