Heavyweight Hungarian-born character actor Oscar Beregi Jr.'s best performances were on the small screen, usually as Eastern European or Russian heavies. His stock-in-trade villainy was of a cultured or psychological, rather than physical nature, urbane and intellectual, yet inevitably sinister. His father, matinee idol Oscar Beregi Sr., had appeared on the Hungarian and German stage in Shakespearean roles, as well as acting in films, since 1919. Both Beregis left Hungary in 1939, the father settling in the United States, while the son ran a restaurant in Chile. It took several year for the younger Beregi to be granted a visa to enter the U.S., and then only through the intervention of then-U.S. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson. When Beregi finally arrived in America, he spoke little English and worked as a salesman for several years, learning the language, before re-entering the acting profession well into middle age. On the big screen, he was largely restricted to small supporting roles. However, Beregi made the most of the meatier roles offered him in television, such as mob boss Joe Kulak (a character possibly based on real-life mobster Jake Guzik) in eight episodes of Die Unbestechlichen (1959). He was also impressively commanding as the scientific criminal mastermind Farwell in Rod Serling's Unglaubliche Geschichten: The Rip Van Winkle Caper (1961) and, in the same series, as former SS concentration camp commandant Guenther Lutze, driven to insanity by the ghosts of his former victims in Unglaubliche Geschichten: Deaths-Head Revisited (1961). He was also effective in Middle Eastern intrigue (Gefährliche Geschäfte (1959)) and in parodying his evil personae in Mini-Max oder die unglaublichen Abenteuer des Maxwell Smart: I'm Only Human (1966), Mini-Max oder die unglaublichen Abenteuer des Maxwell Smart: Tequila Mockingbird (1969), and Frankenstein Junior (1974). In his spare time, he was a successful breeder of Komondors, a species of large, white Hungarian sheep dog, considered a living treasure in their native country. - IMDb Mini Biography By: I.S.Mowis
