Teddy Stauffer(1909-1991)
- Actor
- Director
- Composer
Musician, big band leader, playboy, hotelier, club-owner and sometime
actor, Teddy Stauffer was born Ernst Heinrich Stauffer on May 2nd, 1909
into into a Swiss middle class family in Murten, Switzerland. Teddy was
to become with his "Original Teddies" the most successful big band
leader in pre-war Germany of the late 1930s. They were called "Teddies"
because of the bear residing in the coat of arms of the city of Bern,
Switzerland. They enjoyed great popularity with their gigs during the
1936 Olympic Games in Berlin and later at the famed Delphi Dance Hall
of the same city by their interpretation of original American swing
music in the style of Benny Goodman. Between 1936-1937 his hit "Goody-goody"
sold over 700,000 records. Although frowned upon by the Nazi censorship
of what was deemed "Negro Jazz" and music by the the "Swing Jew"
Goodman, Stauffer without scruples turned the "Horst Wessel Lied"
(National Socialist's anthem) into a jazz number in 1938 - something he
wasn't really punished for because of his great popularity. At the
outbreak of war in 1939 he returned to his native Switzerland. Some
time and several failures later he emigrated to the United States and
subsequently to Mexico, where the wellknown womanizer (who was also
married, among others to the actress Hedy Lamarr and had love affairs with
Rita Hayworth and Barbara Hutton), turned Acapulco into a holiday resort. He died
there on August 27, 1991.
