Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio rank
#60927
of 909177 performers
Top 10%
Herman Bing works on versatility rather than volume, and the catalogue keeps proving that the quieter choice was the correct one.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Herman Bing appears in 8 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Herman. Dumbo is the clearest case: a film rated 7.0 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for family, animation, romance. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Jack Kinney, Robert Z. Leonard, William A. Wellman and others, Herman Bing helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Dumbo (1941) as The Ringmaster (voice) (uncredited) · Footlight Parade (1933) as Fralick · The Merry Widow (1934) as Zizipoff
Career snapshot
Ranked #60927 of 909177 performers tracked in the Nutevio library.
Films in Nutevio
8
1932–1941
Career length
9 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
7.0
Dumbo
Average Nutevio score
6.4
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
7.0
Dumbo
Most frequent director
Jack Kinney
1 film together
Longest collaboration
1×
With Jack Kinney
Most common genre
Romance
4 titles
Average runtime
1h 35m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
6.8
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
6.2
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1940s
7.0 average MV
The 1940s are where the work and the material meet. Dumbo — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1940s
7.0
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1940s
7.0
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. The Great Ziegfeld, Call of the Wild, The Merry Widow.
Most productive era
1930s
7 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1930s | 1940s |
|---|---|---|
| Drama | 6.34 films | — |
| Comedy | 6.52 films | — |
| Crime | 6.32 films | — |
| Romance | 6.44 films | — |
| Horror | 6.21 film | — |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Franz Odenheimer (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak · Most recent film
1941Dumbo
7.0 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once. The current state of the argument, as The Ringmaster (voice) (uncredited).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
8 of 8 films
as The Ringmaster (voice) (uncredited)
Directed by Jack Kinney
as Fralick
Directed by Lloyd Bacon
as Costumer
Directed by Robert Z. Leonard
as Sam
Directed by William A. Wellman
as Zizipoff
Directed by Ernst Lubitsch
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
Loading credits…
The defining work
#1
The Ringmaster (voice) (uncredited)
Dumbo (1941)
Performance score6.9
The performance the rest of the career is read through. The Ringmaster (voice) (uncredited) gives Herman Bing a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Fralick
Footlight Parade (1933)
Performance score6.6
Footlight Parade asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Fralick is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Costumer
The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
Performance score6.5
The Great Ziegfeld asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Costumer is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
Sam
Call of the Wild (1935)
Performance score6.5
Call of the Wild asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Sam is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as The Ringmaster (voice) (uncredited)
Start here. Dumbo is the clearest statement of what Herman Bing does — accessible, 64 minutes, and rated 7.0 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Herman at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
Footlight Parade (1933)
A deliberate change of key after Dumbo — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
The Merry Widow (1934)
Keeps the comedy register of Footlight Parade but asks for a colder reading of it.
Call of the Wild (1935)
Keeps the romance register of The Merry Widow but asks for a colder reading of it.
The Great Ziegfeld (1936)
Keeps the romance register of Call of the Wild but asks for a colder reading of it.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Frank Borzage
Director
1 film together
Notably A Farewell to Arms
Mervyn LeRoy
Director
1 film together
Notably Three on a Match
Robert Florey
Director
1 film together
Notably Murders in the Rue Morgue
Lloyd Bacon
Director
1 film together
Notably Footlight Parade
Ernst Lubitsch
Director
1 film together
Notably The Merry Widow
William A. Wellman
Director
1 film together
Notably Call of the Wild
Robert Z. Leonard
Director
1 film together
Notably The Great Ziegfeld
Jack Kinney
Director
1 film together
Notably Dumbo
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Jack Kinney
Director
1 film together · 7.0 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
DumboLloyd Bacon
Director
1 film together · 6.6 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Footlight ParadeErnst Lubitsch
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Merry WidowRobert Z. Leonard
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
The Great ZiegfeldWilliam A. Wellman
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Call of the WildMervyn LeRoy
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Three on a MatchFrank Borzage
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
A Farewell to ArmsRobert Florey
Director
1 film together · 6.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
Murders in the Rue MorgueSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Footlight Parade
as Fralick
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
The Great Ziegfeld
as Costumer
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Dumbo
as The Ringmaster (voice) (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
The Great Ziegfeld
as Costumer
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Dumbo
as The Ringmaster (voice) (uncredited)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Herman Bing has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Romance Legend
Awarded
4 catalogue titles in romance, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Dumbo
as The Ringmaster (voice) (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Murders in the Rue Morgue
as Franz Odenheimer (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
The Great Ziegfeld
as Costumer
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Murders in the Rue Morgue
as Franz Odenheimer (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Dumbo
as The Ringmaster (voice) (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Call of the Wild
as Sam
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
The Merry Widow
as Zizipoff
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
A Farewell to Arms
as Swiss Postal Clerk (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
Tom Hanks
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Bonnie Hunt
Built a career in the same territory: animation and family
Michael Caine
Built a career in the same territory: adventure and drama
Mark Ruffalo
Built a career in the same territory: crime and mystery
Harvey Keitel
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Tom Wilkinson
Built a career in the same territory: comedy and adventure
Have your say
Community
Which Herman Bing performance holds up best?
Our readers argue about this one. Make your case, or read the ranked debate already in progress.
Join the conversation
Reference
Continue exploring
Trending performers
Directors they work with
Collections to read next
