ALEXANDER, RICHARD

(1852—1923)

   Actor. Alexander became one of the most popular and highly paid comic actors of the Wilhelmine period, mostly at the Residenz Theater in Berlin. He specialized in boulevard comedies, usually playing the comic adulterer in vehicles like Alexandre Bisson's The Sleeping Car Porter, Georges Feydeau's The Girl from Maxim's, and Dr. Klaus by Adolph L'Arronge. Alexander summed up his career with the following statistics: he kissed a woman 5,480 times in his career on the stage, committed adultery 4,736 times, discovered the actress playing his wife with another man 3,647 times, and was himself discovered en flagrante by the actress playing his wife 2,895 times. In his humorous and readable autobiography (Meine Streichen beim Theater [Berlin: Scherl, 1922]), he claimed that after every performance he redeemed himself when he came home to his spouse in real life with, "Thank God, I can now be with a woman whose blouse is buttoned up" (142).