Werner Peters


Biography

A prolific German actor who worked until the day he died, Werner Peters played both sinister and melodramatic characters with equal aplomb. His first major film part came with the lead in Wolfgang Staudte's "Man of Straw," in which he played the power-crazed Diederich Heßling, a character who gets ahead by trampling others. His next big turn came in the disturbing "The Devil Strikes at N...

Biography

A prolific German actor who worked until the day he died, Werner Peters played both sinister and melodramatic characters with equal aplomb. His first major film part came with the lead in Wolfgang Staudte's "Man of Straw," in which he played the power-crazed Diederich Heßling, a character who gets ahead by trampling others. His next big turn came in the disturbing "The Devil Strikes at Night," in which Peters played the desperate Willi Keun, a married man wrongly accused of murdering his lover. Taking a break from fiendish characters, Peters soon after became a fixture in the Dr. Mabuse melodramas of the 1960s. He appeared in German auteur Fritz Lang's "The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse" as the obnoxiously aggressive insurance salesman Hieronymus B. Mistelzweig. Peters went on to play Böhmler in "The Return of Dr. Mabuse," and the Clown Bobo, a revue theater entertainer involved in criminal doings, in "The Invisible Dr. Mabuse." The actor became known to American audiences playing General Kohler, the strong-willed German commander in the World War II war epic "Battle of the Bulge" and as another German war operative--Otto Schack--in "36 Hours," in which he played opposite James Garner. Peters worked consistently until 1971, when he died of a heart attack at age 52 during a promotional tour for a movie.

Life Events

Videos

Movie Clip

36 Hours (1964) -- (Movie Clip) London, May 31, 1944 Opening, James Garner as American Pike, with Alan Napier as Col. MacLean and Russell Thorson as Gen. Allison, discussing the upcoming Normandy invasion and ways to find out what the Germans know, in 36 Hours, 1964, co-starring Rod Taylor and Eva Marie Saint.
Fine Madness, A (1966) -- (Movie Clip) Ends Of The Spectrum Patrick O'Neal has just been introduced as Manhattan celebrity shrink West, listening to himself on the radio, and joining Jean Seberg as his unstable wife Lydia, fretting then joined by his colleague (Werner Peters), in A Fine Madness, 1966, starring Sean Connery and directed by Irvin Kershner.
36 Hours (1964) -- (Movie Clip) Don't You Know Me? At a German espionage site made to look like an American military hospital six years later, German psychologist Gerber (Rod Taylor) and nurse Anna (Eva Marie Saint) observe as American Pike (James Garner), kidnapped on the eve of D-Day, is awakened, in 36 Hours, 1964.
36 Hours (1964) -- (Movie Clip) Body Departed Lisbon Rapid plot development, as we?ve just seen James Garner as American Major Pike, in Lisbon on a mission, carrying details of the D-Day invasion, drugged by unknown villains, then transported in a coffin, evidently to Germany, where Rod Taylor speaks English, in 36 Hours, 1964.
Battle Of The Bulge (1965) -- (Movie Clip) This Great Deception General Kohler (Werner Peters) tries hard to impress upon Hessler (Robert Shaw) just how prepared and diabolical the remaining German army is, early in director Ken Annakin's Battle Of The Bulge, 1965.

Bibliography