Trivia

After the Anschluss of Austria in 1938, he fled to Paris. There, in 1939, he worked as an assistant director on Robert Siodmak's film "Mädchenhändler" (Girl Trader).

In 1957 he once again played his signature role as Mackie Messer in a television production of The Threepenny Opera.

In 1940, Trenk-Trebitsch managed to emigrate to the United States via Trinidad using false French papers. There, he played theater and supporting roles in films.

He played Mackie Messer from Bertolt Brecht's Threepenny Opera at its premiere at the opening of the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm in Berlin on 28 August 1928 (alongside Lotte Lenya and Erich Ponto under the musical direction of Theo Mackeben), at the Prague premiere and at the first recording of the work in 1930.

He was employed at Heinz Hilpert's Volksbühne until the Nazis seized power in 1933. He then went to Vienna, where he worked primarily in radio.

His written legacy is located in the archive of the Academy of Arts in Berlin.

When he returned from America in the mid-50's, he made his German debut in serious character roles, such as the father in "Anne Frank." He later grew into television.

Willy Trenk-Trebitsch was an Austrian actor. He initially studied music in Vienna before deciding to pursue a career as an actor.

Working with Trenk-Trebitsch wasn't easy. He demanded the same dedication from others as he did from himself. People liked to call him "the difficult one." And he thought: "Unfortunately, there are too few difficult people, too few inconvenient ones. There's too much excessive bureaucracy. Everything has to go too smoothly these days.".

The actor was known for being demanding, setting the highest standards for himself and others. The writer Max Brod wrote of him: "When he's on trial, he works like a foreman in a steel mill.".