Curiosidades

A Czechoslovakian citizen, born in Germany, who went on to become a British subject

Best remembered for his role as the cynical analyst of schizophrenic ventriloquist Michael Redgrave in the classic thriller Na Solidão da Noite (1945).

Played most of the Shakespearean leading roles and notable for his portrayal of Shylock in "The Merchant of Venice." His Othello has been deemed one of the most definitive--alongside Paul Robeson and Laurence Olivier, despite the fact that he spoke the lines with a thick Czechoslovakian accent.

Ironically fled Nazism in 1930s Germany only to be stereotyped as fearless, imposing-eyed Kommandants in British war pictures; later played doctors, kings and cabinet ministers as well.

Married with two young sons at the time of his death.

His most famous film role, however, was that of the analyst of a ventriloquist with a split consciousness in the horror story Dead of Night in 1945.

Valk participated in May 1947 in a Shakespeare month at the Savoy Theatre, and in 1949, he appeared at the capital's Lyric Theatre in Leo Tolstoy's The Power of Darkness alongside Stewart Granger. A year later, he appeared in Eugene O'Neill's play Anna Christie at London's Q Theatre.

Valk made his first appearance on the London stage in 1939, going on to play in numerous productions of classic drama including leading roles in Shakespeare, with his performances as Shylock in The Merchant of Venice and in the title role of Othello, attracting critical admiration.

Valk died suddenly in London on 23 July 1956 during the run of the play Romanoff and Juliet in which he was appearing.

Shortly before the Nazis seized power, Valk left Germany and went to Prague, where he found an engagement at the Deutsches Theater for the 1932/33 season. After the Wehrmacht invaded Prague in 1939, Valk, who had now acquired Czech citizenship, fled to England. Because of this fact, when the war broke out in early September 1939, he was not interned as an enemy alien, but was given the opportunity, now under the anglicized name Frederick Valk, to play all kinds of stereotypical Nazis in a series of British propaganda films, sometimes in tiny roles.

Valk never received top-billing in films, but was happy to accept supporting roles in good screen productions. High-profile films in which he featured include The Young Mr. Pitt and Thunder Rock (both 1942); Dead of Night (1945); A Matter of Life and Death (1946); Mrs. Fitzherbert (1947); The Magic Box (1951);[8] and The Colditz Story (1955).

Despite making his later career in the English-speaking world, Valk never attempted to shed his heavy accent in either his stage or film work, and it became a trademark, particularly in film where he was often the first choice for a role which called for a German or generic Central European accent.

His wife Diana wrote a memoir entitled Shylock for a Summer in which she revealed that Valk had been planning to write an autobiography at the time of his death, and had written a note to himself stating: "I don't want to talk at length of my histrionic adventures - the idea of this is to draw a curve of a life, lived in shadow and sun but lived with gratefulness.".

In 1956, Valk gave his farewell performance at the Piccadilly Theatre in London: there he could be seen in Peter Ustinov's play Romanoff and Juliet alongside Eric Portman.

Valk arrived at the Deutsches Schauspielhaus in his hometown of Hamburg in 1914 without any training. He then had to serve in the military for three years and was only able to continue his theater career in Hamburg in the 1918/19 season.

In 1924, Leopold Jessner brought him to the Prussian State Theater in Berlin. During this time, Valk also made his film debut (with the leading role of old Hartmann in The Son of Hagar), followed by a small role in G. W. Pabst's The Love of Jeanne Ney.

At the beginning of the 1950s, Valk returned to his old ways and twice played a pompous Nazi, this time a camp commandant in the war films Albert R.N. and in the movie The Colditz Story.

In 1946 he won the Ellen Terry Award for best actor for his performance in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.

Frederick Valk was a German-born stage and screen actor of Czech Jewish descent who fled to the United Kingdom in the late 1930s to escape Nazi persecution, and subsequently became a naturalised British citizen.

Valk also toured overseas, in the 1950s performing at the fledgling Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada. When challenged by local journalists that as a Jew he should feel uneasy about playing Shylock, he replied that the assertion made no more sense than saying a Scotsman should baulk at playing Macbeth, that he in fact found a strong pro-Semitic message in the play and that he deplored "that people are beset with prejudices of all sorts and can't bring themselves to wipe their eyes and read and think".