Rudolf Prack

Handsome matinée idol and star of post-war German film, Viennese-born Rudolf Prack was afforded the singular contractual distinction (though somewhat to his detriment) of being never permitted to act in a villainous part - lest his popularity with the female audience be diminished. The son of a postal worker who died in 1922, leaving massive debts in his wake, young Rudolf spent his teenage years as a bank clerk. Once his father's debts had at last been expunged, he began to study at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna and was eventually engaged by Hans Thimig to appear on stage at the Theater in der Josefstadt. His screen career took off rather slowly after his 1937 debut, but he registered early successes as a charismatic poacher in Krambambuli (1940) and as a farm boy seduced by Kristina Söderbaum in Veit Harlan's The Golden City (1942). After the war, he came into his own as rather more sophisticated, urbane leads in sentimental , simplistic 'Heimatfilms', like Schwarzwaldmädel (1950), or _Grün ist die Heide (1951)_. Eschewing offers from Hollywood, he formed popular screen partnerships with leading ladies Sonja Ziemann and Marianne Koch, though both were decades younger. Prack won the first of two Bambi Awards in 1949, ahead of English star Stewart Granger, by a margin of seven percent of the votes. In the 1960's, he made a successful transition to character roles, notably as a country doctor in the bucolic television series Landarzt Dr. Brock (1967). Prack retired from acting in 1976 and died of pneumonia in Vienna in December 1981.