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Felix Bressart(1892-1949)

  • Actor
  • Soundtrack
IMDbProStarmeterSee rank
Felix Bressart
A man's marriage suffers when he pretends to be a bachelor while promoting "his" best-selling book about married life (actually written by an eccentric professor) in order to pay off a debt to a gangster.
Play trailer2:25
Married Bachelor (1941)
5 Videos
37 Photos
With his lanky frame, big nose, toothbrush moustache and horn-rimmed glasses he looked like someone had decided to cross Groucho Marx with Albert Einstein. The perennial scene-stealer Felix Bressart had two distinct careers as a comic actor: an earlier one, on stage and screen in his native Germany, and a later -- even more prosperous one -- in Hollywood. Trained under Maria Moissi in Berlin, Felix began acting professionally after World War I. He honed his skills in the genres of political parody, musical comedy and slapstick farce in the theatres of Hamburg, Berlin and Vienna (with Max Reinhardt). By 1933, he had established his film acting credentials in popular mainstream movies like Die Drei von der Tankstelle (1930) and Die Privatsekretärin (1931). Like so many other distinguished actors he was forced to leave the German realm after the Nazis took power in 1933. Felix moved via Switzerland and France to a new domicile in the United States where his connections to fellow émigrés like Joe Pasternak and Ernst Lubitsch guaranteed him rapid and steady employment.

In Hollywood, Felix joined the regular company of stock players at MGM. He was immediately typecast, his stock-in-trade being disheveled academics, wistful European philosophers, scientists and music professors of diverse ethnicity. His first major screen success was as one of the Russian commissars in Lubitsch's Ninotschka (1939), a delightful performance which spawned as similar part being created for him in Comrade X (1940). The role which ultimately defined his career, in equal parts comedy and pathos, was in the classic wartime satire Sein oder Nichtsein (1942), as Greenberg, a Jewish member of an acting troupe with Carole Lombard and Jack Benny. It seemed, that Felix was still underemployed in films, since he managed to practise as a doctor of medicine on the side. Sadly, he died of leukemia in 1949 at the untimely age of 57.
BornMarch 2, 1892
DiedMarch 17, 1949(57)
BornMarch 2, 1892
DiedMarch 17, 1949(57)
IMDbProStarmeterSee rank

Photos37

Greta Garbo, Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach, and Sig Ruman in Ninotschka (1939)
Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Felix Bressart in Zu klug für die Liebe (1945)
Greta Garbo, Felix Bressart, Alexander Granach, and Sig Ruman in Ninotschka (1939)
Hedy Lamarr and Felix Bressart in Crossroads (1942)
Felix Bressart in Gefährliche Flitterwochen (1943)
Felix Bressart in Iceland (1942)
Hedy Lamarr, William Powell, and Felix Bressart in Crossroads (1942)
Curt Bois, Felix Bressart, and Sig Ruman in Bitter Sweet (1940)
Myrna Loy and Felix Bressart in Dritter Finger, linke Hand (1940)
Jack Benny, Paul Barrett, Felix Bressart, Tom Dugan, James Gillette, Charles Halton, Maurice Murphy, and Gene Rizzi in Sein oder Nichtsein (1942)
Felix Bressart
Hedy Lamarr, Felix Bressart, and Philip Dorn in Mädchen im Rampenlicht (1941)

Known for

James Stewart, Frank Morgan, and Margaret Sullavan in Rendezvous nach Ladenschluß (1940)
Rendezvous nach Ladenschluß
8.0
  • Pirovitch
  • 1940
Greta Garbo in Ninotschka (1939)
Ninotschka
7.8
  • Buljanoff
  • 1939
Tom Dugan in Sein oder Nichtsein (1942)
Sein oder Nichtsein
8.1
  • Greenberg
  • 1942
Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr in Comrade X (1940)
Comrade X
6.5
  • Vanya
  • 1940

Credits

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IMDbPro

Actor

  • William Powell and Shelley Winters in Take One False Step (1949)
    Take One False Step
    6.4
    • Professor Morris Avrum
    • 1949
  • Joseph Cotten and Jennifer Jones in Jenny (1948)
    Jenny
    7.6
    • Pete
    • 1948
  • Danny Kaye, Louis Armstrong, Charlie Barnet, Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Lionel Hampton, Virginia Mayo, and Mel Powell in A Song Is Born (1948)
    A Song Is Born
    6.9
    • Professor Gerkikoff
    • 1948
  • Nancy Coleman, Margaret Lindsay, and Phillip Reed in Her Sister's Secret (1946)
    Her Sister's Secret
    6.5
    • Pepe - New Orleans Cafe Owner
    • 1946
  • Ann Miller in Sambafieber (1946)
    Sambafieber
    5.9
    • Ludwig Kriegspiel
    • 1946
  • I've Always Loved You (1946)
    I've Always Loved You
    6.4
    • Frederick Hassman
    • 1946
  • Felix Bressart, Anne Jeffreys, Richard Korbel, Marcy McGuire, Glen Vernon, and James Warren in Ding Dong Williams (1946)
    Ding Dong Williams
    5.3
    • Hugo Meyerheld
    • 1946
  • James Craig and Signe Hasso in Gefährliche Partnerschaft (1945)
    Gefährliche Partnerschaft
    6.1
    • Professor Roland Budlow
    • 1945
  • Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, and Lucille Ball in Zu klug für die Liebe (1945)
    Zu klug für die Liebe
    6.6
    • Prof. Ginza
    • 1945
  • Secrets in the Dark
    Short
    • 1944
  • Gloria Grahame and Philip Dorn in Blonde Fever (1944)
    Blonde Fever
    5.4
    • Johnny
    • 1944
  • Carmen Miranda, Don Ameche, William Bendix, and Vivian Blaine in Greenwich Village (1944)
    Greenwich Village
    6.2
    • Hofer
    • 1944
  • Spencer Tracy and Signe Hasso in Das siebte Kreuz (1944)
    Das siebte Kreuz
    7.4
    • Poldi Schlamm
    • 1944
  • Robert Taylor and Susan Peters in Song of Russia (1944)
    Song of Russia
    5.9
    • Petrov
    • 1944
  • Richard Lane in Don't Be a Sucker (1943)
    Don't Be a Sucker
    7.6
    Short
    • Anti-Nazi Teacher (uncredited)
    • 1943

Soundtrack

  • Carmen Miranda, Don Ameche, William Bendix, and Vivian Blaine in Greenwich Village (1944)
    Greenwich Village
    6.2
    • performer: "When You Wore a Tulip and I Wore a Big Red Rose" (uncredited)
    • 1944
  • Felix Bressart, Lilian Harvey, and Harry Liedtke in Nie wieder Liebe! (1931)
    Nie wieder Liebe!
    6.8
    • performer: "Nie Wieder Liebe"
    • 1931

Videos5

Official Trailer
Trailer 2:25
Official Trailer
Blossoms in the Dust
Trailer 3:06
Blossoms in the Dust
The Shop Around The Corner
Trailer 4:15
The Shop Around The Corner
Ninotchka
Trailer 2:17
Ninotchka
The Shop Around The Corner
Trailer 4:05
The Shop Around The Corner

Personal details

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  • Born
    • March 2, 1892
    • Eydtkuhnen, East Prussia, Germany [now Chernyshevskoe, Russia]
  • Died
    • March 17, 1949
    • Los Angeles, California, USA(leukemia)
  • Spouse
    • Friedel LehnerMarch 1, 1925 - March 17, 1949 (his death)
  • Other works
    Stage actor.
  • Publicity listings
    • 2 Articles

Did you know

Edit
  • Trivia
    His last film was My Friend Irma (1949), the movie version of a popular radio show. Bressart died during production, forcing the producers to finish the film with Hans Conried. In the final film, Conried speaks throughout, but Bressart is still seen in the long shots.

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