Friedrich Feher
Friedrich Fehér; usually written without the accent Friedrich Feher, actually Frederick White ( born March 16, 1889 in Vienna, † September 30, 1950 in Stuttgart) was an Austrian actor and film director. His most famous film role was that of madmen Francis Robert Wiene's expressionist masterpiece in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari from 1920.
Life and work
After attending the Conservatory in Vienna, he began his career in 1907 at the Schauspielhaus in Berlin and Lessing -Theater and then went on to theaters in Hamburg, Vienna and Prague. He participated with the Max Reinhardt ensemble on a tour of America. 1924/1925 he was temporary director of the Renaissance stage in Vienna.
His first appearances in silent films, he graduated in 1911 in Berlin. He took the time being mainly in literary adaptations, which he himself also from 1913, for the Berlin Mutoscope, staged. He had initial success as the lead in Theodor Körner (1912 ), as Franz Moor in The Robbers (1913 ) and as ODOARDO in Emilia Galotti (1913). 1916 Fehér returned back to Vienna for two years before he again participated in 1919 in German productions and with a starring role in Robert Wiene's The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920 ) finally made his breakthrough. In this expressionist masterpiece he played the famous role of Francis, a young inmates of a lunatic asylum.
In 1921 he took over the artistic direction of the Vienna Odysseus movie, a subsidiary of Vita- film, and directed several films directed. He filmed among other Tales of Hoffmann (1923 ) and appeared as a supporting actor in Robert Wiene's Der Rosenkavalier (1926 ), of the Pan - film. Also, the strong influence of Expressionism film The House of Dr. Gaudeamus ( 1921) was created under his direction.
In 1922, Fehér his own film production company. In 1923 he also took over the management of the first Viennese premiere cinemas, the Kammerlichtspiele Schwarzenberg. In 1926 he moved back to Berlin, where he directed history, detective comedies and films court. In most of his total of 25 movies played his wife Magda Sonja, 1917-1921 's first female film star Sascha film, the main role. Among his best known films of this period include Mata Hari (1927) and Mary Stuart (1927 ).
In 1933 he left Berlin again - but this time forcibly, because he was not allowed to participated in German films as a Jew. He emigrated initially to Czechoslovakia and then to Britain, where he led the Concordia Films Ltd.. founded. In London, he was able to work with other exiles, such as with Robert Wiene, who appeared as a producer for his expressionist and surrealist -inspired staging of bizarre Singspiel Robber Symphony (1936). His son Hans Feher received in the lead role.
After the bankruptcy of his film company, he emigrated in October 1936 on in the United States, where he founded the symphonic film. With this, he directed 1938/39, the short film series Paramount Symphonics, where he conducted some orchestral recordings themselves. When he tried to refine the style principle of robbers Symphony in his short films, his financial backers objected to the idea, and his career came to a halt. Most recently, he got transferred a small film role in Jive Junction from successful Hollywood Austria emigrants Edgar G. Ulmer, 1943.
The main income of the Fehér family during the years of emigration came increasingly lack of successful movies from other activities. Since 1939, Fehér mainly worked as a conductor and earned extra money as a manager of a grocery store. His wife, once a silent film star in the German-speaking countries, in the U.S. sound film was not active at all. In March 1950, Fehér returned to London, and soon after to Germany. There he tried to explore the possibilities of production of television films with musical content. The end of September 1950, he died completely surprising in a Stuttgart hospital. The often to read of death Frankfurt, however, is not true.
Filmography (selection)
On the following films Friedrich Fehér worked with as an actor. With many of which he also directed, in some he worked with on the script - as the supplemental information is given in brackets:
Sound films: