RUDOLF KLEIN-ROGGE

Rudolf Klein-Rogge was a German actor from the 1910s to the 1940s. He is super closely identified with Fritz Lang, having starred in most of his very best movies, including Metropolis, and he played the master criminal Dr. Mabuse three times for Lang (in both the 1920s and the 1930s), and he also was the master spy in "Spies"! But there is much more about his career and his personal life that is not commonly known! He was on stage from 1907, and in 1914, he met Thea von Harbou and they married, and they both had major successes. But as the decade wore on, her career became much more successful than his, and in 1920, they divorced (that same year he had a part in "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari"). Von Harbou had an affair with Fritz Lang, who was married, and after his wife committed suicide, they married in 1922, but she and Klein-Rogge remained good friends, and he starred in many of Lang and von Harbou's collaborations, as noted above. In the early 1940s, Klein-Rogge fell out of favor with Joseph Goebbels, and he retired from movies. He passed away in 1955 at the age of 69, having appeared in 89 movies (he had one final cameo role in 1949).