Tonio Selwart

Selwart made a total of 21 film appearances. His debut was in Fritz Lang's Hangmen Also Die! (1943), as a Nazi Gestapo chief. In The Barefoot Contessa (1954),he appeared as the Pretender King,[3] with Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart. His last film appearance, The Other Side of the Wind for Orson Welles, was left unreleased for decades. According to Welles in a letter to Selwart, it contains an excellent performance by this actor as the Baron. Selwart was much concerned that this "swan song" of his had never been released and even in 1992, at the age of 95, regretted that he would probably never see it. This was not only because of his age but because of his gradual loss of sight. The film was released in 2018, 16 years after Selwart's death at the age of 106 in 2002.

Other titles include: Anzio (1968) by Edward Dmytryk, his last Hollywood film appearance; The North Star (1943), directed by Lewis Milestone with a script by playwright Lillian Hellman, with Erich von Stroheim; Edge of Darkness (1943), also by Milestone, his first film role, where he played his first film German soldier role, opposite Judith Anderson; Wilson (1944), where he played the German ambassador to Washington, D.C. during World War I, Count von Bernstorff; The Cross of Lorraine (1943), with Gene Kelly; The Hitler Gang (1944), playing the Nazi official Alfred Rosenberg and Romanoff and Juliet (1961), written, directed and starring Peter Ustinov, and an Italian-American adaptation of Homer's Iliad, Helen of Troy (1956), directed by Robert Wise, with Rossanna Podesta, Jacques Sernas, and in two featured roles, Selwart played opposite a then almost unknown Brigitte Bardot, in 1956.

While he played only supporting roles in English-language cinema, Selwart starred in Italian and French films, including Lupo della Frontiere (Wolf of the Frontier, 1951), during the 1950s; he never appeared in a German film. He also made a brief speaking part appearance in Luchino Visconti's Italian film Senso (1954), at the beginning opera house scene, as an Austrian officer. He spoke fluent Italian, English and French, which helped him with roles in several countries. Starting from the late 1940s until the 1950s and 1960s, he also appeared on American television, making guest appearances in drama programs, including The Fifth Column for Buick-Electra Playhouse on CBS in 1960, playing an almost-deaf Nazi officer in a group of fifth columnists operating behind the lines in Madrid during the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s (the program was adapted from a story by Ernest Hemingway and directed by John Frankenheimer).

Selwart appeared on stage around the country (including Broadway) and in Canada. His performances included: The Pursuit of Happiness (touring with it across the U.S. and England), Candle in the Wind by Maxwell Anderson with Helen Hayes (where he played his first German Nazi officer role, a type of character he came to specialize in), The Laughing Woman with Helen Menken, Autumn Crocus, Seeds in the Wind, Liliom by Ferenc Molnár (in which Selwart played the title role), and The Hidden River in 1957, among many others.

Selwart's last American stage appearances were with the Lotte Lenya in the 1964 tour of Brecht on Brecht and in the 1965 Carnegie Hall performance of Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera). He studied at the Actors Studio in New York and with Michael Chekhov in California. Selwart had referred to Chekov as "My best teacher in America." As a member of Eva Le Gallienne's Civic Repertory he appeared in Peter Pan, Alice in Wonderland, and Frank Wedekind's Spring's Awakening—a tragedy about adolescence which he also directed. Writer and poet May Sarton appeared in this production—one of her earliest stage roles.

In 1995, now legally blind, Selwart was interviewed by William F. Powers for his book, Alive and Well: The Emergence of the Active Nonagenarian (Rutledge Books, 1996). In the interview, Selwart reflected: "If I died today, I could say only that I had lived a very beautiful and charmed life. Even when it looked at times like something bad had happened, it soon turned back again to something positive. The loss of my eyesight, although difficult, did not make me bitter. I figured that at my age I have to expect something and remembered all those poor people who suffer from cancer and are in terrible pain. I say to myself that I may have trouble seeing, but I don't suffer any physical, mental, or emotional pain."