John Wengraf

Acting

John Wengraf

Born 1897-04-22 · Vienna, Austria-Hungary, now Austria

Emigrating to England in 1933 as the Nazis began their rise to power, Wengraf appeared unbilled in a couple of films there, as well as in some of the first BBC live-television shows ever presented but his career began to languish. In late 1941, however, he had the good fortune of appearing on Broadway with Helen Hayes in "Candle in the Wind" and decided to stay. The following year he headed west and settled permanently in the Los Angeles area. A dark, cold-eyed, thin-lipped player with a precise, meticulous air about him, he found himself invariably playing the very characters he detested. Some of his more nefarious nasties surfaced in such films as the Humphrey Bogart classic Sahara (1943/I), as well as The Boy from Stalingrad (1943), U-Boat Prisoner (1944) and Till We Meet Again (1944). In postwar years, he was often spotted portraying ethnic professionals (scientists, doctors, professors, foreign royalty). Some of the more quality pictures he enhanced were Tomorrow Is Forever (1946); Count Von Papen in 5 Fingers (1952); and Ronchin in the Ethel Merman musical Call Me Madam (1953). Although Wengraf never made it to the very top of the Hollywood character ranks, he remained a throughly strong and reliable player. In the 1950s and 1960s he transferred his talents to TV, appearing on a number of dramatic showcases and on such popular programs as "The Untouchables" (1959), "Hawaiian Eye" (1959), "The Man from U.N.C.L.E." (1964) and "The Time Tunnel" (1966). His last few films included minor roles in the war-themed Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), Hitler (1962) and Ship of Fools (1965). He retired in 1966, and died in Santa Barbara, California, at age 77, on May 4, 1974.

Acting credits

Judgment at Nuremberg poster
8.0

In 1947, four German judges who served on the bench during the Nazi regime face a military tribunal to answer charges of crimes against humanity. Chief Justice Haywood hears evidence and testimony not only from lead defendant Ernst Janning and his defense attorney Hans Rolfe, but also from the widow of a Nazi general, an idealistic U.S. Army captain and reluctant witness Irene Wallner.

Judgment at Nuremberg

1961

Never Say Goodbye poster
6.4

In present-day U.S., Dr. Michael Parker, a prominent surgeon, unexpectedly runs into his German-born wife whom he thought was dead. Victor, an artist and his "dead" wife's now boyfriend, berates Dr. Parker for "killing" her. The bulk of the story flashes back to Austria during World War II as we learn how Dr. Parker met and married his wife, and the one mistake that may have cost him his family.

Never Say Goodbye

1956

The Razor's Edge poster
6.9

An adventurous young man goes off to find himself and loses his socialite fiancée in the process. But when he returns 10 years later, she will stop at nothing to get him back, even though she is already married.

The Razor's Edge

1946

Sailors Three poster
7.6

Three sailors get drunk while on shore leave and end up on the wrong ship. When they realise their mistake they scramble off it and onto their warship, HMS Ferocious. However, they soon realise that the vessel they have boarded is not the Ferocious but a German battleship.

Sailors Three

1940

Gog poster
5.9

A mechanical brain is programmed to sabotage the government's secret lab while working on the first space station.

Gog

1954

T-Men poster
6.7

Two T-men, U.S. Treasury agents, go undercover in Detroit, and then Los Angeles, in an attempt to break a U.S. currency counterfeiting ring.

T-Men

1947

Night Train to Munich poster
7.2

Czechoslovakia, March 1939, on the eve of World War II. As the German invaders occupy Prague, inventor Axel Bomasch manages to flee and reach England; but those who need to put his knowledge at the service of the Nazi war machine, in order to carry out their evil plans of destruction, will stop at nothing to capture him.

Night Train to Munich

1940

Ship of Fools poster
6.6

A varied group of passengers boarding a ship bound for pre-WWII Germany represents a microcosm of early-1930s society.

Ship of Fools

1965

The Prize poster
6.7

A group of Nobel laureates descends on Stockholm to accept their awards. Among them is American novelist Andrew Craig, a former literary luminary now writing pulp detective stories to earn a living. Craig, who is infamous for his drinking and womanizing, formulates a wild theory that physics prize winner Dr. Max Stratman has been replaced by an impostor, embroiling Craig and his chaperone in a Cold War kidnapping plot.

The Prize

1963

5 Fingers poster
7.5

During WWII, the valet to the British Ambassador to Ankara sells British secrets to the Germans while trying to romance a refugee Polish countess.

5 Fingers

1952

Valerie poster
4.6

After the American Civil War, former Union Major John Garth marries pretty settler Valerie but tragedy strikes and the two spouses end up in court where they give two different conflicting accounts of their marriage.

Valerie

1957

The Pride and the Passion poster
6.0

During the Napoleonic Wars, when the French have occupied Spain, some Spanish guerrilla soldiers are going to move a big cannon across Spain in order to help the British defeat the French. A British officer is there to accompany the Spanish and along the way, he falls in love with the leader's girl.

The Pride and the Passion

1957

Sahara poster
7.2

In Libya, an American tank commander, along with a handful of Allied soldiers, tries to defend an isolated well with a limited supply of water from a German Afrika Korps battalion during the Western Desert Campaign of World War II.

Sahara

1943

The Desert Rats poster
6.3

In North Africa, German Field Marshal Rommel and his troops have successfully fended off British forces, and now intend to take Tobruk, an important port city. A ramshackle group of Australian reinforcements sent to combat the Germans is put under the command of British Captain MacRoberts. The unruly Aussies immediately clash with MacRoberts, a gruff, strict disciplinarian, however this unorthodox team must band together to protect Tobruk from the German forces.

The Desert Rats

1953

The Seventh Cross poster
6.8

In Nazi Germany in 1936 seven men escape from a concentration camp. The camp commander puts up seven crosses and, as the Gestapo returns each escapee he is put to death on a cross. The seventh cross is still empty as George Heisler attempts an escape to freedom in Holland.

The Seventh Cross

1944

Portrait in Black poster
5.7

A pair of lovers plot to kill the woman's rich husband.

Portrait in Black

1960

Convoy poster
5.6

A tale of life on board a Royal Navy cruiser assigned to protect the vital convoys between America and England during WWII.

Convoy

1940

Wake of the Red Witch poster
5.8

Captain Ralls fights Dutch shipping magnate Mayrant Sidneye for the woman he loves, Angelique Desaix, and for a fortune in gold aboard the Red Witch.

Wake of the Red Witch

1948

Hell and High Water poster
6.0

A privately-financed scientist and his colleagues hire an ex-Navy officer to conduct an Alaskan submarine expedition in order to prevent a Red Chinese anti-American plot that may lead to World War III. Mixes deviously plotted schoolboy fiction with submarine spectacle and cold war heroics.

Hell and High Water

1954

Hitler poster
5.8

Richard Basehart stars as one of the most influential and one of the most reviled men in history in this probing psychological study of a man who nearly gained dominance over the entire western world--at the cost of millions of lives--Hitler.

Hitler

1962

Mission to Moscow poster
5.7

Ambassador Joseph Davies is sent by FDR to Russia to learn about the Soviet system and returns to the US as an advocate of socialism.

Mission to Moscow

1943

Tomorrow Is Forever poster
6.3

In 1918, Elizabeth MacDonald learns that her husband, John Andrew, has been killed in the war. Elizabeth bears John's son and eventually marries her kindly boss. Unknown to her, John has survived but is horribly disfigured and remains in Europe. Years later, on the eve of World War II, Elizabeth refuses to agree to her son's request to enlist and is stunned when an eerily familiar stranger named Kessler arrives from abroad and becomes involved.

Tomorrow Is Forever

1946

The French Line poster
4.5

Oil heiress Mame Carson takes an incognito cruise so that men will love her for her body, not her money.

The French Line

1954

Week-End at the Waldorf poster
6.4

Anything can happen during a weekend at New York's Waldorf-Astoria: a glamorous movie star meets a world-weary war correspondent and mistakes him for a jewel thief; a soldier learns that without an operation he'll die and so looks for one last romance with a beautiful but ambitious stenographer; a cub reporter tries to get the goods on a shady man's dealing with a foreign potentate.

Week-End at the Waldorf

1945