Willi Forst, born Wilhelm Anton Frohs (7 April 1903 – 11 August 1980) was an Austrian actor, screenwriter, film director, film producer and singer. As a debonair actor he was a darling of the German-speaking film audiences, as a director, one of the most significant makers of the Viennese period musical melodramas and comedies of the 1930s known as Wiener Filme. From the mid-1930s he also recorded many records, largely of sentimental Viennese songs, for the Odeon Records label owned by Carl Lindström AG.

Biography

His first major role was opposite Marlene Dietrich in the silent film Café Elektric in 1927. He was best known, however, for his characters in light musicals, which rapidly made him a star. He developed the genre of the Viennese Film with writer Walter Reisch in the 1930s, beginning with the Franz Schubert melodrama Leise flehen meine Lieder (1934) which became an iconic role for actor Hans Jaray and Maskerade (1934), which launched his fame as a significant director and brought Paula Wessely to international fame. He founded his own film company, Willi Forst-Film, in 1937 and considered a move to Hollywood the same year.

Following the annexation of Austria in 1938, he was much courted by the National Socialists but succeeded in avoiding overt political statement, concentrating entirely on the opulent period musical entertainment for which he was famous and which was much in demand during World War II. During the seven-year period of National Socialist rule in Austria, he only made four films, none of them political (although his ardent Vienna-Austrian topos is considered subversive of pan-German Nazism by many film historians), and which are considered among his finest and classics of the Viennese Film genre.

He had comparatively little success after the war with the exception of the film Die Sünderin ("The Sinner") (1950) starring Hildegard Knef, which became a scandal because of the protests of the Roman Catholic church against its nudity, the first in German-speaking cinema, but which subsequently attracted an audience of seven million people. He gave international actress Senta Berger her first role in 1957 and that same year directed his last film (Wien, du Stadt meiner Träume), after which he retired from the industry, suggesting that his style was no longer in demand.

After the death of his wife in 1973 he lived a reclusive life in the Swiss canton of Tessin. He died of cancer in Vienna in 1980 and is buried in Neustift am Walde. Forst is today considered one of Europe's important early sound directors.

Filmography

• 1922 Sodom und Gomorrha
• 1922 Oh, du lieber Augustin
• 1922 Der verwechselte Filmstar
• 1923 Lieb' mich und die Welt ist mein
• 1927 Die elf Teufel
• 1927 Café Elektric
• 1927 Die drei Niemandskinder
• 1928 Amor auf Ski
• 1928 Ein besserer Herr
• 1928 Ein Tag Film
• 1928 Folly of Love
• 1928 Die blaue Maus
• 1928 Liebfraumilch
• The Convict from Istanbul (1929)
• 1929 Die Lustigen Vagabunden
• 1929 Fräulein Fähnrich
• 1929 'Atlantik (his first sound film); Poldi, with Fritz Kortner
• 1929 Die Frau, die jeder liebt, bist du!
• The White Roses of Ravensberg (1929)
• 1929 Gefahren der Brautzeit
• Katharina Knie (1929)
• 1930 Das Lied ist aus
• 1930 Der Herr auf Bestellung
• A Student's Song of Heidelberg (1930)
• 1930 Ein Tango für Dich
• 1930 Petit officier… Adieu!
• 1930 Zwei Herzen im Dreiviertel Takt
• 1931 Der Raub der Mona Lisa, Vicenzo Peruggia, with Gustaf Gründgens, Roda Roda
• 1931 Die Lustigen Weiber von Wien
• The Prince of Arcadia (1932)
• 1932 Ein blonder Traum
• You Don't Forget Such a Girl (1932)
• Peter Voss, Thief of Millions (1932)
• 1933 Ihre Durchlaucht, die Verkäuferin
• The Burning Secret (1933)

• Gently My Songs Entreat (1933) (screenplay and direction; appeared in English in 1934 as The Unfinished Symphony)
• 1933 Brennendes Geheimnis
• 1934 Ich kenn' dich nicht und liebe dich
• 1934 So endete eine Liebe
• 1934 Maskerade
• 1935 Königswalzer
• 1935 Mazurka
• 1936 Burgtheater
• 1936 Tomfoolery
• 1937 Capriolen
• 1937 Serenade
• 1938 Es leuchten die Sterne
• 1939 Ich bin Sebastian Ott
• 1939 Bel Ami, directed and acted (Georges Duroy)
• 1940 Operette, directed and acted (Franz Jauner)
• Vienna Blood (1942)
• Women Are No Angels (1943)
• 1944 Hundstage
• 1944 Ein Blick zurück
• 1945 Wiener Mädeln, directed and acted (Carl Michael Ziehrer)
• 1947 Der Hofrat Geiger
• 1948 Die Frau am Weg
• 1948 Das Kuckucksei
• 1949 Die Stimme Österreichs
• 1950 Die Sünderin
• 1950 Herrliche Zeiten
• 1951 Es geschehen noch Wunder
• 1952 Alle kann ich nicht heiraten
• 1952 The White Horse Inn
• It Was Always So Nice With You (1954)
• 1954 Weg in die Vergangenheit, directed and acted (Clemens)
• 1955 Die Drei von der Tankstelle
• 1955 Ein Mann vergisst die Liebe
• 1956 Kaiserjäger
• 1957 Die unentschuldigte Stunde
• 1957 Wien, du Stadt meiner Träume

Awards

• 1968 Bundesfilmpreis (Filmband in Gold) for his life's work