John van Dreelen

Who was John van Dreelen?

John van Dreelen was a Dutch-born American-based actor, who frequently performed on television from the 1960s through the 1980s. He was born as Jacques van Drielen Gimberg and until 1950 his stage name was Jack Gimberg, at which time he changed it to John van Dreelen.

The son of Dutch actor and director Louis Gimberg, van Dreelen was fluent in several languages, he escaped the Emslandlager labor camp near Papenburg by disguising himself as one of the German officers he would later play so often on both big and small screens. Though he appeared in many European films, van Dreelen is best remembered as an A-list guest star in dozens of American television shows from the early 1960s to the mid-1980s, such as 12 O'Clock High, The Twilight Zone, The Man from UNCLE, Blue Light, and Mission: Impossible. In 1962, he played the part of Ulrich in the episode "The Immigrants" on CBS's Rawhide. In 1964 he played a movie producer in the Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Bountiful Beauty." In 1965 he was again cast as the murderer in the episode, "The Case of the Feather Cloak."