L.A. is the place best designed to cause culture shock in anyone not from there. But for 15-yr-old Werner, who was greeted at the station with his sister and mother by a chauffeur-driven limosine and whisked away to a home in Bel-Air, "it was like fairyland."

Where Berlin had meant separation, here was inclusion. Otto Klemperer was no longer obliged by the harsh economic conditions of prewar Germany to spend six months of each year conducting abroad. The morning conversations which Werner had always enjoyed with his father were now daily events. The younger Klemperers were no longer excluded from participating in activities out of fear for their safety. Werner could finally experience the powerful music-making of his father for himself.
 

But the conversation and concerts, words and music, which united son and father in this period would ultimately drive them apart. Otto Klemperer recalled his experience at the conservatory, with its intense music studies and its six hours of daily practice, with pleasure. Werner Klemperer's perception of what conservatory life would mean sounds more like self-imposed exile to the dungeon in Fidelio. Dr. Klemperer was of the Mozartian opinion that words are the servant of music. Not so Master Klemperer. A self-described talker, so linguistically gifted (as is his sister) as to become a fluent English-speaker after only a summer's tutelage, he excelled in the verbal arts.
 

Exposure to acting in high school settled the matter. In 1939, the Nazi's parting gift to Otto Klemperer—the blow to the head from his "accidental" fall into an orchestra pit—had developed into a brain tumor. With his father's career, the family fortunes, and plans for his future in turmoil, Werner made his break. He enrolled in the Pasadena Playhouse.

In a field with 80% unemployment; in a country where his first language was not spoken; in a time when anti-German feeling ran high, he would make his career. "Maybe I took the easy way out," was Mr. Klemperer's later comment, which says more about the steepness of Klemperer standards than the ease of the path he had chosen. His mother's operatic success had owed as much to her gifts as an engaging and versatile actress as to her singing. But hers was not a dominating presence in the theatrical world, as her husband's was in music. "At least," said Klemperer, "acting was my own."

After graduating from Pasadena Playhouse, Klemperer's theatrical education received a further boost from an unexpected source: the US Army. In 1942 he was called to active service. While stationed in Hawaii as a military policeman, he auditioned for and was accepted into Maurice Evans' Special Services unit. Two years of touring the Pacific entertaining the troops provided, he later stated, "the greatest theatrical training I could've asked for."

After discharge Klemperer moved to New York City, where he made his living by radio and stage acting, stage managing, even ushering and waiting tables when necessary. He debuted on Broadway in the1947 production, Heads or Tails. His big break came with Dear Charles in 1954, where he played a temperamental Polish pianist wooing Tallulah Bankhead ("one of the great people because she relates as a human being"). When the tour reached Los Angeles, film and television offers were waiting.

The growing television industry had no interest in amusing European bon vivants of the sort he was playing. But it did have a great need for heavies. Nature having bestowed on him at 25 the look he'd keep with little change for more than 50 years, he was already being cast in character parts. His accent was also an advantage; no one much cared which accent it was. In America, "if you have an accent, they give you foreign roles." Russians, Frenchmen, Serbs, Austrians, Germans, Poles . . . "I've played villains in almost any country you can think of."

Most villainous of all were the Nazis he played, starting in '61 with his casting as the monstrous Adolf Eichmann. As a character actor, his career consisted of playing parts for fiction which he would never dream of assuming in life, such as spies, saboteurs, and assistant to a strong-willed conductor. That the son of a Jewish-born father, who had himself with his family been forced to flee Germany to escape the unthinkable, would play Nazis—this has always been a difficult point for interviewers to grasp. But who else could more acutely understand, or derive more satisfaction from portraying, just how sinister they truly were?
 

By the mid-60's, Klemperer was the embodiment of the American Dream fulfilled. With his stunning wife, two kids, nice house, even a dog; with his active lifestyle, full of concert-attending, Dodgers-watching, and travel; with his reputation so firmly established within his field that he was constantly in demand, he seemed to have it all.

But an overlooked aspect of the Klemperer legacy remained unfulfilled. If you've experienced Otto Klemperer's music; if you've read reviews of Johanna Klemperer's operatic work; if you've encountered Klemperer (as in "Otto") researchers' praise of Lotte Klemperer; if you've witnessed the effect that mentioning the name of "Klemperer" in a crowded room produces, you know. Never has there been a family which has inspired so much joy.

But that Werner Klemperer's work should evoke this response seemed an impossibility. He seemed to be everywhere, appearing in a host of movies including the star-studded Judgment at Nuremberg and Ship of Fools and a plethora of television shows, including Perry Mason, The Man From Uncle, and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. But, commented Klemperer of this period, "nobody knew who I was." And the type of roles he was portraying, while interesting and well-played, were hardly the sort to induce admiration. Whoever heard of a Nazi in whom anyone could delight?

Welcome to America, where anything is possible.