Piet Hendriks(1918-2000)

Piet Hendriks was to the public mainly known as the 'Ingenieur' in the legendary tv-musical 'Ja Zuster, Nee Zuster'. Until the early nineties he played in the Dutch edition of Sesamestreet. As a boy, he wanted to go to the theater, though his parents urged him to become an electrician. He was mainly acting in amateurcompanies. After the war he worked at the head postoffice of Amsterdam, and at that stage he decided to become an actor. He was hired for the club of Tom Manders, better known as Dorus. In 1954 he made his first television appearance in a show of Tom Manders. After that he hardly played in the theater anymore, and he started to appear in television series. He always played 'small' parts: a police-man, a waiter, a lackey, a pedestrian. He was playing the part of 'de Ingenieur' (the engineer) in a modest way: as a counter-measure against the other characters, who were all very noisy. His only title-part was in the televisions series 'De Wolvenman' (The Wolf-man) by Dick Walda, as a widowed man who starts a new romance, and doing so arouses the anger of his children. After this part he started to play small parts again. Mr. Hendriks sometimes felt a little bit underrated or even discriminated. He simply wasn't one of the top guys, but he deserves to be remembered as someone often playing characters like himself: nice, kind, honest and modest