Karl Stepanek
Date of birth: 1899-10-27
Place of birth: Brünn, Moravia, Austria-Hungary [now Brno, Czech Republic]
Known for: Acting
Also known as: Karl Stepanek, Karel Štěpánek, Karel Stepanek
Biography
Though born in Czechoslovakia, actor Karel Stepanek was generally regarded as a German actor due to his extensive film work in Germany (as Karl Stepanek) in the years before World War II. Stepanek fled to England in 1940, where, like many European refugee actors, he specialized in portraying Teutonic villains. He tried to stay away from out-and-out Nazi roles, but his predilection for wearing black uniforms and barking out guttural commands left little doubt as to the political preferences of Stepanek's screen characters. One of his most typical characterizations could be found in the 1946 POW drama, The Captive Heart; Stepanek also registered well as a friendlier foreigner in The Fallen Idol (1949). Commuting between London and Hollywood, Karel Stepanek continued to fight World War II, usually on the wrong side, into such '60s films as Sink the Bismarck! (1960), I Aim at the Stars (1960) and Operation Crossbow (1965).
Movie Credits
Man of the Moment
1955-11-24
Norman is a file clerk who accidentally becomes a British delegate to a diplomatic conference, befri
Murderers Club of Brooklyn
1967-03-17
Fifth Jerry Cotton Movie. A rich capitalist is blackmailed and threatened with the murder of his dau
The Fallen Idol
1948-09-30
Phillipe, the son of an ambassador in London, hero-worships his father's butler Baines. His percepti
Devil Doll
1964-09-01
An evil hyponotist/ventriloquist plots to gain an heiress' millions.
Operation Crossbow
1965-04-01
Allied agents infiltrate the Nazi rocket complex at Peenemunde in order to obtain their secrets and
Affair in Trinidad
1952-07-29
A nightclub singer enlists her brother-in-law to track down her husband's killer.
Anastasia
1956-12-13
Russian exiles in Paris plot to collect ten million pounds from the Bank of England by grooming a de
The Cockleshell Heroes
1955-11-16
During WW2, German ships are "safely" docked upriver at Bordeaux, but the British send a team of kay
Never Let Me Go
1953-03-18
An American reporter falls in love with a Russian ballet dancer.
City Beneath the Sea
1953-04-21
Two adventures dive for treasure off the coast of Jamaica.
Sink the Bismarck!
1960-02-11
The story of the breakout of the German battleship Bismarck—accompanied by the heavy cruiser Prinz E
The File of the Golden Goose
1969-10-13
U.S. Secret Service agent Peter Novak goes undercover with Scotland Yard officer Thompson to halt a
Die Fledermaus
1937-10-30
The delightful Johann Strauss comic opera Die Fledermaus was mercilessly lampooned in this truly biz
The Captive Heart
1946-04-29
A series of stories about the lives and loves of men in a Prisoner of War camp over five years. The
They Met in the Dark
1943-08-11
A Royal navy Commander is tricked by a pretty girl who is working for the Nazis. She tricks him into
Conspirator
1949-07-28
A newlywed suspects her husband of being a Communist spy.
Walk East on Beacon
1952-06-01
An FBI agent works with a refugee scientist and the Coast Guard to crack a Soviet spy ring in Boston
The Frozen Dead
1966-10-15
A crazed scientist keeps the heads of Nazi war criminals alive until he can find appropriate bodies
Secret Venture
1955-11-10
An American is visiting Britain and finds himself in possession of a briefcase full of secret docume
Sperrbezirk
1966-06-02
The story of a pimp who falls in love with one of his victims, is "purified" by it, but also perishe
A Prize of Gold
1955-10-14
A U.S. sergeant, a British sergeant and a British pilot hijack gold for a German refugee's war orpha
Before Winter Comes
1969-01-17
Drama/Comedy set in a refugee camp in occupied Austria after World War II. A shrewd multi-lingual in
Tale of Three Women
1954-01-01
A compilation of 3 stories, "The Wedding Gift", "The Thief of London" and "The Final Twist". Origina
Licensed to Kill
1965-07-05
An English spy (Tom Adams) guards a Scandinavian scientist (Karl Stepanek) who has sold an anti-grav
Dangerous Cargo
1954-05-01
Inspired by the real events of the attempted heist at Heathrow Airport in 1952, a criminal tricks an
Cairo Road
1950-06-21
In colonial Egypt, a British police officer sets out on a daring hunt for drug smuggling gangs opera
West of Suez
1957-03-01
In this suspense movie, a Yankee mercenary is hired to blow up an Arab dignitary.
Operation Amsterdam
1959-01-12
When Germany invades Holland in 1940, a British intelligence officer and two Dutch diamond merchants
Five from the Jazzband
1932-03-19
By pure chance, Jessie and his four jazz musicians are hired to play at the cabaret theatre “Trocade
Berlin-Alexanderplatz: The Story of Franz Biberkopf
1931-10-07
Franz Biberkopf has served four years in prison. His return to normal life is not successful.
Tomorrow We Live
1943-04-05
British World War II film set in occupied France, portraying the activities of members of the French
The Third Man
1949-08-31
In postwar Vienna, Austria, Holly Martins, a writer of pulp Westerns, arrives penniless as a guest o
Give Us This Day
1949-10-14
Exiled from Hollywood due to the blacklist, director Edward Dmytryk briefly operated in England in t
Rough Shoot
1953-03-30
An American military officer and his wife move to a cottage in what they think is the peaceful Engli
Secret Mission
1942-10-05
World War II drama in which a member of the French Resistance and three British agents undertake a h
The Leghorn Hat
1939-04-04
Der Florentiner Hut (The Leghorn Hat), a 1939 German film directed by Wolfgang Liebeneiner
The Third Visitor
1951-01-31
Suave supercilious Carling (Karel Stepanek) receives several callers to his isolated house, all of w
Brainwashed
1960-09-02
Werner von Basil, a Austrian intellectual, was captured by the Nazis in 1938. They want to break him
The Heroes of Telemark
1965-11-12
Set in German-occupied Norway, resistance fighter Knut Straud enlists the reluctant physicist Rolf P
The Unknown
1936-11-12
The body of an unknown beautiful woman is fished out of the river and leaves the policemen wondering
Escape to Danger
1943-10-18
During the Second World War a British schoolteacher working in Denmark is caught up when the Germans
Here's Berlin
1932-03-14
Story of a rendezvous in Paris which is prepared through telephone calls between a Berlin telephonis
A Song for You
1933-04-14
During a concert tour, famous tenor Riccardo Gatti meets Lixie at an Aida rehearsal and takes her fo
War es der im 3. Stock?
1939-01-06
Olga, a woman of the demimonde, is shot in her apartment. The bullet was deflected by something, oth
Hermine and the Seven Upright Men
1935-01-11
Seven men in peaceful Switzerland swear lifelong friendship while the rest of the world is at strife
Der Außenseiter
1935-11-14
Spione im Savoy-Hotel
1932-11-04
State Secret
1950-09-11
While working in England, an American surgeon Dr. John Marlowe is invited to Vosnia (a fictitious Ea
Broken Journey
1948-04-14
A plane flying over the Swiss Alps develops engine trouble and is forced to crash-land on a glacier.
The Man in the Road
1956-03-01
A brilliant scientist who has lost his memory is hunted by Communist agents out to obtain a secret f
Aufstand der Gehorsamen
1963-04-20
The Games
1970-08-07
From Great Britain, the United States, France, Italy, Australia and behind the Iron Curtain. They ar
Narren im Schnee
1938-08-16
Waltz War
1933-10-03
The quarrel between the waltz king Joseph Lanner and his still unknown violinist Johann Strauss. It
The Heroes of Telemark: Location report from Norway
2003-10-31
Over one hour of black-and-white location footage and interviews with the stars and director, all st
Our Man in Havana
1960-01-27
Jim Wormold is an expatriate Englishman living in pre-revolutionary Havana with his teenage daughter
Golden Arrow
1949-12-31
On a journey from Paris to London, a Briton, a Frenchman and an American bond with each other and in
No Highway in the Sky
1951-06-28
James Stewart plays aeronautical engineer Theodore Honey, the quintessential absent-minded professor
Hotel Sacher
1939-03-15
Vienna is celebrating New Year’s Eve 1913/14. It is the year, which will see the outbreak of the Fi
Klatovští dragouni
1938-02-25
The Traitor
1957-03-01
One time members of a resistance group come together every year to remember their dead leader, betra
Na růžích ustláno
1935-01-25
Pozdní láska
1935-06-07
Counterblast
1948-05-18
An escaped World War 2 Nazi doctor impersonates a murdered English doctor so he can work on a vaccin
Our Film
1942-08-03
A British factory is inefficient because of pre-war rules and red tape. A Soviet trades union repres
Die Werft zum grauen Hecht
1935-08-21
Otto is pressured by his former girlfriend Mila to marry her. His friend and colleague Franz gets hi