Griem, Helmut

(1932-2004)

   Actor. Griem was familiar to German audiences by the time he became internationally known for his performance as Maximilian von Heune in the Bob Fosse film Cabaret (1972). He began his career in Lübeck in 1955, playing Star-buck in one of the first German productions of The Rainmaker by Richard Nash. The success of that production led to several subsequent engagements in Cologne, Munich, and Hamburg, culminating in a lengthy engagement with the Burgtheater in Vienna to play a number of heroic leading parts. These included William Shakespeare's Richard II, Heinrich von Kleist's Prince Friedrich of Homburg, Major von Tellheim in Gotthold Ephraim Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm, and Tom Wingfield in Tennessee Williams's The Glass Menagerie. In Vienna, Griem began his film and television career, and by the 1980s he had established himself as a theater director as well. His Munich production of Orton's Entertaining Mr. Sloane was a remarkable box office success, as were his later commercially produced stagings in Vienna during the 1990s of Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night, John Millington Synge's The Playboy of the Western World, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and Ariel Dorfman's Death and the Maiden. Shortly before his death, Griem was awarded the Federal Service Cross for his contributions to German culture.