Hans Nielsen (actor)

Biography

Hans Albert Nielsen was born in Hamburg, Germany. He first got an education in business, but afterward, began taking private acting lessons from Albrecht Schoenhals and Erich Ziegel. He made his stage debut in Hamburg in 1932, after which he worked in Augsburg, Kiel, Leipzig, Berlin, Munich and Düsseldorf. Many actors and performing artists fled Nazi Germany, but Nielsen remained. He made his film debut in 1937 in Daphne and the Diplomat, followed by German movies, such as Heimat (with Zarah Leander), Friedrich Schiller – The Triumph of a Genius (with Horst Caspar) and The Great King (with Otto Gebühr).

After World War II, Nielsen performed in a Kabarett group, Die Außenseiter ("The Outsider") and played in revues by cabaret artist Günter Neumann. He resumed his successful film acting career in 1947, appearing in In Those Days, a drama by Helmut Käutner. He often played roles that were good-natured, likeable and elegant, such as the presiding judge in the 1953 satire Hocuspocus with Curt Goetz; the criminal defense attorney in Confess, Doctor Corda; a police inspector with Christopher Lee in Sherlock Holmes and the Deadly Necklace; the police chief in Scotland Yard vs. Dr. Mabuse and a judge in Jugendrichter, with Heinz Rühmann. He also worked with Curd Jürgens and Lilo Pulver in film versions of Conrad Ferdinand Meyer's Gustav Adolfs Page. He also appeared in a few Karl May films and in Edgar Wallace's The Indian Scarf, Das Phantom von Soho and The Door with Seven Locks. His only Hollywood film was Town Without Pity (1961) with Kirk Douglas.

In addition to his own film roles, in 1948, Nielsen began working as a voice actor, dubbing films into German, including Fred Astaire (Funny Face and Daddy Long Legs); Gary Cooper (Cloak and Dagger, among others); Errol Flynn (The Adventures of Robin Hood, Adventures of Don Juan, among others); Cary Grant (Crisis); Rex Harrison (Cleopatra); Phil Silvers (Cover Girl); David Niven (The King's Thief, among others), Tyrone Power (The Mark of Zorro and Prince of Foxes, among others); James Stewart (in The Philadelphia Story and Anatomy of a Murder, among others); Robert Taylor (Quo Vadis), Spencer Tracy (Malaya); Orson Welles (Citizen Kane) and Trevor Howard (The Third Man).