Helmut Dantine

Helmut Dantine (October 7, 1918 – May 2, 1982) was an Austrian-American actor born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, who built a substantial Hollywood career during the 1940s before appearing on Broadway between 1947 and 1950. His father, Alfred Guttmann, directed the Austrian railway system in Vienna. As a teenager, Dantine became active in Vienna's anti-Nazi movement, and in 1938, at age nineteen, he was arrested during the Anschluss and held in a Nazi concentration camp outside Vienna alongside hundreds of other opponents of the Third Reich. His parents used their influence to secure his release after three months and sent him to California to stay with a family friend. His father later died in Austria, while his mother, Ditha Guttman, was brought to California by her son in 1960 and remained there until her death in 1983.

After arriving in the United States, Dantine enrolled at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he developed an interest in theater. He launched his acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse while operating two gas stations to cover his living expenses. A Warner Bros. talent scout discovered him there and signed him to a contract. His first uncredited film appearances came in International Squadron and To Be or Not to Be, both in 1942, followed by his first credited role in MGM's Mrs. Miniver that same year, in which he played a downed German pilot captured by Greer Garson's title character. The film was a major commercial success and brought Dantine considerable attention. Also in 1942, he appeared in Casablanca as a young Bulgarian refugee who attempts to win money through gambling in order to purchase travel visas for himself and his wife, ultimately receiving help from Humphrey Bogart's character.

Warner Bros. signed Dantine to a new contract in August 1942 and cast him steadily in wartime productions, including The Pied Piper, Desperate Journey, and The Navy Comes Through. He went on to appear in Watch on the Rhine, Edge of Darkness, and Mission to Moscow in 1943, followed by Northern Pursuit, in which he played a Nazi villain pursued through northern Canada. Passage to Marseille and Hollywood Canteen followed in 1944, the same year exhibitors voting for Stars of Tomorrow ranked him tenth. In 1945, Warners gave him a sympathetic lead in Hotel Berlin as the head of the German underground, and he appeared in Escape in the Desert before concluding his time at the studio with the film noir Shadow of a Woman in 1946. His screen work during this period established him as a specialist in Nazi portrayals, ranging from cold SS officers to conflicted German soldiers.

After leaving Warner Bros., Dantine starred in the film noir Whispering City for Eagle-Lion Films in 1947. That same year he made his Broadway debut, co-starring with Tallulah Bankhead in The Eagle Has Two Heads, replacing Marlon Brando in the role. Jean Cocteau noted that Bankhead had made alterations to the play, and the production closed after only twenty-nine performances. Dantine also performed in No Time for Comedy during a Washington stage engagement and appeared in Arms and the Man at Cambridge Summer Playhouse. His Broadway work concluded with the 1950 production La Parisienne.

During the early 1950s, Dantine starred in the live television series Shadow of the Cloak during the 1951–52 season and appeared in Guerrilla Girl and Call Me Madam in 1953, as well as the British science fiction film Stranger from Venus, in which Patricia Neal supported him. He directed the 1958 military aviation film Thundering Jets, starring Rex Reason, and continued acting in Fräulein and Tempest that same year. His notable mid-decade film appearances included the 1956 adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace, in which he played the Cossack officer Dolokhov, as well as Alexander the Great, Kean: Genius or Scoundrel, The Story of Mankind, and Hell on Devil's Island, all released in 1956 and 1957.

As his acting work diminished, Dantine transitioned into producing and studio management. In 1959 he became a vice-president of Schenck Enterprises, the company run by Hollywood mogul Joseph Schenck, who was his wife's uncle. He subsequently worked as a producer with Robert L. Lippert Productions and later served as president of Hand Enterprises Inc. He served as executive producer on three films: Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia and The Killer Elite, both directed by Sam Peckinpah and released in 1974 and 1975 respectively, and The Wilby Conspiracy in 1975. His final screen appearances included The Fifth Musketeer in 1979 and Tarzan the Ape Man in 1981.

In his personal life, Dantine married fellow UCLA theater student Gwen Anderson before graduating; they divorced in 1943. He became an American citizen in April 1944. In 1947 he married Charlene Stafford Wrightsman, the younger daughter of oil millionaire Charles Bierer Wrightsman, whose collection of French furniture and decorative arts is housed in several galleries at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The couple had a son, Dana Wrightsman Dantine, and divorced in 1950. In 1958, Dantine married Nicola Schenck, daughter of Nicholas Schenck, a founder of Loews; the couple had three children, Dita, Nicola, and Shelley, and divorced in 1971. Dantine died of a heart attack in Beverly Hills on May 2, 1982, at the age of sixty-three.