Joachim Fuchsberger 10th anniversary of death: James Bond’s younger brother

On September 11, 2014, Joachim Fuchsberger (1927-2014), known to his fans and friends as “Blacky”, said goodbye to one of the last great actors and television personalities who began his career in the post-war period in Germany and continues to this day. A glorious day.

From the late 1970s through just after the turn of the millennium, his impeccable manners and high viewership earned him recognition primarily as a television game and talk show host on such shows as “The Hot Wire,” “Let’s Go,” and “Tonight.” But it was his numerous roles in the Edgar Wallace films, which were particularly popular with moviegoers in the 1960s, that made him a superstar in the Federal Republic.

Growing up as a German crime superstar

Based on the novels of the prolific British author Edgar Wallace (1875-1932), and produced as a series by Germany’s Rialto Films with the backing of cult German producer Horst Wendland (1922-2002), this crime film sees Fuchsberger embody a brilliant Scotland Yard inspector who tracks down the most fearsome criminals and usually saves the lives of beautiful women in the process.

The first film in this 32-part film series, “The Masked Frog”, was made in 1959 and surprisingly continued to be a huge success until the early 1970s. For Blacky Fuchsberger, who had already achieved his first success as an actor with the lead role in the war film “08/15” (1954), this finally meant his big breakthrough. Other stars of the era, such as the Ulknudel Eddi Arent (1925-2013), the daring Karin Baal (83) or Klaus Kinski (1926-1991), who specialized in psychopathic roles, also benefited from the hype surrounding this action. – Edgar Wallace’s career is rich. – The film adaptations have a huge advantage.

Fearless bravado and elegant style

The Scotland Yard inspector, also known as Larry Holt, Mike Dorn or Johnny Gray, played by Fuchsberger, was a completely new figure to the German audience. At the time, most of what was known in this country was the first German crime series, “Stahlnetz”, which was filmed in close collaboration with the German police authorities on real crime cases. But the inspector in this TV series was miles away from the brave bravado and elegant coolness of Blacky Fuchsberger, and none of them seemed as good as him.

After making a total of 13 Edgar Wallace thrillers, Fuchsberger became disillusioned with the declining quality of these works and quit his Scotland Yard job after “The Secret of the Green Pin” (1971) and worked for several years as a comedic actor in films like “The Beetle Runs Fast” (1972) or “The Flying Classroom” (1973), before almost giving up acting and finding new vocations as a presenter and talk show host on television.

In a later interview with “Stern” he explained this change of direction with the following words: “I realized in the early 70s that my time as a young lover and eternal inspector was slowly coming to an end. It was a wonderful time, no doubt, but I wanted to. At some point I was too vain to say, ‘Oh, that’s Fuchsberger, he was pretty cool. ‘”

James Bond went one step further

In the same interview, Fuchsberger revealed that he almost fell into the role of the now legendary secret agent James Bond shortly after the Edgar Wallace series began. One day, Horst Wendland, the producer of the Wallace films, approached him, put a Bond novel by British writer Ian Fleming (1908-1964) on the table and said, “We should do that.”

His answer was: “Oh, Horst, that can’t be done in black and white for 750,000 marks. It has to be in color. And all these exotic locations. That’s really expensive.” After that, Wendlandt no longer dared to approach the flashy material and instead acquired the filming rights to Karl May’s novels. Instead of Blacky Fuchsberger, a certain Sean Connery (1930-2020) became the first James Bond.

Return to crime with ‘News from the Wixxer’

In 2003, Fuchsberger was set to trace Edgar Wallace’s past when he was asked to play a role in the comedy “The Wixxer,” a parody of Edgar Wallace film classics such as “The Witcher” (1964). He <선미>As revealed in the article, he politely declined the offer without even looking at the script because of the title. Later, screenwriters Oliver Calcope (58) and Bastian Pasteuca (52) sent him a DVD of the finished film and asked for a sequel to the hugely successful film. This time, Blacky starred in the 2007 film “Neues vom Wixxer.”

His final role in the expanded Edgar Wallace universe also saw Fuchsberger promoted to a higher police rank. In the bizarre comedy, he plays a former Scotland Yard boss with the racy name of Sir David Dickham.

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