Kurt Kasznar

Did you know?!

1. A first

   Kasznar was among the first photographers in the Army to film what Hiroshima and Nagasaki looked like after the atomic bombings.

2. Behind the award

   Kasznar originated the part of Max Detweiler in the original Broadway run of The Sound of Music, which played from 1959 to 1963, and earned a Tony Award nomination for it. The New York Times reported that he was the only actor who never missed a show by its 1,000th performance.

3. First role

   Kasznar was eleven when he acted in Der Zirkuskönig, also called The King of the Circus, released in 1924. Max Linder's final film, it was shot in Vienna.

4. Behind the camera

   Corporal Kurt S. Kasznar wrote and performed in First Cousins, his only play, while in service. It was among five winners of a soldier-playwrights contest and was published in the 1943 book The Army Play by Play.

5. A first

   In March 1959, while appearing on stage in Noël Coward's Look After Lulu!, Kasznar took the role of detective Nero Wolfe in a planned series drawn from Rex Stout's characters. William Shatner played Archie Goodwin, and the show was dropped after a pilot and a few episodes.