Theodore Isidore Gottlieb (November 11, 1906 â€" April 5, 2001), known
as Brother Theodore, was a German-born American actor and comedian
known for rambling, stream-of-consciousness monologues which he called
"stand-up tragedy". He was a man described as "Boris Karloff,
surrealist Salvador DalÃ, Nijinsky and Red
Skelton…simultaneously".Gottlieb was born into a wealthy Jewish
family in Düsseldorf, in the Rhine Province, where his father was a
magazine publisher. He attended the University of Cologne. At age 32,
under Nazi rule, he was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp
until he signed over his family's fortune for one Reichsmark. After
being deported for chess hustling from Switzerland, he went to Austria
where Albert Einstein, a family friend and alleged lover of his
mother, helped him escape to England, where he was interned; he
subsequently was allowed to sail to New York in May 1940.He worked as
a janitor at Stanford University, where he demonstrated his prowess at
chess by beating 30 professors simultaneously, and later became a
dockworker in San Francisco. (It should be kept in mind that "facts"
such as these are based on not-necessarily-reliable and unsupported
statements about himself.) He played a bit part in Orson Welles' 1946
movie The Stranger. This was one of the several movie appearances he
made beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1990s. These were
mostly small parts in B-movies, although he did provide the voice of
Gollum in the 1977 made-for-television animated version of The Hobbit
and the follow-up adaptation of The Return of the King (1980). He also
voiced Ruhk, Mommy Fortuna's assistant and carnival barker in The Last
Unicorn (1982).
as Brother Theodore, was a German-born American actor and comedian
known for rambling, stream-of-consciousness monologues which he called
"stand-up tragedy". He was a man described as "Boris Karloff,
surrealist Salvador DalÃ, Nijinsky and Red
Skelton…simultaneously".Gottlieb was born into a wealthy Jewish
family in Düsseldorf, in the Rhine Province, where his father was a
magazine publisher. He attended the University of Cologne. At age 32,
under Nazi rule, he was imprisoned at the Dachau concentration camp
until he signed over his family's fortune for one Reichsmark. After
being deported for chess hustling from Switzerland, he went to Austria
where Albert Einstein, a family friend and alleged lover of his
mother, helped him escape to England, where he was interned; he
subsequently was allowed to sail to New York in May 1940.He worked as
a janitor at Stanford University, where he demonstrated his prowess at
chess by beating 30 professors simultaneously, and later became a
dockworker in San Francisco. (It should be kept in mind that "facts"
such as these are based on not-necessarily-reliable and unsupported
statements about himself.) He played a bit part in Orson Welles' 1946
movie The Stranger. This was one of the several movie appearances he
made beginning in the 1940s and continuing into the 1990s. These were
mostly small parts in B-movies, although he did provide the voice of
Gollum in the 1977 made-for-television animated version of The Hobbit
and the follow-up adaptation of The Return of the King (1980). He also
voiced Ruhk, Mommy Fortuna's assistant and carnival barker in The Last
Unicorn (1982).
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