Kurt Kasznar

Kurt Kasznar (born Kurt Servischer; August 13, 1913 – August 6, 1979) was an Austrian-American stage, film and television actor who played roles on Broadway, appearing in the original Broadway productions of Waiting for Godot, The Sound of Music and Barefoot in the Park. He also appeared in feature films and had many notable parts in television, including the science fiction series Land of the Giants.

"A big, glib, dapper man who spoke with an accent, he was almost always cast as some sort of a Continental gentleman," reported The New York Times.

As a soldier in World War II, Kasznar was among the first U.S. Army photographers to film the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Kurt Kasznar was born Kurt Servischer on August 13, 1913, in Vienna, Austria-Hungary. His family was Jewish. His father left the family when Kurt was very young. After his mother married Hungarian restaurateur Ferdinand Kasznar, Kurt assumed his surname. While working as an apprentice waiter at his stepfather's restaurant, Kasznar met director Max Reinhardt and enrolled in his seminars. "There I learned to act, write, build sets and live," Kasznar said later.

At age eleven Kasznar appeared in Der Zirkuskönig (The King of the Circus, 1924), the last movie made by Max Linder, which was filmed in Vienna. Kasznar began working on the stage in 1931, in a performance of Jedermann (Everyman) at the Salzburg Festival.

In 1936 Kasznar left Austria for the United States, with Max Reinhardt's theater company. He appeared in Reinhardt's production of The Eternal Road, playing the role of Zebulon in the premiere performance July 7, 1937, and performing at least a dozen roles during the three-month Broadway run of the epic production.

In 1941 Kasznar produced a two-act Broadway musical revue, Crazy With the Heat, which ended as a financial failure. Later that year he was drafted into the United States Army. He was trained as a cinematographer and later served in the Pacific. Assigned to a photographic unit, he filmed landings on New Guinea and in the Philippines, and the signing of the Japanese surrender aboard the USS Missouri. He was one of the first Army photographers to film the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

While in service, Corporal Kurt S. Kasznar wrote and performed in his only play, First Cousins, which he dedicated "to the thousands of foreign-born American soldiers." Kasznar's play was one of five that won a contest for soldier-playwrights and were published in the 1943 book The Army Play by Play. The one-act plays were performed on Broadway for the benefit of the Sailors and Soldiers Club, and were later staged at Hyde Park for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his 2004 study, Staging the War: American Drama and World War II, Albert Wertheim calls First Cousins – which tied for fourth place in the competition – "by far the most effective play in The Army Play by Play collection."