Brother Theodore (11 November 1906 – 5 April 2001), born Theodore Gottlieb, was a German-American monologuist and comedian known for rambling, stream-of-consciousness dialogues which he called "stand up tragedy."
He was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, where his father was a magazine publisher. Theodore attended the University of Cologne. At age 32, under Nazi rule, he was imprisoned at the Dachau concentra...
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Brother Theodore (11 November 1906 – 5 April 2001), born Theodore Gottlieb, was a German-American monologuist and comedian known for rambling, stream-of-consciousness dialogues which he called "stand up tragedy."
He was born into a wealthy Jewish family in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, where his father was a magazine publisher. Theodore 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 the United States.
He worked as a janitor at Stanford University, where he demonstrated his prowess at chess by beating thirty professors simultaneously, and later became a dockworker in San Francisco. He played a bit part in Orson Welles's The Stranger. This was one of the several movie appearances he made...
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