For the Conservancy, Dietrich Bader Recalls the Paris Fire That Sparked a Career

Photo by David James Heiss

Dietrich Bader arrives at The Asistencia.

By David James Heiss

Redlands News Collective

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As a 7-year-old boy in a Paris theater, Dietrich Bader just wanted to watch Charlie Chaplin. He didn’t realize he was about to give his first public performance.

Speaking to more than a dozen guests during the Redlands Conservancy’s "Second Tuesday" speaker series at the Asistencia on April 14, the veteran actor recounted the moment a small fire broke out on stage, halting the film’s exhibition.

As the organist stopped and the audience began to boo, the young Bader — infatuated with Chaplin and known to reenact scenes in private — felt a surge of protective loyalty.

"No one boos Charlie Chaplin," Bader recalled thinking.

He ran to the stage to rescue the moment, launching into an impromptu rendition of the film. The organist, catching the boy's lead, resumed the background music.

"To which I was very grateful," Bader told the audience.

The improvisation lasted longer than expected as stagehands tended to the disruption. Bader had to stretch his act, eventually concluding with a roll and the tipping of a pantomime hat. The performance earned him a standing ovation and a "Bravo" from an elderly man in the front row.

That attention, he said, got him hooked on acting.

Bader noted a striking similarity between his childhood experience and a scene in the 1992 biopic Chaplin starring Robert Downey Jr. In that film, a young Charlie Chaplin watches his mother, a vaudeville performer, suffer a breakdown on stage. The character says, "No one boos my mother," before taking the stage to perform his own pantomime.

Despite his early start in comedy and pantomime, Bader told the crowd he never intended to become a television actor known for roles in “The Drew Carey Show,” “American Housewife,” or films like “Napoleon Dynamite.” He initially set his sights on becoming a classically trained Shakespearean actor.

He described himself as the "odd child out" in a family of high academic achievers: his brother Christopher attended Princeton, his brother John went to Yale, and his sister Kathy attended Duke. At his father’s insistence — and offer of tuition — Bader attended the North Carolina School of the Arts. There, he met his mentor, Yuri Belov, a director of the Moscow Art Theatre.

The conversation eventually turned to his prolific career in voice acting, ranging from “The Simpsons and King of the Hill” to his turn as the Caped Crusader in “Batman: The Brave and the Bold.” Bader explained that voice work requires immense creativity, noting that a single actor might voice three or more characters in the same scene.

"This, from a man who has voiced dinosaurs for ‘Jurassic Park,’" he joked, referencing a career that spans from major franchises to direct-to-video favorites like “What’s New, Scooby-Doo?”

The presentation was part of the Redlands Conservancy’s free monthly series. The next installment, "Citrograph Printing: The Storied Oldest Continuing Business in Redlands," featuring owner Al Hernandez, is scheduled for May 12 from 6:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Asistencia, 26930 Barton Rd.

Registration is requested in advance at Citrograph Printing Company | Redlands Conservancy.