Karlheinz Böhm
Dutch Postcard, nr. F 213.
Karlheinz Böhm (1928) was the young Emperor Franz Joseph I of Austria in the Sissi trilogy.
His father was the famous conductor Karl Böhm and his mother the soprano Thea Linhart. He started his career in 1948 as an assistant director of Der Engel mit der Posaune (1948, Karl Hartl), in which he also had a small part. Later he attended the actor's training at the Burgtheater and subsequently became a member of the ensemble. In 1952, Hartl brought him to Munich for Haus des Lebens (1952, Karl Hartl). In the following decade, Böhm appeared in more than 30 films. His first success was his role as the elegant young lover of Alraune (1952, Arthur Maria Rabenalt). In films like Salto Mortale (1953, Victor Tourjansky) and Ich war ein häßliches Mädchen (1955, Wolfgang Liebeneiner), he often appeared as a sincere and respectable young man. Hugely popular were the three Sissi films. Böhm and Romy Schneider were the perfect couple of the German cinema. During the shooting of Sissi (1955, Ernst Marischka), the then 16 year old Romy Schneider used to call him Uncle Karlheinz, although he was just 12 years her senior. Böhm became the male role model of the 1950’s, but the stiff juvenile hero role left him with a serious image problem. He attempted a change in international films. With his first British film he succeeded almost too well.
Outside of Europe Karlheinz Böhm (sometimes Carl Boehm) is probably best known for his role as the psychopathic voyeur and serial killer in Peeping Tom (1960, Michael Powell). Although the movie received slating reviews by critics in Great Britain and Germany alike, it was re-examined 20 years later and is nowadays considered as a masterpiece. Böhm subsequently appeared with Jayne Mansfield in the striptease thriller Too Hot to Handle (1959, Terence Young) and the French thriller La Croix des vivants (1960, Ivan Govar). He appeared as the Nazi-sympathizing son of Lee J. Cobb in the remake of The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1962, Vincente Minnelli). He also played Jakob Grimm in the Cinerama spectacular The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm (1962, Henry Levin), Ludwig van Beethoven in the Disney production The Magnificent Rebel (1962, Georg Tressler) and as a sadistic agent in The Venetian Affair (1967, Jerry Thorpe). In the mid-1960's Böhm moved to Italy and focussed more on his theatre work again. In 1964, he made his debut as a director of opera productions. A second German career began in 1972, when Rainer Werner Fassbinder made full use of Böhm's by now many-layered star image, first as the worldly-wise Prussian councillor Wüllersdorf in Fontane Effi Briest (1974), then as the sadistic husband in Martha (1974), the homosexual art dealer in Faustrecht der Freiheit (1975), and finally the arrogant, middle-class communist Tillmann in Mutter Küsters Fahrt zum Himmel (1975). Later, Böhm was mainly to be seen on stage or in tv productions. After losing a bet on the German tv show Wetten, dass..? (1981), he founded the charity organization Menschen für Menschen. Over 25 years now he promotes charities for starving children in Central Africa and Ethiopia. In 1991 he married Almaz Böhm, a native of Ethiopia. They have two children. From previous marriages he has five more children, among them actress Katharina Böhm.
Sources: Encyclopedia of European Cinema, Filmportal.de, Wikipedia and IMDb.