Oskar Werner

Talented Austrian actor Oskar Werner (1922-1984) was Jules in François Truffaut’s Nouvelle Vague classic Jules et Jim (1962). He is also known for international films like Ship of Fools (1965), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968). Werner received an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe Award in 1966.


West German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf., no. 1722. Photo: Gamma / Union-Film. Oskar Werner in Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955).


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma by Editions Art & Scene, Paris, no. CF 88. Photo: R. Cauchetier. Jeanne Moreau, Henri Serre and Oskar Werner in Jules et Jim / Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962).

Ripe for film stardom

Oskar Werner or Oscar Werner was born Oskar Josef Schließmayer in Vienna, Austria in 1922. His parents divorced when he was fairly young. Oskar spent much of his childhood in the care of his grandmother, who entertained him with stories about the Burgtheater, the Austrian state theatre. Performing in school plays aroused a deep desire to act. His father (according to Wikipedia) or his uncle (IMDb) helped him to get parts as an extra in films like Geld fällt vom Himmel / Money falls from the sky (Heinz Helbig, 1938) and Hotel Sacher (Erich Engel, 1939).

He decided to drop out of high school to pursue acting roles. In 1940, director Lothar Müthel accepted the then eighteen-year-old as a member of the Burgtheater. Oskar was the youngest person ever to receive this recognition. He made his theatre debut using the stage name Oskar Werner in October 1941. Two months later, Werner was drafted into the Wehrmacht. As a pacifist and staunch opponent of National Socialism, he was determined to avoid advancement in the military. He finagled his way into KP duty, feigning incompetence and was assigned to peeling potatoes and cleaning latrines instead of being sent to the Eastern Front.

In 1944, he secretly married actress Elisabeth Kallina, who was half-Jewish. They immediately had a daughter, Eleanore. That December, he deserted the Wehrmacht and fled with his wife and daughter to the Wienerwald, where they remained in hiding until the end of the war. Werner returned to the Burgtheater and acted in productions at the Raimund Theater and the Theater in der Josefstadt, frequently playing character roles. He made his film debut in Der Engel mit der Posaune / The Angel with the Trumpet (Karl Hartl, 1948). The following year, he portrayed Ludwig van Beethoven's nephew Karl in Eroica (Walter Kolm-Veltée, 1949).

In 1950, Werner journeyed to the United Kingdom to reprise the role he had played in Der Engel mit der Posaune in its English-language version, The Angel with the Trumpet, under the direction of Anthony Bushell. He and his wife divorced at about this time but remained friends. He appeared in a few more German–Austrian films before going to Hollywood for a lead role as a German prisoner of war in the war film Decision Before Dawn (Anatole Litvak, 1951) opposite Richard Baseheart. The 20th Century Fox production was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Picture. He was ripe for film stardom, but the subsequent roles promised by the studio failed to materialise. Hurt and disappointed, Werner returned to Europe and settled in Triesen, Liechtenstein, in a home he designed and built with a friend.

He returned to the stage, and during the 1950s, he performed in 'Hamlet', 'Danton's Death', 'Henry IV', 'Henry V', 'Torquato Tasso', and 'Becket', among others. In 1954, he married Anne Power, the daughter of French actress Annabella and adopted daughter of Tyrone Power. After a period of inactivity in the cinema, Werner appeared in five films in 1955, among them the war drama Der letzte Akt / The Last Ten Days (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1955) about Hitler’s last ten days, Mozart / The Life and Loves of Mozart (Karl Hartl, 1955), in which he played the title role, and Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955) as a student opposite Martine Carol. Gary Brumburgh describes him at IMDb as “An aloof, handsome blond with wide-set, hooded eyes and quietly solemn features”. Despite his good looks and obvious talent, it would take seven more years before he began to draw critical acclaim and international recognition in the cinema.


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma by Editions Art & Scene, Paris, no. CF 891996. Photo: R. Cauchetier. Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner and Henri Serre (left) in Jules et Jim/Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 472. Simone Signoret and Oskar Werner in Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer, 1965).

An international sensation

In 1962, Oskar Werner’s final breakthrough came with the French film Jules et Jim / Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962), based on Henri-Pierre Roché's semi-autobiographical novel about his relationship with writer Franz Hessel and his wife, Helen Grund. He became an international sensation as the highly romantic and intellectual Austrian Jules who falls in love with the same woman, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), as his best friend Jim (Henri Serre). Jules et Jim is one of the seminal products of the Nouvelle Vague, the French New Wave. Wikipedia describes it as “an inventive encyclopedia of the language of cinema that incorporates newsreel footage, photographic stills, freeze frames, panning shots, wipes, masking, dolly shots, and voiceover narration (by Michel Subor).”

Werner's then portrayed the philosophical Dr. Schumann in Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer 1965), which recounts the overlapping stories of several passengers aboard an ocean liner bound to Germany from Mexico in 1933. His role won him the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, and the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb describes Werner’s style as “remote, rather morose and, as a result, intriguing“.

His portrayal of Jewish East German spy Fiedler in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Martin Ritt, 1965) won him another Golden Globe Award and his second BAFTA nomination. In 1966, he played book-burning fireman Guy Montag in François Truffaut's film adaptation of the cult-classic 'Fahrenheit 451' by Ray Bradbury. The relationship with Truffaut was irreparably damaged over artistic differences while filming. The unhappiness of that film experience triggered an already burgeoning drinking problem and the decline of his career.

Werner next played an orchestra conductor in the British drama Interlude (Kevin Billington, 1968) and a Vatican priest loosely based on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in the American drama The Shoes of the Fisherman (Michael Anderson, 1968). That same year, he divorced Power and put his film career on hold. He returned to the stage and spent time travelling in Israel, Italy, Malta, France, and the United States. He appeared in an episode of the TV series Columbo (Bernard L. Kowalski, 1975) featuring Peter Falk, and the following year he made his final screen appearance in Voyage of the Damned (Stuart Rosenberg, 1976) as Faye Dunaway’s Jewish husband. The story was inspired by true events concerning the fate of the MS St. Louis ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939. For his part, he received another Golden Globe nomination.

Werner was an alcoholic, which was a deciding factor in the decline of his health and career. He lived most of the time retired in his house in Liechtenstein. His last stage appearance was in a 1983 production of 'The Prince of Homburg', and his last public appearance was at the Mozart Hall in Salzburg ten days before his death. On 22 October 1984, Werner cancelled a reading at the Hotel Europäischer Hof in Marburg because he was feeling ill. He was found dead of a heart attack the following morning, only two days after François Truffaut had died. Oskar Werner was 61. He is buried in his adopted country of Liechtenstein. He had two children: his daughter Elinore (1944) with Elisabeth Kallina, and son Felix (1966) with the American model Diane Anderson.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 12/80, 1979. Oskar Werner in Voyage of the Damned (Stuart Rosenberg, 1976).

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Jules et Jim (1961)

Jules et Jim (François Truffaut, 1962) is a classic of the Nouvelle Vague, the New Wave of the French cinema. Based on a novel by Henri-Pierre Roché, it describes a 30-year relationship between 2 friends, Jules and Jim, and their shared love Catherine. In 1962, it was a bold film which challenged the norms about relationships and gave an alternative view of love and friendship. Jeanne Moreau starred as the flamboyant, free-spirited Catherine with her devil-may-care sensuality.


Chinese postcard. Jeanne Moreau in Jules et Jim / Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962).


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma by Editions Art & Scene, Paris, no. CF 88. Photo: R. Cauchetier. Jeanne Moreau, Henri Serre and Oskar Werner in Jules et Jim/Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962).

A famous love triangle

Jules et Jim/Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962) starts with a quote: "Tu m’as dit: 'Je t’aime'. Je t’ai dit: 'Attends'. J’ allais dire: 'Prends-moi'. Tu m’ as dit: 'Va-t-en'. (You said, 'I love you', I said, 'Wait'. I was going to say, 'Take me', you said, 'Go away'.) We are in Paris, 1912. Two writers, the shy, German Jules (Oskar Werner) and the Bohemian Frenchman Jim (Henri Serre) develop a close friendship. They share an interest in literature, art and women. At a slide show, the two become entranced with a bust of a goddess with a serene smile and travel to an island in the Adriatic Sea to see it. Back from Greece, they meet Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), who has a similar smile on her face. Both men fall in love with her and the three become inseparable. When they go on holiday with Catherine, the two friends become distant. Jules senses everything has changed and warns Jim that Catherine will be his wife. The friends always traded and shared their girlfriends, “but not this one, Jim. OK?” Jim agrees and continues to be involved with his girlfriend Gilberte (Vanna Urbino), usually seeing her apart from Jules and Catherine. Catherine asks to speak with Jim at a cafe, but she does not show up on time and he leaves. Catherine chooses Jules and marries him. But the friendship between the two men endures.

When World War I breaks out, the three lose track of each other. The two friends are haunted by the fear of killing each other in battle. After the war, Jules and Catherine live together with their daughter Sabine (Sabine Haudepin) in a chalet in the Black Forest. They invite Jim to stay for a while. He sees that Jules and Catherine are growing apart and that their marriage is unhappy. His old love for Catherine blossoms again. They all live together and Jim and Catherine become increasingly close, eventually wanting to have a child. Jules doesn't mind and promises to love Catherine no matter what. But Catherine is eternally dissatisfied and keeps changing her mind about her choice of lover. The ardour and passion binding Catherine and Jim fade, giving way to a tense, stormy atmosphere in which Catherine threatens to kill Jim. Finally, Catherine kills herself and Jim by driving over a destroyed bridge in her new car and failing to brake at the end of the carriageway. Jules watches helplessly.

Henri-Pierre Roché wrote his novel 'Jules et Jim' in 1953 when he was 73. His novel is largely autobiographical: Jim is based on himself, and Jules and Catherine are directly inspired by the German writer Franz Hessel and his wife Helen Grund. They were the parents of Stéphane Hessel, a Resistance fighter and diplomat born in Berlin in 1917. After the death of Helen Hessel (née Grund) in 1982 at the age of 96, the identity of the people who inspired this famous trio was publicly revealed. Henri-Pierre Roché's notebooks entitled 'Carnets, Les années Jules et Jim, Première partie, 1920-1921' were published in 1990 with a preface by François Truffaut. The German author Manfred Flügge wrote a factual novel about Roché and the Hessel couple entitled 'Gesprungene Liebe. The true story of ‘Jules and Jim’', which was published in 1993. In 1996, the publication of some of Helen Hessel's letters to Henri-Pierre Roché followed in 'Lettres d'Helen, lettres à Henri-Pierre Roché, 1920-1921'.

Director, producer and co-scriptwriter François Truffaut altered several elements of the novel in his adaptation. He changed the character of German Kathe in the novel into French Catherine in the film. In the novel, Kathe has two children, whereas in the film she has only one daughter. Rather than replace scenes from the novel that were difficult to adapt with equivalent scenes, Truffaut had Michel Subor read passages from Roché's novel in voice-over. Earlier, Truffaut had denounced the practice of using 'equivalent scenes' in his famous article ‘Une certaine tendance du cinéma Française' (A Certain Trend in French cinema), which he published in 1954 in Les Cahiers du Cinema. The scenes with Subor worked well and brought the literary flavour of the novel to the screen.

The period of the film is 20 years without the characters showing any signs of ageing. Instead, Truffaut placed thirteen reproductions of paintings by Pablo Picasso in the film which are temporal markers but also clues reflecting the state of mind or transformations of the characters in the foreground. At the start of the film, Truffaut placed 'L'Étreinte dans la mansarde' in Jules's flat, reflecting his desire to find the company of a woman, and 'Famille d'acrobates avec singe' in Jim's flat, reflecting his more flighty, acrobat-like character. Similarly, in the scene where Jim is waiting for Catherine in a café, Picasso's painting 'Au Lapin Agile: Arlequin au verre Au Lapin Agile' can be seen in the background, depicting a relationship similar to Pablo Picasso and Germaine Pichot, who had the reputation of being a femme fatale with whom Carles Casagemas was madly in love.


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma by Editions Art & Scene, Paris, no. CF 891996. Photo: R. Cauchetier. Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner and Henri Serre (left) in Jules et Jim / Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962).


Dutch collectors card in the series 'Filmsterren: een portret' by Edito Service, 1995. Photo: Sunset / KIPA-Interpress. Jeanne Moreau and Henri Serre in Jules et Jim / Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962).

Charges of immorality

François Truffaut came across the novel 'Jules et Jim' in 1956 in a second-hand bookshop in Paris. He later befriended the old author, Henri-Pierre Roché, who approved of Truffaut's interest in adapting his semi-autobiographical novel. Truffaut was also a big fan of Ernst Lubitsch's comedy Design for Living (1933). The basic plot of this film classic is the same as that of 'Jules and Jim': two friends fall in love with the same woman. But where Lubitsch made a comedy, Truffaut made a drama. Lubitsch's film also ends in a car, but with a happy ending: the three lovers are reunited and continue to live together. ‘Jules et Jim is a hymn to life and death, a demonstration through joy and sadness of the impossibility of any amorous combination outside the couple’, wrote Truffaut a year before filming.

For the two friends, Truffaut chose Austrian stage actor Oskar Werner, and French actor Henri Serre, who were both relatively unknown at the time. Truffaut was impressed by Werner's role in Max Ophüls's film Lola Montès (1955). Years later, Truffaut would give him another leading role in his film Fahrenheit 45 (1966) about a world where books are banned. He chose Henri Serre because of his stunning resemblance to Henri-Pierre Roché. Like Roché, Serre is tall, slim and has a sonorous voice. For Catherine, he chose Jeanne Moreau. Film historian Peter Bosma: 'Jeanne Moreau is the perfect choice for the portrayal of Catherine. She has the strong charisma of a headstrong, non-conformist woman, capable of anything: crime, but also melancholic endless walks.'

Jules et Jim was released in 1962, at the time of the creative explosion of the Nouvelle Vague. It was François Truffaut’s third feature film after Les 400 Coups / The 400 Blows (1959) and the crime drama Tirez sur le pianiste / Shoot the Piano Player (1960). After the latter flopped, Truffaut was forced to make his next film on a low budget and he shot some indoor scenes for his next film at friends' homes. He was determined that Jules et Jim became a success, otherwise filming in the future would become very difficult. He adapted his film to the taste of the general public, in which he amazed his contemporaries. But his tactic paid off. Jules et Jim's success exceeded even Truffaut's own expectations. Film critic Roger Ebert: 'Although a case can be made for Godard’s A Bout de Souffle / Breathless (1960) (based on a story by Truffaut), Jules et Jim / Jules and Jim was perhaps the most influential and arguably the best of those first astonishing films that broke with the past. There is joy in the filmmaking that feels fresh today and felt audacious at the time. In the energy pulsing from the screen, you can see the style and sensibility that inspired Bonnie and Clyde (1967), a film Truffaut was once going to direct, and which jolted American films out of their torpor."

Initially, the film was boycotted in Italy and received an ‘over 18’ status in France. American critic Pauline Kael defended the film against the charges of immorality: "Jules and Jim is not only one of the most beautiful films ever made and the greatest motion picture of recent years, it is also, viewed as a work of art, exquisitely and impeccably moral. Truffaut does not use the screen for messages or special pleading or to sell sex for money; he uses the film medium to express his love and knowledge of life as completely as he can." Her colleague Roger Ebert added: "Truffaut’s camera is nimble, its movement so fluid that we sense a challenge to the traditional Hollywood grammar of establishing shot, closeup, reaction shot and so on; “Jules and Jim” impatiently strains toward the hand-held style. The narrator also hurries things along, telling us that there is no time to show us. The use of a narrator became one of Truffaut’s favorite techniques; it’s a way of signaling us that the story is over and its ending known before it even begins. His use of brief, almost unnoticeable freeze-frames treats some of the moments as snapshots, which also belong to the past."

Jules et Jim won the 1962 Étoile de Cristal, with Jeanne Moreau winning that year's prize for best actress, and became a huge success in Europe and the United States. The film unleashed a veritable craze in ‘Jules et Jim’ merchandise, such as caps, T-shirts, etc. It gave Truffaut a high profile in the film world, but he also became an international star. Years later, François Truffaut also adapted Roché's second novel 'Les deux anglaises et le continent' (1956) into a film, the romantic drama Les Deux Anglaises et le Continent / Two English Girls (François Truffaut, 1971) starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Claude, Kika Markham as Anne, and Stacey Tendeter as Muriel. The film also tells about a passionate triangle in which three people are trapped, all in love with all, all reluctant to hurt the others.


French postcard in the Collection Cinéma by Editions Art & Scene, Paris, no. CF 81, 1995. Photo: Raymond Cauchetier. Jeanne Moreau in Jules et Jim / Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962).


French postcard in the Collection Noire by Editions Hazan, Paris, no. 6109, 1989. Photo: Les films du Carosse, Paris. François Truffaut at the set of Jules et Jim (François Truffaut, 1961).

Sources: Roger Ebert (Roger Ebert.com), Peter Bosma (Dutch), Marc Pieters (Dutch), Wikipedia (Dutch, French and English) and IMDb.

Oskar Werner

Talented Austrian actor Oskar Werner (1922-1984) was Jules in François Truffaut’s Nouvelle Vague classic Jules et Jim (1962). He is also known for international films like Ship of Fools (1965), The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965), Fahrenheit 451 (1966) and The Shoes of the Fisherman (1968). Werner received an Academy Award nomination and won a Golden Globe Award in 1966.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 12/80, 1979. Photo: publicity still for Voyage of the Damned (Stuart Rosenberg, 1976).

Decision Before Dawn

Oskar Werner or Oscar Werner was born Oskar Josef Schließmayer in Vienna, Austria in 1922.

His parents divorced when he was fairly young. Oskar spent much of his childhood in the care of his grandmother, who entertained him with stories about the Burgtheater, the Austrian state theatre.

Performing in school plays also aroused a deep desire to act. His father (Wikipedia) or his uncle (IMDb) helped him to get parts as an extra in films like Geld fällt vom Himmel/Money falls from the sky (Heinz Helbig, 1938) and Hotel Sacher (Erich Engel, 1939).

He decided to drop out of high school in order to pursue acting roles. In 1940, director Lothar Müthel accepted the then eighteen years old as a member of the Burgtheater. Oskar was the youngest person ever to receive this recognition.

He made his theatre debut using the stage name Oskar Werner in October 1941. Two months later, Werner was drafted into the Wehrmacht.

As a pacifist and staunch opponent of National Socialism, he was determined to avoid advancement in the military. He finagled his way into KP duty feigning incompetence and was assigned to peeling potatoes and cleaning latrines instead of being sent to the Eastern Front.

In 1944, he secretly married actress Elisabeth Kallina, who was half-Jewish. They immediately had a daughter, Eleanore. That December, he deserted the Wehrmacht and fled with his wife and daughter to the Wienerwald, where they remained in hiding until the end of the war.

Werner returned to the Burgtheater, and also acted in productions at the Raimund Theater and the Theater in der Josefstadt, frequently playing character roles.

He made his film debut in Der Engel mit der Posaune/The angel with the trumpet (Karl Hartl, 1948). The following year he portrayed Ludwig van Beethoven's nephew Karl in Eroica (Walter Kolm-Veltée, 1949).

In 1950, Werner journeyed to the United Kingdom to reprise the role he had played in Der Engel mit der Posaune in its English-language version, The Angel with the Trumpet, under the direction of Anthony Bushell.

He and his wife divorced at about this time but remained friends.

He appeared in a few more German–Austrian films before going to Hollywood for a lead role as a German prisoner of war in the war film Decision Before Dawn (Anatole Litvak, 1951) opposite Richard Baseheart. The 20th Century Fox production was nominated for Academy Awards for Best Film Editing and Best Picture.

Werner was ripe for film stardom, but the subsequent roles promised by the studio failed to materialize. Hurt and disappointed, he returned to Europe and settled in Triesen, Liechtenstein, in a home he designed and built with a friend.

He returned to the stage and during the 1950’s he performed in Hamlet, Danton's Death, Henry IV, Henry V, Torquato Tasso, and Becket, among others.

In 1954 he married Anne Power, the daughter of French actress Annabella and adopted daughter of Tyrone Power.

After a period of inactivity in the cinema, Werner appeared in five films in 1955. Among them were the war drama Der letzte Akt/The Last Ten Days (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1955) about Hitler’s last ten days, Mozart/The Life and Loves of Mozart (Karl Hartl, 1955), in which he played the title role, and Lola Montès (Max Ophüls, 1955) as a student opposite Martine Carol.

Gary Brumburgh describes him at IMDb as “An aloof, handsome blond with wide-set, hooded eyes and quietly solemn features”. Despite his good looks and obvious talent, it would take seven more years before he began to draw critical acclaim and international recognition in the cinema.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H. Minden/Westf., no. 1719. Photo: Gamma / Union / Vogelmann. Publicity still for Lola Montez (Max Ophüls, 1955) with Martine Carol and Ivan Desny.


Jeanne Moreau. French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 1017. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Jules et Jim

In 1962, Oskar Werner's final breakthrough came with the French film Jules et Jim/Jules and Jim (François Truffaut, 1962) based on Henri-Pierre Roché's semi-autobiographical novel about his relationship with writer Franz Hessel and his wife, Helen Grund.

Werner became an international sensation as the highly romantic and intellectual Austrian Jules who falls in love with the same woman, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), as his best friend Jim (Henri Serre).

Jules et Jim is one of the seminal products of the Nouvelle Vague, the French New Wave. Wikipedia describes it as “an inventive encyclopedia of the language of cinema that incorporates newsreel footage, photographic stills, freeze frames, panning shots, wipes, masking, dolly shots, and voiceover narration (by Michel Subor).”

Werner's then portrayed the philosophical Dr. Schumann in Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer 1965), which recounts the overlapping stories of several passengers aboard an ocean liner bound to Germany from Mexico in 1933. His role won him the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actor and nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actor, the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, and the BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor.

His portrayal of Jewish East German spy Fiedler in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (Martin Ritt, 1965) won him another Golden Globe Award and his second BAFTA nomination. Gary Brumburgh calls Werner’s acting style “remote, rather morose and, as a result, intriguing“.

In 1966, he played book-burning fireman Guy Montag in François Truffaut's film adaptation of the cult-classic Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. The relationship with Truffaut was irreparably damaged over artistic differences while filming. The unhappiness of that film experience triggered an already burgeoning drinking problem and the decline of his career.

Werner next played an orchestra conductor in the British drama Interlude (Kevin Billington, 1968) and a Vatican priest loosely based on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in the American drama The Shoes of the Fisherman (Michael Anderson, 1968).

That same year he divorced Power and put his film career on a hold. He returned to the stage and spent time travelling in Israel, Italy, Malta, France, and the United States.

He appeared in an episode of the TV series Columbo (Bernard L. Kowalski, 1975) featuring Peter Falk, and the following year he made his final screen appearance in Voyage of the Damned (Stuart Rosenberg, 1976) as Faye Dunaway’s Jewish husband.

The story was inspired by true events concerning the fate of the MS St. Louis ocean liner carrying Jewish refugees from Germany to Cuba in 1939. For his part he received another Golden Globe nomination.

Werner was an alcoholic, which was a deciding factor in the decline of his health and career. He lived most of the time retired in his house in Liechtenstein. His last stage appearance was in a 1983 production of The Prince of Homburg, and his last public appearance was at the Mozart Hall in Salzburg ten days prior to his death.

On 22 October 1984, Werner cancelled a reading at the Hotel Europäischer Hof in Marburg because he was feeling ill. He was found dead of a heart attack the following morning, only two days after François Truffaut had died.

Oskar Werner was 61. He is buried in his adopted country of Liechtenstein.

He had two children, his daughter Elinore (1944) with Elisabeth Kallina, and son Felix (1966) with the American model Diane Anderson.


Trailer Decision Before Dawn (1951). Source: UmbrellaEntAU (YouTube).


Trailer Jules et Jim/Jules and Jim (1962). Source: UmbrellaEntAU (YouTube).

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.