Gertan Klauber(1932-2008)
- Actor
Corpulent, bushy-browed Czechoslovakian-born character actor Gertan
Klauber was a familiar face on British television, appearing in
anything from 'Carry On' comedies to playing a Roman galley master in
Doctor Who (1963). In Britain from
an early age, he studied acting in Birmingham before moving to London
in the mid-1950's. Over the next four decades, he trod the boards of
the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Arts Theatre and the National
Theatre, as well as acting in several drama series for BBC TV. His
stock-in-trade was a fluency in Eastern and Central European dialects,
as a result of which he was often typecast as spies, border guards,
waiters, minor officials and oily second-string villains. As such, he
guested on many popular television shows of the day, including
The Saint (1962),
Secret Agent (1964), and
The Prisoner (1967). He was,
arguably, at his most amusing, as the mad, penguin-fixated King George
III in the final instalment of
Blackadder the Third (1987).
