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We are having a party, myself and I
Hardy Krüger has died. At a respectable and unsurprising age, but I am still feeling slightly bereft.
I imprinted on him almost before I knew to care about actors. It took me years to recognize Heinrich Dorfmann in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) as a deliberately difficult character with his monofocus and his cold equations and his slide-rule arrogance that's just as dangerous as the threatened traditionalism of the seat-of-the-pants pilot played by James Stewart because he was my favorite character from the first time I saw the film and the one I still gravitate toward among its embarrassment of character actors, sand-blond in his rimless octagonal glasses and his relentless faith in engineering. He's the outsider, the one German in a cast of predominantly British and Americans, his nationality thrown in his face with the war he was too young to fight in: "That's it, then, that's why they never won—they didn't have old Heinrich!" He's intelligent and anoraky and his people skills are so terrible that calling them ass would be an insult to the human posterior. If only the rest of the survivors knew, his chilly, rational, logical plan is even crazier and more quixotic than it looks. I spent my childhood building model rockets and the occasional plane and I loved him. I don't know how many times I had seen the film before it occurred to me to wonder whether I was supposed to.
For that degree of love, I saw the actor in surprisingly little else. He was marvelous as Oberleutnant Franz von Werra in The One That Got Away (1957), effortlessly and ironically drawing the audience into the adventures of the only Axis POW to escape successfully from Allied custody during World War II. I'm not sure it counts that I saw him in A Bridge Too Far (1977) because everyone was in A Bridge Too Far, but his name in the cast list was one of the reasons I sought it out. I have been trying for years to get hold of Blind Date (1959) not just because it's a late noir by Joseph Losey, but because Krüger sings in it. My mother has always spoken fondly of Sundays and Cybèle (1962). In recent years I was glad, if that's the right word for something that should not have been necessary, to see that he had become an activist against the rise of fascism and the far right, citing his own experiences as the child of Nazis and a teenage conscript into the Wehrmacht. I liked knowing he was in the world. He isn't and his films are and that's what happens with artists.
I imprinted on him almost before I knew to care about actors. It took me years to recognize Heinrich Dorfmann in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965) as a deliberately difficult character with his monofocus and his cold equations and his slide-rule arrogance that's just as dangerous as the threatened traditionalism of the seat-of-the-pants pilot played by James Stewart because he was my favorite character from the first time I saw the film and the one I still gravitate toward among its embarrassment of character actors, sand-blond in his rimless octagonal glasses and his relentless faith in engineering. He's the outsider, the one German in a cast of predominantly British and Americans, his nationality thrown in his face with the war he was too young to fight in: "That's it, then, that's why they never won—they didn't have old Heinrich!" He's intelligent and anoraky and his people skills are so terrible that calling them ass would be an insult to the human posterior. If only the rest of the survivors knew, his chilly, rational, logical plan is even crazier and more quixotic than it looks. I spent my childhood building model rockets and the occasional plane and I loved him. I don't know how many times I had seen the film before it occurred to me to wonder whether I was supposed to.
For that degree of love, I saw the actor in surprisingly little else. He was marvelous as Oberleutnant Franz von Werra in The One That Got Away (1957), effortlessly and ironically drawing the audience into the adventures of the only Axis POW to escape successfully from Allied custody during World War II. I'm not sure it counts that I saw him in A Bridge Too Far (1977) because everyone was in A Bridge Too Far, but his name in the cast list was one of the reasons I sought it out. I have been trying for years to get hold of Blind Date (1959) not just because it's a late noir by Joseph Losey, but because Krüger sings in it. My mother has always spoken fondly of Sundays and Cybèle (1962). In recent years I was glad, if that's the right word for something that should not have been necessary, to see that he had become an activist against the rise of fascism and the far right, citing his own experiences as the child of Nazis and a teenage conscript into the Wehrmacht. I liked knowing he was in the world. He isn't and his films are and that's what happens with artists.
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I see no reason to dispute this statement. What else have you seen him in?
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The One That Got Away
The Flight of the Phoenix
A Bridge Too Far
The Wild Geese
Plus a couple where I know I've seen the film, but not recently enough to recall his role in them
Hatari
The Secret of Santa Vittoria
And I was like you with regard to his role in The Flight of the Phoenix, my sympathies were always with him rather more than with the others.
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Mow, thank you. He will always look nerdy and sunburned and wonderful to me.
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The Secret of Santa Vittoria
I've seen neither of those! I suspect Hatari! suffered on my radar from containing John Wayne. I see the other has Anthony Quinn, though, which is promising.
And I was like you with regard to his role in The Flight of the Phoenix, my sympathies were always with him rather more than with the others.
I understand how that movie doesn't work if its central figures aren't both sympathetic, flawed, wrong at different points and right at others, but also, team disaster engineer forever.
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* Any other memory is probably smooshed up with watching Daktari at a similar age.
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https://www.arte.tv/de/videos/082184-000-A/die-hardy-krueger-story/
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I am very glad that you had the chance to hear him speak. I could only read interviews.
I don't know whether you can watch ARTE (German-French broadcaster) in the US, but they put up a good documentary about him in their Mediathek
"Dieses Video ist in Ihrem Land nicht verfügbar"!
Thank you for the thought. Maybe it will show up on YouTube someday.
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Strapping people to the wing had been done - think of all the wing-walkers in the pre-war stunt era, and there were persistent instances of people doing it to rescue pilots who had been shot done in both WWI and WWII. There's lots of detail complications, but I'd be more worried about the tail than the wing. The big issue would be balance, which they wouldn't be certain of until they were in the air, though you could do a rough calculation.
The aircraft they built for the flying sequences was frankensteined together from several different aircraft types, though none of them the C-119 of the story, and did fly and gain CAA certification as airworthy, though it did eventually crash killing the pilot due to structural failure - ironically in the built-for-the-purpose fuselage, not the frankensteined bits.
ETA: at least one famous British aircraft designer did actually get their start with model aircraft before WWI, though his name isn't popping to mind right now.
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You're welcome! Thank you.
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That's the one part of the film I don't like! I can't remember not knowing it, either, which is weird, but the film is dedicated to his memory.
ETA: at least one famous British aircraft designer did actually get their start with model aircraft before WWI, though his name isn't popping to mind right now.
I don't know if Sydney Camm counts because he was a teenager at the time, but he built both models for sale and, famously, a full-size glider. I thought this story belonged to R. J. Mitchell, but he just seems to have built model airplanes as a kid like everyone does.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SxUieGMcG8s&ab_channel=ChazzD
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Whoa!
Thank you. I am at present in the middle of a review of another movie (also on YouTube, actually), but then I will put this one in my eyes.
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I didn't know about his activism but I'm delighted to hear it. Thank you for writing this.
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I'm astonished to realise looking at Wiki that Sopwith's working life came within 5 years of overlapping with mine - he was still a consultant to BAe until 1980, I started with GEC-Marconi in '85. I don't imagine he was doing much at 92, but my flabber is gasted.
Completely off-topic, but did you notice in today's Guardian: The King’s Daughter: Pierce Brosnan’s cursed mermaid stabbing movie finally gets released https://www.theguardian.com/film/2022/jan/21/the-kings-daughter-pierce-brosnan-mermaid
Which seems like the kind of thing to interest/amuse you.
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I mean, he's the definition of charisma to burn in that movie: I am not at all surprised it was his star-making role. By transitive fondness, when I saw an old paperback of Kendal Burt and James Leasor's The One That Got Away (1956) at a library sale in 2018, I bought it on the spot.
It sounds like I should seek out Flight of the Phoenix and Blind Date, as well.
The Flight of the Phoenix is actually one of my comfort movies. I have no idea how many times I've seen it.
I didn't know about his activism but I'm delighted to hear it. Thank you for writing this.
You're welcome!
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All right!
Sopwith's working life came within 5 years of overlapping with mine - he was still a consultant to BAe until 1980, I started with GEC-Marconi in '85. I don't imagine he was doing much at 92, but my flabber is gasted.
I think that's extremely cool, and also I can see how that is not a timeline you saw coming.
Completely off-topic, but did you notice in today's Guardian: The King’s Daughter: Pierce Brosnan’s cursed mermaid stabbing movie finally gets released
I had not seen that! I had no plans to see the movie, either, but I am still kind of impressed.
(I love everything about the book except its prose style. The first time I saw Peter Dinklage, I thought he was a shoo-in for the romantic lead. The fact that a film adaptation was made and did not star him is as bewildering as the fact that Leslie Howard never played Peter Wimsey.)
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Oh, wow. Thank you so much! (What a snapshot to catch. I love how cities are biographied on film.)