Roland Varno

Roland Varno was a Dutch actor who built a career in German and American films. Born Jacob Frederik Vuerhard in Utrecht in 1908, he grew up largely in Java and studied dramatics after college in Leiden, supporting himself as a newspaper illustrator. He worked in vaudeville as a performer and set designer before moving to Germany in the late 1920s, where he appeared in silent and early sound pictures and won a supporting role in The Blue Angel. A talent scout for MGM spotted him in a German film in 1931 and brought him to Hollywood, where he appeared in dozens of films across the 1930s and 1940s. During World War II he served in the Office of Strategic Services and played Nazi officers in propaganda films. He later turned to television, with parts in Space Patrol, the Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok and 77 Sunset Strip, and retired from acting in 1959. He died in 1996.