Fritz Wepper: the man they called Harry
As a child, he wanted to be like Hopalong Cassidy, the noble film cowboy who didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, didn’t swear. It didn’t quite work out that way: Fritz Wepper was also only human, changed wives and was once caught with 0.06 grams of coke. But no one took offense at the actor, who died yesterday at the age of 82. For good reason: Since the anti-war film “Die Brücke” in 1959, he has accompanied the TV Republic of Germany as an assistant to commissioners, mayor and repeatedly as a crime investigator. In the end it almost didn’t seem to matter what role Fritz Wepper played – the audience blindly loved him as the elder statesman of German film. Something that no one would have thought possible when he became famous in “The Bridge” at just 17 years old…