Gordon Sterne

Gordon Sterne was a Germanborn English actor with a prolific career spanning over five decades in film television and theater He is perhaps most widely recognized for his role as Mr Kessler in the horrorcomedy classic An American Werewolf in London 1981 where his character famously meets a gruesome end while watching The Muppet Show in a dream sequence He left his native Nazidominated birth country in 1941 and became a native of Windsor Ontario with a father who worked in the tobacco business and mother who was supportive of his theatre aspirations Sterne studied economics at the University of Western Ontario before volunteering for the Canadian Army in 1944 serving in the infantry as a sergeant Heading to New York in 1945 he trained and graduated from the Dramatic Workshop under the tutelage of its founder Erwin Piscator at the same time as Rod Steiger Bea Arthur Walter Matthau Tony Curtis and Harry Belafonte Sterne then began his acting career in America working on radio and TV in summer stock and offBroadway After a career on stage playing the leading man in various plays in New Jersey during the 1940s as well as Benvenuto Cellini in The Firebrand at Washingtons Arena Stage and Joseph K in The Trial at New Yorks Provincetown Playhouse during the early 1950s Sterne moved to Britain in 1956 where he had over 50 years working in theatre TV and film Being able to speak German and French enabled Sterne to perform in Drop Dead Darling on tour in Germany as well as a spell with the English Theatre in Vienna