Obituary: Kurt Kreuger

Hollywood actor Kurt Kreuger, 89, got so tired of being typecast as Nazi officers he became an estate agent instead. Casting directors could hardly be blamed, for Kreuger fitted the classic Aryan mould to perfection. Tall, blond, blue-eyed and with a strong (and genuine) German accent, he appeared in numerous war films and became 20th Century Fox's third male pin-up, behind Tyrone Power and John Payne.

After making his film debut as Franz, a German seaman in Mystery Sea Raider (1940), Kreuger went on to take similar, often uncredited, roles in more than 20 films of variable quality, including Sahara (1942), in which he played a Nazi pilot shot down by Humphrey Bogart.

In 1949, after a quarrel with 20th Century Fox, he walked out of his contract and returned to Europe where he played the lead in several German films, but after a motor accident in 1955, he returned to Hollywood, where he once again found himself being stereotyped. After a role as a hit man for "Bugs" Moran in The St Valentine's Day Massacre (1967), he retired from acting.