European Film Star Postcards

For Jan.

Jewish cabaret artist Valeska Gert (1892-1978) became famous in Berlin with her radical modern dances. With her dark, aquiline features. she was also active as an artists' model and appeared in several classics of the Weimar Cinema. After a comeback in Fellini’s Giulietta degli spiriti/Juliet of the Spirits (1965), Gert worked with the film makers of the New German Cinema of the 1970s.

German card. Photo: Atelier Leopold, München (Munich). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Dadaist Mixed Media Art Nights

Valeska Gert was born as Gertrud Valesca Samosch in 1892 in Berlin to a Jewish family. She was the eldest daughter of manufacturer Theodor Samosch and Augusta Rosenthal.

Exhibiting no interest in academics or office work, Gert began taking dance lessons at the age of nine. This, combined with her love of ornate fashion, was the basis for her career in dance and performance art.

In 1915, she studied acting with Maria Moissi.

World War I had a negative effect on her father’s finances, forcing Gert to rely on herself far more than other bourgeois daughters typically might. As World War I raged on, Gert joined a Berliner dance group and created revolutionary satirical dance.

In 1916, Gert made her dance debut in a Berlin film house, performing between film reels. The same year, she began acting at the Munich Kammerspiele.

Following engagements at the Deutsches Theater and the Tribüne in Berlin, Gert was invited to perform in expressionist plays in Dadaist mixed media art nights. Her performances in Oskar Kokoschka’s Hiob (1918), Ernst Toller’s Transformation (1919), and Frank Wedekind’s Franziska earned her popularity.

During this time, she also performed in the Schall und Rauch cabaret. Gert launched a tour of her own dances, with titles like Dance in Orange, Boxing, Circus, Japanese Grotesque, Death, and Whore. With her highly athletic style of dance, she created a sensation.

She also contributed articles for magazines like Die Weltbühne and the Berliner Tageszeitung.

German card. Collection: Didier Hanson.

A Social Conscience Melodrama

By 1923, Valeska Gert focused her work more on film acting than live performance.

She played Puck in the Ufa production Ein Sommernachtstraum/Wood Love (Hans Neumann, 1925). This adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream had an all-star cast including Werner Krauss, Alexander Granach en Hans Albers.

In 1925 she also appeared in the classic Die freudlose Gasse/Joyless Street (G. W. Pabst, 1925), starring Asta Nielsen and the young Greta Garbo in her second major role.

Craig Butler at AllMovie: “Street is not about any one person but about a time, a place and, above all, a society that was perilously divided into two very unequal parts. Director G.W. Pabst and scenarist Willy Haas have created a social conscience melodrama that is enormously powerful; it's manipulative at times, but there's such commitment behind it that most viewers won't mind. Pabst is excellent at exploring the bleakness and despair of the residents of the Street and contrasting it with the amorality and immorality of the upper classes, who think nothing of spreading false rumors that will destroy many but will increase their own already considerable wealth.”

Gert also performed in G. W. Pabst’s Tagebuch einer Verlorenen/Diary of a Lost Girl (G. W. Pabst, 1929), and Die 3-Groschen-Oper/The Threepenny Opera (G. W. Pabst, 1931), loosely based on the 1928 musical theatre success The Threepenny Opera by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill.

Gert played Mrs. Peachum, and according to Hal Erickson at AllMovie the film version “is every bit as good as the stage original, and sometimes even better.”

In France she appeared in Jean Renoir’s second film Nana (1926), a lavishly appointed adaptation of Emile Zola's novel. Other classic silent films with her were the science fiction horror film Alraune/Mandrake (Henrik Galeen, 1928) featuring Brigitte Helm, and Menschen am Sonntag/People on Sunday (Robert Siodmak, Rochus Gliese, Edgar G. Ulmer, 1930), based on a screenplay by Billy Wilder.

In the late twenties, Gert returned to the stage with pieces emphasizing Tontänze (sound dances), which explored the relationship between movement and sound.

German card. Photo: Atelier Leopold, München (Munich). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Exile

In 1933, Valeska Gert’s Jewish heritage resulted in her ban from the German stage. Her exile from performance in Germany sent her to London for some time, where she worked both in theatre and film.

In London she worked on the experimental short film Pett and Pot (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1934), which would long stand as her last film.

In 1936, Gert wed an English writer, Robin Hay Anderson. It was her second marriage and her first husband had been Helmuth von Krause.

In 1938, she emigrated to the United States, where it was difficult for her to continue her previous career. She lived on the welfare of a Jewish refugee community and found work washing dishes and sometimes posing as a nude model.

This same year, she hired the 17-year old Georg Kreisler as a rehearsal pianist to continue focus on cabaret work.

By 1941, she had opened the Beggar Bar in New York, where Julian Beck, Judith Malina, and Jackson Pollock worked for her. Tennessee Williams also worked for her for a short time as a busboy, but was fired for refusing to pool his tips.

By 1944, Gert had relocated to Provincetown, Massachusetts, where she opened Valeska's. During this period, Gert was called to Provincetown court for throwing garbage out of her window and failing to pay a dance partner. She called upon Williams as a character witness, which he did with pleasure, despite the fact that she fired him. He told incredulous friends that he "simply liked her".

Asta Nielsen. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1140/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

Brigitte Helm. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5501/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa. Distributed in Italy by Ballerini& Frattini, Florence.

Fellini and Fassbinder

In 1947 Valeska Gert returned to Europe. After stays in Paris and Zurich, she went to Blockaded Berlin in 1949, where she opened the cabaret Hexenküche (Witch's Kitchen) in the next year. Following Hexenküche, she opened Ziegenstall on the island of Sylt.

In the 1960s, she made her screen comeback. She was rediscovered by Federico Fellini who gave her a part in his film Giulietta degli spiriti/Juliet of the Spirits (1965), featuring Giulietta Masina.

The film brought her to the attention of a new generation of German directors. During the 1970s, she played in an episode of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's serial Acht Stunden sind kein Tag/Eight Hours are Not a Day (1973), the experimental film Die Betörung der blauen Matrosen/The Enchantment of the Blue Sailors (Tabea Blumenschein, Ulrike Ottinger, 1975) and in Volker Schlöndorff's Der Fangschuss/Coup de grâce (1976), with Matthias Habich.

Schlöndorff also made a documentary about her, Nur zum Spaß, nur zum/Just for fun, just for the game (1977). Gert told in this film about theatre in Berlin in the 1920s, and her dances were re-created by Pola Kinski.

In 1978 Werner Herzog invited Gert to play the real estate broker Knock in his remake of F.W. Murnau's classic film Nosferatu, but she died just two weeks later before filming began.

On 18 March 1978 neighbours and friends in Kampen, Germany, reported she had not been seen for four days. When her door was forced in the presence of police she was found dead. She was 86 years old.

In 1970. she had been awarded with the Filmband in Gold for lifelong achievement in German film.

Valeska Gert’s art was for the first time exhibited in 2010 in the Berlin Museum for Contemporary Art Hamburger Bahnhof.

Valeska Gert - Die Frau im Taumel des Lasters. Short scene from the documentary Cabaret Berlin - Die wilde Bühne 1919 - 1933. Source: dict adtv (YouTube)

Scene from Der Fangschuss/Coup de grâce (1976). Source: Matcarriere (YouTube).

Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Craig Butler (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.

English actor, film director and producer Richard Attenborough (1923) won two Oscars for Gandhi in 1983. He has also won four BAFTA Awards and three Golden Globe Awards. As an actor he is known for his roles in Brighton Rock (1947), The Great Escape (1963) and Jurassic Park (1993).

Vintage postcard, no. 950. Photo: British Lion.

Psychopathic Young Gangster

Richard Samuel Attenborough, Baron Attenborough was born in Cambridge, England in 1923. ‘Dickie’ was the eldest of three sons of Mary Attenborough née Clegg a founding member of the Marriage Guidance Council and Frederick Levi Attenborough, a scholar and academic administrator who was a don at Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Richard’s brothers were nature documentarian David Attenborough and John Attenborough, who was an executive at Alfa Romeo before his death in 2012.

Attenborough was educated at Wyggeston Grammar School for Boys in Leicester and studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA). At the age of 12, his acting career had started when he appeared in shows at Leicester's Little Theatre.

Attenborough's film career began with an uncredited role as a deserting sailor in the war film In Which We Serve (Noël Coward, David Lean, 1942).

During the Second World War Attenborough served in the Royal Air Force. After initial pilot training he was seconded to the newly-formed RAF Film Unit at Pinewood Studios, under the command of Flight Lieutenant John Boulting where he appeared with Edward G. Robinson in the propaganda film Journey Together (John Boulting, 1943-1945).

He then volunteered to fly with the Film Unit and after further training, where he sustained permanent ear-damage, qualified as a sergeant, flying on several missions over Europe filming from the rear gunner's position to record the outcome of Bomber Command sorties.

After the war, he made his breakthrough as a psychopathic young gangster in the film of Graham Greene's novel Brighton Rock (John Boulting, 1947), a part that he had previously played to great acclaim at the Garrick Theatre in 1942. Brighton Rock received critical acclaim and was the most popular British film of 1947.

After that, he was type-cast for many years as working-class misfits or cowards in films like The Guinea Pig (Roy Boulting, 1948) in which the 26-year-old Attenborough was wholly credible as a 13-year-old schoolboy, London Belongs to Me (Sidney Gilliat, 1948) with Alastair Sim, and the naval drama Morning Departure (Roy Ward Baker, 1950) starring John Mills.

In 1949 exhibitors voted Attenborough the 6th most popular British actor at the box office.

British autograph card, 1949.

Hollywood Blockbuster

In 1952, Richard Attenborough starred in the original West End production of Agatha Christie's The Mousetrap, which went on to become the world's longest-running stage production. He took a 10% profit-participation in the production, which proved to be a wise business decision.

During the 1950s, Attenborough worked prolifically in British films and appeared in successful comedies, such as Private's Progress (Roy Boulting, 1956) opposite Ian Carmichael, and I'm All Right Jack (Roy Boulting, 1959), also with Dennis Price.

In the late 1950s, Attenborough formed a production company, Beaver Films, with Bryan Forbes. He began to build a profile as a producer on projects including the crime drama The League of Gentlemen (Basil Dearden, 1959), the drama The Angry Silence (Guy Green, 1960) withPier Angeli, and Whistle Down the Wind (Bryan Forbes, 1961) starring Hayley Mills. In the first two he also performed as an actor.

In 1963 he appeared in the ensemble cast of The Great Escape (John Sturges, 1963) as RAF Squadron Leader Roger Bartlett (‘Big X’), the head of the escape committee and based on the real life exploits of Roger Bushell. It was his first appearance in a major Hollywood blockbuster and his most successful film up to that time.

During the 1960s, he expanded his range of character roles in films such as Séance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964) and Guns at Batasi (John Guillermin, 1964), for which he won the BAFTA Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM).

In 1965 he played Lew Moran opposite James Stewart in The Flight of the Phoenix (Robert Aldrich, 1965) and in 1967 and 1968, he won back-to-back Golden Globe Awards in the category of Best Supporting Actor, the first time for The Sand Pebbles (Robert Wise, 1967), co-starring Steve McQueen, and the second time for his comedic turn as a circus owner in Doctor Dolittle (Richard Fleischer, 1968), starring Rex Harrison.

His feature film directorial debut was the all-star screen version of the hit musical Oh! What a Lovely War (Richard Attenborough, 1969). Sergio Angelini in Directors in British and Irish Cinema: “a project inherited from John Mills, who had developed the screenplay with Len Deighton from Joan Littlewood's stage production. This satiric fantasia on the First World War is largely set on Brighton Pier, but Attenborough and cinematographer Gerry Turpin successfully open out the play with a number of bravura sequences, the best remembered being the final shot which pulls back to reveal an entire hillside covered in white crosses.”

He later directed two epic period films: Young Winston (Richard Attenborough, 1972), which starred his favourite leading man, Anthony Hopkins, as Winston Churchill, and A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977), an all-star account of Operation Market Garden in World War II.

His acting appearances became sporadic as he concentrated more on directing and producing. His portrayal of the serial killer John Christie in 10 Rillington Place (Richard Fleischer, 1971) garnered excellent reviews and he also played to great acclaim in Indian director Satyajit Ray's period piece The Chess Players (1977).

Following his appearance in The Human Factor (Otto Preminger, 1979), he stopped with film acting for more than a decade.

British autograph card, 1949.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 475. Photo: Charter Films.

In Search of Gandhi

In 1982, Richard Attenborough finally realized a project he had been attempting to get made for 18 years: Gandhi, featuring Ben Kingsley. It proved to be an enormous commercial and critical success. Gandhi won eight Academy Awards, and Attenborough himself was awarded with the Oscar for Best Director and as the film's producer, the Oscar for Best Picture. For his historical epic, he also won the Golden Globe as Best Director in 1983. He published his book In Search of Gandhi, another product of his fascination with the Indian leader.

Attenborough then directed the screen version of the musical A Chorus Line (Richard Attenborough, 1985) and the anti-apartheid drama Cry Freedom (Richard Attenborough, 1987), based on the life and death of the prominent anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko and the experiences of Donald Woods. He was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Best Director for both films.

His more recent films as director and producer include the underrated Chaplin (Richard Attenborough, 1992) starring Robert Downey, Jr. as Charlie Chaplin and Shadowlands (Richard Attenborough, 1993), based on the relationship between C.S. Lewis (Anthony Hopkins) and Joy Gresham (Debra Winger).

He made his come-back as an actor as the eccentric owner of a dinosaur theme park in Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1993) and the sequel, The Lost World: Jurassic Park (Steven Spielberg, 1997).

He also starred in the remake of Miracle on 34th Street (Les Mayfield, 1994). Since then he has made occasional appearances in supporting roles, including as Sir William Cecil in the historical drama Elizabeth (Shekhar Kapur,1998) with Cate Blanchett, Jacob in Joseph and the Amazing TechnicolorDreamcoat (David Mallet, 1999) and as The Narrator in the film adaptation of Spike Milligan's comedy book Puckoon (Terence Ryan 2002).

He made his only appearance in a Shakespeare film when he played the British ambassador who announces that Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead at the end of Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996).

British postcard by Show Parade Picture Service, London, in the series 'The People', no. P1065. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation Ltd.

Entirely Up to You, Darling

Richard Attenborough has been married to English actress Sheila Sim since 1945. With his wife, they founded the Richard and Sheila Attenborough Visual Arts Centre.

He also founded the Jane Holland Creative Centre for Learning at Waterford Kamhlaba in Swaziland in memory of his elder daughter. Jane Holland, her mother-in-law, and her 15-year-old daughter Lucy were killed in 2004 when a tsunami caused by the Indian Ocean earthquake struck Khao Lak, Thailand where they were holidaying.

Attenborough has two other children, Michael and Charlotte, an actress. Michael is a theatre director and the Artistic director of the Almeida Theatre in London.

In 1967, Richard Attenborough was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE). He was knighted in 1976 and in 1993 he was made a life peer as Baron Attenborough, of Richmond upon Thames. At 84, he made his last film as director and producer, Closing the Ring (Richard Attenborough, 2007).

According to Jason Buchanan at AllMovie, “Sixty-five years after making his screen debut as a young stoker in co-directors Noël Coward and David Lean's World War II drama In Which We Serve, Richard Attenborough perfects the balance between epic story and intimate tale with this drama starring Shirley MacLaine and Neve Campbell as a mother and daughter who find a relic from the past sparking an incendiary series of events.”

Attenborough served as vice president (1973–1995) and president (2002–2010) of the British Academy of Film and Television Arts and as president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (2003– ). For 33 years he was President of the Muscular Dystrophy campaign, and he is also the patron of the United World Colleges movement. He passionately believes in education, primarily education that does not judge upon colour, race, creed or religion.

In 2008 Attenborough published, in association with his long standing associate Diana Hawkins, an informal autobiography Entirely Up to You, Darling.

Later that year he entered hospital with heart problems and was fitted with a pacemaker. In December 2008 he suffered a fall at his home after a stroke, and went into a coma, but came out of it within a few days. Shortly before her 90th birthday, in June 2012 Sheila Sim entered the actors' home Denville Hall, for which she and Attenborough had helped raise funds.

In March 2013, in light of his deteriorating health, Attenborough moved into Denville Hall to be with his wife.

Scene from Brighton Rock (1947). Source: Legendy2k (YouTube).

Trailer for Gandhi (1982). Source: 05HK09 (YouTube).

Sources: Sergio Angelini (Directors in British and Irish Cinema), Jason Buchanan (AllMovie), Encyclopaedia Britannica, AllMovie, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Fernanda Negri Pouget (1889-1955) was an Italian actress who starred in the Italian silent cinema of the 1910s.

Italian postcard by Vettori, Bologna, no. 171. Photo: Civirani, Rome

Sad Eyes

Fernanda Negri Pouget was born Fernanda Negri in Rome in 1889. She first enrolled as a pupil of the conservatory Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia.

In 1906, she was hired by the new Roman film company Alberini & Santoni (which would become Cines). She debuted in the short Il romanzo di un Pierrot/Romance of aPierrot (Mario Caserini, 1906).

Until 1909 she mostly played supporting parts, often in film d’art-like films by Mario Caserini such as Romeo e Giulietta/Romeo and Juliet (1908) and Beatrice Cenci (1909), but as of 1909 she also had the female leads in films such as Marco Visconti (Mario Caserini, 1909), La sposa del Nilo/The Bride of the Nile (Enrico Guazzoni, 1911), San Francesco il poverello d’Assisi/St. Francis (Enrico Guazzoni, 1911) and Santa Cecilia/St. Cecilia (Enrique Santos, 1911).

Quite soon the slender, frail looking girl with the sad eyes and the tip-tilted nose became one of the major dramatic actresses of Italian silent cinema, challenging the dominance at Cines of ‘first actress’ Maria Gasperini Caserini, Caserini’s wife.

In 1912, she switched to the Ambrosio film company of Turin, where the year before she had already collaborated in the films L’innocente (Edoardo Bencivenga, 1911), based on Gabriele D’Annunzio’s novel, and La madre e la morte (Arrigo Frusta, 1911).

In L’innocente/The Innocent she played the female lead of Giuliana Hermil, a part which sixty-five years after would be played by Laura Antonelli in Luchino Visconti’s adaptation.

In these years she also married the French actor Armand Pouget, who started acting in films by Ambrosio as of 1912. Henceforth, Fernanda was named Negri Pouget.

Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Turin.

Armand Pouget. Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Turin, no. 191

Facing Real Lions

At Ambrosio, Negri Pouget acted in many films, at first several by Mario Caserini, who had shifted to Ambrosio as well. An example was Nelly, la domatrice/Nellie, the Lion Tamer (Mario Caserini, 1912), in which Negri Pouget faced real lions when playing a female lion tamer. She also acted in films by Luigi Maggi (Satana/Satan, 1912), Febo Mari (Il critico/The Critic, 1913), Eleuterio Rodolfi and others.

In 1913 Negri Pouget peaked in various Ambrosio films. She was Beatrice Portinari in Dante e Beatrice/The Life of Dante (Mario Caserini, 1913), she was a grandmother who remembers her heroic deeds during the Risorgimento in La lampada della nonna/Grandmother's Lamp (Luigi Maggi, 1913), she played a newly discovered film star in Cenerentola/A Modern Cinderella (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1913) – the film gives a wonderful image of the Ambrosio studio ‘in action’ at the time.

Finally she was the pitiful blind girl Nidia/Nydia in the Ambrosio version of the epic Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1913), while simultaneously the Pasquali company, also of Turin, made a competing version, with Suzanne De Labroy as Nidia.

Later, Negri Pouget had memorable parts in Il dottor Antonio/Doctor Anthony (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1914) opposite Hamilton Revelle in the title role, and in the period piece Il leone di Venezia/The Lion of Venice (Luigi Maggi, 1914).

In 1917 she played three outstanding parts, as poor Esther in the adventure film Il fiacre No. 13/Cab Number 13 (Alberto Capozzi, Gero Zambuto, 1917) with Elena Makowska and Alberto Capozzi, as a little vagabond turned into a painter’s model in Lucciola/Firefly (Augusto Genina, 1917) with again Makowska, and as a tomboy in Maschiaccio/Tomboy (Augusto Genina, 1917) with Vasco Creti.

In the early 1920s, Negri Pouget worked for several other companies, but mainly at the Roman company Nova Film, e.g. acting as Gasperina in the Luigi Pirandello adaptation Ma non è una cosa seria (Augusto Camerini, 1921), co-starring Romano Calò, Ignazio Lupi and Carmen Boni.

Her last performance she gave in 1923 in the film La gola del lupo (Torello Rolli, 1923). According to critic Lucio D'Ambra, Negri Pouget was characterized by the fact that she stayed far from the languid poses of the divas, preferring the expression of a lively performance on the screen.

Fernanda Negri Pouget died in Rome in 1955.

Italian postcard.

Fragment of Cenerentola/A Modern Cinderella (1913). Source: Sempre in penombra (YouTube).

Sources: Sempre in penombra (Italian), Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.

Dear friends,

Another month, a new design. The previous months, I rejuvenated the look of EFSP, bit by bit, here and there, but the postcards, stars and stories will stay vintage.

What's new? Above the blog there's an alphabet so you don't need to scroll along the always growing list of stars when searching for one.

There's also more interspace in the texts. More importantly you can view the postcards now always in full, without double clicking. I'm also using more variety in image sizes.

And there are several more small changes, for which diehards may search on a wet Sunday afternoon.

I hope you like the result. Any suggestions? Let them be heard.

Greetings from Amsterdam!

French actor and scriptwriter Marcel Lévesque (1877-1962) excelled in silent and sound comedies but he also played memorable parts in the crime serials by Louis Feuillade and in Jean Renoir’s Le crime de M. Lange.

Marcel Levesque in La nouvelle mission de Judex

French postcard by Coquemer Gravures, Paris. Photo: Gerschel / Gaumont. Still for La nouvelle mission de Judex (Louis Feuillade, 1917-1918).

Countless Witty Characters

Joseph Marcel Lévesque was born in the Montmartre district of Paris in 1877.

He entered the Paris Conservatory but left quickly enough to make his stage debut in 1896. In 1900, he joined the cast of the Théâtre de l’Athénée, where for five years he forged a reputation as an actor who easily changed from comedy to drama.

Afterwards he also played at the Odeon and the Palais Royal. Like so many other stage performers, the film world discovered his talent, as of 1909. Lévesque started to appear in various shorts, but little is known about this.

He did act with Jean Dax and Nelly Cormon in the short historical film L’arrestation de la Duchesse de Berry/The arrest of the Duchess of Berry (André Calmettes, 1910) for Films d'Art (Pathé).

In 1913, he joined Gaumont where he met actor-director Léonce Perret for whom he wrote La belle-mère/The Stepmother (1913) with Suzanne Le Bret, followed by Léonce et Poupette (1913), which he scripted as well and in which he played Léonce’s man servant.

He followed this with the lead in L’illustre Mâchefer/The Illustrious Clinker (1913), directed by Louis Feuillade, who would become his regular director between 1913 and 1918 and which whom he acted in almost 30 films plus some serials.

Feuillade would have him play countless witty characters in the comedy series La vie drôle/Funny Life.

Meanwhile, Marcel Lévesque had tried his luck at film direction at Gaumont with La pintade et le dindon/Guinea pig and fowl (1915) with Madeleine Guitty as his partner.

Feuillade also used him in more mature roles for his crime serials Les Vampires/The Vampires (1915-1916) with the dangerous Musidora– Lévesque played Oscar Mazamette - and Judex (1916-1917).

In Judex he played the unpredictable Cocantin, a role he resumed in Feuillade’s sequel La nouvelle mission de Judex/The New Mission of Judex (1917-1918), again with René Cresté as the protagonist.

Lévesque also played in a parody of the crime serials, Le pied qui étreint (1916) by Jacques Feyder, with again Musidora, René Poyen (Bout de Zan) and André Roanne.

Pina Menichelli and Marcel Lévesque in La dame de Chez Maxim's

Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Photo: publicity still for La dame de Chez Maxim's (Amleto Palermi, 1923) with Pina Menichelli.

Extraordinary, Subtle And Discreet Performance

Although Marcel Lévesque did not always have the lead in his films, his extraordinary, subtle and discreet performance made him steal the scenes in whichever film he acted in.

In 1918, producer Louis Nalpas engaged him for some years to be Serpentin in a burlesque series draped around his character and directed by Jean Durand, occasionally also by Alfred Machin.

Gaston Modot was often his co-actor here.

In 1919 Lévesque also played in the prestigious, two-part exotic drama La sultane de l’amour (René Le Somptier, Charles Burguet, 1919), starring France Dhélia.

In 1920 Marcel Lévesque went back to the theatre to act in Je t’aime (I love you), a new play by Sacha Guitry.

In the early 1920s Lévesque went to Italy to be the comical antagonist of Pina Menichelli in the Georges Feydeau comedies La dama de Chez Maxim's/La dame de chez Maxim’s (Amleto Palermi, 1923) and Occupati d'Amelia/Occupe-toi d’Amélie (Telemaco Ruggeri, 1924). These were Menichelli's last films before she married and retired from the screen.

He also played with Mario Bonnard in Il tacchino/The turkey (1924) and Théodore et Cie (1925) and with Palermi again in Florette e Patapon (1927) with Ossi Oswalda.

French postcard by Coquemer Gravures, Paris. Photo: Gerschel / Gaumont. Still for La nouvelle mission de Judex (Louis Feuillade, 1917-1918).

The Unforgettable, Authority Respecting Concierge

Unlike many other actors from the silent cinema, Marcel Lévesque’s career took a new turn with the advent of the talkies.

He became one of the most important supporting actors in early French sound cinema.

Lévesque played a pharmacist in love with Josseline Gaël in Jacques Tourneur’s drama Tout ça ne vaut pas l’amour/All this is not worth the love, 1931) starring Jean Gabin, and he played a collector of garters in L’affaire Coquelet/The Cockelet Case (Jean Gourguet, 1934).

But most of all he was the unforgettable, authority respecting concierge in Jean Renoir’s Le crime de Monsieur Lange/The Crime of M. Lange (1935-1936), starring Florelle, René Lefèvre and JulesBerry.

In 1936 Lévesque found Sacha Guitry again for Faisons un rêve/Let’s Have a Dream, an adaptation of a play by le Maître written in 1916, and starring Jacqueline Delubac and Raimu.

During the war years Lévesque acted in a handful of films such as Marcel L’Herbier’s La nuit fantastique (1941) with Micheline Presle, Jean Grémilllon’s Lumière d’été (1942) with Madeleine Renaud, and Sacha Guitry’s La Malibran (1943) with Suzy Prim.

Marcel Lévesque played his last film part in 1956 in Sacha Guitry’s Assassins et Voleurs/Thieves and Assassins, starring Jean Poiret and Michel Serrault.

In their biography of Lévesque at CineArtistes. Christophe Lawniczak and Philippe Pelletier mention that in many film encyclopaedias, the name of Marcel Lévesque is mentioned only for the distribution but not in the credits (he replaced Charles Bayard).

At the age of 70, Marcel Lévesque stopped film acting and moved to Couilly-Pont-aux-Dames, where he ran a retirement home for old actors. He died there in 1962.

Suzy Prim. French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 1066. Photo: Manuel Frères. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Sources: Christophe Lawniczak and Philippe Pelletier (CineArtistes) (French), Wikipedia (French) and IMDb.

We continue our new series 'Imported from the USA' with Lex Barker. After a Hollywood career as Tarzan and Mr Lana Turner, Barker moved to Europe. Here he worked with Federico Fellini and later became Old Shatterhand in the popular Karl May film series.

Vintage Dutch postcard. With Pierre Brice at right.

Old Shatterhand

“Lake Of Terror! Battle Of Vengeance!” was the tagline of the German-Yugoslavian-French co-production Der Schatz im Silbersee/Treasure of Silver Lake (Harald Reinl, 1962), the first and the best of the European Westerns based on the novels by Karl May.

In 1962-1963 Der Schatz im Silbersee had over 3 million visitors and today it is still an entertaining film with likable characters like the Apache chief Winnetou (Pierre Brice) and his blood brother, the frontiersman Old Shatterhand, played by Lex Barker.

Der Schatz im Silbersee made both into superstars in Germany.

Like his co-star and good friend Pierre Brice, Barker later started a singing career and released several records.

German postcard by Kruger. Photo: Bernard of Hollywood (Bruno Bernard) / CCC-Produktion. Publicity Still for Old Shatterhand (Hugo Fregonese, 1964).

German postcard, no. E 82. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Der Schatz im Silbersee/Treasure of Silver Lake (1962).

German postcard, no. E 9. Photo: Constantin. Still from Winnetou - 1. Teil/Apache Gold (Harald Reinl, 1963).

Caption: "Old Shatterhand puts a rat in the ammunition and saves himself with a bold leap onto the horse. The remaining car, surrounded by Kiowas, explodes."

Disowned By His Family

Lex Barker was born Alexander Crichlow Barker, Jr. into a prominent and wealthy New York family in 1919 He was the second child of Alexander Crichlow Barker, Sr., a Canadian-born building contractor and his American wife, the former Marion Thornton Beals. His father later worked as a stockbroker.

Barker took time off from being a high-profile playboy to attend Princeton University, but dropped out in order to join a theatrical stock company, much to the chagrin of his family.

He made it to Broadway once, in a small role in a short run of William Shakepeare's The Merry Wives of Windsor in 1938. He also had a small role in Orson Welles's disastrous Five Kings, which met with so many problems in Boston and Philadelphia that it never made it into New York.

Barker reportedly was spotted by scouts from Twentieth Century Fox and offered a film contract in 1939, but could not convince his parents to sign it (he was underage). Disowned by his family for his choice of an acting career, he worked in a steel mill and studied engineering at night.

In February 1941, ten months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, Barker left his fledgling acting career and enlisted in the US Army. He rose to the rank of major during the war. He was wounded in action fighting in Sicily.

Back in the United States, Barker recuperated at an Arkansas military hospital, then upon his discharge from service, travelled to Los Angeles. Within a short time, he landed a small role in his first film, Doll Face (Lewis Seiler, 1945) starring Vivian Blaine.

A string of small roles followed, the best of which was as Emmett Dalton in the Western Return of the Bad Men (Ray Enright, 1948). Barker then found the role that would bring him fame.

Dutch postcard by Facet Publishers, Lunteren, no. 4. Photo: Rank Film Distributors (Holland) N.V. Publicity still from Der Schatz im Silbersee (1963) with Pierre Brice.

German postcard, no. E 30. With Marie Versini.

German postcard, no. E 26. Photo: Constantin. Still from Winnetou I (1963) with Pierre Brice at right.

Caption: "Old Shatterhand, an Kräften und List dem Apachen-Häuptling überlegen, besiegt diesen, doch schont dessen Leben. Das Gottesurteil hat gesprochen. Old Shatterhand und seine Getreuen sind frei. (Old Shatterhand, superior in strength and cunning to the Apache chieftain, defeats him, but spares his life. The judgment of God has spoken. Old Shatterhand and his followers are free.)"

Ape-Man

In Tarzan's Magic Fountain (Lee Sholem, 1949), Lex Barker became the tenth official Tarzan of the cinema. He replaced Johnny Weissmuller. His blond, stunningly handsome, and intelligent appearance, as well as his athletic frame, helped make him popular in the role as Edgar Rice Burroughs’ ape-man.

Barker made only five Tarzan films produced by Sol Lesser between 1949 and 1953, but he remains one of the actors best known for the role.

His stardom as Tarzan led him to a variety of heroic roles in other films, primarily Westerns, and one interesting (and quite non-heroic) part in a World War II film, Away All Boats (Joseph Pevney, 1956) starring Jeff Chandler.

Barker's film career began to stall; the rise of television had erased many roles for the handsome leading man.

In 1957, he moved to Europe. Via England, he made his way to Italy where he was very much at home in the wave of Peplums. He also filmed in Spain and France. In Italy, he had a short but prestigious role as Anita Ekberg's fiancé in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960).

But Barker had his greatest success in Germany. There he starred in two films based on the Doctor Mabuse stories (formerly filmed by Fritz Lang). As the hunter of the notorious Dr. Mabuse he played F.B.I. man Joe Como in the two black and white crime thrillers Im Stahlnetz des Dr. Mabuse/Return Of Dr. Mabuse (Harald Reinl, 1961) and Die Unsichtbare Krallen des Dr. Mabuse/Invisible Dr. Mabuse (Harald Reinl, 1962).

He also starred in the drama Frauenarzt Dr. Sibelius/Dr. Sibelius (Rudolf Jugert, 1962) and the comedy Frühstück im Doppelbett/Breakfast in Bed (Axel von Ambesser, 1963) with O.W. Fischer.

His most successful film was the Karl May adaptation Der Schatz im Silbersee/Treasure of Silver Lake (Harald Reinl, 1962) with Pierre Brice as Winnetou.

German postcard, no. E 79. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Der Schatz im Silbersee (1962).

German postcard, no. E 53. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Der Schatz im Silbersee (1962).

German postcard, no. E 57. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Der Schatz im Silbersee (1962).

James Bond Rip-offs

In the following years, Lex Barker played in 12 more films based on novels by Karl May in which he played such well-known May characters as Old Shatterhand, Kara Ben Nemsi, and Dr. Karl Sternau.

While American audiences forgot about him, his popularity in Europe quickly soared above the popularity of stars like John Wayne. In 1966, Barker was awarded the Bambi Award as Best Foreign Actor in Germany.

He even recorded a single, in German, with Martin Böttcher, the composer of some of the soundtracks of the Karl May films: Ich bin morgen auf dem Weg zu dir (I'll be on the way to you tomorrow) and Mädchen in Samt und Seide (Girl in Silk and Velvet).

Barker returned to the United States occasionally and made a handful of guest appearances on American television episodes. But Europe, and especially Germany, was his professional home for the remainder of his life.

He showed up in a handful of James Bond rip-offs.In 1967, he appeared with Shirley MacLaine in one part of an American seven-part film Woman Times Seven (1967), directed by Vittorio de Sica.

Lex Barker died of a heart attack in 1973 in New York. He was 54. Barker had been married five times. His wives were Constance Rhodes Thurlow (1942-1950), actress Arlene Dahl (1951-1952), actress Lana Turner (1953-1957), Swiss actress Irene Labhardt (1957-1962) and Carmen Cervera (1965-1972), a former Miss Spain. He left behind two sons and one daughter. One of his sons is actor Christopher Barker, from his marriage to Irene Labhart.

Pierre Brice and Lex Barker in Der Schatz im Silbersee

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam / Edition Facet Publishers. Photo: Rank Film Publishers (Holland) N.V. Publicity Still for Der Schatz im Silbersee (1962).

German postcard, no. E 72. Photo: Constantin. Publicity Still for Der Schatz im Silbersee (1962).

German postcard, no. ED 66. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Der Schatz in Silbersee (1962).

Lex Barker and Mavid Popovic in Winnetou I

German postcard, no. E 25. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Winnetou I (1963) with Mavid Popovic. Caption: "In the water there is a bitter fight between Old Shatterhand and Winnetou's father, the chief of the Apaches."

Jan Sid, Lex Barker, Der Schatz im Silbersee

German postcard, no. E 68. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Der Schatz in Silbersee (1962) with Jan Sid.

Karin Dor, Lex Barker, Pierre Brice in Der Schatz im Silbersee

German postcard, no. ED 64. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Der Schatz in Silbersee (1962) with Karin Dor and Pierre Brice.

This was the third episode of 'Imported from the USA'. The first two episodes were dedicated to Jayne Mansfield and Josephine Baker.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Lex Barker Official Site, Brian J. Walker (Brian's Drive-In Theater), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Hungarian-born silent film star Vilma Bánky (1901-1991) filmed in Budapest, France, Austria, and Germany, before Sam Goldwyn took her to Hollywood. There she starred opposite silent stars like Rudolph Valentino and Ronald Colman. She became Goldwyn's biggest money maker till sound finished her career.

British postcard in the 'Famous Cinema Star' series by J. Beagles & Co, LTD., London, no. 235 G. Photo: Allied Artists Pictures. Publicity still for The Eagle (1925).

Blonde And Violet-Eyed

Vilma Bánky was born Vilma Konsics Bánky to János Konsics Bánky and Katalin Ulbert in Nagydorog, Austria-Hungary, in 1901. (Although reference books give dates ranging from 1898 to 1903).

Her father was a bureau chief under Franz Joseph's Austro-Hungarian Empire. Shortly after her birth, her father was transferred to Budapest, and the family relocated. She had two siblings - an older brother, Gyula (who would later go on to work in Berlin as a writer and cinematographer), and a younger sister, Gisella.

After graduation from secondary school, Bánky took courses to work as a stenographer, but then she was offered a role in a film. Her debut was in the now lost German film Im Letzten Augenblick/The Last Moment (Carl Boese, 1919).

The violet-eyed, blonde beauty was soon asked for Hungarian, Austrian, and French films. To her European productions belong Galathea (Béla Balogh, 1921), A Halott szerelma/The Eye of the Death (Carl Boese, 1922), Das Bildnis/The Picture (Jacques Feyder, 1923), Das verbotene Land/The Forbidden Country (Friedrich Feher, 1924), and Soll man heiraten?/Do You Have to Marry? (Manfred Noa, 1925).

French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 428. Photo: Vilma Banky in The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926), also with Ronald Colman and a young Gary Cooper, who debuted in this film.

French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 433, with Ronald Colman.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3375/3, 1928-1929. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for Two Lovers (Fred Niblo, 1928), with Ronald Colman.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3375/1, 1928-1929. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for Two Lovers (Fred Niblo, 1928), with Ronald Colman.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 2082/3, 1927-1928. Photo: United Artists, with Ronald Colman.

The Hungarian Rhapsody

On a trip to Budapest in 1925, Hollywood film producer Samuel Goldwyn discovered and signed Vilma Bánky to a contract. Both her mother and father were vehemently against Bánky's acting career as was her fiancé.

Nonetheless she left for the United States in March 1925, arriving to a great deal of fanfare. She was hailed as ‘The Hungarian Rhapsody’.

Bánky was an immediate hit with American audiences with her first American film, The Dark Angel (George Fitzmaurice, 1925). The New York Times review praised her acting and called her "so exquisite that one is not in the least surprised that she is never forgotten" by her co-star.

This would be the first of five fantastic love stories in which she co-starred with Ronald Colman, including the very popular The Winning of Barbara Worth (Henry King, 1926).

Opposite Rudolph Valentino, she appeared as the daughter of a Russian aristocrat in The Eagle (Clarence Brown, 1925), and as an Arab dancer in his last film The Son of the Sheik (George Fitzmaurice, 1926).

Vilma Banky, Rudolph Valentino, Son of the Sheik

French postcard in a series by Shampoing Butywave. Photo: Allied Artists. Publicity still for The Son of the Sheik (1926), with Rudolph Valentino. The woman portrayed is notVilma Banky, but Agnes Ayres.

French postcard in a series by Shampoing Butywave. Photo: Allied Artists. Publicity still for The Son of the Sheik (1926), with Rudolph Valentino.

French postcard by Europa, no. 235. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for The Son of the Sheik (1926), with Rudolph Valentino.

French postcard in a series by Shampoing Butywave. Photo: Allied Artists. Publicity still for The Son of the Sheik (1926), with Rudolph Valentino.

Extravagant Wedding

In 1927 Vilma Bánky married another star, Rod La Rocque, during an extravagant wedding, paid by Sam Goldwyn. Cecil B. DeMille was best man and the ushers included Ronald Colman and Harold Lloyd.

In 1928, Bánky participated in the first public demonstration of the way films could be transmitted over telephone wires. Film of her arrival by train in Chicago was shown at a newsreel theatre in New York nine hours later; the process was hailed as a technological breakthrough.

It is commonly believed that her thick Hungarian accent cut her career short with the advent of sound, however she also began losing interest in films and wanted to settle down with her new husband. Her first talking movie was This Is Heaven (Alfred Santell, 1929). It proved to be an awful experience for the almost inaudible Hungarian actress. A Lady To Love (Victor Sjöström, 1930) with Edward G. Robinson would be Bánky's final American film and her second attempt at a talkie.

According to IMDb reviewer drednm "it's a very good film indeed. (...) I was struck throughout this film at what a nice voice she had and how much her accent resembled that of Greta Garbo in Anna Christie that same year.". She also made an alternate-language version in German, Die Sehnsucht jeder Frau/Every Woman's Desire (Victor Sjöström, 1930).

Bánky went with Rod La Rocque to Germany to make a final film, Der Rebell/The Rebel (Edwin H. Knopf, Luis Trenker, 1932), starring Luis Trenker. Vilma remained with Rod till his death in 1969. Her post Hollywood years were spent selling real estate with her husband and playing golf, her favourite sport.

In 1981, Bánky established an educational fund called the Banky - La Rocque Foundation, which is still in operation. Vilma Bánky died in 1991, from cardiopulmonary failure, aged 90. Today, of her twenty-four films, seven exist in their entirety and three only in fragments.

Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 975. Photo: Halasz, Budapest.

Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 577/1. Photo: Fanamet Film.

Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 695/3. Photo: Halasz, Budapest / Fanamet-Film.

Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 577-2. Sent by mail in Serbia in 1930.

British postcard by Real Photograph in the Picturegoer series, no. 272.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1689/1, 1927-1928. Photo: United Artists.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1540/3, 1927-1928. Photo: United Artists.

French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 407.

Vilma Banky and Rudolph Valentino in a scene from The Eagle (1925). Source: (YouTube).

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), New York Times, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

French singer and actor Dick Rivers (1945) was - with Eddy Mitchell and Johnny Hallyday - one of the three stars who introduced Rock and Roll in France in the early 1960s. In later life, he also appeared in some films.

French postcard by PSG, no. 923. Photo: Patrick Bertrand.

The Wild Cats

Dick Rivers was born Hervé Fornieri in in Villefranche-sur-Mer in southern France in 1945. He was fascinated by America, the juke box and Rock and Roll. He admired Elvis Presley, who highly influenced both his singing and his looks.

In 1960, at the age of fifteen, Hervé founded with three friends, guitarists Jean-Claude and Gerard Roboly and bassist Gerard Jacquemus, the group Les Chats Sauvages (The Wild Cats). With his black hair slicked back, his never worn jeans and his cowboy boots he was the lead singer. His stage name came from the character (Deke Rivers) that Presley played in his second film, Loving You (Hal Kanter, 1957).

In February 1961, the British music magazine, NME, reported that Rivers concert at the Palais des Sports de Paris, whilst headlining with Vince Taylor, had turned into a full-scale riot. Between May 1961 and June 1962, he recorded with Les Chats Sauvages more than a hundred songs, and they sold more than 2 million albums.

Big hits were Ma petite amie est vache (My girlfriend is a cow), Twist à Saint-Tropez (Twist in Saint-Tropez) and Est-ce que tu le sais (Do you know). The band’s success extended to all French-speaking countries, Belgium, Switzerland and Quebec, where they attracted large crowds.

But then, Rivers suddenly left Les Chats Sauvages.

French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 228. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 1095. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 227. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Mister D

In September 1962, Dick Rivers released his solo single Baby John which sold 200,000 copies. It was the start of a long and successful solo career, with more than thirty albums (three in English) and many singles.

Among his hits were Tu n'es plus là (1963), the French version of Roy Orbison’s Blue Bayou, and Va t'en va t'en (1965), based on Go Now by the Moody Blues.

In the 1970s, his music seemed outdated. For ten years, between 1982 and 1992, he hosted a program devoted to rock on Radio Monte Carlo.

In 1994, a first collection of his old successes, Very-Dick was certified gold the following year. He started to record new music. In 1999, Dick made his first film La Candide Madame Duff/The Candid Lady Duff (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1999) and gave about 60 concerts in France, Belgium and Switzerland.

In 2003, Rivers played in the comedy Le Furet/The Ferret (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 2003) with Jacques Villeret and Michel Serrault. The following year he appeared on stage in the play Les Paravents (The Screens) by Jean Genet, at the Théâtre National de Chaillot. It was a success.

Furthermore, he was the French voice of Shere Khan in Jungle Book 2 (Steve Trenbirth, 2003) and he also gave his voice to Arthur et les Minimoys/Arthur and the Invisibles (Luc Besson, 2006). On television he appeared in Mon amour de fantôme/Phantom Love (Arnaud Sélignac, 2007).

His latest album, called Mister D, was released in 2011 to celebrate his 50-year career. At the same time, a book with the same title was published containing his memoirs collected by Sam Bernett. He returned to the stage and in 2012, he was on tour in France.

Dick Rivers lives in an apartment in Montmartre in Paris and on a ranch in the Toulouse region. He is married to Micheline Davis and has an adopted daughter, Natala, who lived for three years with American director George Lucas.

French collector's card by Publistar.

French promotion card by Pathé Marconi, no. 5-63. Photo: Vallois.

French postcard by P.I., no. 1085, offered by Corvisart. Photo: Jean Mainbourg.

Sources: RFI Musique (French), Dick Rivers.com (French), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.

Dutch-born actress and singer Ilse Werner (1921-2005) was one of the most popular stars of the German screen during the Nazi years. After the war she became a successful Schlager singer. Her nickname, Ein Frau mit Pfiff, translates as A Woman of Distinction, but also refers to her trademark, whistling.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3732/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick / Ufa.

The Biggest German Film Studio

Ilse Werner was born Ilse Charlotte Still in Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia), in 1921. Her father was a rich Dutch plantation owner and consul, E. O. Still, and her mother, Lilli Still-Werner was German.

After living 10 years on Java, the family returned to Europe and finally settled down in Vienna in 1934. Although Ilse would later have her greatest successes in Germany, she kept her Dutch citizenship until 1955.

In 1936-1937 she followed acting classes at the Max-Reinhardt-Seminarin Vienna, where she changed her name into Ilse Werner.

Her stage debut was at the Viennese Theater in der Josefstadt in the play Glück (Happiness) in 1937, and her film debut was the following year in Finale/Die unruhigen Mädchen/The Restless Girls (Géza von Bolváry, 1938) starring Käthe von Nagy.

The Ufa became interested in the young actress, and the biggest German film studio offered her a contract.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3732/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick / Ufa.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3896/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Terra / Quick.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3477/1. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.

German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3224/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.

Propaganda Film

Ilse Werner started to work at the legendary Ufa Studios in Babelsberg near Berlin. She appeared in films like Frau Sixta/Mrs. Sixta (Gustav Ucicky, 1938), Das Leben kann so schön sein/Life Can Be So beautiful (Rolf Hansen, 1938), the classic comedy Bel Ami (Willi Forst, 1939) and Bal paré (Karl Ritter, 1940) with Paul Hartmann.

Her breakthrough film was the propaganda film Wunschkonzert/Request Concert (Eduard von Borsody, 1940), an incredibly popular home-front comedy-drama centred around a beloved radio program.

She continued to be a top attraction in popular films like Die schwedische Nachtigall/The Swedish Nightingale (Peter Paul Brauer, 1941) as the famous soprano Jenny Lind, and Wir machen Musik/We're Making Music (Helmut Käutner, 1942) with Viktor de Kowa. She starred opposite Hans Albers in the colour spectacle Münchhausen/The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Josef von Báky, 1943), and the in the harbour of Hamburg located love story Grosse Freiheit Nr. 7/Port of Freedom (Helmut Käutner, 1944). In the latter film she played her first serious character role.

During the war she worked for the TV station Paul Nipkow and moderated the weekly TV show Wir senden Frohsinn – wir spenden Freude (We Broadcast Cheerfulness, We Donate Joy).

Ilse Werner also made several very popular records such as Sing ein Lied, wenn du mal traurig bist (Sing A Song If You’re Sad Sometimes), Du und ich im Mondenschein (You and Me in the Moonlight) and especially Wir machen Musik (We Make Music).

She became famous for her inimitable whistling, a skill she had picked up as a child and cultivated throughout her career. She often whistled to melodies composed by Werner Bochmann.

German postcard by Verlag und Druckerei Erwin Preuss, Dresden-Freital, Serie I Die neue farbige Filmstarkarte, no. 15. Photo: Charlott Serda.

German postcard by Ross, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa / Baumann.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3896/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Terra / Quick.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3986/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa.

Barred From Performing

At the end of World War II, Ilse Werner was temporarily barred from performing in films by the Allies. In the meanwhile she worked as a voice actress for the synchronization of American films. In 1948, she relocated to America with her husband, the American journalist John de Forest. Yet she continued appearing in German films like Geheimnisvolle Tiefe/Mysterious Shadows (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1949) and Epilog: Das Geheimnis der Orplid/Epilogue (Helmut Käutner, 1950).

After her 1953 divorce, she returned to Germany and excelled in such dramatic character roles as Queen Marie-Louise in the film operetta Der Vogelhändler/The Bird Seller (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1953) with Wolf Albach-Retty. Other films were the romance Ännchen von Tharau (Wolfgang Schleif, 1954) and Griff nach den Sternen/Reaching for the Stars (Carl-Heinz Schroth, 1955) with Erik Schumann.

However, her biggest post-war successes were the records she released between 1957 and 1964. Her song Baciare was in 1960 a hit all over Europe. In the following decades she was successful on the stage in productions like the musical Der König und ich (The King and I) (1970), and on TV, where she had her own variety show Ein Abend mit Pfiff (An Evening of Distinction) (1967).

In 1981 she published her memoirs, So wird's nie wieder sein …Ein Leben mit Pfiff (It Will Never Be Like That Again, A life of Distinction). That same year she was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Merit) and in 1986 she also received the Filmband in Gold for her work in the German cinema.

Five years later, she won the award again for her self-ironic portrayal of an ageing Schlager Singer in the tragic comedy Die Hallo-Sisters/The Hallo Sisters (Ottokar Runze, 1990) with Gisela May. It was her last film role; her last TV appearance was in the Krimi Tatort (2000). Ilse Werner died in 2005 in a retirement home in Lübeck at the age of 84. She had been suffering from pneumonia. Werner had been married to John de Forest and later to Josef Niessen, the director of the Nurnberg Dance Orchestra of the Bayerischen Rundfunk (the Bavaria radio station). Both marriages ended in a divorce.

French postcard by EPC, no. 190. Photo: ACE / Ufa.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 139. Photo: Quick / Terra. From Tatiana.

German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3102/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3477/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa / Baumann.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 218. Photo: Quick / Terra.

Scene with Ilse Werner from Wir machen Musik/We're Making Music (1942). Source: Robert S (YouTube).

Sources: Stephanie d’Heil (Steffi-line) (German), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Hans J. Wollstein (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Serge Lifar (1905-1986) was a French dancer, choreographer and ballet master of Ukrainian origin. He was one of the greatest male ballet dancers of the 20th century and considered the successor to Nijinsky in the Ballet Russes. From 1930 on, he was immensely successful, essentially in his own ballet creations. During three decades he lead the Paris Opéra Ballet and enriched its repertoire, re-established its reputation as a leading ballet company, and enhanced the position of male dancers in a company long dominated by ballerinas.

French postcard no. 148. Photo: Studio Harcourt. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Ballets Russes

Serge Lifar (Сергій Лифар) was born Serhіy Mуkhailovуch Lуfar in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) in 1905. His year of birth is officially shown as 1904 (as on a 2004 Ukrainian stamp commemorating his centenary), but other sources say 1905. He was the son of a civil servant. Lifar had a late start as a dancer. He was introduced to dance in 1920 by Bronislava Nijinska, under whom he began to study.

In 1921 he left the Soviet Union to join Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Diaghilev sent him to Turin in order to improve his technique with the eminent teacher Enrico Cecchetti. Lifar made his debut at the Ballets Russes in 1923, and became premier danseur of the company in 1925. The company revolutionized ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracized by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.

Lifar was very handsome, had an athletic body, and a great desire to be liked. He was clearly the impresario's favourite and was considered as the successor to Nijinsky. At the age of 21, he was cast in Nijinska’s Roméo et Juliette (1926) opposite Tamara Karsavina, who was twice his age. In George Balanchine’s comic ballet Barabau (1925), Lifar was a police sergeant chasing an Italian peasant.

He originated leading roles in three ballets by Balanchine for the Ballet Russes, La Chatte (1927) with a score by French composer Henri Sauguet and based on an Aesop fable, which featured Lifar’s famous entrance in a ‘chariot’ formed by his male companions, Apollon Musagète (1928) with a score by Stravinsky depicting the birth of the Greek God, Apollo and his encounter with the three muses, Callipe, Polyhymnia, and Terpsichore, and Le Fils prodigue (The Prodigal Son) (1929) with a score by Prokofiev, the last great ballet of the Diaghilev era.

Anna Kisselgoff in The New York Times about his charisma: “His dark exotic looks and athletic body gave him an animal intensity. A child's-eye view is unreliable, but in 1949, on a trip to Paris, I saw his portly but still-dramatic presence dominate the stage in Icare. The image remains.“

French postcard no. 257. Photo: Studio Harcourt. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Paris Opéra Ballet

At the death of Diaghilev in 1929, Serge Lifar was invited by Jacques Rouché to take over the directorship of the Paris Opéra Ballet. Lifar was 24 at the time. The Paris Opéra Ballet had fallen into decline in the late 19th century. He gave the company a new strength and purpose initiating the re-birth of ballet in France and began to create the first of many ballets for that company. In 1932 he was awarded the title of 'professeur de danse' and began reforms of the Opéra’s school to enable its dancers to perform the more modern ballets.

Lifar was immensely successful, essentially in his own ballet creations, notably with Les Créatures de Prométhée ('The Creatures of Prometheus) (1929), a personal version of Le Spectre de la rose (1931) and L'Après-midi d'un faune (1935), Icare (Icarus) (1935) with costumes and décor by Pablo Picasso, Istar (1941) or Suite en Blanc (1943), which he qualified as neoclassical, all created for the Paris Opera.

He also worked as a choreographer for some films. Examples are Nuits de feu/Nights of Fire (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937), starring Gaby Morlay, and La Mort du Cygne/The Death of the Swan (Jean Benoît-Lévy, 1937), the first feature film set entirely in the ballet world.

As ballet master of the Paris Opéra from 1930 to 1944 and from 1947 to 1958, Lifar devoted himself to the restoration of the technical level of the Paris Opera Ballet to return it to its place as one of the best companies in the world. During those three decades as director of the Paris Opéra Ballet, he lead the company through turbulent times during World War II and the German occupation of France. In 1945, charges of collaboration with the Germans had caused him the first time to leave and become director of the Nouveau Ballet de Monte Carlo. Lifar, cleared of the charges and given a year's suspension, returned as director of the Paris Opera Ballet in 1947. In 1958, he left the Paris Opéra Ballet.

Gaby Morlay. French postcard, no. 69. Photo: Film Pathé-Natan.

Icarus

During his career, Serge Lifar made an effort to revitalize dance and thought the basic principles of ballet and the five positions of the feet denied mobility for the dancer and invented sixth and seventh positions with the feet turned in not out like the first five positions. In 1935 he published his confessio fidei titled Le manifesto du chorégraphe, proposing laws about the independence of choreography. He proclaimed that dance, as an independent art, could exist without music.

He also wrote a biography of Diaghilev titled Serge Diaghilev, His Life, His Work, His Legend: An Intimate Biography published by Putnam, London, 1940. He brought the Paris Opéra Ballet to America and performed to full houses at the New York City Center. Audiences where enthusiastic and had great admiration for the company of dancers. According to Wikipedia, he undoubtedly influenced Yvette Chauviré, Janine Charrat and Roland Petit.

During his life he also appeared in a few films. The best known is Jean Cocteau’s Le testament d'Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi!/Testament of Orpheus (1960), in which he played Orphée's Friend. Two years later he could be seen in a segment of Le crime ne paie pas/Crime Does Not Pay (Gérard Oury, 1962) with Rosanna Schiaffino.

In 1977 the Paris Opéra Ballet devoted a full evening to his choreography. In 1983 he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (1983). Serge Lifar died in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1986, aged 81 and was buried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery. Editions Sauret published his memoirs titled Les Mémoires d’Icare posthumously in 1993. The title references one of his greatest roles in the ballet Icare, “the story of the ballet is based on the ancient Greek myth of Icarus whose father Daedalus builds him a pair of artificial wings. Disobeying his father’s orders, Icarus flies too close to the sun, which melts the wax in his wings and causes him to plunge to his death.”

The Serge Lifar Foundation was set up in 1989 by Lifar's devoted companion, glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt-Laurvig. In 2012, jewels from the Countess' estate were auctioned at Sotheby's, with the proceeds going to the Foundation.

Sources: Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times), Colin Gleadell (The Telegraph), Michael Minn (Andros on Ballet), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Film director and actor Veit Harlan (1899-1964) was one of Nazi Germany’s most notorious filmmakers. His most perfidious film was the anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süß/Jew Süss (1940) filled with vicious stereotypes of Jews.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7753/1, 1935. Photo: Robertson, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Propaganda

Veit Harlan was born in Berlin in 1899. His father was a novelist and two of his brothers were musicians. After studying under Max Reinhardt, he first appeared on the stage in 1915 and, after World War I, worked at the Berlin State Theatre for eleven years.

In 1922 he married Jewish actress and cabaret singer Dora Gerson; the couple divorced in 1924. In 1943, Gerson was killed in Auschwitz, with her family.

Harlan made his film debut in 1925. He played roles in films like the historical comedy Der Meister von Nürnberg/The Master of Nuremberg (Ludwig Berger, 1927), and the comedy Die Hose/The Trousers (Hans Behrendt, 1927) starring Werner Krauss.

Till 1935 he played in some 30 films. Harlan married in 1929 actress Hilde Körber, having three children with her. They divorced in 1938 ‘for political reasons related to the influence of National Socialism’, according to Wikipedia. One of their children, Thomas Harlan, became a writer and director in his own right.

His first direction was the romantic comedy Krach im Hinterhaus/Trouble Backstairs (1934) starring silent film star Henny Porten. It was a success and in the following years Harlan specialized in romantic idylls like Die Kreutzersonate/The Kreutzer Sonata (1937) and Die Reise nach Tilsit/The Trip to Tilsit (1939), a remake of F. W. Murnau’s silent classic Sunrise (1926).

In 1939, Harlan married the star of his film, Swedish actress Kristina Söderbaum. Since 1933, Harlan was a supporter of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). After many of the country's best filmmakers had fled the country, Joseph Goebbels had appointed Harlan in 1937 as one of his leading propaganda directors.

His most notorious film was Jud Süß/Jew Süss (1940), which was made for anti-Semitic propaganda purposes in Germany and Austria. The film was required viewing for all SS members. Set in the 18th century, it claims to be a dramatization of the true story of how a sinister, cunning Jewish financier, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer (Ferdinand Marian), took control of the duchy of Wurttemberg while preying sexually on a pure Aryan maiden (Kristina Söderbaum). The film was a hit and seen by more than 20 million people. In 1943 it received Ufa's highest awards.

Werner Krauss. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. A 3264/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Quick / Ufa.

The First Major European Colour Film

Harlan made the Reich's loudest, most colourful and expensive films. In 1942 he directed the first major European colour film, Die goldene Stadt/The Golden City.

Next he directed the melodramas Immensee (1943) and Opfergang/The Great Sacrifice (1944) which included some very dramatic suicide scenes, further increasing Harlan and Söderbaum’s popularity with the German cinema audience.

Harlan’s megalomaniac epic Kolberg (1945) was the basis for Inglourious Basterds’ pivotal film-within-a-film Stolz Der Nation. One of the last films of the Third Reich, Kolberg was intended as a Nazi propaganda piece to shore up the will of the German population to resist the Allies.

The film is based on the autobiography of Joachim Nettelbeck, mayor of Kolberg in western Pomerania. It tells the story of the successful defence of the besieged fortress town of Kolberg against French troops between April and July 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars.

Kristina Söderbaum. German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3321/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Haenchen / Tobis.

Charged With Crimes Against Humanity

After the war Veit Harlan was charged with participating in the anti-Semitic movement and aiding the Nazis. But he successfully defended himself by arguing that the Nazis controlled his work and that he should not be held personally responsible for its content. However, many former crew members and colleagues contradicted him. In 1949, Harlan was charged with crimes against humanity for his role as director of Jud Süß. The Hamburg Criminal Chamber of the Regional Court (Schwurgericht) acquitted Harlan of the charges; however, the court of the British occupation zone nullified the acquittal.

In 1951, Harlan sued for an injunction against Hamburg politician Erich Lüth for publicly calling for a boycott of Unsterbliche Geliebte/Immortal Beloved (1950). The District Court in Hamburg granted Harlan's suit and ordered that Lüth forbear from making such public appeals. However, the lower court decision was ultimately overturned in 1958 by the Federal Constitutional Court because it infringed on Lüth's right to freedom of expression. This was a landmark decision because it clarified the importance of the constitutional civil rights in disputes between individuals.

Harlan made a total of nine films between 1950 and 1958, including Anders als du und ich/Different from You and Me (1957), with Christian Wolff, a feature film on homosexuality, a topic which was still highly taboo at this time.

In 1958, Veit Harlan's niece, Christiane Susanne Harlan, married filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who was Jewish. She is credited by her stage name Susanne Christian in Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957). They remained married until Kubrick's death in 1999.

Veit Harlan died in 1964 while on vacation in Capri. He was 64. Two months before his death he had become Catholic. Susanne Körber, one of his daughters from his second wife Hilde Körber, converted to Judaism and married the son of Holocaust victims. She committed suicide in 1989.

In 2001, Horst Konigstein made a film titled Jud Suss - Ein Film als Verbrechen?/Jud Suss - A Film As a Crime? The documentary Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss (Felix Moeller, 2008) explores Harlan's motivations and the post-war reaction of his children and grandchildren to his notoriety.

Christian Wolff. Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4268. Photo: Arca / Cinepress.

Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), John Simkin (Spartacus Educational), New York Times, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Glamorous, seductive film star and engineer Hedy Lamarr (1913–2000) was born in Austria. The notorious Czechoslovak film Ekstase/Ecstasy (1933) made her an international sensation, and Louis B. Mayer invited her to Hollywood where she became ‘the most beautiful woman in films’. She also co-invented an early technique for spread spectrum communications, a key to many forms of wireless communication.

British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. W 200. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).

Hedwig Kiesler

Hedy Lamarr was born as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria), in 1913. She was Jewish. Her mother, Gertrud Lichtwitz, was a pianist, and her father, Emil Kiesler, a successful bank director. She studied ballet and piano. She had very dark hair, her eyes were pools where weak men drowned, and her breasts were apparently in order when she was just 18, auditioning for Max Reinhardt in Berlin. He called her the ‘most beautiful woman in Europe’. Yet he failed to detect enough evidence of an actor's energy or need, and so, Hedwig drifted into pictures.

Her first film role had been a bit part in the German film Das Geld liegt auf der Straße/Money on the Street (Georg Jacoby, 1930). Soon, the attractive teenager played major roles alongside stars like Heinz Rühmannand Hans Moser in the German films Die Frau von Lindenau/Storm in a Water Glass (Georg Jacoby, 1931), Die Abenteuer des Herrn O. F./The Trunks of Mr. O. F. (Alexis Granowsky, 1931), and Man braucht kein Geld/We Don't Need Money (Carl Boese, 1932).

But it would be her fifth film that catapulted her to worldwide fame. In early 1933, she starred in Gustav Machatý's Ekstase/Symphonie der Liebe/Ecstasy (1933), a Czechoslovak film made in Prague. It's the story of a young girl who has an indifferent old husband and falls in love with a young soldier. Close-ups of her face in orgasm, and long shots of her running nude through the woods, created a sensation all over the world. The Pope denounced the film. The scenes, tame by today's standards, caused the film to be banned by the US government.

Shortly before the film's release, Hedwig married Viennese millionaire, Fritz Mandl, a munitions manufacturer, 13 years her senior, and eager to have a trophy wife. Her new husband bought up as many copies of Ekstase as he could possibly find, as he objected to her nudity and ‘the expression on her face’. (She later claimed the looks of passion were the result of the director poking her in the bottom with a safety pin.) Mandl prevented her from pursuing her acting career, and instead took her to meetings with technicians and business partners. In these meetings, the mathematically-talented Lamarr learned about military technology. Otherwise, she had to stay home at castle Schwarzenau.

Hedy later related in her autobiography Ecstasy and Me that even though Mandl was part-Jewish, he was consorting with Nazi industrialists which infuriated her, and dictators Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler both attended Mandl's grand parties.

American postcard. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

French postcard by Editions Chantal, no. 10. Photo: MGM.

Dutch postcard. Photo: United Artists.

Mathematics Talent

In 1937, Hedy Kiesler was finally successful in escaping when she hired a new maid who resembled her. She convinced Mandl to allow her to attend a party wearing all her expensive jewellery. She drugged the maid and used her uniform as a disguise to escape out of the country. First she fled to Paris, where she obtained a divorce, and then she moved on to London.

At Claridge's hotel she encountered Louis B. Mayer, the mogul of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who hired her. At his insistence, Hedwig changed her name to Hedy Lamarr. She choose the surname in homage to beautiful silent film star Barbara LaMarr, who had died from a drug overdose in 1926.

Her American debut was as the love interest of Charles Boyer in Algiers (John Cromwell, 1938), the re-make of the very successful French film, Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937). In Hollywood, Hedy was usually cast as elegant and mysterious. Between 1940 and 1949 she made 18 films, even though she had two children during that time: Denise Loder (1945) and Anthony Loder (1947).

Her MGM films include Boom Town (Jack Conway, 1940) with Clark Gable, the musical extravaganza Ziegfeld Girl (Robert Z. Leonard, 1941) with James Stewart, and opposite John Garfield in Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942), based on the novel by John Steinbeck.

White Cargo (Richard Thorpe, 1942) was one of Lamarr's biggest hits at MGM. She appeared as the native girl Tondelayo, who seduces most of the men at a British trading post in Africa. The film contains arguably her most famous film quote, "I am Tondelayo".

Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 106. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940).

Hedy Lamarr and Clark Gable In Comrade X

Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 166. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940) with Clark Gable.

Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 166. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942) with John Garfield.

Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 154 Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942) with John Garfield.

Strong and Independent

Jan Christopher Horak described her star persona in a 2002 article in CineAction: "Lamarr consistently played strong, independent women who knew what their value was in the marketplace of erotic exchange, and were not afraid to bargain. Seldom did she go down on her knees before a man without already having an eye on the prize, rarely did she put her own desire behind that of a male partner. Lamarr broke taboos (on the screen and in the gossip columns) and many women in the audience had their secret pleasure watching her, while the boys gawked."

She was having nearly as many husbands as movies a year. In 1939-1940, she was married for 14 months to producer Gene Markey; there were affairs with Burgess Meredith and Reginald Gardiner, and a brief engagement to actor George Montgomery before she married another actor, Englishman John Loder- it lasted only four years.

In June 1941, Hedy Lamarr submitted the idea of a secret communication system, together with her neighbour and lover, noted modernist composer George Antheil (he did the music for the classic avant-garde film Ballet Mécanique (Fernand Leger, 1924)). On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and 'Hedy Kiesler Markey', her married name at the time. This early version of frequency hoppingused a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies.

The original idea, meant to solve the problem of enemies blocking signals from radio-controlled missiles during World War II, involved changing radio frequencies simultaneously to prevent enemies from being able to detect the messages. The idea was ahead of its time, and not feasible owing to the state of mechanical technology in 1942. It was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by US military ships during a blockade of Cuba after the patent had expired.

British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 1208a. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

British postcard by Real Photograph in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 1208. Photo: Walter Wanger.

Dutch postcard. Photo: R.K.O. Radio Films.

The Shoplifter

Hedy Lamarr left MGM in 1945. For Paramount she starred as Delilah opposite Victor Mature's Samson in Cecil B. DeMille's epic Samson and Delilah (1949). This proved to be Paramount's most profitable movie to date, bringing in $12 million in rental from theatres.

However, following her comedic turn opposite Bob Hope in My Favorite Spy (Norman Z. MacLeod, 1951), her career went into decline. She was to make only six more films between 1949 and 1957, the last being The Female Animal (Harry Keller, 1958). In 1953 she had become a naturalized US citizen.

In 1965 she was accused of shoplifting, and a year later followed Andy Warhol's short film Hedy/The Shoplifter (1966). The controversy surrounding the shoplifting charges coincided with an aborted return to the screen in Picture Mommy Dead (Bert I. Gordon, 1966). The role was ultimately filled by Zsa Zsa Gabor.

She wrote about it in her so-called memoirs Ecstasy and Me (1967). She later sued the publisher claiming that many of the anecdotes in the book, which was described by a judge as "filthy, nauseating, and revolting", were fabricated by its ghost writers, Leo Guild and Sy Rice.

Dutch postcard by J. Sleding N.V., Amsterdam, no. S 63. Photo: MGM.

French postcard by Editions P.I, no. 24D, presented by Les Carbones Korès. Photo: Paramount, 1953.

Disastrous Plastic Surgery Experiments

In the ensuing years, she retreated from public life, and settled in Florida. There were three more husbands: Teddy Stauffer, a band leader who had worked in Acapulco; Howard Lee, a Texas oil man (he married Gene Tierney after Hedy); and a lawyer named Lewis Boles. All her marriages ended in divorce.

In 1991, she returned to the headlines when the 78 year old former actress was arrested a couple of times on minor shop-lifting charges (cosmetics and clothes), but the charges were settled.

In 2000, she was eventually found dead in a small home in Altamonte Springs, Florida, where she lived alone. She was 86, and she had experimented disastrously with plastic surgery. Her son Anthony Loder took her ashes to Vienna and spread them in the Wienerwald, according to her wishes.

Today, Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as COFDM used in Wi-Fi networkconnections and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Hedy Lamarr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fameat 6247 Hollywood Blvd.

Italian postcard by C.C.M., no. 11, distributed in Belgium by Victoria, Bruxelles. Photo: RKO Radio Films.

Sources: Jan Christopher Horak (CineAction), David Thomson (The Independent), HedyLamarr.com, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Stunning Anna May Wong (1905-1961) was the first Chinese American movie star, and the first Asian American actress to gain international recognition. Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles she reluctantly played in Hollywood, Wong left for Europe, where she starred in such classics as Piccadilly (1929).

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5477/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Manassé, Wien (Vienna).

A Vibrant, Erotic Star Quality

Anna May Wong (Chinese: 黃柳霜; pinyin: Huáng Liǔshuāng) was born Wong Liu Tsong (Frosted Yellow Willows) near the Chinatown neighbourhood of Los Angeles in 1905. She was the second of seven children born to Wong Sam Sing, owner of the Sam Kee Laundry in Los Angeles, and his second wife Lee Gon Toy.

Wong had a passion for the movies. By the age of 11, she had come up with her stage name of Anna May Wong, formed by joining both her English and family names.

Wong was working at Hollywood's Ville de Paris department store when Metro Pictures needed 300 girl extras to appear in The Red Lantern (Albert Capellani, 1919) starring Nazimova as a Eurasian woman who falls in love with an American missionary. The film included scenes shot in Chinatown. Without her father's knowledge, a friend of his with movie connections helped Anna May land an uncredited role as an extra carrying a lantern.

In 1921 she dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue a full-time acting career. Wong received her first screen credit for Bits of Life (Marshall Neilan, 1921), the first anthology film, in which she played the abused wife of Lon Chaney, playing a Chinaman.

At 17, she played her first leading part, Lotus Flower, in The Toll of the Sea (Chester M. Franklin, 1922), the first Technicolor production. The story by Hollywood's most famous scenarist at the time, Frances Marion, was loosely based on the opera Madame Butterfly but moved the action from Japan to China.

Wong also played a concubine in Drifting (Tod Browning, 1923) and a scheming but eye-catching Mongol slave girl running around with Douglas Fairbanks Jr in the super-production The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh, 1924).

Richard Corliss in Time: “Wong is a luminous presence, fanning her arms in right-angle gestures that seem both Oriental and flapperish. Her best scenes are with Fairbanks, as they connive against each other and radiate contrasting and combined sexiness — a vibrant, erotic star quality.”

Wong began cultivating a flapper image and became a fashion icon.

In Peter Pan (Herbert Brenon, 1924), shot by her cousin cinematographer James Wong Howe, she played Princess Tiger Lily who shares a long kiss with Betty Bronson as Peter. Peter Pan was the hit of the Christmas season.

She appeared again with Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (William Nigh, 1927) at MGM and with Warner Oland and Dolores Costello in Old San Francisco (Alan Crosland, 1927) at Warner Brothers.

Wong starred in The Silk Bouquet/The Dragon Horse (Harry Revier, 1927), one of the first US films to be produced with Chinese backing, provided by San Francisco's Chinese Six Companies. The story was set in China during the Ming Dynasty, and featured Asian actors playing the Asian roles.

Hollywood studios didn't know what to do with Wong. Her ethnicity prevented US filmmakers from seeing her as a leading lady.

Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles as the naïve and self-sacrificing ‘Butterfly’ and the evil ‘Dragon Lady’, Anna May Wong left for Europe in 1928.

Heinrich George. Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 6305. Photo: Verleih W. Luschinsky.

A Sensation In Europe

In Germany, Anna May Wong became a sensation in Schmutziges Geld/Show Life (Richard Eichberg, 1928) with Heinrich George.

The New York Times reported that Wong was "acclaimed not only as an actress of transcendent talent but as a great beauty (...) Berlin critics, who were unanimous in praise of both the star and the production, neglect to mention that Anna May is of American birth. They mention only her Chinese origins."

Other film parts were a circus artist on the run from a murder charge in Großstadtschmetterling/City Butterfly (Richard Eichberg, 1929), and a dancer in pre-Revolutionary Russia in Hai-Tang (Richard Eichberg, Jean Kemm, 1930).

In Vienna, she played the title role in the stage operetta Tschun Tschi in fluent German.

Wong became an inseparable friend of the director Leni Riefenstahl.

According to Wikipedia, her close friendships with several women throughout her life, including Marlene Dietrich, led to rumours of lesbianism which damaged her public reputation.

London producer Basil Dean bought the play A Circle of Chalk for Wong to appear in with the young Laurence Olivier, her first stage performance in the UK.

Her final silent film, Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont, 1929), caused a sensation in the UK.

Gilda Gray was the top-billed actress, but Variety commented that Wong "outshines the star", and that "from the moment Miss Wong dances in the kitchen's rear, she steals Piccadilly from Miss Gray."

It would be the first of five English films in which she had a starring role, including her first sound film The Flame of Love (Richard Eichberg, Walter Summers, 1930).

American studios were looking for fresh European talent. Ironically, Wong caught their eye and she was offered a contract with Paramount Studios in 1930.

She was featured in Daughter of the Dragon (Lloyd Corrigan, 1931) as the vengeful daughter of Fu Manchu (Warner Oland), and with Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932).

Wong spent the first half of the 1930s travelling between the United States and Europe for film and stage work.

She repeatedly turned to the stage and cabaret for a creative outlet. On Broadway, she starred in the drama On the Spot, that ran for 167 performances and which she would later film as Dangerous to Know (Robert Florey, 1938).

Marlene Dietrich. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5582/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Paramount.

Too Chinese To Play A Chinese

Anna May Wong became more outspoken in her advocacy for Chinese American causes and for better film roles.

Because of the Hays Code's anti-miscegenation rules, she was passed over for the leading female role in The Son-Daughter (Clarence Brown, 1932) in favour of Helen Hayes.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer deemed her ‘too Chinese to play a Chinese’ in the film, and the Hays Office would not have allowed her to perform romantic scenes since the film's male lead, Ramón Novarro, was not Asian.

Wong was scheduled to play the role of a mistress to a corrupt Chinese general in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1933), but the role went instead to Toshia Mori.

Her British film Java Head (Thorold Dickinson, J. Walter Ruben, 1934) was the only film in which Wong kissed the lead male character, her white husband in the film.

In 1935 she was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role of the Chinese character O-Lan in the film version of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937).

Paul Muni, an actor of European descent, was to play O-lan's husband, Wang Lung, and MGM chose German actress Luise Rainer for the leading role. Rainer won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance.

Wong spent the next year touring China, visiting her father and her younger brothers and sister in her family's ancestral village Taishan and studying Chinese culture.

To complete her contract with Paramount Pictures, she starred in several B movies, including Daughter of Shanghai (Robert Florey, 1937), Dangerous to Know (Robert Florey, 1938), and King of Chinatown (Nick Grinde, 1939) with Akim Tamiroff.

These smaller-budgeted films could be bolder than the higher-profile releases, and Wong used this to her advantage to portray successful, professional, Chinese-American characters.

Wong's cabaret act, which included songs in Cantonese, French, English, German, Danish, Swedish, and other languages, took her from the US to Europe and Australia through the 1930s and 1940s.

She paid less attention to her film career during World War II, but devoted her time and money to helping the Chinese cause against Japan.

Wong starred in Lady from Chungking (William Nigh, 1942) and Bombs over Burma (Joseph H. Lewis, 1943), both anti-Japanese propaganda made by the poverty row studio Producers Releasing Corporation. She donated her salary for both films to United China Relief.

She invested in real estate and owned a number of properties in Hollywood.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6887/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount.

Rumoured Mistress Of Several Prominent Film Men

Anna May Wong returned to the public eye in the 1950s in several television appearances as well as her own detective series The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951-1952), the first US television show starring an Asian-American series lead.

After the completion of the series, Wong's health began to deteriorate. In late 1953 she suffered an internal hemorrhage, which her brother attributed to the onset of menopause, her continued heavy drinking, and financial worries.

In the following years, she did guest spots on television series.

In 1960, she returned to film playing housekeeper to Lana Turner in the thriller Portrait in Black (Michael Gordon, 1960).

She was scheduled to play the role of Madame Liang in the film production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song (Henry Koster, 1961), when she died of a heart attack at home in Santa Monica in 1961.

Anna May Wong was 56. For decades after her death, Wong was remembered principally for the stereotypical sly ‘Dragon Lady’ and demure ‘Butterfly’ roles that she was often given.

Matthew Sweet in The Guardian: “And this is the trouble with Anna May Wong. We disapprove of the stereotypes she fleshed out - the treacherous, tragic daughters of the dragon - but her performances still seduce, for the same reason they did in the 1920s and 30s.”

Her life and career were re-evaluated by three new biographies, a meticulous filmography, and a British documentary about her life, called Frosted Yellow Willows.

Wikipedia: “Through her films, public appearances and prominent magazine features, she helped to ‘humanize’ Asian Americans to white audiences during a period of overt racism and discrimination. Asian Americans, especially the Chinese, had been viewed as perpetually foreign in U.S. society but Wong's films and public image established her as an Asian-American citizen at a time when laws discriminated against Asian immigration and citizenship.”

Anna May Wong never married, but over the years, she was the rumoured mistress of several prominent film men: Marshall Neilan (14 years older, supposedly Wong's lover when she was 15), director Tod Browning (23 years older, when she was 16) and Charles Rosher (Mary Pickford's favourite cinematographer, who was nearly 20 years older, when Wong was 20).

But no biographer can say for sure that any of these affairs occurred.

This was the fourth episode of 'Imported from the USA'. The first three episodes were dedicated to Jayne Mansfield, Josephine Baker, and Lex Barker.

Anna May Wong in a clip of Piccadilly (1929). Source: Myos336 (YouTube).

Trailer Frosted Yellow Willows. Source: Cliplockbox (YouTube).

Sources: Richard Corliss (Time), Matthew Sweet (The Guardian), Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

French actor and film producer Jacques Charrier (1936) played leading roles in the late 1950s and 1960s, but gained notoriety when he married Brigitte Bardot. Their brief, tumultuous marriage was punctuated by his personal problems.

German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-264. Photo: UFA.

Diary of Anne Frank

Jacques Charrier was born into a family of military men in Metz, France, in 1936. He broke with the family tradition to become an artist. At the age of 17 he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg where he tried ceramics.

In 1956 a teacher at the Conservatoire de Montpellier offered him a role in a film, L'Arlésienne based on a novel by Alphonse Daudet. This local film success stimulated him to try his luck in Paris.

As a 20-year old he entered the ENSATT (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre), where he studied with the actress Berthe Bovy.

In 1958, after some odd jobs, he became an extra at the famous Comédie-Française. Then Marguerite Chamois chose him to play one of the leading roles in the play Le Journal d'Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank) with Pascale Audretat the Théâtre Montparnasse.

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4519. Photo: Paul Apoteker / Unifrance Film / Ufa.

Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 4072. Photo: NV Standaardfilms. Publicity still for Les Tricheurs (1958).

Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 4071. Photo: NV Standaardfilms. Publicity still for Les Tricheurs (1958).

The Cheaters

There the famous film director Marcel Carné saw Jacques Charrier and offered him his first film role, Bob in Les Tricheurs/The Cheaters (Marcel Carné, 1958) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Pascale Petit.

The film, a study of disaffected youth, was a smash hit, and overnight Jacques had become a star.

His next films included Les dragueurs/The Chasers (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1959) with Charles Aznavour, La main chaude/The Itchy Palm (Gérard Oury, 1960), and the thriller L'oeil du malin/The Third Lover (Claude Chabrol, 1961) with Stéphane Audran.

French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 27. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 71. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 66. Photo: Sam Lévin.

BB

Brigitte Bardotchose Jacques Charrier as her leading man in the comedy Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jacque, 1959).

During the shooting of the film Brigitte and Jacques fell madly in love. Immediately after the production was finished they married under massive media attention.

At the time, Jacques was just 23 years old, and a year later he became father of their son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier. BB’s baby was again a media event.

Charrier made headlines when he did several suicide attempts and when he withdrew from National Serviceon health grounds. In 1962 Jacques and Brigitte divorced and from then on he took care of their son.

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4518. Photo: Paul Apoteker / Unifrance Film / Ufa. Publicity still for Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (1959) with Brigitte Bardot.

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb. Collection: Didier Hanson.

German postcard by Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2.625. Retail price: 0,20 MDN. Photo: Progress. Still from La Vie Conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage (1963) with Marie-José Nat.

Anatomy Of A Marriage

Jacques Charrier continued acting in films like the comedy À cause, à cause d'une femme/Because of a Woman (Michel Deville, 1962) opposite Mylène Demongeot, and Carmen 63/Carmen di Trastevere (Carmine Gallone, 1963).

Unique was the experiment Françoise ou la vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Françoise and Jean-Marc ou La vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Jean-Marc (André Cayatte, both 1964). The two films tell the same story, but the first one was made from the wife's point of view, and the second from the husband's.

In 1969 Jacques founded the film company Les Films Marquiseto produce low budget films. He produced and starred in films like Sirokkó/Winter Wind (Miklos Jancso, 1969) with Marina Vlady, Eglantine (Jean-Claude Brialy, 1971), and Les volets clos/Closed Shutters (Jean-Claude Brialy, 1973) with Marie Bell.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 960. Presented by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.

German Postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2744. Photo: Silver / Cinetel / Gloria-Film. Publicity still for Les tricheurs/The Cheaters (1958).

German Postcard by Kolibri-Verlag no. 824. Photo: Deutsche Cosmopol Film. Publicity still for Les dragueurs/The Dredgers (1959).

A Damning Riposte

In the 1980’s he returned to the Ecole des Beaux-Artsto study painting. His work would be exhibited in Paris, Genève and San Francisco.

In 1996 he found himself back in the media spotlights once more when Brigitte Bardot published her memoirs, Initiales BB/Initials BB in which she excoriated him.

In 1997 he answered with his own publication, Ma réponse à Brigitte Bardot/My Answer to Brigitte Bardot, a damning riposte to his ex-wife who once referred to her pregnancy as a 'tumour' growing inside her.

Nicolas Charrier won damages for hurt feelings.

French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 25. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French postcard by Editions P.I., no. FK 120A, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Ufa.

Scene from Les Tricheurs (1958). Source: Le canard en rut (Daily Motion)

Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia (French) and IMDb.

Tall and good-looking Matheson Lang (1879-1948) was a Canadian-born stage and film actor and playwright in the early 20th century. He is best known for his Shakespearean roles in British productions of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet and for his role as Mr. Wu. He was one of the first major stars of the British theatre who acted in a silent film and during the 1920s, he became a popular film star in Great Britain.

British postcard by Rotary, no. 1212 F. Photo: Rita Martin.

Imposing Presence

Matheson Alexander Lang was born in Montreal, Canada, the son of Rev. Gavin Lang of Inverness, Scotland in 1879. He was educated at Inverness College and the University of St Andrews.

He began his career as a Shakespearean actor in 1897 in Wolverton, first played in London in 1900, and acted Benedick to the Beatrice of Ellen Terry in 1903.

He became known for his imposing presence, commanding features, and fine voice in plays by William Shakespeare such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. He also appeared in plays by Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw.

British postcard by Davidson Bros., London / New York, no. 3948. Sent by mail in 1908. Photo: D.B. Publicity still for the play Romeo and Juliet (1908).

British postcard by Rotary Photo E.C., no. 1212 R. Photo: Foulsham & Banfield. Matheson Lang as "Pete".

Mr. Wu

Matheson Lang first toured to America in 1902-1903 with Lillie Langtry. In 1903 he married actress Nellie Hutin Britton in London. In 1906 he played Tristram in Joseph Comyns Carr's play Tristram and Iseult at the Adelphi Theatre, with Lily Brayton as Iseult and Oscar Asche as King Mark; Lang's wife played Arganthael.

Lang and his wife subsequently formed their own company, which toured India, South Africa, and Australia from 1910 till 1913 performing Shakespeare. In 1913, Lang returned to England and created one of his most memorable roles, the title character in Mr. Wu. Wu is a Chinese merchant who reluctantly kills his beloved but dishonoured daughter, with the girl's consent. Revengefully, he then kidnaps her seducer, and demands his mother in exchange.

He reprised this part in the silent film Mr. Wu (Maurice Elvey, 1919), which was a big hit. Lang became so identified with the role that he titled his 1940 memoirs Mr. Wu Looks Back. In 1914-1915, he and Ben Greet were the first directors of the Old Vic Theatre in its premiere season. Land and Hutin Britton successfully directed The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet that season.

British postcard by J. Beagles & Co., London, no. 293H.

British postcard by Rotary, no. 1212C. Photo: Ellis & Walery. Publicity still for the play The Devil's Disciple (1907).

Carnival

In 1916, Matheson Lang became one of the first major theatre stars to act in a silent film. He played Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (Walter West, 1916), with his wife as Portia. The film was made by the company Broadwest, which hired the complete stage cast of the play and filmed at Walthamstow Studios using largely natural light.

Next he appeared in The Ware Case (Walter West, 1917) and The House Opposite (Walter West, Frank Wilson, 1917), in both co-starring with Violet Hopson and Ivy Close.

Lang went on to appear in over 30 films and also wrote the plays Carnival (1919) and The Purple Mask (1920), both of which were produced on Broadway. Carnival was also filmed twice. During a production of Shakespeare's Othello in Venice, an Italian actor suspects his wife of having an affair and plans to murder her on stage. Lang played the lead role in the silent version, Carnival (Harley Knoles, 1921), co-starring Ivor Novello, and again in the sound remake Carnival (Herbert Wilcox, 1931), co-starring Joseph Schildkraut.

British postcard by Rotary, no. 2391 P. Photo: Foulsham and Banfield. Publicity still for the play The Taming of the Shrew.

British postcard in the Picturegoer series, no. 87A. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.

Britain's Leading Screen Actor

Among his other memorable roles were Guy Fawkes (Maurice Elvey, 1923), Matthias in The Wandering Jew (Maurice Elvey, 1923) and Henry IV in Henry, King of Navarre (Maurice Elvey, 1924). By the mid-1920s Matheson Lang was Britain's leading screen actor but he was then eclipsed by Ivor Novello.

His final film was the historical drama The Cardinal (Sinclair Hill, 1936). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “Set in 15th-century Italy, The Cardinal stars Matheson Lang as one Cardinal de Medici. Bound by the rules of the confessional, the cardinal is unable to disclose the multitude of sins revealed to him by one of his most influential parishioners. De Medici's dilemma is compounded by the fact that the confessor has committed a murder for which the Cardinal's brother has been arrested. The basic plot gimmick was good for another go-round in the 1953 Hitchcock flick I Confess.”

In 1940 the Langs were staying with their old friend Dornford Yates and his wife at their house near Pau in France when France surrendered and they had to escape from the advancing Germans through Spain to Portugal. In 1948, Matheson Lang died in Bridgetown, Barbados, at age 68.

British postcard by Raphael Tuck & Sons (Real Photograph), no. 166. Photo: Gaumont-British.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Encyclopaedia Britannica, British Pictures, AllMovie, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Popular pin-up model Eve Eden (1940) aka Rosa Dolmai was a starlet in British B-films of the late 1950’s and 1960’s.

Yugoslavian postcard by Grafoplastika DD, Smederova.

Anatomical Marvel

Eve Eden was born as Rosa Dolmai (or Delmai or Delmar) in Bath, UK in 1940 (some sources say 1938) and reportedly, she owed her exotic looks to Portuguese and English ancestry. 17 years later she was a waitress who became ‘One of Britain’s many anatomical marvels (39-22-36) in the figure modeling field”, as TidiousTed writes at his blog RetroRamblings.

Rosa was discovered by an unnamed photographer in the Thames Valley Photographic Club where she became a popular attraction for other camera club photographers who named her 'The West Country Lovely'. As Rosa Dolmai or Rosa Dolmaille, she featured in glamour photographer Harrison Marks’ magazine Solo No.3. Her first appearance in his magazine Kamera followed in issue No.11. After that she became a regular model for several months.

She came under contract to 'leading London agent for glamour’ Bill Watts, who was also the agent for Sabrina and Shirley Ann Field.

Sabrina. British postcard in the Greetings series. Photo: Douglas Burn.

Naked Fury

Between 1957 and 1959, Rosa Dolmai with her seductive dark looks appeared often in the pocket magazines from TOCO, such as Spick & Span, Foto, Model, QT, Hush, Strip Lingerie, Sleek, X For Men, Beautiful Britons, and Fan Fare, usually in white lingerie, corsets, panties and stockings.

While modelling, Rosa also harboured tap dance aspirations. She worked as a compere for stage shows and made her screen debut on TV as one of the presenters of an episode of the Six-Five Special (1958). Rosa gained bit parts in TV commercials and variety shows with Norman Wisdom and Benny Hill.

Parts were to follow on series like Danger Man and Airline Detective. She had an uncredited bit part in the crime film Naked Fury (Charles Saunders, 1959) and played credited as Eve Eden in the war comedy Operation Bullshine (Gilbert Gunn, 1959).

Dutch postcard. Publicity still for the TV series Danger Man (1960-1961) with Patrick McGoohan.

Bondage Scandal

In the following years, pretty Rosa Dolmai continued to appear in glamour magazines. As Eve Eden, she was a dancer in a strip show in the comedy Doctor in Love (Ralph Thomas, 1960), the third sequel to Doctor In The House (Ralph Thomas, 1954). She played small parts on television and in B-films like So Evil, So Young (Godfrey Grayson, 1961) starring Jill Ireland, the crime drama Rag Doll (Lance Comfort, 1961) and The Clue of the Silver Key (Gerard Glaister, 1961).

In Belgium, she appeared in the comedy De ordonnans/At the Drop of a Head (Charles Frank, 1962) with country singer Bobbejaan Schoepen.

After a bondage full-nude layout brought her to public scandal, she dyed her hair blond and reinvented herself as Eve Eden, and landed a bit part as a high priestess in the Beatles’ film Help! (Richard Lester, 1965).

The Beatles. Dutch postcard by Rembrandt N.V., Amsterdam. Sent by mail in 1964.

An Unverified Rumour

She had another uncredited part in the sixteenth in the series of Carry On films, Carry On... Up the Khyber (Gerald Thomas, 1968), as one of the wives of the The Khasi of Kalabar (Kenneth Williams). Reviewer Shell-26 at IMDb: “Probably the best of the Carry-Ons. Genuinely funny performances from all the actors and a classic script.”

Later she appeared also in When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (Val Guest, 1969). Eve Eden continued to pose until the late 1960's. Her dozens of pictorials included spreads in international magazines like Playboy, Hi-Life, Modern Man, Fling, Beau, and Knave.

There’s an unverified rumour that she then married a wealthy South American and retired from modelling.

And finally a word about Eve from the editor of The 60s Glam Database: “Perhaps the most beautiful model of England's Golden Age and certainly today one of the most highly sought after models. Magazine appearances are becoming increasingly collectable.”

Sources: The 60s Glam Database of British Glamour Models of the 1960’s, RetroRambling and IMDb.

Horst ‘Hotte’ Buchholz (1933-2003) was the James Dean of the German Cinema. He was often type casted as a rebellious teenager in the late 1950s. Horst appeared in over sixty films between 1952 and 2002 and is now best remembered as the Mexican gunfighter Chico in The Magnificent Seven (1960).

German postcard by Franz-Josef Rüdel, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1858. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden Westf., no. 2204. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).

Biker-Gang Leader

Horst Werner Buchholz was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1933. His father was a German shoemaker, while his mother was born to Danish parents. At the end of the war he found himself in a foster home in Czechoslovakia.

Back in Berlin he landed his first stage role at 15 in a theatre version of the German children's classic Emil und die Detective (Emil and the Detectives). In the next years he established himself in the theatre and on the radio. After some dubbing work he expanded into film in 1952.

He had a supporting part in Marianne, meine Jugendliebe/Marianne My Teenage Love (Julien Duvivier, 1955) starring Marianne Hold, and he won a Best Actor award at Cannes for his lead in Himmel ohne Sterne/Sky Without Stars (Helmut Käutner, 1955).

His star making role was the biker-gang leader Freddy in Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956) with Karin Baal. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "With the exception of Buchholz, most of the young toughs in the film are nonprofessionals, exuding a raw energy that many 'pros' could not emulate. Most of Die Halbstarken was lensed on location in genuine gang-ridden urban neighborhoods."

Another major film was Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull/Confessions of Felix Krull (Kurt Hoffmann, 1957) based on the novel by Thomas Mann. The film, and its young star, received international acclaim.

French postcard by St. Anne, Marseille. Photo: Sam Lévin.

German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/92. Photo: Sam Lévin.

German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/93. Photo: Sam Lévin.

With Myriam Bru. German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/94. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Gandhi's Assassin

Horst Buchholz began appearing in foreign films from 1959 on. He was a villain in the British thriller Tiger Bay (J. Lee Thompson, 1959).

That same year he made his Broadway debut with Cherie. In Hollywood, he followed that with the western The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960), the dramatic romance Fanny (Joshua Logan, 1961) and the Berlin-set comedy One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder, 1961), but then his star started to fade.

As an international star he played Gandhi's assassin in Nine Hours to Rama (Mark Robson, 1963), and Marco Polo in La fabuleuse aventure de Marco Polo/Marco the Magnificent (Denys de la Patelliere, 1965), but his particular moment was over.

He took the parts as they came and appeared in comedies, horror films and war dramas, in films and on television, both in the US and in Europe.

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden Westf., no. 2171. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (1956).

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2329. Photo: Interwest / Union / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (1956).

German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1941. Photo: NDF / Herzog-Film/ Ringpress - Vogelmann. Publicity still for Robinson soll nicht sterben/The Legend of Robinson Crusoe (Josef von Báky, 1957).

German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 140. Photo: Union Film / Kiehl.

Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. 7468. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for Fanny (1962).

Puzzles

Since 1985, Horst Buchholz mostly appeared in European films such as I skrzypce przestaly grac/And the Violins Stopped Playing (Alexander Ramati, 1988) in which a group of gypsies flee Nazi persecutors, and the fantasy film In weiter Ferne, so nah!/Faraway, So Close! (Wim Wenders, 1993).

His last important role was in the Oscar-winning La vita è bella/Life Is Beautiful (Roberto Begnini, 1997). He played the doctor whose obsession with puzzles blinds him to his ability to help Roberto Benigni in the concentration camp.

Thanks to his gift for languages, Buchholz was able to dub himself in the foreign releases of the film.

With Romy Schneider. German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F 85. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / NDF.

German postcard by W.S.-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F4. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / NDF.

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.h., Minden (Westf.), no. F 21. Retail price: 25 Pf. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann.

German postcard by Ufa (Universal-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-147. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Klaus Collignon / Ufa.

German postcard by Ufa (Universal-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-31. Sent by mail in 1963. Photo: Bavaria Film.

Out of the Closet

In 2000, Horst Buchholz came out of the closet in the German magazine Bunte as having 'bisexual tendencies'.

His final feature film was the fantasy Detective Lovelorn und die Rache des Pharao/Detective Lovelorn and the revenge of the pharaoh (Thomas Frick, 2002).

In 2003, Horst Buchholz died in intensive care in Berlin of pneumonia while recovering from a broken thighbone. He was 69.

He was married to French actress Myriam Bru, with whom he had two children, Christoph and Beatrice. His son Christopher Buchholz directed the documentary Horst Buchholz... mein Papa/Horst Buchholz... My Dad (Christoph Buchholz, Sandra Hacker, 2005), which deals with his father's life and their relationship.

German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2912. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Film. Publicity still for Tiger Bay (J. Lee Thompson, 1959).

German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg. Photo: Sam Lévin.

German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Estambul 65/That Man in Istanbul (Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi, 1965).

German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg, no. 4766. Photo: Vogelmann / Constantin. Publicity still for Cervantes (Vincent Sherman, 1967).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie). Bob Stage (IMDb), Wikipedia, Filmreference.com, AllMovie and IMDb.

Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) was a German-American actor, screenwriter, producer and film director, who started his career in the silent cinema of the Weimar Republic. During the 1920s, his urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director. His films were promoted as having ‘the Lubitsch touch.’

German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 1926. Photo: Fritz Richard. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Ethnic Jewish Humour

Ernst Lubitsch was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1892. He was the son of Anna (née Lindenstaedt) and Simon Lubitsch, a tailor. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father born in Grodno and his mother from Wriezen (Oder), outside Berlin. Ernst was drawn to the stage while participating in plays staged by his high school, which he quit at 16.

He worked as a bookkeeper at his father's store by day and appeared in cabarets and music halls by night. By 1911, he was a member of Max Reinhardt's renowned Deutsches Theater, where he quickly advanced from bit parts to character leads.

He made his film debut the following year and appeared in approximately thirty films between 1912 and 1920. Lubitsch appeared in a series of very successful film comedies as a character named Meyer in which he emphasized ethnic Jewish humour.

In 1914 he began to write and direct his own films, and made his mark as a serious director with the drama Die Augen der Mumie Ma/The Eyes of the Mummy (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918), starring Pola Negri. He gradually abandoned acting to concentrate on directing and his last film appearance was opposite Pola Negri and Paul Wegener in the drama Sumurun (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920).

With Ossi Oswalda. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 337/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Zander & Labisch.

Pola Negri. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 407/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt Phot.

Emil Jannings as the British king Henry VIII and Henny Porten as Anna Boleyn, in Anna Boleyn (1920). German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 645/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Union Film.

Grand Master

As a director, Lubitsch alternated between escapist comedies and large-scale historical dramas, enjoying great international success with both. A triumph was Die Austernprinzessin/The Oyster Princess (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919), featuring Ossi Oswalda, a sparkling satire caricaturizing American manners.

His reputation as a grand master of world cinema reached a new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame Du Barry/Passion (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) with Pola Negri, and Anna Boleyn/Deception (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) starring Henny Porten and Emil Jannings. Both of these films found American distributorship by early 1921.

They, along with his Carmen/Gypsy Blood (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921) were selected by The New York Times on its list of the 15 most important movies of 1921. With glowing reviews under his belt, and American money flowing his way, Lubitsch formed his own production company and made the high-budget spectacular Das Weib des Pharao/The Loves of Pharaoh (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921).

Henny Porten as Anna Boleyn, in Anna Boleyn (1920). German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 401/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt Phot. / Messter Film, Berlin.

Henny Porten as Anna Boleyn, in Anna Boleyn (1920). German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 402/4, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt Phot. / Messter Film, Berlin.

Hollywood

Ernst Lubitsch left Germany for Hollywood in 1922. He was contracted by Mary Pickford to direct her in the film Rosita (1922). The result was a critical and commercial success, but director and star clashed during its filming, and it ended up as the only project that they made together.

A free agent after just one American film, Lubitsch was signed to a remarkable three-year, six-picture contract by Warner Brothers that guaranteed the director his choice of both cast and crew, and full editing control over the final cut. Settling in America, Lubitsch established his reputation for sophisticated comedy with such stylish films as The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926).

But his films were only marginally profitable for Warner Brothers, and Lubitsch's contract was eventually dissolved by mutual consent, with MGM-Paramount buying out the remainder. His first film for MGM, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) with Ramon Novarro, was well regarded, but lost money.

Ramon Novarro, Norma Shearer, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg

Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 98/6. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927).

Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 98/10. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927).

Musicals

Lubitsch seized upon the advent of talkies to direct musicals. With his first sound film, The Love Parade (1929), starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Lubitsch hit his stride as a maker of worldly musical comedies and earned himself another Oscar nomination.

The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) were hailed by critics as masterpieces of the newly emerging musical genre. Lubitsch served on the faculty of the University of Southern California for a time.

His next film was a romantic comedy, written with Samson Raphaelson, Trouble in Paradise (1932). The cynical comedy was popular both with critics and with audiences. But it was a project that could only have been made before the enforcement of the Production Code, and after 1935, Trouble in Paradise was withdrawn from circulation. It was not seen again until 1968.

Maurice Chevalier and Jeannette MacDonald

Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. Dutch postcard. JosPé, no. 402. Photo: Paramount.

Maurice Chevalier & Miriam Hopkins in The Smiling Lieutenant

Maurice Chevalier and Miriam Hopkins. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5976/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931).

Running Paramount

Ernst Lubitsch continued to specialize in comedy, whether with music, as in MGM's opulent The Merry Widow (1934) and Paramount's One Hour with You (1932), or without, as in Design for Living (1933).

He made only one other dramatic film, the anti-war Broken Lullaby/The Man I Killed (1932).

In 1935, he was appointed Paramount's production manager, thus becoming the only major Hollywood director to run a large studio. But Lubitsch had trouble delegating authority, which was a problem when he was overseeing sixty different films. He was fired after a year on the job, and returned to full-time moviemaking.

Maurice Chevalier. Dutch postcard, no. 196. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931).

Maurice Chevalier. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6709/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount.

Garbo Laughs!

In 1935 he married British actress Vivian Gaye. They had one daughter, Nicola Lubitsch in 1938. And in 1936, he became a naturalized US citizen.

Lubitsch moved to MGM, and directed Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939). The famously serious actress' laughing scene in this satirical comedy was heavily promoted by studio publicists with the tagline "Garbo Laughs!"

In 1940, Lubitsch directed The Shop Around the Corner, an artful comedy of cross purposes. The film reunited Lubitsch with his Merry Widow screenwriter Raphaelson, and starred James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as a pair of bickering co-workers in Budapest, each unaware that the other is their secret romantic correspondent.

Roland Young, Genevieve Tobin, Jeanette MacDonald, Maurice Chevalier

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6732/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for One Hour with You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932) with Roland Young, Genevieve Tobin, Jeanette MacDonald, and Maurice Chevalier.

Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, no. C 181. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Ninotschka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939) with Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas.

Heaven Can Wait

Lubitsch went independent to direct That Uncertain Feeling (1941, a remake of his 1925 film Kiss Me Again), and the dark anti-Nazi farce To Be or Not to Be (1942). A heart condition curtailed his activity, and he spent much of his time in supervisory capacities.

Heaven Can Wait (1943) was another Raphaelson collaboration. Then, Lubitsch worked with Edwin Justus Mayer on the scripting process of A Royal Scandal (1945), a remake of Lubitsch's silent film A Forbidden Paradise. The script was written and prepared under Lubitsch, and he was the original director of this film, and directed the rehearsals. He became ill during shooting, so hired Otto Preminger to do the rest of the shooting.

After A Royal Scandal, Lubitsch regained his health, and directed Cluny Brown (1946), with Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones. In 1947, he was awarded a Special Academy Award. Ernst Lubitsch died later that year in Hollywood of a heart attack, his sixth. His last film, That Lady in Ermine (1948) with Betty Grable, was completed by Otto Preminger and released posthumously.

Meyer aus Berlin/Meyer from Berlin (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919). Source: Bob Toomey (YouTube)

Trailer for Ninotschka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939). Source: OscarMovieTrailers (You Tube).

Sources: Ephraim Katz (The Film Encyclopedia), William McPeak (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Voluptuous, visually stunning Italian film actress Eleonora Rossi Drago (1925–2007) played princesses and temptresses throughout Italian cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. She never found the international cross-over fame destined for Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, but she earned respect as a fine actress playing leading roles in films by such famous directors as Michelangelo Antonioni, Luigi Comencini and Valerio Zurlini.

Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 369. Photo: Minerva Film.

Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 114.

Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit, no. 3329. Photo: ENIC.

An Arresting Beauty

Eleonora Rossi Drago was born Palmina Omiccioli near Genoa, Italy, in 1925. She was the daughter of a Spanish sea captain and an Italian mother. At the age of 17, Palmina married to a gentleman named Rossi and bore a daughter, Fiorella. The marriage did not last, and mr. Rossi emigrated to Argentina leaving his wife to raise their daughter by herself. She found work as a department store mannequin and began actually designing couture clothing herself.

An arresting beauty, she started competing in beauty contests and wound up in fourth place in the Miss Italy pageant. Gina Lollobrigida came in third. The attention lured her to films. She moved to Rome and in 1949 began receiving small film roles while using her married name of Rossi.

Her first two big breaks came with Persiane chiuse/Behind Closed Shutters (Luigi Comencini, 1951) with Massimo Girotti, a melodrama about prostitution, and the highly controversial Sensualità/Barefoot Savage (Clemente Fracassi, 1952) in which Marcello Mastroianni and Amedeo Nazzari violently quarrel over her affections.

Persiane chiuse was considered a strong success. The highly impressed director, Luigi Comencini went on to cast Eleonora as a female lead in his next film La tratta delle bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1952), another tawdry melodrama about prostitution that co-starred Vittorio Gassman and also showcased the up-and-coming Sophia Loren.

Italian postcard by Vetta Traldi, Milano, in the series Divi del Cinema, no. 56.

German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 118. Retail price: 10 Pfg. Photo: Franco London Film.

French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 624. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 483, presented by Les Carbones Korès, no. 27D.

Lady of the Italian Cinema

According to Gary Brumburgh at IMDb,it was obvious that Eleanora Rossi-Drago “had the makings of a bosomy sex goddess but she constantly strove to better her acting reputation in classier material”. She got the nickname of the 'Lady of the Italian Cinema'. In 1954 she appeared opposite Madeleine Robinson in the L'affaire Maurizius/On Trial (Julien Duvivier, 1954), a bleak drama about the miscarriages of justice. In 1955 she won critical notice on stage as Helena opposite Marcello Mastroianni in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya directed by Luchino Visconti.

Her finest hour in the cinema came about that same year with the release of Le amiche/The Girlfriends (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1955). She starred in this rags-to-riches story as a humble girl who becomes a respected owner of a fashion salon. Among her other standout roles in the 1950´s were Kean (Vittorio Gassman, Francesco Rosi, 1956) again opposite Gassman, Suor Letizia/The Awakening (Mario Camerini, 1957) starring Anna Magnani, the Oscar nominated La strada lunga un anno/The Year Long Road (Giuseppe de Santis, 1958) opposite Silvana Pampanini, and the crime drama Un maledetto imbroglio/An Ugly Mess (Pietro Germi, 1959) with Claudia Cardinale.

In the Italian/French co-production Estate violenta/Violent Summer (Valerio Zurlini, 1959), she played a married woman approaching middle age who surrenders herself to a younger man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) during the summer of '43 and the height of fascism. The film earned her the Nastro d'argento(Silver Ribbon award), voted for by Italian film journalists, and the Best Actress award at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina.

Italian postcard by Turismofoto, no. 63.

French postcard by Editions P.I., no. FK 3096. Photo: Joachim G. Jung / Ufa.

Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 21.250, 1961. Retail price: 8 Kop.

Blending Back Inconspicuously

Eleanora Rossi Drago was forced to take on provocative roles of lesser quality - roles that usually emphasized her physical attributes or enhanced the scenery around her. While Sophia Loren had a Carlo Ponti to promote her internationally, Rossi-Drago was less fortunate. By the 1960´s she was relegated to such unmemorable adventures, horror films and sword-and-sand spectacles as David e Golia/David and Goliath (Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier, 1960) with Orson Welles playing King Saul, and Rosmunda e Alboino/Sword of the Conqueror (Carlo Campogalliani, 1961) opposite a raping and pillaging Jack Palance.

More interesting were her parts in the anthology film L´amour a vingt ans/Love at Twenty (Renzo Rossellini a.o., 1961), Anima nera/Black Soul (Roberto Rossellini, 1962) and the delightful comedy Se permettete parliamo di donne/Let's Talk About Women (Ettore Scola, 1964) starring Vittorio Gassman. In 1964, she also appeared in the TV mini-series La Cittadella (Anton Giulio Majano, 1964), an adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel, The Citadel. Elsewhere, she was pretty much overlooked in the epic ensemble as Lot's wife in the mammoth failure The Bible: In the Beginning... (John Huston, 1966).

Things did not improve into the decade and after appearing in the elegant erotic drama Camille 2000 (Radley Metzger, 1969), in the critically-panned retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (Massimo Dallamano, 1970) with Helmut Berger, and in the good-looking giallo thriller Nelle pieghe della carne/In the Folds of the Flesh (Sergio Bergonzelli, 1971) with Pier Angeli, she called it quits.

Blending back inconspicuously into mainstream society, she married Sicilian businessman Domenico La Cavera in 1973, and eventually retired to Palermo, Italy. In 1989 she returned once to the screen, for the documentary Ben Webster: The Brute and the Beautiful (John Jeremy, 1989) about jazz saxophonist Ben Webster. In 2007, Eleanora Rossi Drago died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 82. She was survived by her second husband and her daughter.

Mexican card, no. 320.

Scene from Estate violenta/Violent Summer (1959). Source: bolingbroke70 (YouTube).

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.

American film, stage and television actress Carroll Baker (1931) enjoyed popularity as both a serious dramatic actress and as a sex symbol. Cast in a wide range of roles during her heyday in the 1960s, Baker was especially memorable playing brash, flamboyant women, due to her beautiful features, striking blonde hair, and distinctive Southern drawl. In the late 1960s she moved to Italy, where she starred in numerous Giallo thrillers and horror films.

German postcard by ISV, no. T-13.

Baby Doll

Carroll Baker was born Karolina Piekarski in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1931. Her parents were Virginia (née Duffy) and Polish born William Watson Baker (Piekarski), who was a travelling salesman. After spending a year in college, she began working as the assistant of magician the Great Volta and joined a dance company.

Baker moved to New York City. In 1953, she married furrier Louie Ritter, but the marriage ended the same year. She studied acting under Lee Strasberg, eventually becoming part of the famed Actors Studio, where she was an acquaintance of Marilyn Monroe and became a close friend of James Dean. Baker began her film career with a small part in Easy to Love (Charles Walters, 1953). After appearing in television commercials, she took a role in the Broadway production of All Summer Long.

Then director Elia Kazan cast her as the title character in his controversial Baby Doll (1956), based on a script by Tennessee Williams. Her role as the thumb-sucking teenage bride to a failed middle-aged cotton gin owner (Karl Malden) brought Baker instant fame as well as a certain level of notoriety. It earned her an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe. She also appeared in Giant (George Stevens, 1956) alongside Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean.

Israelian postcard by Editions de Luxe, no. 117.

Something Wild

Carroll Baker would go on to work steadily in films throughout the late fifties and early sixties. She appeared in a variety of genres: romances, such as The Miracle (Irving Rapper, 1959), co-starring a young Roger Moore, and But Not for Me (Walter Lang, 1959) with Clark Gable, as well as Westerns, including The Big Country (William Wyler, 1958) and a lead role in the epic How the West Was Won (Henry Hathaway, John Ford, George Marshall, 1962); and steamy melodramas, including the controversial independent film Something Wild (1961), directed by her then-husband Jack Garfein, in which she plays a rape victim; and Station Six-Sahara (Seth Holt, 1962).

Baker was also chosen by MGM for the lead in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, but her contract with Warner Brothers prevented her from accepting the role, which ultimately went to Elizabeth Taylor. Baker's portrayal of a Jean Harlow-type movie star in The Carpetbaggers (Edward Dmytryk, 1964) brought her a second wave of notoriety. The film was the top money-maker of that year, with domestic box-office receipts of $13,000,000 and marked the beginning of a tumultuous relationship with the film's producer, Joseph E. Levine.

Based on her Carpetbaggers performance, Levine began to develop Baker as a sex symbol, casting her in the title roles of Sylvia (Gordon Douglas, 1965) and Harlow (Joseph E. Levine, 1965). Despite much pre-publicity, the latter film was not a success, and relations between Baker and Levine soured.

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 3143, 1968. Retail price: 0,20 M. Photo: publicity still for Cheyenne Autumn (John Ford, 1964).

Horror and Giallos

In the late 1960s, Carroll Baker moved to Italy after a protracted legal battle with Paramount Pictures, as well as a divorce from her second husband, Jack Garfein. The next decade, she starred in a multitude of Italian films. These included several horror films and Giallo thrillers such as L’Harem/Her Harem (Marco Ferreri, 1967) with Renato Salvatori, Il dolce corpo di Deborah/The Sweet Body of Deborah (Romolo Guerrieri, 1968) opposite Jean Sorel, and Il diavolo a sette face/The Devil Has Seven Faces (Osvaldo Civirani, 1971).

She became a favourite of cult director Umberto Lenzi who directed her in the horror films Così dolce... così perversa/So Sweet... So Perverse (1969) with Jean-Louis Trintignant, Orgasmo/Paranoia (1969) with Lou Castel, Paranoia/A Quiet Place to Kill (1970), and Il coltello di ghiaccio/Knife of Ice (1972).

She followed her roles in Lenzi's films with a leading role in Baba Yaga/Black Magic (Corrado Farina, 1973) as the titular witch, alongside George Eastman. In those years, film locations would take her all around the world, including Spain, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Mexico.

Dutch postcard by P. Moorlag, Heerlen, Sort. 15/6.

Warhol

Carroll Baker returned to American cinema with a leading part as a beauty salon owner who provides hit men with jobs in Andy Warhol's Bad (Jed Johnson, 1977). She played a washed-up actress living among expatriates in a Spanish village in Las flores del vicio/The Sky Is Falling (Silvio Narizzano, 1979) with Dennis Hopper.

She appeared in British theatre productions of Bell, Book, and Candle; Rain, Lucy Crown, and Motive. There she met her third husband, stage actor Donald Burton.

Baker starred in the Walt Disney-produced horror film, The Watcher in the Woods (John Hough, 1980), alongside Bette Davis and played the mother of Dorothy Stratten in Star 80 (Bob Fosse, 1983). She also played Jack Nicholson's wife in Ironweed (Héctor Babenco, 1987).

She later had supporting roles in Kindergarten Cop (Ivan Reitman, 1990) and the acclaimed thriller The Game (David Fincher, 1997), before retiring in 2002.

During a career spanning 50 years, Carroll Baker appeared in over 80 roles in film, television, and theatre. In 1983, she published a well-received autobiography entitled Baby Doll: An Autobiography, and later wrote two other books, To Africa with Love, and a novel entitled A Roman Tale. Baker has two children with Jack Garfein, Blanche Baker (1956) and Herschel Garfein (1958).

Trailer for L’Harem/Her Harem (1967). Source: Horrorwitz (YouTube).

Trailer for Orgasmo/Paranoia (1969). Source: Solsoulvideo (YouTube).

This was the fifth episode of 'Imported from the USA'. Earlier episodes were dedicated to Jayne Mansfield, Josephine Baker, Lex Barker and Anna May Wong.

Sources: AllMovie, Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia and IMDb.