Wolfgang Draeger

Wolfgang Draeger bonds with Big Bird

Wolfgang Draeger (b. 1928) is a German actor and voice artist who has dubbed Big Bird on Sesamstrasse. To date, he is the only dub actor to stay with the show from its debut in 1973 to the present. He also dubbed Big Bird's clip in E.T.

Draeger studied at the Berlin-Reinickendorf Conservatory for Music and Art. Beginning in 1953, he established himself as a familiar radio voice, and became the regular dubbing voice of such varied actors as Woody Allen, James Cagney, and Dudley Moore. He also dubbed Gene Wilder in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and Trans-American Express, Eric Idle as Sir Robin in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, George Harrison in The Beatles' films, Charles Grodin in Catch-22, Harry Dean Stanton in Repoman, Martin Landau in The Hallelujah Trail, and Roman Polanski in Chinatown.

In animation, he voiced Inspector Gadget, the Clock King on Batman: The Animated Series, and Cheetah on Kimba the White Lion. He has been a staple of German audiobooks and radio plays, often as comics characters (Popeye, the narrator in Asterix, and Prince Barin in Flash Gordon), or in mysteries (Chief Reynolds and others in the Alfred Hitchcock Three Investigators series, Horatio Mcintire in the Edgar Wallace series).

External links

• Deutsche Synchronkartei - German dubbing credits
• Hoerspielland- Audio book discography