Cafe Biz

Willi Forst, born Wilhelm Anton Frohs (born 7 April 1903 in Vienna; died 11 August 1980, also in Vienna) was an Austrian actor, screenwriter, film director, film producer and singer. As an actor he was a darling of the German-speaking public, as a director one of the most significant makers of the light musical comedies of the 1930s known as Wiener Filme ("Viennese films"). From the mid-1930s he also recorded many records, largely of sentimental Viennese songs, for the Odeon Records label owned by Carl Lindström AG.

His first major role was opposite Marlene Dietrich in Café Elektric in 1927. He was best known however for his characters in the light musical Wiener Filme, which rapidly made him a star. As a film producer too he specialised in these through the 1930s and 1940s. He founded his own film company, Willi Forst-Film, in 1937.

He was much courted by the National Socialists but succeeded in avoiding overt political statement, concentrating entirely on the light entertainment for which he was famous and which was much in demand during the war. During the seven year period of National Socialist rule in Austria, he only made four films, none of them political.

He had comparatively little success after the war, with the exception of the film Die Sünderin ("The Sinner") (1950) starring Hildegard Knef, which became a scandal because of the protests of the Roman Catholic church against its nudity, the first in German-speaking cinema, but attracted an audience of seven million people. His last film (Wien, du Stadt meiner Träume) was made in 1957, after which he retired from the film world, acknowledging that his style was no longer in demand.

Afte the death of his wife in 1973 he lived a reclusive life in the Swiss canton of Tessin. He died of cancer in Vienna in 1980 and is buried in Neustift am Walde.