Oskar Homolka

Oskar Homolka
Born	Oskar Homolka 12 August 1898(1898-08-12) Vienna, Austria–Hungary
Died	27 January 1978 (aged 79) Sussex, England
Occupation	actor

Oskar Homolka (August 12, 1898 – January 27, 1978) was an Austrian film and theatre actor. Homolka's strong accent, stocky appearance, bushy eyebrows and Slavic-sounding name led many to believe he was Eastern European or Russian, but he was born in Vienna, Austria–Hungary.

Career

After serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army during World War I, Homolka attended the Imperial Academy of Music and the Performing Arts in Vienna and began his career on the Austrian stage. Success there led to work in the much more prestigious German theatrical community in Munich where in 1924 he played Mortimer in the premiere of Brecht's play The Life of Edward II of England at the Munich Kammerspiele, and since 1925 in Berlin where he worked under Max Reinhardt.

His first films were Die Abenteuer eines Zehnmarkscheins (The Adventures of a Ten Mark Note, 1926), Hokuspokus (Hocuspocus, 1930), and Dreyfus (The Dreyfus Case, 1930). After the Nazi rise to power, Homolka moved to Britain and later was one of the many Austrian and specifically Viennese actors and theatrical people (many of them Jewish) who fled Europe for the U.S.

In 1936, he played the bomber in Alfred Hitchcock's Sabotage. Although he often played villains such as Communist spies and Soviet-bloc military officers or scientists, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of the crusty, beloved uncle in I Remember Mama (1948). Homolka also acted with Ingrid Bergman in Rage in Heaven, with Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, with Ronald Reagan in Prisoner of War, and with Katharine Hepburn in The Madwoman of Chaillot. He returned to England in the mid-1960s, to play the Soviet KGB Colonel Stok in Funeral in Berlin (1967) and Billion Dollar Brain (1968), opposite Michael Caine. His last film was the Blake Edwards romantic drama The Tamarind Seed in 1974.

In 1967 Homolka was awarded the Filmband in Gold of the Deutscher Filmpreis for outstanding contributions to German cinema.

Personal life

Homolka married four times:

• His first wife was Grete Mosheim, a Hungarian Jewish actress. They married in Berlin on June 28, 1928, but divorced in 1937. She later married Howard Gould.
• His second wife, Baroness Vally Hatvany (died 1938), was also a Hungarian actress. They married in December 1937, but she died four months later.
• In 1939, Homolka married socialite and photographer Florence Meyer (1911–1962), a daughter of Washington Post owner Eugene Meyer. They had two sons, Vincent and Laurence, but eventually divorced.
• His last wife was actress Joan Tetzel, whom he married in 1949. The marriage lasted until Tetzel's death in 1977.

Oskar Homolka made his home in England after 1966. He died of pneumonia in Sussex, England on January 27, 1978, just three months after his wife's death. He was 79 years old.

Selected filmography

External links

• Oskar Homolka at the Internet Movie Database
• Photographs of Oskar Homolka
• Oskar Homolka on Filmreference.com