RIP Otto Mellies

Otto Mellies is dead: actor at the Deutsches Theater Berlin

Der Spiegel

April 27, 2020

An old, embittered former GDR judge who now, decades later, is supposedly practicing justice – it was one of his last roles that Otto Mellies played in Berlin's “crime scene” at the end of last year. Grandly reserved, with a charisma that conveys all the anger and sadness of the figure without big words. Now the actor Otto Mellies has died, the artist agency Merten and Tatsch said, citing his family.

Otto Mellies was born in 1931 in the then German town of Schlawe in Pomerania. His mother, older sister and their children died shortly before the end of the war. His father was still a soldier at that time. His brother Eberhard, who later also worked as an actor, was drafted in the war, so that Mellies was on his own when he was 14 and worked as a groom for Russian soldiers.

After attending school interrupted by the turmoil of the Second World War, Mellies applied to the Schwerin Theater at the age of 16 and received from the well-known actress

Lucie Höflich taught acting for two years.

In 1956 the director Wolfgang Langhoff brought him to the German Theater in Berlin, where he had been a member of the ensemble for 50 years. His leading role was Nathan in Lessing's “Nathan the Wise” – he played this role a total of 325 times and wrote stage history with it.

Mellies became known to a wide audience as “Der Arzt von Bothenow” (1961), but especially four years later in the TV multi-part “Dr. Schlüter” in the role of a German chemist, who was ultimately leading a chemical plant with concentration camp inmates escapes and decides against a career under the Nazis. For this he also received the GDR National Prize. For his role in Andreas Dresden's film “Halt auf Freiloute”, he received the German Film Award in 2012 as the best male actor in a supporting role.

Many know his voice from radio play and audio book productions. He was also the voice actor for Paul Newman, Christopher Lee and Sean Connery.

In an interview with the “Mitteldeutsche Zeitung” Mellies said in 2017. “For me, theater was the mother of art. I did everything else, film, television, radio, on the side. But I enjoyed everything.” Otto Mellies died on Monday. He was 89 years old.

MELLIES, Otto (Otto Ewald Ernst Mellies)

Born: 1/19/1931, Slupsk, Poland

Died: 4/26/2020, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

Otto Mellies’ westerns – voice dubber:

Colt .45 – 1950 [German voice of Stanley Andrews]

The Big Sky – 1952 [German voice of Arthur Hunnicutt [2010 DVD]

White Apache – 1985 [German voice of Alberto Farnese]

Colt 45 – 1995 [German voice of Stanley Andrews 1950]

Texas Rangers – 2001 [German voice of James Coburn]

Open Range – 2003 [German voice of Michael Gambon]

The Big Sky – 2010 [German voice of Arthur Hunnicutt 1952]

Rango – 2011 [German voice of mayor]