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Pierre Brice, 2004

Pierre Brice (born 6 February 1929 in Brest, France), birth name Baron Pierre Louis de Bris, is a French actor, mainly known to the audience for his role as fictional Apache-chief Winnetou in German Karl May movies.

When he was 19, Brice enlisted as volunteer to the French army and fought in the war in Indochina. From 1962 to 1968 Brice acted in a total of eleven German Western movies adapted from novels by German author Karl May, in which he played the fictional red Indian chief Winnetou of the Mescalero Apache-tribe, alongside alternatively Lex Barker (7 movies), Stewart Granger (3 movies) and Rod Cameron (1 movie) as the white heroes. After the movies he also played this role at the Karl May Festspiele in Elspe from 1977 to 1980 and 1982 to 1986 and at the Bad Segeberg open-air theatre, Germany, from 1988 to 1991 and 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 shows).

Besides the theatre productions he was mainly seen in various TV-series of a soft boulevard style, like "Ein Schloss am Wörthersee" (A Castle by the Woerthersee) or "Die Hütte am See" (The Cottage by the Lake). In 1979 he 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 again acted in a two-part TV mini series "Winnetous Rückkehr" (The Return of Winnetou), which earned devastating criticism from the fans, as the Winnetou-character died in the movie "Winnetou III" and now suddenly returned to the living. Again, this one did not originate from a story by Karl May.

Pierre Brice tried to escape the Winnetou-character in the 1976 TV series "Die Mädchen aus dem Weltraum" (Star Maidens) and in several movies for the big screen, e.g. as Zorro in the Italian "Zorro contro Maciste" (1963). He also worked with Terence Hill (still called Mario Girotti at the time) in "Schüsse im Dreivierteltakt" (Shots in 3/4 Time) (1965), again with Lex Barker in a non-Karl May movie "Die Hölle von Manitoba" (A Place Called Glory City) (1965) and in the anthology movie "Gern hab' ich die Frauen gekillt" (Killer's Carnival) (1966) Stewart Granger, Lex Barker and Pierre Brice finally worked together in one movie - but for some reason, the three actors did not share a single scene in the film.

Like Lex Barker (who recorded only two tracks as a singer) Pierre 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 didn't 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 Records
  contains the above songs, as well as Lex Barker songs.

• Pierre Brice biography on (re)Search my Trash

• Pierre Brice at the Internet Movie Database
• Homepage of Pierre Brice (in German)
• Winnetou on WWW.ALMISSA.COM (in Croatian/English)