Olaf Olsen, 81, film actor and filmmaker

Olaf Olsen, a longtime Ridgefielder who had a distinguished career both in front of and behind the camera, died Sept. 5, it was learned this week. Mr. Olsen was 81 years old and had been living at Laurelwood.
A native of Germany who was born in 1919, he came to England when he was 15 years old and almost immediately began a career in film and radio. Mr. Olsen played in 29 British films including The Man in the White Suit, Lili Marlene, and We Dive at Dawn, performing alongside such greats as Alec Guinness, Deborah Kerr, and Leslie Howard.
At 18, he played a German POW in the BBC production of Journey’s End, the first full-length drama ever broadcast over live television.
He was only 19 in 1938 when he played Queen Victoria’s son-in-law with Dame Anna Neagle as the queen in Sixty Glorious Years, a film about the reign of Queen Victoria. In 1953, the year of the present queen’s coronation, he portrayed Prince Albert with Miss Neagle in the musical version of the Victoria story, The Glorious Days, which was at the Palace Theatre for two years.
Mr. Olsen also appeared in more than 1,000 BBC radio and TV broadcasts.
In 1954, he went to Hollywood to sign a movie contract but Jack B. Ward offered him the vice-presidency of Ward Acres Studios of New Rochelle, N.Y., a newly formed enterprise that produced TV commercials and documentaries.
In 1957 he and Mr. Ward moved to the former Ridgefield Golf Club calling it Ward Acres, and breeding and raising award-winning thoroughbred racing horses.
Mr. Olsen continued to produce travel documentaries as the Olsen Film Productions Company, serving as cameraman, producer, director, cutter, editor, and synchronizer. Distributed by the J. Arthur Rank Group, many were world travelogues, but some also dealt with horses and wildlife. His favorite is the widely shown Lion Country Safari.
Almost as soon as he arrived here, Mr. Olsen became active in the Red Cross. He also formed a group that visited and entertained patients — including the criminally insane — at the old Fairfield Hills State Hospital in Newtown, Southbury Training School, and other institutions and hospitals in the region. He showed his films to many organizations and in many schools.
Did he miss acting? he was asked in 1975. “No,” he replied. “When you’ve had your name in lights for two years in London, what else do you want?”
Nonetheless, in 1996, when he returned to London for a memorial to Dame Anna Neagle, mobs of fans sought his autograph and Princess Anne invited him to a party. “What a delightful and fascinating man he is,” the Princess was quoted as saying after meeting and chatting with Mr. Olsen.
No services were planned.