Fröhlich, Gustav

(1902-1987)

   Actor. Fröhlich is best known among international audiences as the tortured Freder Fredersen, son of the capitalist exploiter of workers in Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927), although he had a remarkable career in the German theater as well. Sometimes called "the Don Juan of German films," Fröhlich played leading men in dozens of movies and continued playing them concomitantly on the stage throughout the Weimar period, the Third Reich, and well into the postwar years. He was originally a newspaper editor and author of cheap novels, but he began acting in the 1920s. Fröhlich is one of the few German actors to have served on active duty with the German army in both world wars, and he is doubtlessly the only actor to have confronted Joseph Goebbels about his affair with actress Lida Baarova. Fröhlich was living with Baarova at the time of her liaison with Goebbels, and accounts vary as to the severity of the altercation between the two. During the Weimar period and the Third Reich, Fröhlich worked primarily on the stage under Heinz Hilpert's direction, most notably in 1931 as Frederic Henry in the Hilpert-Carl Zuckmayer adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. In the postwar period, he appeared in several productions in regional theaters.