Werner Peters

A prolific German actor who worked until the day he died, Werner Peters played both sinister and melodramatic characters with equal aplomb. His first major film part came with the lead in Wolfgang Staudte's "Man of Straw," in which he played the power-crazed Diederich Heßling, a character who gets ahead by trampling others. His next big turn came in the disturbing "The Devil Strikes at Night," in which Peters played the desperate Willi Keun, a married man wrongly accused of murdering his lover. Taking a break from fiendish characters, Peters soon after became a fixture in the Dr. Mabuse melodramas of the 1960s. He appeared in German auteur Fritz Lang's "The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse" as the obnoxiously aggressive insurance salesman Hieronymus B. Mistelzweig. Peters went on to play Böhmler in "The Return of Dr. Mabuse," and the Clown Bobo, a revue theater entertainer involved in criminal doings, in "The Invisible Dr. Mabuse." The actor became known to American audiences playing General Kohler, the strong-willed German commander in the World War II war epic "Battle of the Bulge" and as another German war operative--Otto Schack--in "36 Hours," in which he played opposite James Garner. Peters worked consistently until 1971, when he died of a heart attack at age 52 during a promotional tour for a movie.