1. Helmut Dantine was an Austrian-American actor who often played Nazis in thriller films of the 1940s.
23 Facts About Helmut Dantine
1. 2.
Helmut Dantine was rounded up with hundreds of other opponents of the Third Reich and imprisoned in a Nazi concentration camp outside Vienna.
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Helmut Dantine's relatives thought he would go into business, but he became interested in theater.
4.
Helmut Dantine began his US acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse, while running two gas stations in order to pay his expenses.
5.
Helmut Dantine was spotted by a talent scout from Warner Bros, who signed him to a contract.
6.
Helmut Dantine had uncredited parts in International Squadron and To Be or Not to Be, before his first credited role in MGM's Mrs Miniver, playing a downed German pilot captured by the title character.
7.
Helmut Dantine had a sympathetic role in Casablanca, as a young refugee trying and failing to earn money via gambling in order to purchase travel visas for him and his wife; he is helped by Humphrey Bogart.
8.
Helmut Dantine was a Nazi on-the-run in Escape in the Desert, a remake of The Petrified Forest.
9.
Helmut Dantine was the lead in another film noir Whispering City for Eagle-Lion Films.
10.
Helmut Dantine was in No Time for Comedy on stage in Washington and performed in the 1950 Broadway play Parisienne.
11.
Helmut Dantine was in Arms and the Man at Cambridge Summer Playhouse.
12.
Helmut Dantine had the lead in a B-movie, Guerrilla Girl, then had a small role in the musical, Call Me Madam, Helmut Dantine was supported by Patricia Neal while starring in the British science fiction film Stranger from Venus.
13.
Helmut Dantine acted in the 1956 film production of Tolstoy's War and Peace as Dolokhov, a Cossack officer assigned to harrying the retreat of France's Napoleonic army from Moscow.
14.
Helmut Dantine had a small role in Alexander the Great, Kean: Genius or Scoundrel, and The Story of Mankind.
15.
Helmut Dantine played the lead role in Hell on Devil's Island.
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Helmut Dantine directed the 1958 military aviation film Thundering Jets, starring Rex Reason, and continued to act in the films Fraulein and Tempest.
17.
Helmut Dantine later went to work as producer with Robert L Lippert Productions and then as president of Hand Enterprises Inc.
18.
Helmut Dantine was in The Fifth Musketeer and Tarzan the Ape Man.
19.
The couple had a son, Dana Wrightsman Helmut Dantine, before divorcing in 1950.
20.
Helmut Dantine's ex-wife claimed Dantine was after her father's money.
21.
In 1958, Helmut Dantine married Nicola Schenck, daughter of Nicholas Schenck, one of the founders of Loews.
22.
Helmut Dantine's wife acted under the name Niki Dantine; the couple had three children: Dita, Nicola, and Shelley.
23.
On 2 May 1982, Helmut Dantine died in Beverly Hills of a heart attack at age 63.