Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1962)

HORST BUCHHOLZ Continued from page 40 Now, more than twenty years later, Horst’s life is better, much better. As we lunched in Hollywood’s posh Scandia, the actor more than once looked around at the elegant surroundings, turned to his wife, Myriam, and said, “My childhood wasn't like this — definitely, it wasn’t like this.” And now, the same number of years later, his life is still filled with fantasies — but they are not of his own making. His parents had always hoped that he would study medicine, but war, bombings and prison camps stopped all that. In fact, before Horst was eight, his family was no longer together. His father was taken into the German Army, his mother and baby sister, Heidi, were sent away to stay with relatives in Frankfurt. Horst, along with some of his school chums, went to live a kind of prisoner’s life in a series of evacuation camps in Czechoslovakia. He tended cattle, hoed potatoes and he even learned to sew. And he was hungry, always hungry. By 1945, Germany’s war machine was all but destroyed, and Germany itself was on the verge of collapse. War’s end, to Horst, meant only that now, perhaps, he would be able to find his mother, his father, his sister. The Russians were already overrunning the countryside, looting and pillaging. Horst and a couple of friends stole away one night from their camp, desperately determined to get back to Berlin. “Trigger-happy Russians” It took them months. The boys slept in open frost-covered fields, under hayricks, in abandoned barns. They begged for food — or stole it, when they had to. Once, riding in a dirty cattle car, the runaways survived a bombardment that destroyed the train and killed some of the other occupants. “And all the while,” Horst remembered, “we kept dodging those trigger-happy Russians.” But still Horst and his pals ploddingly headed north to Berlin and home. They reached Magdeburg and the Elbe River — the dividing line between the American troops and the Russians. Only one bridge remained; the others had been bombed. No one could cross because the bridge was closed. There was only the river; a strong swimmer could make it. “But it would have been insane to try,” Horst said. “One story had me actually swimming the Elbe; I did not. I was no hero; I wanted to live. There were machine gun emplacements there, and huge searchlights lighting up every inch of both river banks. We saw many corpses floating in the Elbe — people who had tried to get across,” Horst shuddered. “No, I had no wish to die.” Luckily for Horst and his friends, a Red Cross worker found them and took them to another camp. There Horst stayed for almost a year, until he was free to move safely back to Berlin. “That camp really matured me,” said Horst. “By the time I was reunited with my mother and sister — my father stayed in a prisoner-of-war stockade until 1947 — I was really a man.” Now he was the sole support of his family. He went back to school, managed to find part-time work helping farmers in the fields, taking home a few potatoes, ears of corn or heads of cabbages that had been thrown away. Then one day, he heard that there might be work to be had at the Metropol Theater, where they needed children for walk-ons. Horst dashed down there, spoke to the manager. “Yes, we have a few openings,” the manager said. “We pay three marks a night.” Three marks — seventy-five cents! To always-hungry Horst it was a fortune. And because a thirteen-year-old lad was hungry, because he had to support his family, the Horst Buchholz of today was born. “There was no other reason,” Horst said, honestly. “I had no burning desire to become an actor. The theater meant nothing to me. I went into it only for the money, because I desperately needed work.” Yet even at his young age Horst saw the wisdom of what his mother had always said to him: “A man must dare greatly to be happy.” He decided that if he were going to be an actor, he’d be as good as he knew how. He began taking acting lessons. He studied languages. “I wanted to be ready,” he said, “if my break ever came.” He got a small part in the Kestner play, “Emile and the Detectives.” Over the next two years, movie producers came to him and asked him to dub their imported English films with German. He was a bit player in dozens of comic operas, appeared on Radio Berlin, often slept only three or four hours a night. He was all of fifteen. There were stage plays and more movies — “Die Halbstarken,” “Heaven Without Stars” — films that made him the idol of Germany’s teenagers and brought him a much-coveted award at the Cannes Film Festival. Soon he was Germany’s leading young actor; at twenty, he was already a major Continental star. But the picture which was the first to gain him world-wide attention was Thomas Mann’s classic “The Confessions of Felix Krull.” In the world’s press, Horst, the boy who had to become a man at twelve, was acclaimed as “one of the great new actors of our times.” One girl wasn’t impressed But to one girl, a lovely young French actress named Myriam Bru, the fame of Horst Buchholz didn’t mean a thing. Horst and Myriam first met in Munich, on the set of the Franco-Italian production of Tolstoy’s “Resurrection.” They were to be co-stars: Horst playing the arrogant Prince Dimitri ; Myriam, the young girl Katouka, whose love Dimitri hopes will redeem him. Myriam had seen Buchholz in a German movie in which he played a leatherjacketed young punk, and she was furious at the notion that he was to be her partner in the Tolstoy classic. “You mean,” she exclaimed to the film’s producer, “that you’re going to have that beatnik, that Rhineland rock ’n’ roller, play Prince Dimitri ?” Horst himself was not too impressed with the young French actress, either. “Oh, yes,” he smiled, “I thought she was charming and intelligent, but that’s all.” Somehow, though, Horst’s gentleness and r To you who are OVER 5*7" — new Spring fashions priced no higher than regular misses' sizes. Style showh is washable printed rayon linen sheath, colors— green & turquoise — navy & magenta. Sizes, 10 to 20. Other styles and fabrics, $3.49 to $22.98. Sizes, 10 to 24. Also coats; shoes, lingerie, suits, girdles, sportswear. MAIL coupon FOR FREE “TALL GIRLS” CATALOG. Over Five-Seven Shops, Dept.T-11 465 Fifth Ave., New York 17, N.Y. 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