Tonio Selwart thereafter studied acting and appeared in many plays throughout Europe.
14 Facts About Tonio Selwart
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Tonio Selwart appeared in a variety of stage productions, including classics such as Shakespeare and modern popular works like Heinrich von Kleist's romantic dream play, The Prince of Homburg, in which he played the title role.
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Tonio Selwart's luck panned out in New York City, where he landed the lead part in Lawrence Langner's and Armina Marshall's play The Pursuit of Happiness for the Theatre Guild in 1930.
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Tonio Selwart was himself an officer and fought in World War I on the Austro-Hungarian side, as a lieutenant in the cavalry.
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Tonio Selwart was familiar with the novella Tonio Kroger, which dealt with a half-German, half-Italian young artist in pre-World War I Germany and was written by Thomas Mann and had a tape recording of the story being read by Mann himself.
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Tonio Selwart's wife, Claire Volkhart, a painter and sculptor, died in Germany in 1935 and his longtime companion, Ilse Jennings, a Paris-born Spanish artist, died in 1967.
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Tonio Selwart died at the age of 106 in New York City on November 2,2002.
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Tonio Selwart was much concerned that this "swan song" of his had never been released and even in 1992, at the age of 96, regretted that he would probably never see it.
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Tonio Selwart made a brief speaking part appearance in Luchino Visconti's Italian film Senso, at the beginning opera house scene, as an Austrian officer.
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Tonio Selwart spoke fluent Italian, English and French, which helped him with roles in several countries.
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Tonio Selwart appeared on stage around the country and in Canada.
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Tonio Selwart's performances included: The Pursuit of Happiness, Candle in the Wind by Maxwell Anderson with Helen Hayes, The Laughing Woman with Helen Menken, Autumn Crocus, Seeds in the Wind, Liliom by Ferenc Molnar, and The Hidden River in 1957, among many others.
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Tonio Selwart studied at the Actors Studio in New York and with Michael Chekhov in California.
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In 1995, now legally blind, Selwart was interviewed by William F Powers for his book, Alive and Well: The Emergence of the Active Nonagenarian.