Helmut Berger is Dead to Me!

Link? I'm googling and only finding that Helmut Berger is alive, ALIVE.

German Wikipedia has already been updated.

Look how beautiful he was.

He made a couple of great movies as a twink but became a nutcase. Too much alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs. And he never overcame the loss of daddy Visconti.

Reported on Der Spiegel

R3. That’s Tom Sandoval with highlights 😳

Yes, he was gorgeous. A great looking man.

Not Peter De Vilbis!!!

Never thought he was much of an actor, but the brilliant Visconti did wonders with him in some true masterworks. I might watch The Damned today in honor. RIP, seemed like a troubled guy by the end. Hope he’s at peace now.

His daughter had a great career in music.

Only 10 Helmut Berger fans on DL? I am shocked! On of the greatest Thespians and Rent Boys of all time passes aways and crickets on DL. He probably was a Datalounger too.

^ by the looks of it.

There's actually a Helmut Berger troll on DL - he should have been all over this.

How often was he naked on screen?

So much attention to Visconti, when we could be talking about DYNASTY.

Fleeting nudity.

He was seething with anger over Alain delon turning up to Visconti’s funeral. If visconti had both delon and Berger in their primes… he was very lucky

Morte, tot, dead

gestorben!

Absolutely gorgeous guy, although he aged very badly at the end.

Nutbar.

On tonight's show, the Hamburglar reminisces about his cousin and friend Helmut.

There was a documentary on him where he actually jerks off on camera, but it seems to have disappeared.

R23 I haven't seen that documentary in full, but the trailer alone is magnificent.

Ugh, sorry.

Götterdämmerung! RiP, Helmut!

I believe I just saw his big, fat ass in his penultimate film, Liberté (2019). But then again, nothing could trump his nude, dead scene in Salon Kitty (1976).

Fun Dynasty Trivia.....Helmut played Peter DeVilbis. He was the playboy fiancé of Fallon.. They broke up. He left town. But when Fallon came up missing (Pamela Sue Martin exited the role), it was revealed she was in the plane that killed Peter off screen. She reappeared a year later with very little explanation beyond amnesia.

Had a crush on him for awhile after watching the damned. I really did feel guilty. He was gorgeous up to the mid 70s and then it was a steep decline.

Agree with r11 that it's a very sad sign of the times that someone who by all rights should be a DATALOUNGE KING gets so little attention on his death.

Visconti lived out every DLer's fantasy by putting his rentboy naked on screen in self-indulgent homoerotic fantasias under the guise of high art. Some of the movies even hold up pretty well and he allowed future gays to feast their eyes on stunningly beautiful Helmut for eternity.

Check out Conversation Piece - lovely late Visconti movie with Helmut and Burt Lancaster.

Auf wiedersehen, darling!

bygone era, not many interests even fog Gen X.

^ for

He was pining after Burt Lancaster when they both were in Visconti's last movie.

R29 I think he doesn't receive much love here because he is uncut

Was he a gay gay?

^no, he was a gay straight

He was a whore, darlings. And a good one at that.

Visconti's last movie was L'Innocente, and neither Burt nor Helmut was in it. But Marc Porel was smoldering hot there.

It was announced in 2005! Helmut Berger and Klaus Kinski in Neil Simon's The Odd Couple. Coming to the Martin Beck Theatre this fall. Ticket go on sale in August. Hurry. Limited engagement. Police standing by at each performance.

He was the Dermott Mulruney's Dylan McDermott to Berger's Helmut Huber

I saw that freaky documentary ("Helmut Berger, Actor") by Andreas Horvath. It was a tad traumatizing, and almost too "real" for comfort. It chronicles Helmut's decay, but it's also interesting to note that he was always quite decadent. It's impossible to look back at early, beautiful Helmut and not see the fascinating perversity that's evident in the documentary. It just looks so different when you, well, look different.

Helmut B. also portrayed the old YSL in "Saint Laurent" (2014). That didn't even register the first time I saw it.

RIP, beautiful boy and decadent old man.

He was once married to Marisa Berenson, immortalized as Lady Lyndon.

Did anyone ever see the documentary on him where he was shown masturbating and ejaculating? And know where it's available?

There's a nude photo of him in a book Helmut Newton's work, he's the only male nude in the entire book. Somehow, teenage me found both the book and the photo at my local bookstore and whenever I was at the mall I would stop by for a peak. I saw him in a soft core version of The Portrait of Dorian Gray from the early '70s, where they suggest he is bisexual (though no explicit scenes like he has with the women).

He was the subject of one of my favorite Pauline Kael lines, from her review of The Damned (which she hated and which sounds incredibly stupid): "Martin, the creepy psychopath with two sets of eyebrows (his own and the painted thin ones)."

Today we are all Helmut Berger, drunk, chain-smoking and masturbating for the camera.

He may have been murdered!! That’s what he’s wife implies.

R46, his wife?

He was still married to Francesca Guidato.

R11, I'm a fan and this is the first I'm hearing of it! I'm genuinely sad at the news, even though he'd become such a mess in recent years that I expected we'd hear of his passing any day. The fact that it's barely made a ripple in the media is depressing.

[quote]Never thought he was much of an actor, but the brilliant Visconti did wonders with him in some true masterworks.

He wasn't a great actor but he was an incredible presence, and sometimes that's all that's required. He was mesmerizing to watch. You can tell Visconti himself couldn't tear his eyes off him, just by the way he shot him in his films. His fascination is reflected back to us, the audience.

Here's an early English-language interview:

[quote]He was once married to Marisa Berenson, immortalized as Lady Lyndon.

No, only briefly engaged.

Time to watch Dorian Gray in remembrance...

Didn't Charlotte Rampling say he was just "a ski instructor with a big bum"?

Wasn’t he discovered as a waiter at a ski resort by visconti. Or was working in his family’s hotel

Everything is forgiven for dear Helmut.

He was quite eloquent for an Austrian boy from the 60s. Spoke 4 languages. Probably because he grew up in a hotel.

What a beauty he was. Is there any comparable Eurotrash these days, or is that era over?

[quote] He was quite eloquent for an Austrian boy from the 60s. Spoke 4 languages. Probably because he grew up in a hotel.

He sounded sexy in his foreign languages, less so when speaking his native Austrian German.

Yes, R56, he had this whiney pseudo upper-class Viennese accent. Not sexy. Much better in English.

And he was drunk or high, as usual, in R56.

He had a bitterness that always seemed to come through in interviews, I guess visconti kept him feeling insecure…

My favorite film of his is "Dorian Gray" (1970) - beautiful, exquisite man - hoped the actor himself might remain ageless too, but alas.

[quote]Wasn’t he discovered as a waiter at a ski resort by visconti. Or was working in his family’s hotel

As a student he was visiting the town of Volterra with friends at the same time Visconti was shooting his film Sandra there. He spent hours one day watching the filming and apparently caught Visconti's eye, he approached him and they chatted, Visconti inviting him to a lunch the next day at his villa. Helmut and his friend went and thereafter Visconti pursued him until he agreed to quit school and move in with him in Paris.

With Helmut, you always have to keep in mind his propensity for bullshit, but I think the general outline of how they met was true. A lot of Visconti bios rely heavily on people who hated Helmut as sources (like Zeffirelli, or the Viscontis themselves) and as a result he often doesn't get a fair shake, there's an effort to diminish him.

[quote]Didn't Charlotte Rampling say he was just "a ski instructor with a big bum"?

I mean, it's Charlotte Rampling, though? She wasn't viewed as much of actress either until she got old, prior to that she was best known as vaguely Eurotrash who took her clothes off a lot. She's yet another example of people in Visconti's citcke who didn't see Berger as worthy of Visconti despite the length of their relationship.

He didn't exactly age in reverse, R60....

From the NYTimes Obituary:

'Mr. Berger fell into a deep depression after Mr. Visconti’s death in 1976.'

'“At first I drank a lot, gluckgluckgluck, and then the pills came,” he told Gala. “My housekeeper wasn’t supposed to come until 5 p.m. but happened to drop by at 10 a.m. and saved me.”'

Good interview if you speak German. And good photos.

JUST a ski instructor with a big bum? That is the highest praise in my book.

Where are the pics of his big bum? I want to see.

Basket

Ass

He's here:

Oh no !!! Loved Helmut. He was unapologetic, a gigolo, a swinger, lovely in" the garden of the finzi-contini." Love him in ash wednesdey . A real 60's hero.

Fun fact, Helmut had no doubt in his mind that he would inherit the vast fortune of one of the most illustrious ruling families of Europe. When the heirs of the dukes of Milan kicked his sorry ass out of Luchino's house(s) , he kept screaming " I saw the will". Dumb whore

Who will play Helmut Berger in the inevitable biopic?

Full film here - beautiful:

He hung out with Dominick Dunne

I don't care for Charlotte Rampling's homophobic comments . She's proving herself yet again one of the most unpleasant actresses in the business. Who the fuck does she think she is ? She has zero training whatsoever, FFS she was in a fucking revue with her sister. Helmut was a trained actor when he met Visconti in Itlay, he was even in acting school. What a cunt that pretentious bore Rampling is. FYI, Charlotte, Bogarde warned every director in sight to skip you in favour of Julie christie if they wanted a good actress.

Visconti had his butler of 20+ years witness his will--and he wasn't the only one who's said there was a will and Helmut was in it. I don't think Visconti intended to leave Helmut his entire fortune but he certainly intended him to have something. The Viscontis had no right to intercept the will and keep their brother's wishes regarding his own property from being carried out. That's shitty.

As for Charlotte Rampling's comment--read a few bios of Visconti and it becomes clear that many of the people in Visconti's circle viewed Helmut as unworthy of him and have gone out of their way to diss him. Jealousy was rife among that crew, not even sexual jealousy but just jealousy of Visconti's attention. I hope one of these days someone will write a joint biography that will paint a more complete portrait of their relationship than these other books have, compromised as they have been by various agendas and resentments.

Of course there was a will, and of course it was destroyed at the family's request. There was no way in hell the immense fortune of one of the noblest families in Europe , or even a fraction of it, would land on the lap of a cokehead male whore who had dumped Luchino the minute he was in a wheelchair. Helmut would have sold everything for drugs and booze. BTW , Luchino's father, Giuseppe, duke of Grazzano Visconti, Count of Lonate Pozzolo, Lord of Cogennno, Somma, Crenna , and Agnadello, was a HOT DADDY

Helmut Berger - The Most Beautiful Man In The World.

He was no Max Schell

Young Lucino Visconti was so hot. I would have hit that. Almost deserves his own thread...By the time he met Helmut , 120 cigarettes a day had taken their toll.

Luchino looked like a stocky italian peasant compared to his gorgeous bisex father, I always suspected he was the gardner's son

Are there better photos of Luchino‘s fathers, R82?

Helmet Burger?

I saw him in Dorian Gray in 1970. I immediately went home and masturbated three times, then I wrote a trashy poem about him, which I long ago lost.

RIP Beautiful Boy

Wasn't he the one who said, after hearing Visconti trashing contemporary actors as lazy, that fucking Visconti was hard work?