On the screen he was a big game hunter and officer, outdoorsman and sunny boy – among the German actors one of the few world stars.
The blonde with the blue eyes and the striking face stood in front of the camera in Hollywood with colleagues such as James Stewart, Claudia Cardinale and Sean Connery. He worked with directors such as Stanley Kubrick, Richard Attenborough and Laurence Olivier. Hardy Krüger first had a rapid career in post-war Germany, then he was an internationally popular screen hero as a “German hero” and heartthrob. He died on Wednesday in his adopted home of Palm Springs at the age of 93, his agency said on Thursday, citing his wife.
“Eberhard Glückspilz is coming to Hollywood” – this is how the Berliner, born Franz Eberhard August Krüger, once described it in retrospect. He found that he had had a “wonderful life” and remained “curious and hungry” for more into old age. Even though he repeatedly referred to the capital as his real home (“My home is Berlin, this is where I want to be buried”), he commuted between Hamburg and California for most of his life. He was not only a “globetrotter” on television, for which Krüger visited spectacular areas as author, director and leading actor in the series of the same name.
At the age of 15 for the first time in front of the camera
Young Hardy, who was just 17 when the war ended, went out into the world early on: at the age of 15, the son of parents who were enthusiastic about Hitler was discovered for the Nazi film “Junge Adler”, after the war he tried his luck as an actor in Hamburg. He managed a career on German stages and as the eternal sunny boy in German entertainment films. But he also diligently crammed English vocabulary and worked on his German accent. When he took on the leading role as the German flight officer Franz von Werra in the British production “One came through” (1956), he also made his international breakthrough.
In the English press, Krüger became his country’s ambassador and doors opened in Hollywood. Krüger worked with John Wayne («Hatari!», 1962) and with James Stewart and Peter Finch («Flight of the Phoenix», 1965). He was the leading actor in around 75 films, including adventure roles, often upright officer figures. The French singer-songwriter Charles Aznavour became a friend of his when they made the anti-war film “Taxi nach Tobruk” (1960). “You can rely on Hardy unconditionally,” Aznavour once said. Krüger also appeared in front of the camera with Catherine Deneuve, Yul Brynner, Orson Welles and Richard Burton.
In 1963, the French production “Sundays with Sybill” received an Oscar – “the fact that its leading actor Hardy Krüger was not nominated was due to Hollywood’s notorious shyness of foreign actors at the time,” wrote the “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung” when it honored him on his 80th birthday . She also recalled the question that Krüger was repeatedly asked in his career: “Are you German?” His “Aryan” appearance could have been fatal for the actor, since Hollywood repeatedly offered him Nazi roles – but “Krüger turned them to character studies”.
From rascal to character actor
With his choice of roles, he managed to overcome the negative cliché of the “ugly German” on screen. And he managed the leap from the eternal rascal with beaming eyes from easy hits like “The Girl from the South Seas” (1950) to a serious character actor like in Helmut Käutner’s modern version of “Hamlet” “The Rest is Silence” (1959). “I’ve built a career through the films I haven’t made,” he said himself. He chose very carefully which filmmakers he worked with – “so I was close to the best directors”.
But when the world star on television became the “globetrotter”, his international career broke off. “You can’t stay away from Hollywood for ten years with impunity,” Kruger later said. He was referring to the time when he fascinated television audiences with his personal travel diaries: he talked about his travels on TV from 1987 to 1995 for ARD as a “globetrotter”. The enthusiastic hobby pilot also wrote the book “A Farm in Africa”. Krüger, who bought the «Hatari!» farm, lived in Tanzania for a long time and went bankrupt with his «Momella Game Lodge».
He also liked to recall the “Hatari!” filming with John Wayne with an anecdote in one of his books: “Bottoms up!” – with this toast Wayne toasted him at the time. Krüger had been warned against him: “Never drink with the man. And don’t talk to him about politics.” But as he faced him, Wayne immediately announced, “Kid, we’re going to have a drink at the bar later.” Krüger was able to prepare himself with three spoonfuls of corn oil and the “Brandy. French. Dreistöckig” down to a double before it got serious – and finally the young German drank the US star under the table.
three marriages
His memoirs “Wanderjahre” were followed by other books such as “Zarte Blume Hoffnung”, after a long break he was also seen again in a TV drama (“Family Secrets”) in 2011. Krüger was married three times, since 1978 to Anita Krüger. Two of his three children followed in his footsteps as actors.
Meanwhile, Krüger himself was involved in another project: a few days before his 85th birthday, he launched an initiative against right-wing violence. In his case, it was the actors Hans Söhnker and Albert Florath who radically changed his views. “In six months they managed to turn the Adolf Hitler student into an anti-Nazi,” he said at the presentation of the project in Hamburg. In his last book, «What life allows itself – My Germany and I», he takes up the subject again and tells of growing up in Nazi Germany.
His co-authors and agents at the time, Olaf Köhne and Peter Käfferlein, wrote in the announcement about Krüger’s death on Thursday: “The actor, writer and globetrotter worked throughout his life to prevent the Nazi crimes from being forgotten. The fight against racism and the education of young people were his personal life’s work. His warmth of heart, his joie de vivre and his unshakable sense of justice will make him unforgettable.» (dpa)