Pierre Brice

Biography

Pierre-Louis Le Bris (6 February 1929 – 6 June 2015), known as Pierre Brice, was a French actor, best known as portraying fictional Apache chief Winnetou in German films based on Karl May novels.

Life and films

Brice was born in Brest, Brittany, France. When he was 19, Brice enlisted in the French Army and fought in the First Indochina War. While patrolling in Indochina, one of his team triggered a mine and its explosion sent Brice whirling through the air, but left him virtually unhurt. A member of the Commandos Marine, special forces units of the French Navy, he served later as a paratrooper during the Algerian War.

He was working as actor and model since 1954, but as France had young male stars like Delon, Belmondo, Trintignant, he got leading roles mainly abroad. From 1962 to 1968 he acted in a total of eleven West German Western movies adapted from novels by German author Karl May (1842–1912), in which he played the fictional Native American chief Winnetou of the Mescalero Apache tribe, alongside Lex Barker (7 movies), Stewart Granger (3 movies) and Rod Cameron (1 movie) as co-stars. After the films he also played this role at the Karl May Festspiele in Elspe from 1977 to 1980 and 1982 to 1986 and at the Karl May Festival in Bad Segeberg open-air theatre, Germany, from 1988 to 1991; he also worked there until 1999 as director of several open-air theatre productions. (The open-air theatre in Bad Segeberg is dedicated only to productions of Karl May plays.)
Besides theatre productions, he was mainly seen in TV-series, including Ein Schloß am Wörthersee (A Castle by the Wörthersee) and Die Hütte am See (Lakeview Cottage). In 1979 Brice again played Winnetou in a 14-part TV series called Mein Freund Winnetou (My friend Winnetou – Winnetou le Mescalero), which did not originate from Karl May material. In 1997 he appeared in a two-part TV mini series Winnetous Rückkehr (The Return of Winnetou), which earned devastating criticism from the fans, since the character had died in the movie Winnetou III and now suddenly returned to life. Again, this did not originate from writings by Karl May.
Brice tried to escape the Winnetou character in a 1976 TV series, Star Maidens, and in several movies for the big screen, playing Zorro in the Italian Zorro contro Maciste (1963). He also worked with Terence Hill (still called Mario Girotti at the time) in Shots in Threequarter Time (1965), with Lex Barker in a non-Karl May film The Hell of Manitoba (a.k.a. A Place Called Glory) (1965) and in the anthology Killer's Carnival (1966).

Singing career

Like Lex Barker (who recorded two tracks as a singer), Brice tried to sing with the help of German composer Martin Boettcher, and even managed to issue several singles and CDs. Most of the songs were in German and, as Brice did not understand the language at the time of recording, he had to sing them phonetically.

PIERRE BRICE: Ich steh' allein / Ribanna – DECCA D 19 557 (mono)
PIERRE BRICE: Wunderschön / Keiner weiß den Tag – Decca, D 19 560
PIERRE BRICE: Winnetou, Du warst mein Freund / Meine roten Brüder – Barclay
PIERRE BRICE: Du fehlst mir / Der große Traum – CBS
Winnetou du warst mein Freund – 1996, sampler CD, Bear Family Recordscontains the above songs, as well as Lex Barker songs.