John Wengraf
Birth : 1897-04-23, Vienna, Austria-Hungary, now Austria
Death : 1974-05-04
History
Emigrating to England in 1933 as the Nazis began their rise to power, Wengraf appeared unbilled in a couple of films there, as well as in some of the first BBC live-television shows ever presented but his career began to languish. In late 1941, however, he had the good fortune of appearing on Broadway with Helen Hayes in "Candle in the Wind" and decided to stay. The following year he headed west and settled permanently in the Los Angeles area. A dark, cold-eyed, thin-lipped player with a precise, meticulous air about him, he found himself invariably playing the very characters he detested. Some of his more nefarious nasties surfaced in such films as the Humphrey Bogart classic Sahara (1943/I), as well as The Boy from Stalingrad (1943), U-Boat Prisoner (1944) and Till We Meet Again (1944). In postwar years, he was often spotted portraying ethnic professionals (scientists, doctors, professors, foreign royalty). Some of the more quality pictures he enhanced were Tomorrow Is Forever (1946); Count Von Papen in 5 Fingers (1952); and Ronchin in the Ethel Merman musical Call Me Madam (1953). Although Wengraf never made it to the very top of the Hollywood character ranks, he remained a throughly strong and reliable player. In the 1950s and 1960s he transferred his talents to TV, appearing on a number of dramatic showcases and on such popular programs as "The Untouchables" (1959), "Hawaiian Eye" (1959), "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." (1964) and "The Time Tunnel" (1966). His last few films included minor roles in the war-themed Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Hitler (1962) and Ship of Fools (1965). He retired in 1966, and died in Santa Barbara, California, at age 77, on May 4, 1974.
Graf
Passengers on a ship traveling from Mexico to Europe in the 1930s represent society at large in that era. The crew is German, including the ship's Dr. Schumann, who falls in love with one of the passengers, La Condesa. A young American woman, Jenny, is traveling with the man she loves, David. Jenny is fascinated and puzzled by just who some of the other passengers are.
Hans Eckhart
A group of Nobel laureates descends on Stockholm to accept their awards. Among them is American novelist Andrew Craig, a former literary luminary now writing pulp detective stories to earn a living. Craig, who is infamous for his drinking and womanizing, formulates a wild theory that physics prize winner Dr. Max Stratman has been replaced by an impostor, embroiling Craig and his chaperone in a Cold War kidnapping plot.
Dr. Morell
Richard Basehart stars as one of the most influential and one of the most reviled men in history in this probing psychological study of a man who nearly gained dominance over the entire western world--at the cost of millions of lives--Hitler.
Karl Wieck
In 1947, four German judges who served on the bench during the Nazi regime face a military tribunal to answer charges of crimes against humanity. Chief Justice Haywood hears evidence and testimony not only from lead defendant Ernst Janning and his defense attorney Hans Rolfe, but also from the widow of a Nazi general, an idealistic U.S. Army captain and reluctant witness Irene Wallner.
Dr. Kessler
A pair of lovers plot to kill the woman's rich husband.
Dr. Erich Heinrich
A group of twelve international scientists are the first to land on the moon. In their exploration of the surface, they run into all kinds of trouble, including threatening messages from alien life forms residing on the moon. Just a short nine years before the historic moon landing, this film's understanding of the science of space exploration is fantastically simplistic, but this well-made science fiction film holds interest with a strong cast and intriguingly strange events, photographed with great style by John Alton. Ken Clark, Michi Kobi, Tom Conway, John Wengraf, and Robert Montgomery Jr. portray the intrepid scientists.
John Merriman
After a vampire leaves his native Balkans, he murders a Czech artist, assumes his identity, and moves in with the dead man's American cousins.
Dr. Carl Metz
When men on a photo safari stumble into a misanthropic doctor’s remote camp with a wounded comrade, the doctor's restless wife supplements her usual pursuit (voodoo, especially as a way to off her husband) with a new one: seduction. As men lose their hearts (sometimes literally) to the alluring voodoo priestess, she embarks on a killing spree that turns the jungle blood red.
Mr. Louis Horvat
After the American Civil War, former Union Major John Garth marries pretty settler Valerie but tragedy strikes and the two spouses end up in court where they give two different conflicting accounts of their marriage.
Sermaine
During the Napoleonic Wars, when the French have occupied Spain, some Spanish guerrilla soldiers are going to move a big cannon across Spain in order to help the British defeat the French. A British officer is there to accompany the Spanish and along the way, he falls in love with the leader's girl.
Dr. Krauss
Arthur Turner's bored housewife Mildred seeks psychiatric help from Dr. Alan Coles who also has his own emotional problems to solve.
Prof. Zimmelman
In present-day U.S., Dr. Michael Parker, a prominent surgeon, unexpectedly runs into his German-born wife whom he thought was dead. Victor, an artist and his "dead" wife's now boyfriend, berates Dr. Parker for "killing" her. The bulk of the story flashes back to Austria during World War II as we learn how Dr. Parker met and married his wife, and the one mistake that may have cost him his family.
Dr. Tabor
An Italian daredevil turns Grand Prix driver and works his way up to Le Mans with his ballerina lover.
Nicholas Cadiz
A discharged army Captain returns home to New Orleans to take revenge on the men who murdered his father.
Dr. Zeitman
A mechanical brain is programmed to sabotage the government's secret lab while working on the first space station.
Vidal
Sach is the exact double of a famous French scientist who has invented a powerful rocket fuel. Enemy agents, mistaking Sach for the scientist, attempt to kidnap him and get the formula for the fuel.
Commodore Renard
Oil heiress Mame Carson takes an incognito cruise so that men will love her for her body, not her money.
Col. Schuman (uncredited)
A privately-financed scientist and his colleagues hire an ex-Navy officer to conduct an Alaskan submarine expedition in order to prevent a Red Chinese anti-American plot that may lead to World War III. Mixes deviously plotted schoolboy fiction with submarine spectacle and cold war heroics.
German Doctor (uncredited)
In North Africa, German Field Marshal Rommel and his troops have successfully fended off British forces, and now intend to take Tobruk, an important port city. A ramshackle group of Australian reinforcements sent to combat the Germans is put under the command of British Captain MacRoberts. The unruly Aussies immediately clash with MacRoberts, a gruff, strict disciplinarian, however this unorthodox team must band together to protect Tobruk from the German forces.
Lukats
A fugitive from the police helps a beautiful farmer run her struggling banana plantation.
Count Franz Von Papen
During WWII, the valet to the British Ambassador to Ankara sells British secrets to the Germans while trying to romance a refugee Polish countess.
Pierquin
Posing as a wealthy Parisian, Mercadet fleeces friends and casual acquaintances alike. He is forced into this life of crime to keep up appearances, so that his daughter Julie can land herself a rich husband.
Prosecuting Attorney
Captain Ralls fights Dutch shipping magnate Mayrant Sidneye for the woman he loves, Angelique Desaix, and for a fortune in gold aboard the Red Witch.
German Doctor
John Hoyt plays a high-ranking Nazi being prosecuted by an army tribunal in the aftermath of World War II. Sentenced to death, the general appeals to the American investigating Major (Ray Milland), claiming mitigating circumstances, and providing the names of witnesses who will clear his name. This sends the Major in a search through the ruins of post-war Germany to determine the degree of the general's guilt.
Peter Goltzen
A former OSS agent is assigned to rescue two atomic scientists from the dastardly Russians and spirit them away from behind the Iron Curtain.
'Shiv' Triano
Two U.S. Treasury ("T-men") agents go undercover in Detroit, and then Los Angeles, in an attempt to break a U.S. currency counterfeiting ring.
Joseph - Gray & Isabel's Butler
An adventurous young man goes off to find himself and loses his socialite fiancée in the process. But when he returns 10 years later, she will stop at nothing to get him back, even though she is already married.
Dr. Ludwig
In 1918, Elizabeth MacDonald learns that her husband, John Andrew, has been killed in the war. Elizabeth bears John's son and eventually marries her kindly boss. Unknown to her, John has survived but is horribly disfigured and remains in Europe. Years later, on the eve of World War II, Elizabeth refuses to agree to her son's request to enlist and is stunned when an eerily familiar stranger named Kessler arrives from abroad and becomes involved.
Alex
Anything can happen during a weekend at New York's Waldorf-Astoria: a glamorous movie star meets a world-weary war correspondent and mistakes him for a jewel thief; a soldier learns that without an operation he'll die and so looks for one last romance with a beautiful but ambitious stenographer; a cub reporter tries to get the goods on a shady man's dealing with a foreign potentate.
Rudolph Kruger
Eminent psychiatrist Dr. Brenner invites cartoonist Bill Harrison and his wife, Jack, to a banquet honoring war refugees. Bill volunteers to pick up fellow psychiatrist Dr. Baumler at the train station, but the man vanishes when he has Bill stop so he can use a pay phone. At the dinner, Bill and Jack are seated with Brenner's daughter, Freda, and, to Bill's surprise, another man is introduced as Baumler -- who dies moments later.
Gunther Rudehoff, Gestapo Agent
Bruce Bennett plays merchant seaman Archie Gibbs, who manages to survive when his ship is torpedoed by a German submarine. Disguising himself in the uniform of a dead Nazi spy, Gibbs is picked up by the Nazi U-boat. He manages to convince the German sailors that he's the spy, and in this guise he tries to rescue a group of captured Allied scientists.
Overkamp
In Nazi Germany in 1936 seven men escape from a concentration camp. The camp commander puts up seven crosses and, as the Gestapo returns each escapee he is put to death on a cross. The seventh cross is still empty as George Heisler seeks freedom in Holland.
Major von Falken
Sergeant Joe Gunn and his tank crew pick up five British soldiers, a Frenchman and a Sudanese man with an Italian prisoner crossing the Libyan Desert to rejoin their command after the fall of Tobruk. Tambul, the Sudanese leads them to an abandoned desert fortress where they hope to find water. Soon a detachment of German soldiers arrives and attempts to barter food for water, but Gunn and his followers refuse. When the Germans attack, Gunn leads his desert-weary men in a desperate battle, hoping that British reinforcements can arrive in time.
Polish Ambassador Grzybowski (uncredited)
Ambassador Joseph Davies is sent by FDR to Russia to learn about the Soviet system and returns to America as an advocate of Stalinism.
Herr Kesselman
Lucky Jordan is a gangster living in New York City and when he's drafted into the army, he tries to escape duty by using an old con woman named Annie to convince the draft board he's needed at home. When that fails, Jordan is sent to boot camp, but he doesn't stay there long. He takes a beautiful USO worker hostage and flees back to New York. There, he learns that a rival gangster is plotting against America.
German Captain
Three sailors get drunk while on shore leave and end up on the wrong ship. When they realise their mistake they scramble off it and onto their warship, HMS Ferocious. However, they soon realise that the vessel they have boarded is not the Ferocious but a German battleship.
Commander Deutschland
A tale of life on board a Royal Navy cruiser assigned to protect the vital convoys between America and England during WWII.
KL Physician (uncredited)
Czechoslovakia, March 1939, on the eve of World War II. As the German invaders occupy Prague, inventor Axel Bomasch manages to flee and reach England; but those who need to put his knowledge at the service of the Nazi war machine, in order to carry out their evil plans of destruction, will stop at nothing to capture him.
German
From a series of propaganda films made to raise awareness of the risks of idle gossip providing vital information to enemy spies and collaborators. This Ealing Studios production features well-known 1940s actor John Mills, playing a sailor whose girlfriend thoughtlessly blunders away vital wartime secrets. The consequences prove disastrous when his boat next leaves to cross the English Channel.
German Radio Operator
A young pilot, annoyed at not being selected to take part in a raid on an enemy target, moans to his fiancée, who in turn chatters to a friend at a cocktail bar.
