Siegfried Carl Alban Rumann (11 October 1884 – 14 February 1967), billed as Sig Rumann and Sig Ruman, was a German-American character actor. He is known for his portrayals of pompous and often stereotypically Teutonic officials or villains in more than a hundred films.
He became a favorite comic foil of the Marx Brothers, appearing in A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races (1937), and A Night in Casablanca (1946). His German accent and large stature kept him busy during World War II, playing sinister Nazi characters in a series of wartime thrillers.
During this period, he also appeared in several films by director Ernst Lubitsch, a fellow German émigré, including Ninotchka (1939), portraying a Russian, and To Be or Not to Be (1942), as the pompous Nazi "Concentration-Camp Erhardt". He played Professor Herman Von Reiter in Shining Victory (1941), an adaptation of an A. J. Cronin play. Ruman continued his trend of portraying over-the-top German characters later in his career for Lubitsch's protégé Billy Wilder, in his films The Emperor Waltz (1948), Stalag 17 (1953), One, Two, Three (1961), and in a cameo in The Fortune Cookie (1966).
Ookiness
Ruman played My Fair Cousin Itt in The Addams Family season 2 premiere episode "My Fair Cousin Itt".
Trivia
- Ruman fought in World War One for the German Imperial Army.
- He changed his name to Sig Ruman in an attempt to make it a little less German-sounding, as anti-German prejudice was rising at that time because the rise of Nazi government.