Fritz Kortner
Biography
Fritz Kortner was an Austrian actor and theater director who trained at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art before joining Max Reinhardt in Berlin in 1911 and Leopold Jessner in 1916. A breakthrough in Ernst Toller's Transfiguration in 1919 established him as a major German character actor and the country's foremost performer of Expressionist works, and he appeared in more than ninety films from 1916 onward. He specialized in sinister and threatening parts, though he also took the title role in Dreyfus (1930). Known early for explosive energy and a powerful voice, he moved toward a more controlled, gesture-based realism during the 1920s. He left Germany in 1933, going first to Vienna and then to Britain, and settled in the United States in 1937, working there as a character actor and theater director. Back in West Germany from 1949, he became noted for innovative stagings of classics by Shakespeare and Molière.
78years old at death
- Born Vienna
- Died Munich
- Star sign: TaurusThe sign runs April 20 to May 20
- Fritz Nathan Kohn (birth name)
Movie Career
- Films
- 6
- Career span
- 24 years1924 to 1948
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Early training
After his studies at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, Kortner went to Berlin, where Max Reinhardt took him on in 1911 and Leopold Jessner in 1916.
Big break
Kortner's breakthrough performance came in 1919, in Ernst Toller's Transfiguration. After that he was counted among Germany's best-known character actors and was the country's leading performer of Expressionist works.
Behind the camera
Kortner went back to West Germany in 1949 and gained a reputation for staging classics by Shakespeare and Moliere in new ways, among them a 1964 Richard III whose king ends the play crawling across heaps of bodies.
Fritz Kortner movies on Netflix
Best known for
The films on Netflix they are best known for, with the part played in each.
- Somewhere in the Night1946 Crime, Mystery, Thrilleras Anzelmo aka Dr. Oracle
IMDb rating 7.04.0K votes
Worked with
Fritz Kortner shares two films with Nancy Guild, and one with each of the others. Pick a number on the chart or a name in the list to see the films they share.
Films together
Nancy Guild's page
Whit Bissell's page
Jeff Corey's page
Robert Ryan's page
Robert Adler's page
Herbert Marshall's page
Edmund GouldingDirector, 1 film, 1946
All films by Edmund Goulding
All films by Jacques Tourneur
All films by Joseph L. Mankiewicz
Awards
Six awards and honors from 1957 to 1970, one of them major.
| Year | Award | Film | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin Film Festival | |||
| 1963 | Berliner Kunstpreis | Won | |
| Other honors | |||
| 1970 | Pour le Mérite for Sciences and Arts order | Won | |
| 1967 | Ernst Reuter Medal | Won | |
| 1967 | Honorary golden medal of the state capital Munich | Honorary | |
| 1967 | Kainz Medal | Won | |
| 1957 | Knight Commander's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany | Won | |
Online
Official profiles and reference pages.