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Jeroen Krabbé

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Every year during the last week of September, Utrecht is the Dutch capital of film with The Netherlands Film Festival. During the festival, EFSP provides you daily with postcards of Dutch films and stars from the past. Handsome Dutch actor and film director Jeroen Krabbé (1944) appeared in many Dutch and international films. He had his international breakthrough with two Dutch films by Paul Verhoeven, and later played the villain in the James Bond film The Living Daylights (1987).

Jeroen Krabbé
Dutch postcard.

The Most Expensive Dutch Film Ever



Jeroen Aart Krabbé was born into an artistic family in Amsterdam, Netherlands, in 1944. He was the son of Margreet (née Reiss), a Jewish film translator, and Maarten Krabbé, a well-known painter. After studies at the Rietveld Academy of Art, Amsterdam (1961-1962), Krabbé changed course and went to Drama School in Amsterdam, graduating in 1965.

In 1963, he made his film debut in the comedy Fietsen naar de maan/Bicycling to the Moon (Jef van der Heyden, 1963). Other early film appearances were in the German-Dutch comedy Professor Columbus (Rainer Erler, 1968) with Rudolf Platte, the American family film The Little Ark (James B. Clark, 1972) based on a novel by Jan de Hartog about the big flood in 1953 which struck a big part of The Netherlands, and the Dutch production Alicia (Wim Verstappen, 1974). However, Krabbé was mainly active on stage and TV. He founded a touring theatre company, directed plays, worked as a costume designer, and translated foreign plays into Dutch.

Internationally he first came to prominence in Paul Verhoeven's Dutch film Soldaat van Oranje/Soldier of Orange (1977) opposite Rutger Hauer. Soldaat van Oranje is set during the German occupation of the Netherlands during World War II, and shows how individual students have different roles in the war. The film had a budget of ƒ 5,000,000 (€2,300,000), at the time the most expensive Dutch film ever. With 1,547,183 viewers, it was the most popular Dutch film of 1977 and received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Foreign Language Film in 1980.

In the election for best Dutch film of the twentieth century at the Netherlands Film Festival in 1999 Soldaat van Oranje/Soldier of Orange reached the second place, right after another Paul Verhoeven film Turks fruit/Turkish Delight (1973). Krabbé had a supporting part in Verhoeven’s Spetters (Paul Verhoeven, 1980), which was a small success in the US.

He played the lead in Een Vlucht Regenwulpen/A Flight of Rainbirds (Ate de Jong, 1981) and in the terrific erotic thriller De vierde man/The Fourth Man (Paul Verhoeven, 1983). In the latter Renée Soutendijk plays a woman who may or may not have killed her three previous husbands. Krabbe is the intended fourth, a broken-down bisexual writer who is pulled into Soutendijk's web like an unsuspecting fly. De vierde man/The Fourth Man was a decent box office hit in the Netherlands, and was even more successful in the United States, where it received widespread critical acclaim. This helped to launch Krabbé’s international career.

Jeroen Krabbé
Dutch postcard.

Jeroen Krabbé in Zo Vader, Zo Zoon
Dutch postcard. Publicity still for the TV quiz Zo Vader, Zo Zoon/Like Father Like Son (ca. 1975) with the other panel members author Henri Knap, politician Willem Aantjes and actress Elly van Stekelenburg, and left host Gerard van den Berg.

James Bond Villain



Jeroen Krabbé had already started to work in international productions. He had a part in the Emmy Award-winning miniseries World War III (Boris Sagal, David Greene, 1982) with Rock Hudson and David Soul. In Great-Britain he played Ben Kingsley’s neighbour in the drama Turtle Diary (John Irvin, 1985) based on a screenplay adapted by Harold Pinter from Russell Hoban's novel.

His first big American film was the Whoopi Goldberg comedy Jumpin' Jack Flash (Penny Marshall, 1986). However, it was his roles as villains in a string of international productions which brought him international stardom. Notable roles included Losado in No Mercy (Richard Pearce, 1986) opposite Richard Gere, and Gianni Franco in The Punisher (Mark Goldblatt, 1989) starring Dolph Lundgren.

He is probably best remembered as KGB agent General Georgi Koskov in The Living Daylights (John Glen, 1987), the fifteenth entry in the James Bond film series and the first to star Timothy Dalton.

Other interesting films were the British-Dutch production Shadow Man (Piotr Andrejew, 1988) about a Polish-Jewish refugee (Tom Hulce) during a fictional war in Amsterdam, the British drama Scandal (Michael Caton Jones, 1989), a fictionalised account of the Profumo Affair, with Ian McKellan as the conservative Minister of War.

He also played in two early films by Steven Soderbergh, the mystery thriller Kafka (Steven Soderbergh, 1991), featuring Jeremy Irons, and King of the Hill (Steven Soderbergh, 1993), which was nominated for the Palme d'Or, at the 1993 Cannes Film Festival.

Jeroen Krabbé
Dutch autograph card.

The Discovery of Heaven


In Hollywood, Jeroen Krabbé appeared in the romantic drama The Prince of Tides (Barbra Streisand, 1991), and as Dr. Charles Nichols in the box-office smash The Fugitive (Andrew Davis, 1993) opposite Harrison Ford. In the meanwhile he kept working in the European cinema. In the Netherlands, he appeared in Voor een Verloren Soldaat/For a Lost Soldier (Roeland Kerbosch, 1992) based upon the autobiographical novel of the same title by ballet dancer and choreographer Rudi van Dantzig. He appeared as the composer George Frideric Handel in Farinelli (Gérard Corbiau 1994) about the life and career of the Italian castrato singer Farinelli (Stefano Dionisi).

He was both director and producer of Left Luggage (1998), a film about Orthodox Jews during the 1970s in Antwerp, Belgium, co-starring Isabella Rossellini and Maximilian Schell. Left Luggage was entered into the 48th Berlin International Film Festival. Krabbé also directed The Discovery of Heaven (Jeroen Krabbé, 2001), based on the novel by Harry Mulisch and starring Stephen Fry.

He continued to appear in international productions, like the American biographical drama Dangerous Beauty (Marshall Herskovitz, 1998), Ever After: A Cinderella Story (Andy Tennant, 1998) starring Drew Barrymore, the big budget Hollywood crime comedy Ocean's Twelve (Steven Soderbergh, 2004) with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, and the British Gothic horror film Snuff-Movie (Bernard Rose, 2005) in which he starred as a horror film maker. His television work includes playing Satan in the Biblical telefilm Jesus (Roger Young, 1999) and an uncanny psychic in series 11 of Midsomer Murders, Talking to the Dead (2008).

In 2005 he presented for Dutch television the documentary series Allemaal theater/All Theatre, about the post-war history of the Dutch theatre. For this he interviewed many actors, directors, writers and comedians. In 2007 he made a similar series about film history, Allemaal film/All Film.

Apart from acting and directing he is an accomplished artist. In 2004 Jeroen Krabbé: Schilder/Jeroen Krabbé: painter by Ruud van der Neut, a comprehensive account of his career in painting, was published in Dutch and English editions. He also co-authored a Dutch cookbook. Krabbé has three sons with his wife Herma, radio and TV presenter Martijn Krabbé, artist and TV presenter Jasper Krabbé and Jacob Krabbé. His brother is master chess player, journalist and novelist Tim Krabbé.

Jeroen Krabbé appeared in the successful Dutch TV series In therapie/In Treatment (Alain de Levita, 2011), the comedy Alleen maar nette mensen/Only Decent People (Lodewijk Crijns, 2012) as the father of Geza Weisz, and the historical war drama Tula: The Revolt (Jeroen Leinders, 2013), about the big slave uprising on the island of Curacao in 1795. In 2014 Krabbé was on the stage again for the first time in almost ten years in the play Vaslav, in which he played the role of Serge Diaghilev. In 2015, Krabbé came up with a successful TV series about Vincent van Gogh. In 2017 he came with a sequel about the life of Pablo Picasso and in 2018 about the life of Paul Gauguin. His latest film is AMS Secrets (Andy Newbery, 2018) with Mike Beckingham and Maryam Hassouni.


Trailer De vierde man/The Fourth Man (1983). Source: Malvolio80 (YouTube).


Original theatrical trailer for The Fugitive (1993). Source: Forever Cinematic Trailers (YouTube).


Trailer The Discovery of Heaven (2001). Source: filmkolumne (YouTube).

Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Poul Webb (Art & Artists), Wikipedia (English and Dutch), and IMDb.

100 years of Dutch Exhibitors Association

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During The Netherlands Film Festival, we join with our little The Netherlands Film Star Postcard Festival. The 38th edition of NFF takes place from 27 September till 5 October 2018, and celebrates the achievements of Dutch filmmakers. Also this year, the NVBF, the Dutch cinema Association, celebrates its 100th anniversary. In a book specially compiled for this occasion, the association looks back on this hundred-year history. In this book, two postcards of our collection are included. Two Ross Verlag postcards of Lien Deyers and Truus van Aalten, two Dutch girls who became films stars in Berlin in the late 1920s and were special guests at the ITF Film exhibition in The Hague in 1928.

Truus van Aalten
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4457/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Balázs, Berlin.

Dutch film star Truus van Aalten (1910-1999) made 29 films in the 1920s and 1930s, and only one of them in the Netherlands.

Truus van Aalten
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1728/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa.

Truus van Aalten
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3618/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ufa. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Truus van Aalten
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5321/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa.

Truus van Aalten
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5774/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Tannenwald, Wiesbaden.

Truus van Aalten
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6436/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Atelier Gerstenberg, Berlin.

Truus van Aalten
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6790/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Eli Cahn, Berlin.

The Dutch Exhibitors Association


All cinemas, arthouses and movie houses in the Netherlands are a member of the Dutch Exhibitors Association NVBF. Therefore the NVBF is the designated body to aim for collective advocacy, promotion, professional development and communication in the broadest sense of the word.

A precursor of the NVBF started during a meeting of film exhibitors in 1918 in Café Schiller, a grand cafe at the Rembrandtplein in the centre of Amsterdam

In the memorial article that appeared on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Dutch Cinema Association, Daniel Hamburger jr., one of the founders and for many years chairman of the association, described the start as follows: 'Born out of necessity, forced by circumstances.'

On 8 February 1918, the magazine De Bioscoop-Courant published an open letter from a Maastricht cinema operator, entitled Een Hulpkreet uit de Zuiden (A cry for help from the South). On the initiative of Hamburger jr., a group of cinema operators gathered a week later, on Monday 11 February 1918, in Café Schiller and that is where the history of the association began.

At the beginning of 1919 the distributors also joined together, in the Association of Film Rental Offices, and in the Netherlands two power blocks arose that faced each other, but also often had common interests. A joint disputes committee was established at the beginning of 1921. This cooperation between the two associations soon resulted in a new connection. At that time the Dutch Cinema Association was founded. In 1937, the film production companies joined the union and the entire sector was represented.

In the following century, the resilience of the union was put to the test. There, among other things, the Second World War, internal conflicts, the film inspection, the arrival of foreign companies, the rise of television and later the videocassette and DVD and piracy did occur. Change also came about in 1992, when the NFC was set up by European regulations and cinema operators and the Dutch film theatres, feature film producers and film distributors each joined in their own organisation.

And now there is this wonderful book - in Dutch - full of great pictures of cinemas now and then - and two postcards of Truus and Lien.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5503/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa.

Dutch actress Lien Deyers (1910-1965) - also known as Lien Deijers and Lien Dyers - was discovered by famous director Fritz Lang who gave her a part in Spione/Spies (1928). She acted in a stream of late silent and early sound films. After 1935 her star faded rapidly and her life ended in tragedy.

Lien Deyers in Spione (1928)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 95/1. Photo: Fritz Lang Film. Publicity still for Spione/Spies (Fritz Lang, 1928). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3525/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Schrecker, Berlin.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4283/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Balázs, Berlin. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4283/2, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Balázs, Berlin.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5274/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.

Lien Deyers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5315/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Source: NVBF (Dutch).

Henriëtte Davids

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The Netherlands Film Festival in the city of Utrecht is both the home of Dutch cinema and the leading platform for the Netherlands’ national film culture. The 38th edition takes place from 27 September till 5 October 2018, and celebrates the achievements of Dutch filmmakers. And EFSP joins the fun again with The Netherlands Film Star Postcard Festival. Dutch variety artist and comedian Henriëtte 'Heintje' Davids (1888-1975) was the sister of talented cabaret star Louis Davids. She appeared in De Jantjes/The Tars (1934) and several other Dutch films of the 1920s and 1930s.

Henriëtte Davids and Sylvain Poons
Dutch postcard. Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn / Hollandia Film Prod. More interesting than the pair in front on this postcard of the Dutch classic De Jantjes/The Tars (Jaap Speyer, 1934) is the strange pair in the background. They are the street singers Na Druppel and De Mop, played by the Jewish comedians Heintje Davids and Sylvain Poons. Their love duet Omdat ik zoveel van je hou (Because I Love You So) became a Dutch evergreen and both were popular stars in many films of the 1930s.

Henriëtte Davids and Jopie Koopman in Op stap (1935)
Dutch postcard. Photo: Nationaal-film. Publicity still for Op stap/On the road (Ernst Winar, 1935) with Jopie Koopman.

The Gas Chambers of Sobibor


Dutch variety artist and comedian Henriëtte Davids was born as Hendrika David in Rotterdam in 1888. She was the daughter of comedian and bar owner Levie David and soubrette Francina Terveen. The poor family had eight children of which four died young.

Her siblings were artists. She was the sister of actress Rika Davids, actor/singer Louis Davids and musician Hakkie Davids. Louis would die just before the Second World War. In 1943 both Rika and Hakkie did not survive the Nazi gas chambers of Sobibor.

So after the war, Henriëtte was the sole survivor of the Jewish stage family. Originally, her siblings performed together as Familie-theater Davids on carnivals, where they performed songs during the summers. Heintje, as Hendrika was lovingly called, was an ugly duckling: small, fat and with a funny voice. So she was not allowed to join the family theatre.

Against the will of her father, she started her stage career in 1907 as a chanteuse comique in a revue by Henri ter Hall. In 1910 she began to work together with her talented brother Louis. Louis Davids and his sister Rika had formed a popular singing duo, but after Rika's marriage in 1910 to British magician John Weil, Heintje took her place.

Louis had his doubts about his 'talentless' sister, but Heintje was ambitious and opportunistic, and made people laugh with her smart and domineering personality. The duo proved to be such a success that they even made tours through Germany and Great Britain.

Henriëtte Davids made her film debut as a dancer in the silent film Fatum (Theo Frenkel sr., 1914) starring Louis Bouwmeester. She also played in three silent film versions of Jordaan plays by Herman Bouber, Bleeke Bet/Pale Beth (Alex Benno, 1923), Amsterdam bij Nacht/Amsterdam By Night (Theo Frenkel sr., 1924) with Willem van der Veer, and Oranje Hein/Orange Hein (Alex Benno, 1925) featuring Johan Elsensohn.

De Jantjes, Joan Remmelts, Jan van Ees, Sylvain Poons, Johan Kaart jr., Henriëtte Davids, Willy Costello, Susie Klein
Dutch postcard by Hollandia Film Prod. / Loet C. Barnstijn. Photo: publicity still for De Jantjes/The Tars (1934).

Johan Kaart, Suzy Klein, Willy Castello, Henriette Davids, Jan van Ees and Sylvain Poons in De Jantjes
Dutch postcard by Hollandia Film Prod. / Loet C. Barnstijn. Photo: publicity still for De Jantjes/The Tars (1934).

Never Can Say Goodbye


Henriette Davids' sound debut was in the Belgian film Jeunes filles en liberté/Young Girls in Freedom (Fritz Kramp, 1933) with Georges Charlia.

Following the huge success of De Jantjes/The Tars (Jaap Speijer, 1934), she performed in the comedies Op stap/On the Road (Ernst Winar, 1935), De big van het regiment/The Big of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935) and Kermisgasten/Carnival People (Jaap Speyer, 1936) opposite Johan Kaart.

She was married to the journalist/writer Philip 'Rido' Pinkhof who wrote several songs for De Jantjes (1934), including her hit Draaien (Turning). He also wrote some of the dialogues for Kermisgasten/Carnival People (1936) and the script for her last film, Een koninkrijk voor een huis/A Kingdom for a House (Jaap Speyer, 1949), in which she starred once again with Johan Kaart.

Heintje and her husband Rigo had miraculously survived the war in several hiding places. In 1948, she got on her sixtieth birthday the now historical Davids-ring of the Municipality of Rotterdam 'in recognition of her great achievements in the field of cabaret and as a posthumous tribute to Rika, Hakkie and Louis'.

In 1954 she officially took leave of the stage, and she gave the Davids-ring to Dutch cabaret artist Wim Kan who passed it forward in 1976 to Herman van Veen. However, after her husband died in 1956 the lonely Heintje soon made her comeback. She kept performing on stage and TV till the late 1960s, often announcing that this was her farewell performance.

Nowadays her name is a synonym in the Netherlands for someone who can’t say goodbye (heintjedavidseffect). Henriëtte Davids finally said farewell to life in 1975 in Naarden, the Netherlands.

Henriëtte Davids
Dutch autograph card, no. 1054.


Heintje Davids and Sylvain Poons sing Omdat ik zoveel van je hou (Because I Love You So) in De Jantjes/The Tars (1934). Source: Pieteroyama (YouTube).


Louis Davids sings Als je voor een dubbeltje geboren bent... (If You Are Born For a Dime) in Op stap/On the Road (1935) with Frits van Dongen and Henriëtte Davids. Source: Brassens66 (YouTube).

Sources: Wim Ibo (Historici.nl - Dutch), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.

Angela Schijf

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During The Netherlands Film Festival, we join with our little The Netherlands Film Star Postcard Festival. The 38th edition of NFF takes place from 27 September till 5 October 2018, and celebrates the achievements of Dutch filmmakers. Dutch actress Angela Schijf (1979) works on stage, television and in the cinema. She had her breakthrough with the TV soap opera Goede tijden, slechte tijden/Good Times, Bad Times (1996-1999) and is also well known for the crime series Flikken Maastricht (2007-now). In the cinema, she made a major splash in the true crime film Van God Los/Godforsaken (2003).

Angela Schijf
Dutch postcard in the GTST-verzamelkaarten series by Grundy / Joop van den Ende Productions / RTL4 / Veronica De Holland Media Group, no. 10. Photo: Govert de Roos. Publicity still for Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden/GTST (1996-1999). Angela Schijf played Kim Verduyn.

Angela Schijf
Dutch postcard in the GTST-verzamelkaarten series by Grundy / Joop van den Ende Productions / RTL4 / Veronica De Holland Media Group, no. 14. Photo: Govert de Roos. Publicity still for Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden/GTST (1996-1999).

The longest-running Dutch soap opera


Angels Schijf was born in Uithoorn, The Netherlands, in 1979.

In 1994, she started her career in the TV comedy series Oppassen!/Beware! (1994-1995) about two grandfathers, taking care of their grandchildren.

In 1996, she had her breakthrough in Goede tijden, slechte tijden/Good times, bad times, also known as GTST, the longest-running Dutch soap opera. The programme was in 1990 the first daily soap in the Netherlands. GTST is produced by Joop van den Ende and to date over 5,000 episodes have been broadcast. Schijf left the soap in 1999.

Her first major film role was in the romantic drama Ik ook van jou/I Love You Too (Ruud van Hemert, 2001), based on a novel by Ronald Giphart. The film portrays the relationship between a young male student (Antonie Kamerling) and a young woman with borderline personality disorder (Schijf). The film received a Golden Film (75,000 visitors) in 2001, the first film to receive this award.

That same year she also had a small part in the horror film Down (Dick Maas, 2001) about a killer elevator, starring James Marshall and Naomi Watts. The film is a remake of the Dutch film De Lift/The Elevator (1983), which was also directed by Maas. It compared badly to the original.

Cas Jansen and Angela Schijf in GTST
Dutch postcard in the GTST-verzamelkaarten series by Grundy / Joop van den Ende Productions / RTL4 / Veronica De Holland Media Group, no. 11. Photo: Govert de Roos. Publicity still for Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden/GTST (1996-1999) with Cas Jansen.

Cas Jansen and Angela Schijf in GTST (1996-1999)
Dutch postcard in the GTST-verzamelkaarten series by Grundy / Joop van den Ende Productions / RTL4 / Veronica De Holland Media Group, no. 12. Photo: Govert de Roos. Publicity still for Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden/GTST (1996-1999) with Cas Jansen.

The Gang from Venlo


In 2002 Angela Schijf married the Belgian actor Tom Van Landuyt. Together, they have three daughters.

Schijf played one of her best roles in Van God Los/Godforsaken (Pieter Kuypers, 2003) opposite Tygo Gernandt and Egbert-Jan Weeber. The crime film is based on the real life of the ‘Gang from Venlo’, that left a trail of death and destruction in the North-Middle Limburg area in the Netherlands from 1993 till 1994. The film received a Golden Film (100,000 visitors) and won three Golden Calves.

In 2005, she had a role in the family film De Griezelbus/Gruesome School Trip (Pieter Kuijpers, 2005), based on the novel series by Paul van Loon. The film received a Golden Film award for having been viewed by over 100,000 people.

Her later films include the disappointing thriller De eetclub/The Dinner Club (Robert-Jan Westdijk, 2010), the mystery Daglicht/Daylight (Diederik van Rooijen, 2013) with Monique van de Ven and Derek de Lint, and another mediocre thriller Schone handen/Clean Hands (Tjebbo Penning, 2015) with Jeroen van Koningsbrugge and Thekla Reuten.

Today, Angela Schijf is best known for playing Eva van Dongen in the Dutch TV-series Flikken Maastricht (2007-now). On stage, she performed the show Kreutzersonate als het verlangen maar stopt in theatres around the Netherlands and Belgium with her husband and two musicians. In the cinema she was last seen in the family film Storm: Letters van Vuur/Falko Letter of Fire (Dennis Bots, 2017) with Yorick van Wageningen.

Ferri Somogyi, Angela Schijf and Cas Jansen in Goede tijden, slechte tijden
Dutch postcard in the GTST-verzamelkaarten series by Grundy / Joop van den Ende Productions / RTL4 / Veronica De Holland Media Group, no. 8. Photo: Govert de Roos. Publicity still for Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden/GTST with Ferri Somogyi and Cas Jansen.

Angela Schijf
Dutch postcard in the GTST-verzamelkaarten series by Grundy / Joop van den Ende Productions / RTL4 / Veronica De Holland Media Group, no. 9. Photo: Govert de Roos. Publicity still for Goede Tijden Slechte Tijden/GTST (1996-1999). Angela Schijf played Kim Verduyn.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

Charles Aznavour (1924-2018)

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Today, 1 October 2018, Armenian-French singer, songwriter, actor, public activist and diplomat Charles Aznavour has passed away. Besides being one of France's most popular and enduring singers, he was also one of the most well-known singers in the world. The ‘Frank Sinatra of France’ was known for his characteristic short figure and unique tenor voice. He has appeared in more than 60 films, composed about 1,000 songs, and sold well over 100 million records. Aznavour was 94.

Charles Aznavour
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 605. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.

Charles Aznavour
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 966. Photo: Studio Vauclair.

Charles Aznavour
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 430. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.

Charles Aznavour
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 674. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.

Charles Aznavour (1924-2018)
French postcard by Editions P.I., offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. FK 46 A. Photo: Unifrance / Ufa.

Songs About Love


Charles Aznavour was born Shahnour Vaghenag Aznavourian in Paris in 1924. He was the son of Armenian immigrants Michael Aznavourian and Knar Bagdasarian who fled to France following the Turkish massacre.

His mother was a seamstress as well as an actress and his father was a baritone who sang in restaurants. They introduced him to the world of theatre at an early age. He dropped out of school at the age of nine, already aspiring to the life of an artist.

Ar age 9, he took his first theatrical bow in the play Emil and the Detectives by Erich Kästner and within a few years he was working as a film extra. He made his film debut in La Guerre des gosses/Generals Without Buttons (Jacques Daroy, 1936). He toured France and Belgium as a boy singer/dancer with a travelling theatrical troupe while living the bohemian lifestyle.

A popular performer at the Paris' Club de la Chanson, it was there that he was introduced in 1941 to the songwriter Pierre Roche. His big break came when the singer Édith Piaf heard him sing and arranged to take him with her on tour in France and to the United States. For Piaf he wrote the French version of the American hit Jezebel.

In 1950, he gave the bittersweet song Je Hais Les Dimanches (I Hate Sundays) to chanteuse Juliette Gréco, which became a huge hit for her.

He made several successful tours while scoring breakaway hits with the somber chanson songs Sur ma vie (About My Life) and Parce que (Because) and the notable and controversial Après l'amour (After the Love). Often described as the ‘Frank Sinatra of France’, his unique tenor voice is clear and ringing in its upper reaches, with gravely and profound low notes.

Aznavour sings mostly about love. Artists who have covered his songs and collaborated with Aznavour include Bing Crosby, Ray Charles, Bob Dylan, Liza Minnelli, Shirley Bassey, José Carreras, and Julio Iglesias.

In 1974 Aznavour became a major success internationally when his song She went to number one in the charts of several countries. His other internationally well-known song was Dance in the Old Fashioned Way. Elvis Costello recorded She for the hit comedy Notting Hill (Roger Michell, 1999) with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts.

Charles Aznavour
Dutch postcard by Rembrandt N.V., Amsterdam. Photo: Barclay Disques.

Charles Aznavour (1924-2018)
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, no. AX 5280. Photo: publicity still for Le passage du Rhin/The Crossing of the Rhine (André Cayatte, 1960).

Charles Aznavour
French promotion card by Barclay Disques. Photo: Pierluigi. Publicity still for the film Tempo di Roma/Destination Rome (Denys de La Patellière, 1963).

Charles Aznavour
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2906, 1967. Photo: Unifrance Film.

Charles Aznavour
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered no. 1146. Photo: Hermann Léonard.

Brash and Brooding


Charles Aznavour has had a long and varied parallel career as an actor, appearing in over 60 films. In the post-WW II years he began appearing in films again. One of them as a singing croupier in Adieu chérie/Goodbye Darling (Raymond Bernard, 1946) starring Danielle Darrieux.

In the late 1950s, Aznavour began to infiltrate films with more relish. Short (he stood only 160 cm) and stubby in stature and excessively brash and brooding in nature, he was hardly leading man material but embraced his shortcomings nevertheless. Unwilling to let these faults deter him, he made a strong impression with the comedy Une gosse sensass' (Robert Bibal, 1957) and with Paris Music Hall (Stany Cordier, 1957).

He was deeply affecting as the benevolent but despondent and ill-fated mental patient Heurtevent in La tête contre les murs/Head Against the Wall (Georges Franju, 1959).

A year later, Aznavour starred as piano player Charlie Kohler/Edouard Saroyan in Francois Truffaut's Tirez sur le pianiste/Shoot the Piano Player (1960), which earned box-office kudos both in Europe and the United States.

Aznavour acted in films outside of France with more dubious results. While the sexy satire Candy (Christian Marquand, 1968), with an international cast that included Marlon Brando, and the Harold Robbins adaptation The Adventurers (Lewis Gilbert, 1970) were considered huge misfires upon release, it still showed Aznavour off as a world-wide attraction.

He also put in a critically acclaimed performance in Ein unbekannter rechnet ab/And Then There Were None (Peter Collinson, 1974), an umpteenth film version of Agatha Christie's Ten Little Indians. Aznavour had an important supporting role in Die Blechtrommel/The Tin Drum (Volker Schlöndorff, 1978), winner of the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 1979.

Later films included the Thomas Mann adaptation Der Zauberberg/The Magic mountain (Hans W. Geissendörfer, 1982), the thriller Les fantômes du chapelier/The Hatter's Ghost (Claude Chabrol, 1982), Yiddish Connection (Paul Boujenah, 1986), which he co-wrote and provided music for, and Il maestro/The Maestro (Marion Hänsel, 1989) with Malcolm McDowell. For his film work Aznavour was awarded a Honorary César (the French Oscar) in 1997.

Charles Aznavour (1924-2018)
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 1008. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Charles Aznavour (1924-2018)
German collectors card, no. 31.

Charles Aznavour
Belgian postcard by Ets. Dagneaux & Cie, Lodelinsart, for Star Chewing Gum.

Charles Aznavour
French postcard by P.I., Paris, no. 1101. Photo: Anders.

Charles Aznavour
French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 184. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Charles Aznavour
French postcard by Publistar, no. 744. Photo: Charles Aznavour.

Aznavour for Armenia


His music kept Charles Aznavour in the international limelight. He received thirty-seven gold albums in all. His most popular song in America, Yesterday When I Was Young has had renditions covered by everyone from Shirley Bassey to Julio Iglesias.

Since the 1988 earthquake in Armenia, he has been helping the country through his charity, Aznavour for Armenia. Together with his brother in-law and co-author Georges Garvarentz he wrote the song Pour toi Arménie, which was performed by a group of famous French artists and topped the charts for 18 weeks.

There is a square named after him in central Yerevan, and a statue erected in Gyumri, which saw the most lives lost in the earthquake. In 1995 Aznavour was appointed an Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Armenia to UNESCO. Charles Aznavour was appointed as ‘Officier’ (Officer) of the Légion d'honneur in 1997.

He also played a role in the Canadian-French production Ararat (Atom Egoyan, 2002), a contemporary story of the making of a historical epic about the Armenian genocide between 1915 and 1918. In 2004, Aznavour received the title of ‘National Hero’ of Armenia for his humanitarian work, Armenia's highest award.

In 2006, Aznavour initiated his farewell tour, performing in the US and Canada, and earning very positive reviews. He started 2007 with concerts all over Japan and Asia. The second half of 2007 saw Aznavour return to Paris for over 20 shows at the Palais des Congrès in Paris, followed by more touring in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the rest of France.

He continued his film career and starred in Mon colonel/The Colonel (Laurent Herbiet, 2006), a murder-mystery and a metaphor for the Algerian War of Independence (1954-1962), and more recently he could be heard as the French voice of Carl Fredricksen in the Pixar animation film Up (Pete Docter, Bob Peterson, 2009).

In December 2011 he gave a concert in Moscow State Kremlin Palace that attracted a capacity crowd. The concert was followed by a standing ovation which continued for about 15 minutes. On 19 September 2018, his last concert took place in NHK Hall, Osaka.

On 1 October 2018 Charles Aznavour died at his home in the village of Mouriès in the south of France. Charles Aznavour was married three times, to Micheline Rugel, Evelyn Plessis and his widow Ulla Thorsell. Six children were produced by these marriages: Séda, Charles, Patrick, Katia, Mischa, and Nicolas.

Charles Aznavour (1924-2018)
French postcard by La Napoule. Photo: René Tron. Caption: La Napoule - Charles Aznavour dans sa villa.

Charles Aznavour
French postcard by La Roue Tourne, Paris.


Trailer for Tirez sur le pianiste/Shoot the Piano Player (1960). Source: La Chambre Verte (YouTube).


Trailer for Ein unbekannter rechnet ab/And Then There Were None (1974). Source: John Wayne Freak (YouTube).


Charles Aznavour sings She live in Paris in 2016. Source: Axel Berlin (YouTube).

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb

Friedrich Zelnik

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During The Netherlands Film Festival, we join with our little The Netherlands Film Star Postcard Festival. The 38th edition of NFF takes place from 27 September till 5 October 2018, and celebrates the achievements of Dutch filmmakers. Friedrich Zelnik or Frederic Zelnik (1885-1950) was Austrian, but he directed two of the most popular Dutch films of the 1930s. He was initially an actor, who became one of the most important producers-directors of the German silent cinema. During the 1920s he had his greatest successes as director-producer of operetta style costume films starring his wife, Lya Mara. A critical success was his drama Die Weber/The Weaver (1927). After 1933, he worked in Great-Britain and in the Netherlands.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 234. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 82/1. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 82/5. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 82/5. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 126/3. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.

Messter


Friedrich Zelnik was born in 1885 in a Jewish family in Czernowitz, then the capital of the Duchy of Bukovina in the Austrian part of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy (today Chernivtsi, Ukraine). Czernowitz was largely populated by Jews. After Wilno it was the most important city for the Jewish culture in Eastern Europe.

Zelnik studied law in Vienna, but then worked as an actor in theatres in Nürnberg, Aachen, Worms, Prague and finally Berlin, where he appeared in Theater an der Königsgrätzer Straße, Berliner Theater and Komödienhaus.

In 1910 he began to act in short silent films for Messters Projektion GmbH, such as Verkannt/Misunderstood (1910), Japanisches Opfer/Japanese victims (Adolf Gärtner, 1910) with Max Mack, and Im Glück vergessen/Forget the luck (Adolf Gärtner, 1911) with silent superstar Henny Porten.

For another company he played the lead in Europäisches Sklavenleben/European slave life (Emil Justitz, 1912). These films made him one of the first German film stars.

Then there was an interval in his film career of three years during which Zelnik set up his own production company, Berliner Film-Manukfaktur, together with Walter Behrend and Max Liebenau.

In 1915, he started to produce and direct films while he still also played parts in other directors’ films. Among these films were the Sherlock Holmes mystery Das dunkle Schloß/The Hound of the Baskervilles: The Dark Castle (Willy Zeyn, 1915) starring Eugen Burg as Holmes, Arme Maria/Poor Mary (Willy Zeyn, Max Mack, 1915) featuring Hanni Weisse, and Die Fiebersonate/The Fever Sonata (Emmerich Hanus, 1916) with Lotte Neumann.

This latter film he also produced. Other early productions were Ein Zirkusmädel/A Circus Girl (Carl Wilhelm, 1917) with Lisa Weise, and the Charles Dickens adaptation Klein Doortje/Little Dorrit (Friedrich Zelnik, 1917).

Friedrich Zelnik and Lupu Pick in Die Rothenburger (1918)
German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2276. Photo: Berliner Film-Manufaktur. Publicity still for Die Rothenburger/The Rothenburgers (Lupu Pick, 1918) with Friedrich Zelnik and Lupu Pick.

Lya Mara and Friedrich Zelnik in Die Rose von Dschiandur (1918)
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm, no. 3216. Photo: Rudolph Schlesinger. Publicity still for Die Rose von Dschiandur/The Rose of Dschiandur (Alfred Halm, 1918) with Friedrich Zelnik and Lya Mara.

Friedrich Zelnik in Die Rose von Dschlandur (1918)
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm, no. 3217. Photo: Rudolph Schlesinger. Publicity still for Die Rose von Dschiandur/The Rose of Dschiandur (Alfred Halm, 1918).

Friedrich Zelnik in Graf Michael (1918)
German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2278. Photo: Berliner Film-Manufaktur. Publicity still for Graf Michael/Count Michael (Alfred Halm, 1918). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 3198 (?). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Among the Greatest Box Office Hits


In 1918, Friedrich Zelnik met in Warsaw a young Polish ballet dancer turned film actress named Lya Mara. They married and he started to produce and direct films for her. He made Mara a huge star of the German cinema.

Between 1917 and 1922, the Berliner Film-Manukfaktur produced more than 120 films. From 1920 on, Zelnik's companies ran under several names: Zelnik-Mara-Film GmbH, Friedrich Zelnik-film GmbH, and Efzet-Film GmbH. Zelnik-Mara-Film GmbH produced silent entertainment films in which Mara was the female star.

Together they made very popular, operetta style costume films like An der schönen blauen Donau/The Beautiful Blue Danube (Friedrich Zelnik, 1926) with Harry Liedtke, Die Försterchristl/The Bohemian Dancer (Friedrich Zelnik, 1926) again with Liedtke, Das Tanzende Wien/Dancing Vienna (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927), and Heut' tanzt Mariett/Marietta (Friedrich Zelnik, 1928) with Fred Louis Lerch.

These films brought Lya Mara and Zelnik enormous success in Germany and beyond. Filmportal.de: ”Zelnik's sentimental costume dramas (…) always ranked among the greatest box office hits of their respective season. Nevertheless, his film version of Gerhart Hauptmann's Die Weber/The Weaver (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927) became popular even with ‘progressive’ critics. To this day, this rather untypical film for Zelnik still mainly accounts for his reputation as a filmmaker.”

Several of his collaborators, including cameraman Frederik Fuglsang and production designer André Andrejew, are perceived today as notable artists of the German silent cinema. Another important collaborator was scriptwriter Fanny Carlsen.

Busy with directing and producing these films, Zelnik did not find the time to appear himself in films anymore. His last film appearance was in Das Geheimnis der alten Mamsell/The Story of the Old Mademoiselle (Paul Merzbach, 1925) starring Marcella Albani.

In 1925, Zelnik was head of production at Deutsche Fox for six films, and in 1926 he became a board member and the art director of Defu (Deutsche Film Union AG) and Defina (Deutsche First National Pictures GmbH).

Lya Mara, An der schöne blauen Donau
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 56/3, 1925-1926. Photo: Zelnik Film. Publicity still for An der schönen blauen Donau/The Beautiful Blue Danube (Friedrich Zelnik, 1926) with Lya Mara. Collection: Egbert Barten.

Hertha von Walther, Wilhelm Dieterle and Hermann Picha in Die Weber (1927)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 77/3. Photo: Zelnik-Film. Publicity still for Die Weber (Friedrich Zelnik, 1927) with Hermann Picha, Wilhelm Dieterle and Hertha von Walther.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne Series, Berlin, no. 82/3. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 235. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 249. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

Hollywood


Upon the introduction of sound film, Friedrich Zelnik became the first director in Europe to post synchronise a film, the Edgar Wallace adaptation Der rote Kreis/The Crimson Circle (Friedrich Zelnik, 1929) starring Lya Mara and Stewart Rome. In London, he used the DeForest Phonofilmsound-on-film process, and added music by Edmund Meisel.

In 1930, the Friedrich Zelnik-Film GmbH went into liquidation and Zelnik travelled to Hollywood, California. Upon his return he directed his first full sound film, a new version of his silent success Die Försterchristl/The Bohemian Girl (Friedrich Zelnik, 1931) featuring Irene Eisinger.

He had no problems adapting his operetta style to the sound film, and soon more musicals like Walzerparadies/Waltz Paradise (Friedrich Zelnik, 1931) with Charlotte Susa, Jeder fragt nach Erika/Everyone asks for Erika (Friedrich Zelnik, 1931) with Lya Mara in her only sound film role, and Spione im Savoy-Hotel/The Gala Performance (Friedrich Zelnik, 1932) with Alfred Abel.

After Adolph Hitler took power in 1933, Zelnik and Lya Mara left Germany for London. His first British film was the musical comedy Happy (Friedrich Zelnik, 1933) with Stanley Lupino. It was an English remake of Es war einmal ein Musikus/There was once a musician (Friedrich Zelnik, 1933), the last film he had made in Germany.

In the years to follow Zelnik, now Frederic (or Fred) Zelnik, continued to direct and produce films in Great Britain and The Netherlands. Among his British films are the musicals Southern Roses ( Frederic Zelnik, 1934), The Lilac Domino (Frederic Zelnik, 1937) with S.Z. Szakall in a supporting part, and I Killed the Count (Frederic Zelnik, 1939) starring Ben Lyon.

In the Netherlands, he directed Vadertje Langbeen/Daddy Long Legs (Friedrich Zelnik, 1938) based on the popular and often filmed novel by Jean Webster, and Morgen gaat ’t beter!/Tomorrow It Will Be Better (Friedrich Zelnik, 1939). Both films were produced by German émigré producer and distributor Rudolf Meyer, and starred Dutch actress Lily Bouwmeester.

Zelnik took the British citizenship. After 1940 he only worked as a producer, in cooperation with British National. His later work included the musical Give Me the Stars (Maclean Rogers, 1945) and the British-Italian drama The Glass Mountain (Henry Cass, 1949) with Michael Denison and Valentina Cortese.

Together with Raymond Stross, he founded Zelstro Films to produce the film Hell Is Sold Out (Michael Anderson, 1951) but Zelnik did not live to see its completion. Friedrich Zelnik died in 1950 in London. He was 65.

About what happened to his wife, Lya Mara there is only a rumour that she died in 1960 in Switzerland.

Lily Bouwmeester and Paul Storm in Vadertje Langbeen (1938)
Dutch promotion card by Cinema Odeon, Den Haag. Photo: Neerlandia. Publicity still for Vadertje Langbeen/Daddy Longlegs (Friedrich Zelnik, 1938) with Lily Bouwmeester as Judy and Paul Storm as Vadertje Langbeen.

Lily Bouwmeester in Morgen gaat 't beter (1939)
Dutch postcard by Colosseum Theater, Rotterdam. Photo: Neerlandia-Filmex. Publicity still for Morgen gaat het beter/Tomorrow It Will Be Better (Friedrich Zelnik, 1939) with Lily Bouwmeester.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 341/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Becker & Maass Phot.

Friedrich Zelnik
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1089/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Atelier Bieber, Berlin.

Lya Mara
Lya Mara. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4180/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

Sources: Filmportal.de, Stephanie d'Heil (Steffi-Line.de), Wikipedia (English and Dutch), and IMDb.

Herman van Veen

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During The Netherlands Film Festival, we join the fun with our little The Netherlands Film Star Postcard Festival. The 38th edition of NFF takes place from 27 September till 5 October 2018, and celebrates the achievements of Dutch filmmakers. One of them is Herman van Veen (1945), a man of many talents. He is considered to be an author, musician, singer/songwriter, and actor. With his shows, the self-proclaimed 'Dutch clown with the bald head' became famous in and outside Europe. He also appeared in and directed a few films and is the creator of Alfred J. Kwak, a brave little duck featured in a 52-episode cartoon TV series.

Herman van Veen
Dutch postcard by Polydor, no. 269. Photo: Gerard Jongerius.

Herman van Veen
German promotion card by Polydor, no. 184/19620.

Intrigued by troubadours and trouveres


Hermannus Jantinus van Veen was born in 1945 in Utrecht, the Netherlands. He grew up with two sisters in a working class family. His father, a printer, was active in the Resistance; one of his grandfathers was the champion billiards player of Holland.

Educated in Montessori schools, Van Veen attended the Utrecht Conservatory, where he studied violin and voice. There, he became fascinated by the works and performers of the Middle Ages. While a student, he met his musical partner Erik van der Wurff, who has been part of his show ever since.

Intrigued by both the troubadours and the trouveres - the medieval clowns, jesters and chroniclers of the age - Van Veen began his career giving classical recitals in churches. Van Veen made his theatre debut in 1965 with Harlekijn, a musical, clownish solo show. The Theatre has occupied him ever since. Inspiration, he says, has come from Buster Keaton and Jacques Brel, Dario Fo and Bob Dylan.

Herman van Veen made his film debut opposite Monique van de Ven in the divorce drama Uit elkaar/Apart (1979), which he directed and produced himself. In 1981, Jos Stelling directed the nostalgic teen drama De pretenders/The Pretenders (1981), which was based on Van Veen's play Jukebox.

Very successful was the drama Ciske de Rat/Ciske the Rat (Guido Pieters, 1984) in which Van Veen starred as the father of the title character, played by Danny de Munk. A flop was the fairytale Nachtvlinder/Night butterfly (Herman van Veen, 1999) which starred Arthur Kristel, the son of Sylvia Kristel, and Van Veen's own daughter, Babette.

Herman van Veen
German promotion card by Polydor, no. 785/22464. Photo: Peter Thomsen.

Alfred Jodocus Kwak (1989-1991)
Dutch postcard by Uitgeverij De Stulp, Leidschendam, Serie 5621, 1988. Image: publicity still for the TV series Alfred J. Kwak/Little Duck's Big Love Story (1989-1991).

A peace-loving duck


In 1982 Herman van Veen made his Broadway debut. The engagement lasted 10 days at the Ambassador Theatre and received a withering review from TheNew York Times. Two years later he returned at Carnegie Hall, and in 1990 he made an American tour.

His performances are presented with quirky stage theatrics and ornate instrumentation. His music has an upbeat pop element that also contains baroque qualities to it. A published poet, he has written 52 episodes of the animated cartoon series Alfred Jodocus Kwak, about a peace-loving duck. For this series, he also composed the music and voiced some of the characters.

Van Veen has been a Goodwill Ambassador for UNICEF since 1965. In Utrecht, he helped start the humanitarian Colombine Foundation, which funds projects ranging from hospitals in Holland to factories in Manila.

Herman van Veen has received numerous awards for both his creative work and his charity work, including the Louis-Davidsring (1976), the Goldene Kamera (1991), the Grand Prix de l’Académie Charles Cros (2003), the World Peace Flame (2004), the Martin Buber Plaque (2005), the Edison Oeuvre Award Kleinkunst (2010) and the Münchhausen Award (2012).

In 1993, he was made Knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau by the Queen of the Netherlands, and in 2008 he was appointed Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion. In 1999, he received the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his outstanding contribution to relations between Germany and the Netherlands.

Herman van Veen married three times, with Marijke Hoffman, actress Marlous Fluitsma, and Gaëtane Bouchez, his present wife. With Hoffman, he has two children, including actress Babette van Veen.

His later films include the French comedy-drama Le conte du ventre plein/Bellyful (Melvin Van Peebles, 2000) with Andrea Ferreol, the Austrian mystery Katharsis (Kawo Reland, 2011), and the Dutch drama De Vreemdeling/The Stranger (Felix van Cleeff, 2011).

To date, Herman van Veen has produced more than 180 CDs, more than 80 books as well as dozens of DVDs and screenplays.

Alfred Jodocus Kwak
Dutch postcard by Uitgeverij De Stulp, Leidschendam, Serie 5621, 1988. Image: Harlekijn / Van Veen, Siepermann, Bacher. Publicity still for the TV series Alfred J. Kwak/Little Duck's Big Love Story (1989-1991).

Alfred J. Kwak was created in the late 1980s by Van Veen. He made up the character and the stories for comic books for Unicef. The comics became such a hit in the Netherlands, that Unicef and a Japanese producer decided to make a animation series out of it. Alfred J. Kwak is the son of Johan Sebastian and Anna Kwak. When their beloved home is disturbed by the development of a new theme park, his parents are forced to move (along with all of their children). When the family is on their way to the farm of an uncle of a very good friend, Henk de Mol, Alfred's parents and all of his siblings are the victims of a tragic car accident. Henk de Mol takes upon him the task of raising the little duck as he was his own son. In the years to come, Alfred experiences a lot of adventures. Herman van Veen voiced three of its characters. One of them was Johan Kwak, Alfred's in-universe father.

Alfred J. Kwak
Dutch postcard by Uitgeverij De Stulp, Leidschendam, Serie 5621, 1988. Image: Harlekijn / Van Veen, Siepermann, Bacher. Publicity still for the TV series Alfred J. Kwak/Little Duck's Big Love Story (1989-1991).

Sources: Matt Wolf (Chicago Tribune), Frank Rich (The New York Times), The Sound of Europe,Wikipedia and IMDb.

Op stap (1935)

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During The Netherlands Film Festival, we join with our little The Netherlands Film Star Postcard Festival. The 38th edition of NFF takes place from 27 September till 5 October 2018, and celebrates the achievements of Dutch filmmakers. We salute Op Stap/On the Road (1935), a Dutch musical comedy film directed by Ernst Winar. Star of the film is Fien de la Mar, the only diva of the Dutch cinema of the 1930s.

Fien de la Mar in Op stap
Dutch postcard by M.B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Dick van Maarseveen, Den Haag / Nationaal Film. Publicity still of Fien(tje) de la Mar in Op stap/On the Move (Ernst Winar, 1935).

Henriëtte Davids and Jopie Koopman in Op stap (1935)
Dutch postcard by M.B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Dick van Maarseveen, Den Haag / Nationaal Film. Publicity still for Op stap/On the Move (Ernst Winar, 1935) with Henriëtte Davids and Jopie Koopman.

Surprises and misunderstandings


In Op stap/On the Road (1935), Louis Davids plays Janus Fortuin, a goodhearted piano tuner and song writer who sees life with mild mockery. He lives poor but satisfied with wife (Henriëtte Davids) and daughter Polly (Jopie Koopman) in the south of Amsterdam. Janus has accepted that he will never amount to anything more. But he still hopes his daughter's fiancé George (Frits van Dongen) will be more successful as a songwriter.

When rich uncle Barend (Adolphe Engers) from Batavia makes a surprise visit. The family does not rrecognise him and he immediately realises that Janus' wife is a greedy landlady. Barend pretends to be a lodger called 'Van Santen' and moves into the Fortuin home.

Barend brings the family in contact with the singer and film star Bella Ramona (Fien de la Mar), which leads to the necessary misunderstandings. Moreover, there is confusion around false checks.

At the end everything is fine: Barend leaves Schiphol for Batavia and George has a hit with his song 'Op stap'. And Janus Fortuin? He is as poor as ever and sings full-length: "Als je voor een dubbeltje geboren bent, bereik je nooit een kwartje" (If you are born for a dime, you never reach a quarter).

Director of the film was the little known Dutch actor Ernst Winar, who appeared in 34 films between 1916 and 1955, in The Netherlands and as well in Germany. From 1921 on, Winar was also active as a director and he made 14 films between 1922 and 1955. In the 1960s he was the editor of the first, short films of Paul Verhoeven.

Both Jewish cabaretier Louis Davids and his sister Henriette Davids were popular revue artists in the Netherlands. Frits van Dongen would become an international film stars who continued his career first in Germany and later n Hollywood as Philip DornFien de la Mar is the glamorous star of this film, and one of the highlights of the films is her song Een Schlager gaat op stap, in which she is accompanied by twelve pianists.

The story of the film was based on an idea of songwriter Jacques van Tol, who also wrote several of the songs. Van Tol was the main lyricist for Louis Davids. Before the Second World War, Van Tol already sympathised with the Dutch Nazi Party, the NSB. Louis Davids died in 1939, Henriette survived the holocaust in hiding, van Tol became during the war, using the alias 'Paulus de Ruiter' the principal writer for the infamous nazi-oriented 'Paulus de Ruiter-cabaret' on Dutch radio. He even rewrote his song De klein man (The little man), originally sung by Louis Davids, with new fully antisemitic lyrics.

After the war Jacques van Tol was arrested and sentenced to prison for a few years, because of his cooperation with the Nazis. After his release he started writing songs again, never using his own name. Van Tol even wrote the farewell song for Henriëtte Davids. Though he had been writing songs for more than 50 years, Van Tol never became famous. When he was writing for Op stap about 'being born for a dime', he must have realised he was describing his own life.

Louis Davids, Rik and Adolphe Engers in Op stap (1935)
Dutch postcard by M.B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Dick van Maarseveen, Den Haag / Nationaal Film. Publicity still for Op stap/On the Move (Ernst Winar, 1935) with Louis Davids, the dog Rik and Adolphe Engers.

Fien de la Mar, Frits van Dongen in Op stap
Dutch postcard by M.B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Dick van Maarseveen, Den Haag / Nationaal Film. Publicity still for Op stap/On the Move (Ernst Winar, 1935) with Fien de la Mar and Frits van Dongen.

Henriëtte Davids, Adolphe Engers and Jopie Koopman in Op stap (1935)
Dutch postcard by M.B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Dick van Maarseveen, Den Haag / Nationaal Film. Publicity still for Op stap/On the Move (Ernst Winar, 1935) with Henriëtte Davids, Adolphe Engers and Jopie Koopman.

Sources: Sybrand Bakker (IMDb), Eye (Dutch), Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.

Adolphe Engers

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During The Netherlands Film Festival, we joined with our little The Netherlands Film Star Postcard Festival. The final post of our Netherlands Film Star Postcard Festival is about actor Adolphe Engers (1884-1945), who appeared in some 55 German and Dutch films during the 1920s and 1930s.

Adolphe Engers
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3186/1, 1928-1929.

Adolphe Engers
Dutch postcard, no. 47759. Photo: Hilde Meyer-Kupfer.

Extra for the Comédie-Française


Adolphe 'Dolph' Engers was born in 1884 in Gulpen, in the south of the Netherlands. He was the son of Jewish policeman Wicher Engers en his wife Jetje Wolf. He had three brothers and a sister.

Engers attended a trade school in Elberfeld, Germany. There he also took acting classes from Max Martersteig. He returned to the Netherlands and worked a while for an insurance company.

While he was in Nice for his work, he got in contact with actors of the Comédie-Française and started to work as an extra for the famous French stage company. In Paris he made also his first film appearances for Gaumont. An actor's strike in France forced him to return to the Netherlands

In 1912 he was back in Holland and got employment as a stage actor. He also worked as a translator, in particular of The Devil and other works ofHungarian author Ferenc (or Franz) Molnar, but also works by Oscar Wilde, W. Somerset Maugham and Luigi Pirandello.

Engers made his Dutch film debut with De Kroon der schande/The Crown of Shame (Maurits Binger, 1918). Soon followed roles in the British-Dutch production Fate's Plaything/Wat eeuwig blijft (Maurits Binger, B.E. Doxat-Pratt, 1920) and the Dutch production De Bruut/The Brute (Theo Frenkel, 1922).

Engers was married for one week with one of Louis Bouwmeester's daughters, before he ended the marriage. He was gay. In 1917, he wrote a stage play on Oscar Wilde, which was never performed, and in 1920 he published Peccavi...???, a then-scandalous novel with a gay protagonist, co-written with fellow actor Ernst Winar.

Ernst Winar
Ernst Winar. Vintage postcard, no. 988/1. Collection: Egbert Barten. The Dutch actor-director Ernst Winar directed Adolphe Engers in the silent Flappy serial in Berlin, and later again in Holland in the film musical Op stap/On the Road (1935).

Louis Davids, Rik and Adolphe Engers in Op stap (1935)
Dutch postcard by M.B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Dick van Maarseveen, Den Haag / Nationaal Film. Publicity still for Op stap/On the Road (Ernst Winar, 1935) with Louis Davids, Rik the dog and Adolphe Engers.

Asta Nielsen


In 1920, Adolphe Engers moved to Germany where he became a very busy film actor. He played in well-known films like Die Benefiz-Vorstellung der vier Teufel/The Benefit performance of the Four Devils (A.W. Sandberg, 1920), Die Geliebte Roswolskys/Roswolsky's Mistress (Felix Basch, 1921) starring the Danish diva Asta Nielsen, and Sie und die Drei/She and the Three (Ewald André Dupont, 1922) starring Henny Porten.

He worked together with Dutch director Jaap Speyer on Der Frauenkönig/The King of the Ladies (Jaap Speyer, 1923), and appeared as as Don Esteban Paqueno in Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau’s delicious comedy Die Finanzen des Grossherzogs/Finances of the Grand Duke (1924).

He then appeared in Auf Befehl der Pompadour/By Order of That Pompadour Woman (Friedrich Zelnik, 1924) and Elegantes Pack/The Elegant Bunch (Jaap Speyer, 1925) with Eugen Klöpfer, Mary Odette and Ralph Arthur Roberts.

He was also very successful with the Flappy serial, three comedies directed by Ernst Winar for the Berliner Terra Film AG. Winar directed him also in the Dutch-German crime film De man op den Achtergrond/Der Mann im Hintergrund/The Man in the Background (Ernst Winar, 1923).

In the second part of the 1920s, the impressive actor went on to appear in such films as Der Prinz und die Tänzerin/The Prince and the Dancer (Richard Eichberg, 1926) with Hans Albers, Die Fahrt ins Abenteuer/The Wooing of Eve (Max Mack, 1926) with Ossi Oswalda and Willy Fritsch.

He appeared again opposite Asta Nielsen in Gehetzte Frauen/Badgered Women (Richard Oswald, 1927). With Liane Haid, he played in Die Königin seines Herzens/The Queen of His Heart (Victor Janson, 1928).

Till the end of the silent era followed Don Juan in der Mädchenschule/Don Juan in the Girls’ School (Reinhold Schünzel, 1928), Sündig und süss/Sinful and Sweet (Carl Lamac, 1929) with Anny Ondra, and Sensation im Wintergarten/Their Son (Joe May, Gennaro Righelli, 1929). Engers also appeared on stage, e.g. at the Deutschen Künstlertheater.

Johan Kaart, Sylvain Poons, Hansje Andriesen, Matthieu van Eysden, and Adolphe Engers in De Big van het regiment (1935)
Dutch vintage postcard by Monopole Film NV. Photo: Dick van Maarseveen. Still for De Big van het Regiment/The Darling of the Regiment(Max Nosseck, 1935) with Johan Kaart, Sylvain Poons, Hansje Andriesen, Matthieu van Eysden, and Adolphe Engers. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Frits van Dongen, Cruys Voorbergh, Matthieu van Eysden, Adolphe Engers, and Johan Kaart in De Big van het regiment (1935)
Dutch vintage postcard by Monopole Film NV. Photo: Dick van Maarseveen. Still for De Big van het Regiment/The Darling of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935) with Frits van Dongen, Cruys VoorberghMatthieu van Eysden, Adolphe Engers, and Johan Kaart. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Berufsverbot


The sound film meant the end of Adolphe Enger's film career in Germany. After a tour through the Dutch Indies, he returned to Holland where he co-wrote and played the lead in the film Terra Nova/New Land (Gerard Rutten, 1932). This fisher drama was meant as the first Dutch sound film, and Engers spoke the first sound-synchronized words in Dutch cinema history (‘The dike is closed’).
However the film disappeared after differences about the result between the director and the producer. The first Dutch sound film was considered lost for many decades.

In the following years, Engers acted regularly in front of the camera, while the Dutch film industry blossomed and many German emigrants started to work here. Engers appeared in the musical Op stap/On the road (Ernst Winar, 1935) with Fien de la MarDe Big van het Regiment/The Darling of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935) with Frits van Dongen a.k.a. Philip Dorn, and Op een avond in mei/One Evening in May (Jaap Speyer, 1936).

Later followed Veertig Jaren/Forty Years (Johan De Meester, Edmond T. Gréville, 1938) and he appeared as a nervous magician in the comic thriller De spooktrein/The Ghost Train (Carl Lamac, 1939), again co-starring with Fien de la Mar.

In the 1930s, he was also active as an author of stage plays and novels like Ardjoena - Indische roman (1936). He gave acting classes at the Conservatory of The Hague. At the start of World War II, he was a member of the stage company De Komedianten (The Comedians), but the Nazis gave the half Jewish Engers a Berufsverbot.

In 1938, Engers was to be honored for his achievements during 30 years on the stage iby an honorary committee that included the author Simon Carmiggelt. Later Carmiggelt related that, when the committee members understood that Engers himself was gay, the officials withdrew from the committee one after the other.

Engers last films were curosities he made while hiding for the Nazis. Moord in het modehuis/Murder in the Fashion Store (Alfred Mazure, Piet van der Ham, 1943), was a film version of Mazure’s popular detective comic Dick Bos. The film could not be shown in the cinema. One of the reasons was that Mazure refused to make a Nazi of his hero. After the war the film was briefly shown in cinemas in 1946. The same team also made another Dick Bos crime film, Ten hoogste negen jaren/At most nine years (Alfred Mazure, Piet van der Ham, 1945).

After the war, he started to appear on stage again in the play The Man Who Came to Dinner, but the war had broken him. Several of his family member were killed by the Nazis in their concentration camps. Adolphe Engers suddenly died on 8 December 1945 in The Hague.

In 1991 a copy of his lost film Terra Nova (1932) was found. The former Dutch Filmmuseum (now Eye) reconstructed the film, added a new score to it and reissued the film in 1994.

Henriëtte Davids, Adolphe Engers and Jopie Koopman in Op stap (1935)
Dutch postcard by M.B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Dick van Maarseveen, Den Haag / Nationaal Film. Publicity still for Op stap/On the Move (Ernst Winar, 1935) with Henriëtte Davids, Adolphe Engers and Jopie Koopman.

Adolphe Engers in A jó tündér (The Good Fairy)
Dutch postcard, no. 949. Photo: publicity still for the stage production of A jó tündér/Die Fee/The Good Fairy by Ferenc Molnar, written in 1930.

Source: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Eye,  Joods Monument (Dutch), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.

Mario Bonnard

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Today starts the 37th edition of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the world’s leading international silent-film festival, located in the Italian city of Pordenone. One of the main programmes this year is a Mario Bonnard retrospective. Bonnard, aka Mario Bonard (1889-1965), was an Italian actor and director, whose career span from 1909 to the early 1960s. He became a popular heartthrob with the diva drama Ma l'amor mio non muore.../Love Everlasting (1913) opposite Lyda Borelli.

Mario Bonnard
Italian postcard, no. 5555.

Mario Bonnard
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana, no. 71.

The Devil through the ages


Mario Bonnard was born in Rome, Italy, in 1889.

In 1909 he started his career on the Roman amateur stage. Within a few months he started acting in films too, first in uncredited parts in such short films as Otello/Othello (Gerolamo Lo Savio 1909). Soon he had male leads as upper class types. His first known credited role was in Dalla morte alla vita/From death to life (director unknown, 1911) for Latium Film.

In 1911 he followed director Mario Caserini to Ambrosio Film in Turin, where he had leads or was co-actor in e.g. La nave dei leoni/The lions ship (Luigi Maggi, 1912), Nelly la domatrice/Nelly the wrangler (Mario Caserini, 1912), Parsifal (Mario Caserini, 1912), La rosa rossa/The red rose (Luigi Maggi, 1912) and Santarellina (Mario Caserini, 1912).

In Satana/Satan (Luigi Maggi, 1912), Bonnard was the devil through the ages (Old Testament, New Testament, Middle Ages and modern times), based on John Milton’s Paradise Lost and Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock’s Der Messias (The Messiah). The film had an international success, even in the US.

French film historian Georges Sadoul has written that the film’s script by Guido Volante was an obvious example to the later films Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916), Civilisation (Thomas Ince, 1916), and Blade af Satans bog/Leaves from Satan’s book (Carl Dreyer, 1920). Unfortunately, only a short fragment of Satana remains.

After a few other films at Ambrosio, Bonnard shifted to the new Turinese company Gloria in the Summer of 1913. There he acted in the studio's first film Il treno degli spettri/The ghost train (Mario Caserini, 1913). This wasn’t as successful as the second Gloria film, the Hennequin & Veber boulevard comedy Florette et Patapon/Floretta and Patapon (Mario Caserini, 1913), with Bonnard as the lover of Bianca Patapon (Maria Caserini Gasperini). The film was widely praised as the first feature-length comedy and proving that comedy features were feasible.

In the fall of 1913, Bonnard’s breakthrough came as the male lead opposite Lyda Borelli in the Gloria production Ma l’amor mio non muore/Love Everlasting (Mario Caserini, 1913), which also launched Borelli as film star after a rich theatrical career. Bonnard played Prince Maximilian who falls in love with Diana, a popular opera singer (Borelli). She proves to have been exiled by his father the Duke, as she is Elsa Holbein, the daughter of a colonel who was accused of treachery when a foreign spy has stolen secret documents, and who committed suicide afterwards.

Mario Bonnard
Italian postcard by Eugenio Zotter. Photo: Galileo Films (Trieste).

Mario Bonnard
Italian postcard, no. 25. Photo: Fontana, Rome.

Mario Bonnard
Italian postcard, no. 26. Photo: Fontana, Rome.

A brilliant and languid Italian dandy


Bonnard became a film heartthrob as a brilliant and languid Italian dandy, inspiring Ettore Petrolini for his latin-lover character Gastone. Bonnard’s penultimate film Gastone (1960) would be about this character.

After the success of Ma l’amor mio non muore, the dream couple Borelli-Bonnard was paired again by Gloria in La memoria dell’altro/The memory of the other (Alberto Degli Abbati, 1914). Here Lyda Borelli is a famous female aviator who falls in love with journalist Mario (Bonnard), but the two are separated, Lyda marries her rich suitor while Mario goes back to his fiancee. When in Venice they meet again, the flame re-arises, and together they flee to Paris, but there ill fate destroys their lives.

Bonnard had a little share in the popular Italian Antiquity films of 1913-1914 when he played Petronius in Caserini’s epic Nerone e Agrippina/Nero and Agrippina (Mario Caserini, 1914), Gloria’s answer to successes such as Cines’s Quo vadis (1913) and the two versions of Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei by Ambrosio and Pasquali (both 1913).

After several minor dramas at Gloria in 1914-1915, Bonnard moved to Caserini’s newly founded company and acted e.g. opposite Leda Gys in La pantomime della morte/The pantomime of death (Mario Caserini, 1915) and L’amor tuo mi redime/Leda di Roccarna/Your love redeems me (Mario Caserini, 1915). In 1915 Bonnard also founded his own company Bonnard film, for which Pier Angelo Mazzolotti did the direction. Most films were modest and plots were criticised, though Titanic (Pier Angelo Mazzolotti, 1915) received praise for its staging.

For La morsa della morte/Death's bite (Pier Angelo Mazzolotti, 1915), Bonnard had to leave the male lead to Giovanni Casaleggio, as he was called for service when Italy joined the Allies in the First World War. He was freed from service quite soon though.

In 1916, Bonnard went to work for the Roman Caesar Film company and was the star of Eduardo Bencivenga’s films Don Giovanni (1916), Il ridicolo/The ridiculous (1916), Ferréol (1916), and La figlia di Jorio/The daughter of Jorio (1917). The films only received lukewarm acclaim.

He also played in patriotic films such as Passano gli Unni/The Huns are passing (Mario Caserini, 1916), starring Lea Gys, Bonnard and Gianpaolo Rosmino, which premiered in Rome and Paris at the same time and was well received despite its not so subtle plot. Bonnard and Rosmino visited the Parisian premiere and they were applauded with enthusiasm.

In 1917 Bonnard ventured into his first direction with the film L'altro io/The other me, for his own company Electa Film. Vaguely inspired by Oscar Wilde and The Student of Prague, Bonnard plays a man who wounded by his perverse adversary, needs to have a piece of the latter’s brain implanted, with unforeseen consequences.

Bonnard was very successful with his second film Treno di lusso/Luxury train (1917), adapted from Umberto Notari’s novel, and starring Leda Gys as a poor Parisian girl who loses her child and successfully climbs the societal ladder. She is armed with cynicism, until she meets an engineer (Bonnard) she falls in love with. He has a wife and child though...

After 1917, Bonnard completely shifted to film direction instead of acting - possibly, as Lotti suggests, because of less positive reception of his acting. In 1919 he directed Ettore Petrolini in his first cinematographic interpretation in Mentre il pubblico ride/While the audience laughs (1919), taken from a play by Petrolini himself and by the futurist Francesco Cangiullo.

Subsequent films, he often directed for Celio Film, e.g. Papà Lebonnard/Father Lebonnard (1920) starring Ugo Piperno, Il milione/The Million (1920), Il fauno di marmo/The marble faun (1920), and L’amica/The girl friend (1920) with Vittoria Lepanto.

Memorable was Bonnard's direction of the Alessandro Manzoni adaptation I promessi sposi/The betrothed (1923), starring Emilia Vidali as Luciana, Domenico Serra as Renzo, Mario Parpagnoli as Don Rodrigo and Ida Carloni Talli as Agnese.

While other Italian directors and actors were looking at Hollywood, with Fairbanks and Valentino as model, Bonnard looked at French boulevard comedy, with Il tacchino/The turkey (1925) after Georges Feydeau’s Le dindon, and Teodoro e socio/Theodor and Co. (1926), based on the French stage comedy Théodore et Cie. Both films starred Marcel Levesque, while the female leads were both for French actresses, resp. Maryse Dauvray and Dolly Grey.

Leda Gys and Mario Bonnard in La pantomima della morte
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano. Leda Gys and Mario Bonnard in La pantomima della morte (Mario Caserini, 1915).

Leda Gys
Italian postcard. Leda Gys was the protagonist of Bonnard's film Treno di lusso (Mario Bonnard, 1917), also co-starring Mario Bonnard himself.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi (Mario Bonnard, 1922), adapted from Alessandro Manzoni's classic novel, with Emilia Vidali as Lucia. During the Milan plague corpses are collected. Caption: She descended from the threshold of one of those exits and came towards the convoy.

Love on a trolley bus


At the collapse of the Italian film industry around 1923, Mario Bonnard went to Germany and he directed in Berlin several films with an international cast.

Marcella Albani repeatedly was his leading actress then, starting with Die Flucht in den Zirkus/The Circus of Life (Mario Bonnard, Guido Schamberg, 1926), and also Das letzte Souper/Theatre (1928).

Other films he directed were e.g. Die Sünderin/The Sinner (1927) with Elisabeth Pinajeff, and Der goldene Abgrund/The Golden Abyss (1928) with Liane Haid.

In 1928, Bonnard directed Der Kampf ums Matterhorn/The Battle for the Matterhorn, together with Nunzio Malasomma. The film helped Luis Trenker to make his breakthrough, and it co-starred Marcella Albani.

This was followed by other films with the daring mountaineer Trenker: Der Sohn der weißen Berge/The Son of the White Mountain (1930), Die heiligen drei Brunnen/The three holy wells (1930), as well as the French version Les chevaliers de la montagne (1930). Nunzio Malasomma directed Der Ruf des Nordens/The Call of the North (1929) but Bonnard had the supervision for this film.

At the beginning of the thirties, Bonnard shifted his focus to Paris and directed French and French-Italian productions – such as the comedy Trois hommes en habit/Tre uomini in frac/Three Lucky Fools (1933) - before finally settling in Rome in 1932.

There, he filmed with numerous well-known Italian actors of his time. His specialty was adaptations of stage comedies, interpreted by the greatest stars of the time: Assia Noris, Elsa Merlini, Amedeo Nazzari, Luisa Ferida, and Enrico Viarisio. The comedy Il feroce saladino/The Ferocious Saladin (1937) was the most popular of his films of the 1930s.

During the war years, Bonnard realised two works with a fresh grace and promoting the film careers of Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani. The first was Avanti, c'è posto.../Come in, there is place enough... (1942), about a trolley bus conductor protecting and falling in love with a poor girl (Adriana Benetti), based on an idea by Aldo Fabrizi and Cesare Zavattini. The second was Campo de 'Fiori/The Peddler and the Lady (1943) with Fabrizi and Anna Magnani as two quarrelling marketers.

Bonnard’s film production in the post-war period was fast. He demonstrated excellent professional skills by directing films of various kinds, attentive to the public's tastes. His films ranged from comedies with Totò and Gino Cervi to historical films, from popular melodrama to Peplum up to the engaged film. He mixed typical pre-1945 actors such as Doris Duranti in the comedy Il voto/The Vow (1950) and Fosco Giachettiin Addio, mia bella Napoli!/Farewell my beautiful Naples (1947) with newcomers such as Antonella Lualdi in L’ultima sentenza/The Last Sentence (1951) and Brigitte Bardot in the historical melodrama Tradita/Haine, amour, trahison/Concert of Intrigue (1954).

Bonnard was the unsurpassable director of masses (Fra Diavolo, 1931) and packer of historical plots (Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs, 1940). With Città dolente/City of Pain (1948) he directed a film virtually ignored by the public, documenting the exodus from Pula.

His Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (1959) was interrupted by his illness and then completed by Sergio Leone. It gives proof of skilled craftsmanship, succeeding with limited means to compete with the great American productions. His last work as a director was the adventure film I masnadieri/Rome 1585 (1961).

Mario Bonnard died because of cardiac arrest in Rome in 1965. He was the younger brother of the soundtrack composer Giulio Bonnard, who frequently wrote film scores for Mario's productions.


Nelly la domatrice (S. A. Ambrosio, 1912) from Cineteca MNC on Vimeo.


La nave dei leoni (S. A. Ambrosio, 1912) from Cineteca MNC on Vimeo.


Parsifal (S. A. Ambrosio, 1912) from Cineteca MNC on Vimeo.

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Il cinema muto italiano - Italian), Denis Lotti (Muscoli e frac - Italian), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (English, Italian, Spanish and German) and  IMDb.

50 years The Parade’s Gone By

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TheGiornate del Cinema Muto honours the 50 years existence of The Parade’s Gone By. British film historian Kevin Brownlow’s classic oral history survey was first published in 1968. Not a history book in the usual sense, it describes early Hollywood primarily through the recollections of people who were there. As Lincoln Specter concludes in a post on his blog Bayflicks: "The current access to silent films that we all enjoy is, to a large extent, the result of Brownlow’s life work. And The Parade’s Gone By was the beginning." Six American silent films which were discussed in Brownlow's study will be presented in a special programme in Pordenone. To honour the Giornate, Brownlow’s work and silent Hollywood, we selected a series of postcards on the stars and on one of the directors of these six films, plus some additional cards on early studios.

James Cruze
James Cruze. American postcard by Krauss Mfg. Co., New York. Photo: Thanhouser. Publicity still for the 23 episodes serial The Million Dollar Mystery (Howard Hansel, 1914), produced by Thanhouser. See for the flipside the picture below.

James Cruze in The Million Dollar Mystery
American postcard. Krauss Mfg. Co., New York. Thanhouser. Retro of a postcard for James Cruze in the 23 episodes Thanhouser serial The Million Dollar Mystery (Howard Hansel, 1914), starring Cruze and Florence La Badie. The card says the actor will personally appear at the The Crescent Theater on Saturday, May 22nd., "to tell about his experiences in the motion picture world and shake hands with all his admirers". The serial is presumably lost. This card refers to a screening on Saturday, 22 May 1915, while the serial had started in June 1914. The Crescent may refer to the Ithaca cinema The Crescent, that opened in 1914. Its rival, the Star cinema, had shown the serial in the Summer of 1914.

James Cruze


The oldest film shown in the programme is The Covered Wagon (James Cruze, 1923), starring J. Warren Kerrigan and Lois Wilson.

James Cruze (1884-1942) was an American actor and director of the silent screen. At the age of 16, he already played first roles on the stage and in 1906 he became a member of the then well-known Belasco troupe, with whom he performed regularly on Broadway.

Already in 1908 he changed profession and participated in countless films of first Lubin, from 1910, and from 1912 onwards at the Thanhouser film company, both Eastcoast companies. In 1915 Thanhouser dismissed Cruze's despite the succes of his serials The Million Dollar Mystery and Zudora (both 1914).

He moved to Hollywood in the mid-1910s and began his career as a director in 1919, primarily for Paramount. He first became known through several comedies with Wallace Reid and Fatty Arbuckle in the lead role. Most of his Arbuckle comedies were withdrawn and destroyed after 1921, at the height of the scandal around the silent film actor.

Cruze's best-known film is the Western The Covered Wagon (1923), depicting the migration of German emigrants to the West of North America and their conflicts with each other and with Indians. The film was carefully researched with great eye for detail. It was one of the most commercially successful representatives of his genre from the early days of film and received several awards.

James Cruze's film Hollywood, also released in 1923, was the first film to cast a critical eye over the façade of the dream factory, relentlessly revealing the manipulation of the audience through partially fictitious stories about the stars of the screen. At the same time the film was a tribute to Fatty Arbuckle and did not spare criticism on the behaviour of the producers towards the actor.

In 1925 Cruze used techniques from German Expressionism for work on Beggar on a Horseback and was able to convince the critics with a dense dramaturgy and for the time exciting new camera settings.

His demise began the following year, as the Western Old Ironside, produced with high financial cost, flopped at the box office. It would take years before again a lavishly produced Western came into the national cinemas.

In the 1930s, James Cruze's career faltered. In 1938 he retired after some B-movies and in 1942 he died completely impoverished and largely forgotten.

J. Warren Kerrigan
J. Warren Kerrigan. British postcard.

Lois Wilson
Lois Wilson. French postcard in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series by A.N., Paris, no. 25. Photo: Paramount.

Jean Paige


The second film in the Parade’s Gone By homage is the Vitagraph production Captain Blood (David Smith, 1924), starring Jean Paige and J. Warren Kerrigan.

Jean Paige (1895-1990) was a silent film actress whose whole career happened at the Vitagraph company. Eventually she married its president.

Jean Paige was born Lucile Beatrice O'Hair in 1895 in Paris, Illinois and was raised on her father's farm there, developing a love for horses while living there.

Paige made twenty-one films in a career which began in 1917 at the Vitagraph company and concluded there in 1924. Her first screen appearance came in two-reeler features based on O' Henry stories, starting with Blind Man's Holiday (Martin Justice, 1917).

She came to prominence in the Vitagraph film Too Many Crooks (Ralph Ince, 1919). As Charlotte Brown she made a star part out of a bit part. Jean had never appeared on stage and had no experience in movies prior to becoming a Vitagraph leading woman.

Her role in Too Many Crooks led Vitagraph president Albert E. Smith to elevate her position at the film studio. Remarkable feature-length films at Vitagraph with Paige starring were a.o. The Darkest Hour (Paul Scardon, 1919), Daring Hearts (Henry Houry, 1919), The Birth of a Soul (Edwin L. Hollywood, 1920), Black Beauty (David Smith, 1921), The Prodigal Judge (Edward José, 1922), and her final film, Captain Blood (uncredited: David Smith, Albert E. Smith, 1924).

Eventually Paige married Smith himself in 1920 - she was his third wife. She stopped acting and they stayed together until his death in 1958. In 1925 Vitagraph was sold to Warner Bros. In 1931, Smith bought the residential apartment building of Chateau Marmont and turned it into a hotel.

Jean Paige
British postcard by Cinema Chat. Photo: Hill / Vitagraph.

Jane Paige aka Jean Paige
Jane Paige aka Jean Paige. French postcard by A.N., Paris in the Les vedettes de cinéma series, no. 91. Photo: Film Vitagraph.

Alice Joyce
Alice Joyce. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1307/1. Photo: Loew-Metro-Goldwyn.

Alice Joyce


The stars of The Home Maker (King Baggot, 1925) were Alice Joyce and Clive Brook. The film was produced by King Baggot Productions and Universal.

Alice Joyce (1890-1955) was an American screen actress, who, at the peak of her career, was nicknamed the Madonna of the Screen. Born in Kansas City, Joyce began her career as a telephone operator. Through various model activities she got her first roles in the film.

From 1910 on, she quickly rose to become one of the biggest stars of Kalem Studios and played mostly well-behaved ladies of the better society in melodramas, comedies and occasionally crime stories. After the merger of Kalem and Vitaphone in 1916, the popularity of Joyce increased.

Until the 1920s she specialised in naive women, but slowly, she also took on some mature roles. In 1924 she acted opposite Clive Brook in the British production The Passionate Adventure by Graham Cutts.

1925 was one of her most productive years. She played opposite Percy Marmont in Frank Borzage's Daddy's Gone A-Hunting. She was Stella's rival Helen Morrison in Henry King's Stella Dallas. And she was Clara Bow's mother in Herbert Brenon's Dancing Mothers, one of Joyce greatest successes. In the latter she is a woman who is denied any pleasure in life by her heartless husband and thoughtless daughter.

In 1925 Joyce also played opposite Clive Brook in King Baggot’s The Home Maker, about a man crippled after a failed suicide attempt and switches roles with his wife, who climbs the corporate ladder at his old company. Both are happy with the new situation until the man discovers that his legs are getting better.

In 1926 she played a princess opposite W.C. Fields in the comedy So's Your Old Man by Gregory La Cava. In 1927 Joyce signed a well-endowed contract with First National, where she received a few substantial film roles, as in The Squall (Alexander Korda, 1929), starring Myrna Loy.

Joyce made a smooth transition from silent film to sound film and in 1930 co-acted with George Arliss in The Green Goddess, the remake of a film in which both stars had had a success in 1923. But a lengthy heart disease (Louise Brooks claims that it was an alcohol problem) forced her into private life after 1930.

Pauline Frederick
Pauline Frederick. British postcard by Lilywhite Ltd. Photo: Stoll Pictures.

Pauline Frederick
Pauline Frederick. British postcard by Lilywhite Ltd. Photo: Goldwyn Pictures.

Pauline Frederick


Another film in the Parade’s Gone By homage is the Universal production Smouldering Fires (Clarence Brown, 1925), starring Pauline Frederick.

Pauline Frederick (1883-1938) was an American theatre and film actress. Frederick made a name for herself in the theatre and had already passed thirty when she became successful in Hollywood. In the period of the silent film she was one of the most powerful actresses in the film industry.

In 1914 Pauline Frederick was hired by Famous Players. She saw the film industry as a temporary get-away, but encouraged by the success of her first role in The Eternal City (1915) she signed a contract. Although she had already passed 30, she became one of the biggest stars in the silent film period. She played mainly sophisticated or demanding, classy women and femme fatales.

In 1919 Frederick signed a contract with Goldwyn Pictures. Critics agreed that she was assigned roles there that were more suitable for her. The budget of the films she worked on was larger and the films were better received in terms of quality.

Although her career ran smoothly, her private life was a disaster. Her first husband was a violent alcoholic and drug addict who regularly mistreated his wife, so in 1919 she applied for a divorce. As a result of the relocation of Goldwyn, Frederick moved to California in 1920. That same year she played in Madame X (1919), the movie she became most familiar with.

Despite the success she enjoyed at Goldwyn, she left the studio for a contract with Robertson-Cole, where she received a fixed salary of $ 7,000 per week. It was a misstep in her career. Most films flopped and reviewers spoke negatively about it. In 1922 her contract was terminated and she returned to the stage.

In 1924 she was hired by the Vitagraph Company and achieved success in films such as Three Women (Ernst Lubitsch, 1924), with May McAvoy and Marie Prevost as the other women and Lew Cody as the man in the middle, and Smouldering Fires (Clarence Brown, 1925), in which she is a successful businesswoman who marries her younger employee (Malcolm McGregor), though he is in love with her younger sister (Laura LaPlante). Frederick became a role model and style icon for elder women.

Her career dwindled in the 1930s. The reason was not so much the new sound film (as Frederick had good diction) but rather loss of prestige. Her private life was increasingly getting difficult, with unfortunate marriages and the death of her mother, but it was her asthma that killed her in 1938 at the age of 55.

Visitors at Entrance to Universal City
Visitors at Entrance to Universal City. American postcard by Van Ornum Colorprint Co, Los Angeles, no. 778. This postcard may refer to the opening of the Second Universal City on Lankershim Bd. on 15 March 1915.

Lillian Gish and Ralph Forbes in The Enemy (1927)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3533/1. Photo: MGM. Lillian Gish and Ralph Forbes in The Enemy (Fred Niblo, 1927).

Lillian Gish


Lillian Gish and Ralph Forbes were the stars in the MGM production The Enemy (Fred Niblo, 1927).

The plot takes place in Austria during the First World War. Carl Behrend (Ralph Forbes) and Pauli Arndt (Lillian Gish) have just married. He is the son of a businessman (George Fawcett), she the daughter of a professor (Frank Currier).

When the First World War breaks out, Carl is drafted and called to the front. There he has to endure major suffering. Life is hard for those left behind too. Pauli is starving and despairs, even more so when her father is revoked for his pacifist opinions. She becomes a prostitute and loses her baby...

Handsome English actor Ralph Forbes (1904–1951) started his film career in the British cinema before he became a Hollywood star of the 1920’s and 1930’s. Later he turned into a noted Broadway actor.

American actress Lillian Gish (1893-1993) was 'The First Lady of the Silent Screen'. During the 1910s, she was one of director D.W. Griffith's greatest stars. She appeared in such classic features of his as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Broken Blossoms (1919), and Orphans of the Storm (1921).

After 13 years with Griffith, she moved to MGM where her first picture was La bohème (1926).

In the 1940s, she again appeared in a handful of films and received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role as Laura Belle McCanles in Duel in the Sun (1946). Her last film was The Whales of August (1987) in which she shared the lead with Bette Davis.

Building a "set" at the Metro Studios, Hollywood
The Metro studios. American postcard by California Postcard Co., Los Angeles. Photo: Glen G. Stone, Los Angeles. Caption at the flipside: "Showing the space-saving device of building a 'set' within a 'set', and further of setting up an 'exterior' within an 'interior'. A mining town street scene is in course of construction within a palatial drawing-room; an interesting side-light on picture making ingenuity."

Evelyn Brent
Evelyn Brent. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4004/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Paramount.

Thomas Meighan


A final film in the Parade’s Gone By homage is another film by James Cruze, The Mating Call (James Cruze, 1928), a production by The Caddo Company and Paramount, 1928). The star was American stage and screen actor Thomas Meighan (1879-1936).

Thomas Meighan began his acting career as stage performer on Broadway, between 1900 and 1912. Though he became a well-known film star from the late 1910s on, he remained devoted to the stage. This is also where he met his wife, Frances Ring.

From 1914 to 1928, Meighan contributed to nearly eighty silent films, mostly produced by the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. In 1915 Famous Players gave Meighan a contract.

In 1919 he had his breakthrough with The Miracle Man (George Loane Tucker, 1919), about con-men who want to use a faith healer to collect money. The film co-starred Betty Compson and Lon Chaney.

Notably, Meighan appeared in seven films by William C. de Mille and five others by his brother Cecil B. DeMille. Three of which are among his best known films, Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919), Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920) and Manslaughter (Cecil B. DeMille, 1922).

His female partners included Renée Adorée (two films), Louise Brooks (one film The City Gone Wild (James Cruze, 1927)), Billie Burke (five films), Gloria Swanson and Bebe Daniels (two films, Male and Female and Why Change Your Wife?), Pauline Frederick (five films), Leatrice Joy (three films in 1922, including Manslaughter), Lila Lee (eleven films, including Male and Female, their first ensemble), Mary Pickford (one film: M'liss (Marshall Neilan, 1918)), Blanche Sweet (five films), Norma Talmadge (three films), Virginia Valli (two films), and Lois Wilson (five films, including Manslaughter).

His final silent films were The Mating Call and Racket, both produced by Howard Hughes in 1928. The Mating Call deals with a soldier who returns home from World War I to find his – secret - marriage has been annulled and his wife (Evelyn Brent) has remarried. At Ellis Island he finds a French woman to pose as his wife (Renée Adorée) but they gradually fall in love.

Thomas Meighan's first sound feature film was Howard Bretherton's The Argyle Case, with HB Warner, Lila Lee, and Zasu Pitts, and released in 1929. Meighan only made five other talking movies, the last one being Peck's Bad Boy (Edward F. Cline, 1934) with Jackie Cooper.

Two years later, in 1936, Meighan died prematurely of lung cancer. Meighan was involved in two Hollywood scandals: he was the only witness at the secret marriage of Jack Pickford and Olive Thomas, and he paid a large share for the bail to get Rudolph Valentino out of prison after the latter was accused of bigamy.

Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan. French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 39. Photo: Apeda.

Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan and his not-so-happy-looking children. French postcard by A.N. Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 21. Photo: Paramount.

Sources: Lincoln Specter (Bay Flicks), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Dunungen (1919)

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This week we follow the 37th edition of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the world’s leading international silent-film festival in Pordenone. Screend today will be Dunungen/In Quest of Happiness (Ivan Hedqvist, 1919), part of the programme Scandinavian Cinema: The Swedish Challenge 2. The film is based on a short story and play by Selma Lagerlöf, and stars Renée Björling as Dunungen, director Ivan Hedqvist himself and Ragnar Widestedt.

Dunungen
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1091/1. Photo: publicity still for Dunungen/In Quest of Happiness (Ivan Hedqvist, 1919) with Ragnar Widestedt and Renée Björling.

Dunungen
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1091/4. Photo: publicity still for Dunungen/In Quest of Happiness (Ivan Hedqvist, 1919) with Renée Björling and Ivan Hedqvist.

Dunungen
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1091/?. Photo: publicity still for Dunungen/In Quest of Happiness (Ivan Hedqvist, 1919) with Ivan Hedqvist and Renée Björling. The lady on the left is Jenny Tschernichin-Larsson, who plays Teodor's mother.

A pack of worthless shares


The story of Dunungen (Ivan Hedqvist, 1919) is set in the 19th century. Star of the film is pretty Swedish film and stage actress Renée Björling (1888-1975). She peaked in the Swedish silent cinema, but decades later, she also played small parts in the films of Ingmar Bergman.

In Duningen, Björling plays the baker's daughter Anne-Marie Ehringer, called Dunungen. Ragnar Widestedt plays the mayor's son Mauritz Fristedt, who has deeply fallen in love with Dunungen.

The mayor applauds the engagement of his son when Mauritz in exchange promises to try to foist on Uncle Theodore (Ivan Hedqvist) a pack of worthless shares that the father wants to get rid of. It is to the rich old bachelor uncle Theodore Mauritz and Dunungen will go on their engagement trip.

Dunungen gets attached to old Uncle Theodore and when Mauritz brings out the worthless shares and proposes Theodore a purchase, Dunungen prevents the deal.

The film was Ivan Hedqvist's directorial debut and Renée Björling's film debut. Weyler Hildebrand made ​​a remake of Dunungen in 1941 with cinematographer Julius Jaenzon who also had filmed this version of 1919.

Dunungen
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1091/6. Photo: Renée Björling and Ivan Hedqvist in Dunungen/In Quest of Happiness (Ivan Hedqvist, 1919).

Dunungen
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1091/8. Photo: Renée Björling in Dunungen/In Quest of Happiness (Ivan Hedqvist, 1919).

Dunungen
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1091/10. Photo: publicity still for Dunungen/In Quest of Happiness (Ivan Hedqvist, 1919).

Dunungen
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1091/12. Photo: publicity still for Dunungen/In Quest of Happiness (Ivan Hedqvist, 1919).

Source: Wikipedia (Swedish) and IMDb.

Lyda Borelli

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EFSP follows this week the 37th edition of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the world’s leading international silent-film festival in Pordenone. One of the highlights is La memoria dell'altro/The memory of the other (Alberto Degli Abbati, 1913), featuring the first Italian film diva: Lyda Borelli (1887-1959). La Borelli was already an acclaimed stage actress before she became a star of the Italian silent cinema. The fascinating diva caused a craze among female fans, which was called 'Borellismo'. During the festival, an exhibition on Borelli will be on show in Pordenone.

Lyda Borelli in La memoria dell'altro (1913)
Italian postcard by Stab. Tip. Valdiserra, Pescia for the Cinematografo Massimo Libia, Piazza Cavour, Firenze (Florence). Photo: Gloria Film. Lyda Borelli in La memoria dell'altro (Alberto Degli Abbati, 1913).

The drama of young female pilot


La memoria dell'altro/The memory of the other (Alberto Degli Abbati, 1913) tells the drama of the young female pilot Lyda (Lyda Borelli), a modern woman, who drives a car just as easy she flies a plane. Despite being courted by the prince de Sèvres (Vittorio Rossi Pianelli), she falls for the young journalist Mario (Mario Bonnard), even if the lattter is bethrothed. His fiancee Cesarina (letizia Quaranta) manages to separate the two and Lyda accepts the love and wealth of the prince.

When later on by chance Mario and Lyda meet again in Venice, the flame is rekindled and they enjoy their love in the romantic city. They flee to Paris, but here fate hits upon them, Mario falls ill and they become very poor. Lyda only gets help from some apaches after dancing in a tavern, but the help comes too late for Mario and he dies.

In her despair Lyda falls ill too and ends up in a hospital. The prince visits her while she is dying herself, but her eyes are only for a photo of Mario...

At the time, critics praised the actors' performances but also the fine cinematography by Angelo Scalenghe, both his interior shots and his shots on location in the Venetian laguna.

La memoria dell'altro (1913) existed till now only in a rather poorly preserved version. Let's hope that for the upcoming edition of the Giornate del Cinema Muto a good new restoration can be projected.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard by Neg. Trevisani, Bologna, no. 459.

Lyda Borelli
German postcard, no. 5561.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard by N. Riccardi, Milano, Serie 7458 - F. Lyda Borelli written as Lidia Borelli. Ca. 1910.

Lyda Borelli in Marcia nuziale
Italian postcard, Ufficio Censura Torino, 9-10-1915, no. 6184. Photo: Lyda Borelli in the Italian silent film Marcia nuziale (Carmine Gallone, 1915), one of the few lost films of her career.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard. Photo: Emilio Sommariva, Milano, no. 504. Collection: Didier Hanson.

The decadent D'Annunzio


Lyda Borelli was born in 1884 in Rivarolo Ligure near Genoa in Italy. She was the daughter of the stage actors Napoleone Borelli and Cesira Banti. Both her parents were theatre actors and it was only natural for Lyda to follow her parents’ steps. Her sister Alda Borelli would later also become a well-known actress.

At 17, Lyda made her stage debut in 1902 with the Pasta-Reiter company. She acted with Paola Pezzaglia in the French drama I due derelitti. Later, she switched to the company of Virgina Talli.

At the age of 18, she already played leads, as in Gabriele d'Annunzio's  La figlia di Jorio/The Daughter of Jorio (1904). The decadent poet and writer later dedicated her Il ferro and Più che l’amore.

In 1909 Borelli started her own company with Ruggero Ruggeri, performing both in light comedies and in such serious dramas as Salome by Oscar Wilde, which would be her major stage play.

In 1909 Ruggeri and Borelli did a tour through Latin-America visiting a.o. Argentine, Uruguay, Brazil, Cuba, and Mexico. In 1914 she would return to Latin America for another tour.

Lyda Borelli and Giannina Chiantoni in La figlia di Jorio
Italian postcard by Varischi & Artico, Milano. Lyda Borelli and Giannina Chiantoni in Gabriele D'Annunzio's stage play La figlia di Jorio (1904).

Lyda Borelli
Spanish postcard by Amadeo, Barcelona. Lyda Borelli in her outfit for her stage version of Oscar Wilde's Salomé.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard. Photo: Varischi & Artico, Milano.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 350. Photo: Scoffone.

Lyda Borelli in Il dramma di una notte
Spanish chocolate card by Imperial. Photo: publicity still of Lyda Borelli in Il dramma di una note/The Drama of a Night (Mario Caserini, 1918).

Lyda Borelli in Madame Tallien
Italian postcard by Uff. Rev. St. Terni, no. 3276. Photo: Film Cines. Lyda Borelli in the silent film Madame Tallien (Mario Caserini, Enrico Guazzoni, 1916) based on the play by Victorien Sardou. The caption goes: "Desfieux, Tallien's Head of Police, runs to Therese's house, discovers the hideout of Jean Guery and has all arrested".

Lyda Borelli and Amleto Novelli in Malombra
Italian postcard. Photo: Lyda Borelli and Amleto Novelli in the silent film Malombra (Carmine Gallone, 1917).

Lyda Borelli in Rapsodia satanica
Spanish postcard. Photo: dressed as Salome, Alba d'Oltrevita (Lyda Borelli) repents the suicide of Sergio because of her in Rapsodia satanica (Nino Oxilia, 1915-1917).

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard by A.G.F. Photo: Cine.

Worldwide Success


In 1913 the film Ma l'amor mio non muore/Love Everlasting (Mario Caserini, 1913) was designed to launch Lydia Borelli in the cinema. The film, made in Turin by Gloria Film, tells the story of a singer who falls tragically in love with a prince, played by Mario Bonnard.

Her ecstatic and aristocratic performance, mixing grand gesture with delicate small details, her elegant attire and her long blond hair caused a craze. Girls dyed their hair, went on diets and strove to imitate her twisted postures. The craze was called 'Borellismo' in Italy.

With the possible exception of the epic Cabiria (1914), Ma l'amor mio non muore is seen by critics as the most famous of early Italian silent films made before World War I. Borelli's appearance in the film led to her being considered the first diva of the cinema.

The worldwide success of Ma l'amor mio non muore resulted in thirteen more films with Borelli. In these films, Lyda Borelli portrayed characters who were doomed and otherworldly, often bordering on the supernatural. She had a favourite fashion designer, artist Mariano Fortuny (admired also by Eleonora Duse) and deemed his creations as vital in her films

A compelling film is her drama Rapsodia Satanica/Satanic Rhapsody (Nino Oxilia, 1915) that tells the tale of an old woman who makes a pact with the Devil for eternal youth. This female version of Faust was based on a poem by Fausto Maria Martini.

Famous composer Pietro Mascagni wrote his only film music for Rapsodia Satanica and conducted the first performance in July 1917. Mascagni was keen to take the commission for the score due to the financial burden of supporting two sickening brothers.

To Lyda Borelli's best films also belong La donna nuda/The Naked Truth (1914), Fior di male/Flower of Evil (1915), and Malombra (1917), all three directed by Carmine Gallone.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard, no. 477. Photo: Attilio Badodi. Signed: Lyda Borelli. Attilio Badodi (1880-1967), born in Reggio Emilia, became a famous Milanese portrait photographer of the Belle Epoque. In 1922 he participated in the First International Exhibition on Photography in Turin and he was a reporter for Illustrazione Italiana, but he is best remembered for his portraits.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard, no. 319. Photo: Attilio Badodi, Milano (Milan).

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard by Fotocelere, Torino, no. 207. Photo: Badodi, Milano.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard, no. 256. Photo: Attilio Badodi, Milano (Milan).

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard, no. 418. Photo: Attilio Badodi, Milano (Milan).

Ecstatic and Aristocratic Performance


Lyda Borelli was the first diva of the Italian cinema and one of the first European film stars, together with Asta Nielsen.

Greta de Groot at Unsung Divas: "She was like a decadent version of the Pre-Raphaelite beauty--thin, with wavy blond hair and strange but picturesque poses. She portrayed characters who were doomed and otherworldly, often bordering on the supernatural."

Anna Battista at her blog Irenebrination sees her essentially as 'a dark femme fatale representing desire and sensuality': "She often interpreted characters defeated by diabolical destinies who ended up killing themselves (often with poison – she died in 8 out of 14 films…)."

In 1918 Lyda Borelli's stage and film career ended suddenly, when she married the Venetian businessman and later count Vittorio Cini di Monselice. Between 1914 and 1918 she had shot 14 films and 2 documentaries.

Anna Battista: "The legend says that when the curtain fell at the end of her last play, people in the audience started crying and throwing her flowers: it was almost unbelievable for them to think that Lyda Borelli had just acted for the last time and some critics wrote that was a national day of mourning."

In the following years, the couple Cini would have four children, Giorgio, Mynna, Yana and Ylda, and Lyda devoted her time to her family.  They lived between Venice and Rome. The Borellismo trend had disappeared soon after the actress retired.

Borelli's son Giorgio Cini would die in a plane crash while going to meet his fiancee, the actress Merle Oberon. Lyda herself died in 1959 in Rome, Lazio, Italy. She was 75.

Borelli was one of the divas featured in the compilation film Diva Dolorosa (Peter Delpeut, 1999). An extended sequence from Fior de Male appears in Peter Delpeut's earlier film Lyrisch Nitraat/Lyrical Nitrate (Peter Delpeut, 1991). In 2013 the Cineteca di Bologna released a DVD of Ma l'amor mio non muore, and in 2018 a box including Ma l'amor mio non muore and Rapsodia satanica.

Antonio Gramsci, at the time a theatre reviewer, wrote in Avanti! about her: "La Borelli è l'artista per eccellenza del film in cui la lingua è il corpo umano nella sua plasticità sempre rinnovantesi" (La Borelli is the film artist par excellence whose language is the human body in its always renewing plasticity).

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard, no. 623. Photo Sciutto. Could have been for the stage play La figlia di Jorio by Gabriele D'Annunzio.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard. Photo: Varischi & Artico, Milano.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard, no. 2015. Photo: Varischi Artico & Co., Milano.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 323. Photo: Fontana.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard, no. 118. Photo: Bettini, Roma.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard. Ed. Soc. Anon. It., no. 164. Photo: Bettini, Roma.

Lyda Borelli
Italian postcard, no. 894, Uff. Rev. Stampa, 25-5-1917. Lyda Borelli painted by Tito Corbella.

Lyda Borelli Calderara caricature
Italian postcard. Lyda Borelli, caricature by C. Calderara. Looking at the outfit and the headgear, the drawing seems to refer to Borelli's first film Ma l'amor mio non muore/ Love Everlasting (1913).

Lyda Borelli
Statue of Lyda Borelli in the Casa di Riposo 'Lyda Borelli', Bologna, Italy. Photo: Ivo Blom.

Casa di riposo Lyda Borelli2
Casa di Riposo 'Lyda Borelli', Bologna, Italy. Photo: Ivo Blom.

Sources: Biblioteca e Raccolta Teatrale del Burcardo, Greta De Groat (Unsung Divas), Anna Battista (Irenebrination), Wikipedia (English and Italian) and IMDb.

I promessi sposi (1922)

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One of the main events of the 37th edition of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto is today's presentation of I promessi sposi (Mario Bonnard, 1922) at the Teatro Verdi. The Nuova orchestra da camera Ferruccio Busoni performs the score by Valter Sivilotti. The film is based on Alessandro Manzoni's historical novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), first published in 1817. It is one of the most famous and widely read novels of the Italian language and was adapted many times for the cinema in Italy. I promessi sposi (Mario Bonnard, 1922) was the fifth silent film version, and stars Emilia Vidali as Lucia, Domenico Serra as her beloved Renzo and Mario Parpagnoli as the evil don Rodrigo.

Emilia Vidali in I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna, no. 181. Photo: U.C.I. Emilia Vidali in I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922).

Emilia Vidali in I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Emilia Vidali in I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922).

A love story jeapordised


I promessi sposi is set in northern Italy in 1628, during the oppressive years of direct Spanish rule. The two betrothed are Renzo Tramaglino and Lucia Mondella. Their love story is jeopardised by Don Rodrigo, the lord of the domain, who is infatuated with Lucia. His 'bravi' menace the local priest Don Abbondio to refuse Renzo and Luciana to marry, with some legal excuse.

On behalf of the couple, the monk Father Cristoforo visits Don Rodrigo to mediate in the affair but is brutally kicked out. When Rodrigo plots to assault the young couple, they flee over Lake Como. Lucia hides in a convent where, however, the scheming nun of Monza plots with Don Rodrigo.

Renzo searches for Lucia and while in Milan visits the fraudulent lawyer doctor Azzeccagarbugli to get his papers right. The police try to arrest him but he manages to flee again. Meanwhile Father Cristoforo is banned from the convent and the village on instigation of don Rodrigo.

A robber baron called l'Innominato or 'the unnamed' is sent by Don Rodrigo to abduct the girl and give her once and for all to Don Rodrigo. Yet, in a startling change of heart, inspired by a visit of Cardinal Federigo Borromeo, the Innominato undergoes a religious conversion and does the right thing by liberating Lucia.

This starts the downfall of the culprits. The Great Plague of Milan (1630) breaks out, imported by German mercenaries during the Thirty Years War. In Milan Renzo meets again Don Cristoforo who helps the dying masses and discovers Don Rodrigo is one of the victims. Renzo forgives him, Rodrigo dies, the Plague stops.

Father Cristoforo frees Lucia also from her vow of chastity she had made in the hope of being relinquished from the clutches of the Innominato. Renzo and Lucia return to their village, where they can finally marry, blessed by don Abbondio, who has bettered his life.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Don Abbondio (Umberto Scalpellini) is afraid Don Rodrigo's bravi may kill him, so he prevents the mariage between Renzo and Lucia. Right of the men stands Perpetua (Olga Capri), don Abbondio's maid. Caption: Do you want me dead?

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922), starring Domenico Serra as Renzo and Emilia Vidali as Lucia, here also Umberto Scalpellini as don Abbondio. Caption: Curate, in presence of these two witnesses, this is my wife...

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Domenico Serra as Renzo, Emilia Vidali as Lucia, and Ida Carloni Talli as Agnese, Lucia's mother. Caption: Rascal! Damned one! Murderer!, Renzo shouted.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Enzo Biliotti as Father Cristoforo. Caption: Father Cristoforo left his convent in Pescarenico, to ascend to the little house.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922), starring Domenico Serra as Renzo and Emilia Vidali as Lucia, on this card also with Ida Carloni Talli as Agnese and Enzo Biliotti as Father Cristoforo. Caption: Father, what do you say of such a rascal?

Emilia Vidali and Ida Carloni Talli in I promessi sposi
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922), starring Emilia Vidali, here with Ida Carloni Talli as her mother Agnese.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922), starring Domenico SerraEmilia Vidali and with Enzo Biliotti as father Cristoforo and Ida Carloni Talli as Agnese, Luciana's mother. Caption: Listen, my dear children, father Cristoforo said, today I will visit that man.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Here we see father Cristoforo (Enzo Biliotti). Caption: The warden shows him to be obedient. It is a fierce blow to the poor monk.

Grand spectacle and richness of details


Italian filmmakers have many times adapted Alessandro Manzoni's novel I promessi sposi. The first film version was already made in 1908 by the company Comerio. In 1911 followed another short silent film adaptation by Film d'Arte Italiana.

In 1913, even two silent versions were directed by Eleuterio Rodolfi and by Eugenio Perego. About Rodolfi's version, which he filmed for the Ambrosio studio, see our blogpost I promessi sposi (1913). For the 1941 sound version, which was made by Mario Camerini, see our blogpost I promessi sposi (1941).

In 1922 former actor turned director Mario Bonnard shot his version of I promessi sposi. Bonnard had been Lyda Borelli's film partner in her sensational debut Ma l'amor mio non muore/Love Everlasting (Mario Caserini, 1913). Since that huge success he had spread his wings in the Italian silent cinema, both as an actor and a director.

Bonnard's film was produced by his own company Bonnard Film but distributed by the trust UCI (Unione Cinematografica Italiana) which company is credited for the photos at the postcards. Sets were by the renowned Italian painter Camillo Innocenti, who had specialised in set design for historical films. Cinematography was by Giuseppe-Paolo Vitrotti, the younger brother of the better known Italian cinematographer Giovanni Vitrotti. He already worked for Ambrosio since 1908 as a camera operator, but became director of cinematography around the time of I promessi sposi.

Star of the film is Italian silent film actress and opera singer Emilia Vidali. As an opera singer, she performed in international opera houses all over the world and was very popular in South America. Her co-star Domenico Serra was an Italian actor who starred in the Italian silent cinema and continued to play in Italian films for well over four decades. At the set of I promessi sposi, Vidali met her future husband Mario Parpagnoli, who played the evil Don Rodrigo. After one more film, Amore e destino (1923), directed by Parpagnoli, she left the Italian screen. Because of the crisis in the Italian cinema, the couple moved to Argentine.

I promessi sposi was censured in November 1922 but the film only had its first night in Rome more than a year after, on 27 December 1923, so just after Christmas. While Italian film critics complained about the lack of fidelity to the concept and the historical details in the novel, they also had to admit that the cinema audiences loved it, and took the deviations and historically incorrect details for granted.

La vita cinematografica wrote that the cinema audience wanted to be emotionally involved by dramatic and comic scenes, grand spectacle, and the richness of details, and got it all. The film was awarded a golden medal at a film festival in Turin in 1923. I promessi sposi remained so popular in the following decade that a sound version of the film was released in 1934.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Lucia (Emilia Vidali) and fra Canziano. Caption: Lucia reappeared with her apron full of nuts (Ch. III).

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Renzo has no clue a police spy is sitting next to him, dealing with the innkeeper to have him arrested. Caption: What shall I do?, the innkeeper asks, looking at that stranger who was not really one to him...

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Renzo at the lying and cheating lawyer Azzeccagarbugli. Caption: To the lawyer we need to set things straight, so that we can mess them up.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Renzo (Domenico Serra) is sent away by the corrupt lawyer Azzeccagarbugli (actor unknown). On the left stands Luciana's mother Agnese (Ida Carloni Talli). Caption: Go, go; you don't know what you are talking about: I don't mess with children...

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Rodolfo Badaloni as L'Innominato kisses the hand of the Cardinal Federico Borromeo (actor unknown). Caption: As soon as the Innominato was introduced, Federico came forward to him.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Lucia's kidnapping by Nibbio, the bravo of the Innominato, with the help of Gertrude, the nun of Monza (Niní Dinelli). Caption: Come, my child, come with me, as I have orders to treat you well and give you courage.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). L'Innominato (Rodolfo Badaloni) and his aid Nibbio (actor unknown), who repents his kidnapping of Lucia. Caption: Compassion! What do you know of compassion? What is compassion? (Ch. XXI).

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). During the Milan plague corpses are collected. Caption: She descended from the threshold of one of those exits and came towards the convoy.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Renzo in the plague ridden Milan. Caption: He did a step back, lifting a knotty stick.

Mario Parpagnoli as Don Rodrigo in I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Caption: "Let me kill that infamous traitor!" Milan is in the grip of the plague. After Don Rodrigo (Mario Parpagnoli) has confessed his aid Griso (Raimondo Van Riel) he is ill, the latter betrays him, He calls for the 'monatti' who will carry his master away to the 'Lazzaretto' and robs the wealth of Don Rodrigo. He won't enjoy his riches for long, as he too will be struck by the plague.

I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Renzo (Domenico Serra) and padre Cristoforo (Enzo Biliotti) in plague ridden Milan. Caption: You ask for a living person at a lazaret!...

Ida Carloni Talli, Domenico Serra and Emilia Vidali in I promessi sposi (1922)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: U.C.I. Publicity still for I promessi sposi/The Bethrothed (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Caption: If you want me to marry you, I'm here. The scene depicts the final scene of the story with Ida Carloni Talli (Agnese), Domenico Serra (Renzo), Emilia Vidali (Lucia) and Umberto Scalpellini (Don Abbondio).

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Il cinema muto italiano, 1921-1922), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Stacia Napierkowska

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This week we follow the 37th edition of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the world’s leading international silent-film festival in Pordenone. One of the highlights of the festival is the classic fantasy L’Atlantide/Missing Husbands (1921). The exotic French actress and dancer Stacia Napierkowska (1886-1945) starred as the seductive but cruel Queen Antinéa. Between 1908 and 1926, this fascinating star of the silent cinema appeared in 86 films.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard in the series Les Vedettes de Cinéma by A.N., Paris, no. 50. Photo: Sobol.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard by MvB, no. 3016. Mailed in 1908.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard by Editions Pathé Frères. Photo: A. Bert.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard in the series Nos artistes dans leur loge, no. 207. Photo: Comoedia.

Indescribable Enthusiasm


Stacia Napierkowska was born Renée Claire Angèle Élisabeth Napierkowski in Paris, France, in 1886 (some sources say 1891; and in the magazine Mon Ciné (no. 17, 1922) she even declared to be born in 1896). Her parents were Polish.

Like Mistinguett, she debuted as a dancer in the revues of the Folies-Bergère. Then she danced in a revival of Lysistrata by Maurice Donnay at the Bouffes-Parisiens. Albert Carré director of the Opéra Comique spotted her and engaged her for the production Fêtes Romaines (Roman Holiday), which he presented at the Théâtre Antique d'Orange. Her performance, but especially her statuesque body and her beauty, triggered an indescribable enthusiasm from thousands of spectators. The public’s fascination for her would endure for twenty years.

In 1908, when she was already a star dancer at the Opéra Comique, Napierkowska made her film debut in L'empreinte ou la main rouge/The mark or The Red Hand (Paul Henri Burguet, 1908) with Max Dearly and Mistinguett. Philippe Pelletier at Ciné Artistes writes that “her perfect physique, her long black hair and dark eyes were quickly put to use to interpret exotic roles for productions of the Société Cinématographique des Auteurs et Gens de Lettres (Film Society of Authors and Men of Letters) directed by Albert Capellani”.

Stacia Napierkowska often inserted dances into her film performances, such as in Dans l'Hellade/In Hellas (Charles Decroix, 1909), Cléopâtre/Cleopatra (Ferdinand Zecca, Henri Andréani, 1910) where she is a messenger who is poisoned and dances a dance of death, and Le pain des petits oiseaux/The Bread of Little Birds (Albert Capellani, 1911), in which she becomes a dance star.

Several Internet sources like Ciné-Artistes state that Stacia performed Queen Semiramis in Le sérail en dix volets/Sémiramis (Camille Morlhon, 1910), but that is incorrect - existing film copies show that the role was played by Yvonne Mirval. Stacia did play a very voluptuous - and again dancing - Esmeralda in an early silent adaptation of Victor Hugo’s Notre-Dame de Paris/The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Albert Capellani, 1911), opposite Henry Krauss as Quasimodo.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard, 1904. Mailed in 1908.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard by MvB, no. 3016.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard by Editions Renaissance, Paris.

Stacia Napierkowska
Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.

American Censors


Max Linder, always looking for pretty women, engaged Stacia Napierkowska as his partner in several short comedies like Max lance la mode/Max Sets the Fashion (René Leprince, Max Linder, 1912). In Spain she did a dance tour and appeared in the film Max toréador (Max Linder, 1913).

Stacia Napierkowska then set course to the United States with The Captive. This ballet captured the American public, but not the censors. In 1913, she was arrested during a performance in New York City which was declared indecent. After returning to France, Napierkowska stated in the New York Times (27 April 1913): "Really, I have not brought away a single pleasant memory from the United States" and "What a narrow-minded people they are -- how utterly impervious to any beautiful impression!"

In France her successful film career continued. She appeared as Marfa Koutiloff in the popular serial Les Vampires/The Vampires (Louis Feuillade, 1915) starring the equally exotic Musidora.

Then Napierkowska went immediately to Rome to star in Lo stratagemma di Stasià/Stacia’s Stratagem (Ugo Falena, 1915) and a score of other Italian short films during the early years of World War I. In Rome, she tried to convince her close friend, journalist Germaine Dulac, to start making films. Dulac finally agreed on condition that Stacia would participate in her second film, the adventure Venus Victrix/In the storm of life (Germaine Dulac, 1917).

Stacia Napierkowska also directed a short silent film herself, L'Héritière de la manade/The Heiress of the Manade (Stacia Napierkowska, 1917). Then she took a break from the cinema and ballet to rest.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard. Photo Pathé.

Stacia Napierkowksa
French postcard. Photo: X.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard by Pathé Frères. Photo: A. Bert.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 229. Sent by mail in 1928. Photo: Studio G.L. Manuel Frères.

Queen of Atlantis


Stacia Napierkowska is probably best known for her role as Antinéa, Queen of Atlantis, in the fantasy film L'Atlantide/Missing Husbands (Jacques Feyder, 1921). The director approached her for this part in 1919.

IMDb cites director Jacques Feyder about this meeting: "Miss Napierkowska was an extraordinary dancer. I had seen her at a dance festival where she, as slim as a flower stalk, had been enthusiastically applauded by a crowd of Parisians admirers. A year later, having to choose actors for L'Atlantide, I proposed her for the leading part of Antinéa and the producer agreed; so, in a cold December afternoon, she was in my office, all wrapped in a fur coat, to sign the contract. I thought I did not remember so a plump face but my doubt vanished in a moment because I was too happy for having her in my film, and she left the office without having put off her coat.

The first costume rehearsal was an ugly surprise for me: during last year she had gained a thirty pounds of weight at least. Of course there was nothing to do but hoping that a hard work and the burning sun of Sahara could get my Antinéa a little less fat. It happened just the opposite: the air of the desert whetted her appetite more and more. The dresser complained for having to enlarge the costumes almost every day. Our headquarters were at Touggourt, in a hotel where the food was simply delicious, and because of it my most important occupations were to take away as much bread as possible from her table and tell her dreadful tales about the terrible effects of cream pastry when eaten under the tropical sun."

Despite an exuberance of boas, ostrich feathers and leopard skins, the filmmaker struggled to hide the overweight of his diva during the shooting in 1920. Finally, she would not dance in the film and merely played the vamp with her eyes. However, L'Atlantide/Atlantis became a great success and turned Stacia Napierkowska into one of the legends of the silent cinema.

Napierkowska made a few more films. Her last screen role was Salomé in Le berceau de dieu/The Cradle of God (Fred LeRoy Granville, 1926) starring Léon Mathot. After that she retired. Philippe Pelletier writes that she “then quickly sank into oblivion.”

Stacia Napierkowska died in 1945 in her hometown Paris. She was 58.

L'Atlantide
French postcard for the Louis Aubert production L'Atlantide (1921) by Jacques Feyder, based on the novel by Pierre Benoit. The card depicts the French captain Morhange (Jean Angelo) received by the mysterious and cruel desert queen Antinéa (Stacia Napierkowska). The sets were by Manuel Orazi.

Stacia Napierkowska
French postcard by Editions Filma in the series Les Vedettes du Cinéma, no. 14. Photo: Films Eclipse.


Scene from Les Vampires/The Vampires (1915). Source: Cid Vale Ferreira (YouTube).


Scene from L'Atlantide/Missing Husbands (1921). Source: astique 333 (YouTube).

Sources: Philippe Pelletier (Ciné Artistes) (French), Mon Ciné (Virtual History), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Viola Dana

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This week, EFSP follows Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the 37th edition of the world’s leading international silent-film festival in Pordenone. One of the programmes is John Collins at Edison. Screened today will be The Slavey Student (1915) with American film actress Viola Dana (1897-1987). She was Collins's wife and the lead actress of many of his films. After his death by the 1918 flu pandemic, Dana became very successful in Hollywood.

Viola Dana
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 801/1 1925-1926. Photo: British-American Films AG (BAFAG).

Viola Dana
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 801/2, 1925-1926. Photo: British-American Films AG (BAFAG).

Viola Dana and Monte Blue in Revelation (1924)
Italian postcard by G. Vettori, Bologna, no. 488. Photo: Metro Picture. Publicity still for Revelation (George D. Baker, 1927) with Viola Dana and Monte Blue. The Italian title is Aspiri e sospiri....

John Hancock Collins


Viola Dana born Virginia Flugrath in 1897 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. She was the middle sister of three sisters: the other two were actresses Edna Flugrath and Shirley Mason. The girls' mother had dreams of her daughters being actresses and enthusiastically sought stage work for them.

Viola appeared on the stage at the age of three. Much of her and her sisters' young lives was spent performing with touring companies, at Coney Island, Elks Clubs or anywhere else employment could be found. She read William Shakespeare and particularly identified with the teenage Juliet.

Dana entered films in 1910. Since the Flugraths lived near the Edison studios, it was only natural that their mother would seek out jobs for them there. For the Edison Manufacturing company, she appeared in A Christmas Carol (J. Searle Dawley, Charles Kent, Ashley Miller, 1910), based on the Charles Dickens story and with Marc McDermott as Ebenezer Scrooge.

Between 1910 and 1912, she made three more small appearances in the emergent film industry in New York, using her own name Viola Flugrath. She began also performing in vaudeville with Dustin Farnum in The Little Rebel and played a bit part in The Model by Augustus Thomas.

In 1913, she won the title part in the David Belasco stage production of The Poor Little Rich Girl and the hit show enjoyed a long run at the Hudson Theatre in Manhattan. Her breakthrough movie was Molly the Drummer Boy (George Lessey, 1914). She became a star with the Edison Company, working at their studio in the Bronx, a former riding academy on West 61st Street.

There, she fell in love with Edison director John Hancock Collins and they married in 1915. Collins had come to Edison in 1904 and performed all sorts of tasks, including handyman, until he was finally promoted to director. After marrying Viola, he became her director and wrote many of her films.

Dana's starred in Collins's Edison features such as The Portrait in the Attic (John H. Collins, 1915), Children of Eve (John H. Collins, 1915) and The Cossack Whip (John H. Collins, 1916), and under his guidance, she became one of Edison's top stars.

William K. Everson writes in his study American Silent Film (1978) that Collins's films were some of the best to come out of the Edison studio: "Despite extremely perceptive and laudatory reviews for his films of 1914-1918, he is an ignored and unknown figure to most American historians". He goes on to note that Collins' lack of recognition is due in part to the perception that no directorial talent ever came out of the Edison studios. "Collins' films show that not only were we wrong about him but that it is quite possible that other directors of his calibre lie buried with the unseen Edison films."

The success of the films by John H. Collins with Viola Dana encouraged producer B. A. Rolfe to offer the couple lucrative contracts with his company, Rolfe Photoplays, which released through Metro Pictures Corporation. Dana and Collins accepted Rolfe's offer in 1916.

The couple made several important films for Rolfe/Metro, notably The Girl Without a Soul (John H. Collins, 1917) and Blue Jeans (John H. Collins, 1917). Rolfe closed his New York-area studio down in the face of the 1918 flu pandemic and sent most of his personnel to California.

Dana left before Collins, who was finishing work at the studio; however, Collins contracted influenza which rapidly turned into pneumonia and died in a New York hotel room.

Viola Dana
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 801/4, 1925-1926. Photo: British-American Films AG (BAFAG).

Viola Dana
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 824/1, 1925-1926. Photo: British-American Films AG (BAFAG).

Kevin Brownlow


Viola Dana had a romantic relationship (1919-1920) with daredevil Hollywood pilot Ormer Locklear, who was married at the time. His skills as an aviator made him perfect movie material, and, in 1920, he was making The Skywayman for Fox.

The filming called for night flying scenes over oil fields in the Los Angeles area. Locklear was to take his plane into a tailspin heading dangerously toward the ground. Sunlight arcs were directed at the plane so it would show up against the night sky. The blinding lights were to be shut off just as Locklear reached the level of the oil wells indicating that he should straighten out the plane. However, whoever was in charge never took the lights off him, and he crashed.

Viola was present a the time of the incident and would not fly again for 25 years. In 1925 she married Yale football star and actor Maurice 'Lefty' Flynn, but they divorced in 1929.

For Metro, Dana continued to turn in great performances in light comedies, particularly as Katie O'Doone in Bred in Old Kentucky (Edward Dillon, 1926). She became one the best paid stars of Metro, which of course became part of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. In 1926, she moved from MGM to Paramount. Throughout the 1920s she continued to act, but her popularity gradually waned when sound film was introduced.

One of her last important roles was in Frank Capra's first film for Columbia Pictures, That Certain Thing (1928) with Ralph Graves. According to Wikipedia, she was unable to make the transition to sound films. According to the Chicago Tribune, her voice was not suited for sound pictures.

By the time she made her final film appearance in 1933, she had played in over 100 films. In 1930 she had married actor and professional golfer Jimmy Thompson. After a brief stint in vaudeville she retired to tour with her husband, Jimmy Thomson.

In 1945, the marriage with Thomson dissolved in a divorce.Dana briefly came out of retirement to appear on television in small part on the TV series  Lux Video Theatre (1956) and My Three Sons (1963). Dana became a volunteer aide at the Motion Picture Country House before moving there permanently in 1979.

More than 50 years after her retirement from the screen, Viola Dana appeared in the documentary TV series Hollywood (Kevin Brownlow, David Gill, 1980), discussing her career as a silent film star during the 1920s. Footage from the interview was used in a later documentary series on Buster Keaton, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow (1987), also by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill.

At the age of 90, Viola Dana passed away in 1987 at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles. In 1990, she was the subject of a documentary short by Anthony Slide, Vi: Portrait of a Silent Star, in which she talks of her life and career.

Viola Dana
British collectors card by Girl's Cinema, 1922.

Viola Dana
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 28. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Viola Dana
British or American postcard. Editor unknown.

Source: Tim Lussier (Silents are Golden), Hal Erickson (AllMovie),  Denny Jackson (IMDb), The Chicago Tribune,  Golden Silents,  Wikipedia and IMDb.

See for more vintage postcards of Hollywood stars our albums at on Flickr: Vintage B&W Hollywood and Hollywood Colour Postcards.

Le joueur d'échecs (1927)

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Today is the final day of Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the world’s leading international silent-film festival in Pordenone. We wave the festival goodbye with a post on the closing event in Teatro Verdi, a screening of the masterpiece Le joueur d'échecs/The Chess Player (Raymond Bernard, 1927). A French silent film on the historical automaton The Turk, which turned out to be one of the most successful hoaxes ever pulled off. The film score by Henri Rabaud will be performed live by the Orchestra San Marco of Pordenone and the conductor will be Mark Fitz-Gerald.

Édith Jéhanne in Le joueur d'échecs
Édith Jéhanne. French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 421. Photo: publicity still for Le joueur d'échecs/ The Chess Player (Raymond Bernard, 1927).

Pierre Blanchar in Le joueur d'échecs (1927)
Pierre Blanchar. French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 422. Photo: publicity still for Le joueur d’échecs/The Chess Player (Raymond Bernard, 1927).

A chess-playing machine known as The Turk


Le joueur d'échecs/The Chess Player (Raymond Bernard, 1927) is based on a novel by Henry Dupuy-Mazuel. It is a historical drama set in the late 18th century during the Russian domination of Polish Lithuania, and elements of the plot are drawn from the story of the chess-playing automaton known as The Turk.

In 1776, a young Polish patriot, Boleslas Vorowski (Pierre Blanchar), is wounded in an abortive uprising against the Russian forces in Vilnius. A reward for his capture is offered but he is sheltered by Baron von Kempelen (Charles Dullin). Von Kempelen is an inventor of lifelike automata, who plans to smuggle Vorowski, a skilful chess-player, to Germany concealed inside The Turk. Vorowski finds his true self, not on the battlefield, but in the wholly unreal world of chess.

Baron von Kempelen, is based on a real-life inventor who stunned the courts of Europe with his life-size mechanical dolls. Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804) was a Hungarian-born engineer who became known for many inventions, most famously his chess-playing machine, The Turk, which he created in 1769 to entertain the Empress Maria Theresa.

Major Nicolaïeff (Camille Bert), a Russian rival of Vorowski, challenges The Turk to a game and is defeated, but he realises that the machine is being secretly operated by Vorowski. He arranges for The Turk to be sent to Moscow to entertain the Russian Empress Catherine II (Marcelle Charles-Dullin). When The Turk refuses to allow Catherine to cheat, the Empress orders that the automaton is to be executed by firing squad at dawn. During a masked ball, von Kempelen replaces Vorowski inside The Turk, to enable him to escape with his lover Sophie Novinska (Édith Jéhanne). Nicolaïeff, who has been sent to search von Kempelen's house, is slain by the inventor's sabre-wielding automata.

It is estimated that the historical Turk defeated 98% of its opponents, who included such luminaries as Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin during Kempelen's lifetime. After the Baron's death, a successor continued to exhibit the Turk, who faced off against Edgar Allan Poe and Charles Babbage, the man who attempted to create the first computer, the 'difference engine', partly inspired by his encounter with Kempelen's marvellous automaton. The Turk remained a popular phenomenon for 85 years, until its owner deliberately revealed how the trick was done and mothballed the gadget.

Camille Bert in Le Joueur d'échecs
Camille Bert. French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 424. Photo: publicity still for Le Joueur d'échecs/The Chess Player (Raymond Bernard, 1927). In the film Camille Bert plays Major Nikolaieff, the Russian adversary of the protagonist, the Polish freedom fighter Boleslas Vorowski (Pierre Blanchar).

Charles Dullin in Le joueur d'échecs (1927)
Charles Dullin. French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 349. Photo: publicity still for Le joueur d'échecs/The Chess Player (Raymond Bernard, 1927).

A spectacular cavalry charge


Le joueur d'échecs/The Chess Player (1927) was the second film which Raymond Bernard made for the Société des Films Historiques, although on this occasion its subject matter of the Polish struggle for independence from Russia did not correspond with the company's avowed devotion to French history. Some scenes were filmed on location in Poland with the assistance of the Polish army.

For many of the other spectacular locations, 35 sets were created at the studios in Joinville by Robert Mallet-Stevens and Jean Perrier; the most spectacular was the facade and courtyard of the Winter Palace, which covered some 5000 square metres of land beside the studio.

Additional special effects were provided by the British film designer W. Percy Day. Filming began on 15 March 1926 and was completed on 31 October, leaving Bernard only two months for its post-production before the premiere in January 1927. An orchestral score was written for the film by Henri Rabaud.

The gala premiere at the Marivaux cinema in Paris was a huge success and the film went on to have a first run of three months at that cinema before its general release in the summer of 1927. Audiences were particularly impressed by the spectacular cavalry charge imagined by Sophie as she sings the Polish hymn of independence. This daydream sequence is daringly intercut with the actual battle - a fiasco whose leaders are killed and maimed, bringing no glory to either Russian imperialists or Polish rebels.

The press reception in France was generally enthusiastic. The film was released in the UK in early 1928, and in the USA in 1930, where however the reviewer for The New York Times was unimpressed. David Melville at IMDb: "Comparable to Abel Gance's Napoleon in its scale and stylistic bravura, this romantic epic (...) differs from the more famous film in its lack of nationalist fervour and Tricolour bombast. Its one 'rousing battle scene' is a pure fantasy, a daydream of its naive heroine as she thumps out a patriotic hymn on her piano. (...) director Raymond Bernard conjures up an eerily perverse atmosphere of ETA Hoffman-style Gothic Expressionism."

A restoration of the film was undertaken in the 1980s, led by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill. In the absence of any definitive negative or print, it required the collaboration of several European film archives from which material in several variant copies was collated; sources in an East German archive and the Cinémathèque Municipale in Luxembourg provided the most complete material. The finished tinted print received its first screenings in London in 1990, with Rabaud's score conducted by Carl Davis.


Scene from Le joueur d'échecs/The Chess Player (Raymond Bernard, 1927) in which von Kempelen presents The Turk. Source: Compujedrez (YouTube).

Sources: David Melville (IMDb), John G. Nettles (Pop Matters), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Marcelle Chantal

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Marcelle Chantal (1901-1960) was a French socialite who became a film actress. She peaked in the early 1930s. Marcelle Chantal symbolised French elegance.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard by EDUG, no. 1090. Photo: Pathé-Natan.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard by A.N., 608. Photo: Paramount.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Édition, Paris, no. 880. Photo: Paramount.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Édition, Paris, no. 2093. Photo: Pathé-Natan.

Never a prima donna


Marcelle Chantal, sometimes known as Marcelle Favrel, was born Marcelle Chantal Pannier in Paris in 1901.

She came from a rich family of bankers and endured a severe education which included the arts. She discovered she liked singing and dancing, but her mother considered this unproper. Director Marcel L’Herbier, a friend of the family, wanted her to debut in film and let her make a screen-test, but her mother forbade it.

After she married a rich and handsome American in 1921, David Jefferson-Cohn, her husband let her enjoy public life in Paris as pastime, in particular the arts. And so, already when they were still betrothed, Marcelle debuted in cinema in L’Herbier’s film Le Carnaval des vérités (Marcel L’Herbier, 1921).

After she had been applauded as a singer on charity galas, she took singing more serious, first at the Opéra Comique in La Vie de bohème, then at the Opéra Garnier in Thaïs, under the name of Marcelle Jefferson Cohn. When she didn’t accept authority anymore, her husband hired her the Théâtre des Champs Elysées, so that she could do as she pleased.

She took things serious, collaborating with a.o. Firmin Gémier and introducing the beautiful dancer Anna Pavlova, but eventually her work as manager and singer took his toll, so for months she was ill. When she recovered she realised she would never become prima donna, and set her mind on another profession, though it took some years.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 722. Marcelle Chantal aka Marcelle Jefferson-Cohn in Le collier de la reine/The Queen's Necklace (Gaston Ravel, Tony Lekain, 1929), inspired by Alexandre Dumas's tale.

Marcelle Chantal, publicity for Campari
French postcard for Campari. Photo: Studio Lorelle. Caption: "Paris sans Campari, n'est pas Paris." (Paris without Campari is not Paris.)

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard. Photo: Paramount.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard in the Les grandes vedettes series by Radiogravure A. Breger Frères, Paris, offered by L'Industrie Boutonnière, St. Maur-des-Fossés. Photo: Pathé-Natan.

Humour and elegance


In 1929, Pola Negri was supposed to play the plotting Comtesse de la Motte in the Gaumont-Franco Film-Aubert production L’Affaire du Collier de la Reine/The Queen’s Necklace (1929). This was an early French sound production directed by Gaston Ravel and Tony Lekain, friends of Chantal.

When the Polish diva made a scene and refused to play, Chantal immediately stepped forward and became a success. Her co-stars were former silent stars George Lannes (Cardinal de Rohan) and Diana Karenne (Marie Antoinette) and rising star Fernand Fabre (Comte de la Motte).

When Marcelle’s husband, however, made her understand that a hobby was alright but not a career, she made him understand their marriage was over. She was set on a film acting career.

Until the outbreak of the Second World War, she would act in various French sound films, under the name of Marcelle Chantal, expressing humour and elegance. In two years’ time she had already performed in eight films.

Chantal would act opposite many male stars of those years, such as Pierre Richard Wilm, Fernand Gravey, Jules Berry and Jean-Pierre Aumont.

After the female lead in La tendresse/Tenderness (André Hugon, 1930) with Jean Toulout, she was the female star of several French Paramount productions: Toute sa vie/All her life (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1930), Le secret du docteur/The Doctor's Secret (Charles de Rochefort, 1930) with Max Maxudian, La vagabonde/The Vagabond (Solange Térac, 1930) with Fernand Fabre, Le réquisitoire/Homicide (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1931) again with Fabre, and Les vacances du diable/The Devil's Holiday (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1931) with Thomy Bourdelle.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard by Ed. Chantal, Paris, no. 71. Photo: Sedif.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard by Editions et Publications cinématographiques, no. 1. Photo: Pathé-Natan.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard by PC, no. 184. Photo: France Presse. Collection: Didier Hanson.

A Comeback against all odds


Marcelle Chantal then starred in films for various companies such as Pathé-Nathan: Au nom de la loi/In the Name of the Law (Maurice Tourneur, 1932) with Gabriel Gabrio, L’ordonnance/The Orderly (Viktor Tourjansky, 1933) with Jean Worms and Fernandel, Amok (Fyodor Otsep, 1934) with Jean Yonnel, Antonia, romance hongroise/Antonia (Jean Boyer, Max Neufeld, 1935) with Fernand Gravey, Baccara (Yves Mirande, 1935) with Lucien Baroux, and La gondole aux chimères/The Phantom Gondola (Augusto Genina, 1936) with Henri Rollan and filmed in Italy.

In 1936 she played opposite Victor Francen in L’Herbier’s La porte du large/The Great Temptation (Marcel L’Herbier, 1936), partly shot in Brest and Finistère. Chantal then acted opposite Harry Baur in Nitchevo (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1936).

She went to London to star in A Romance in Flanders (Maurice Elvey, 1936), and subsequently acted in L’ile des veuves/The Island of Widows (Claude Heymann, 1937) with Pierre Renoir.

In 1938 she starred as Tsarine Alexandra opposite Harry Baur as Rasputin in L’Herbier’s prestigious production La tragédie impériale/Rasputin. After this she starred with Pierre Renoir in the courtcase drama L’affaire Lafargue/The Lafargue Case (Pierre Chenal, 1938).

Chantal’s last role before the war was in Jeunes filles en détresse/Girls in distress (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1939). The plot evolved around parents (Chantal and André Luguet) who are too busy working to take care of their daughter Jacqueline (Micheline Presle), so they send her to a boarding school, where all the girls prove to be children of divorced parents. When one girl attempts suicide and when Jacqueline’s parents decide to divorce as well, the girls are in crisis.

Outraged about the outbreak of the Second World War, Marcelle Chantal fled to Switzerland, where she toured the country with a theatre show, and even dared to perform on the Côte d’Azur while the demarcation line was still running.

When peace returned, Marcelle Chantal rediscovered Paris had changed: the prewar divine creatures had become outdated, so her type and good manners were no assets anymore. She tried a comeback against all odds, starring in Fantomas contre Fantomas (Robert Vernay, 1948-1949) with Aimé Clariond as Bréval andAlexandre Rignaultas Juve.

She also played Marianne in the Colette adaptation Julie de Carneilhan (Jacques Manuel, 1950) opposite Pierre Renoir, Edwige Feuillère and Jacques Dumesnil.

Fittingly Chantal closed her film career with the part of the ageing courtesan Léa de Lonval opposite Jean Dessailly in the title role in another Colette adaptation: Chéri (Pierre Billon, 1950). Just like Léa heartbroken accepts that Chéri abandons her on instigation of his mother (Jane Marken), and marries a girl of his own age he doesn’t love, Chantal understood the times had changed.

Marcelle Chantal left her beloved Paris and retired to an estate in the Pyla/Pilat, near the basin of Arcachon. She refused all subsequent proposals to return to the screen. Cancer was slowly disfiguring her beauty, so in her rare public appearances she was heavily veiled.

The illness took Marcelle Chantal away shortly after her 59th birthday in 1960.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard by EDUG, no. 1023. Photo: Studio Lorelle / Pathé Nathan.

Marcelle Chantal
French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 78. Photo: Teddy Piaz.


Scene from L’ordonnance/The Orderly (1933) with Marcelle Chantal at the piano. Source: Camille885 (YouTube).

Sources: Celine Colassin (Cinéartistes - French), Wikipedia (French) and IMDb.

Fritzi Massary

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Austrian-American soprano singer and actress Fritzi Massary (1882-1969) was one of the greatest 20th century operetta divas. She was a superstar in Berlin and Vienna in the Weimar era, but after the rise of the Nazis, Massary was forced to flee Germany. In London, she appeared in an operetta Noel Coward wrote for her. The popular singer also starred in several early German ‘sound pictures’ and other silent films.

Fritzi Massary in Die Rose von Stambul (1919)
German postcard by NPG, no. 795. Photo: Anny Eberth, Berlin. Publicity still for Die Rose von Stambul/The Rose of Stamboul (Felix Basch, Arthur Wellin, 1919).

Fritzi Massary
German postcard. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin.

Fritzi Massary
German postcard. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin.

Reigning over the Berlin stage


Fritzi Massary was born Friederike Massaryk in Vienna in the Austro-Hungarian Empire on 1882. She was the eldest of three daughters of a Jewish family, and her father was a businessman. Her parents, and especially her mother, encouraged her talent via singing lessons, with the result that their daughter, now renamed Fritzi Massary, received her first engagement in a small part at the Landestheater in Linz in 1899/1900.

In 1900 she appeared in another minor role at the Carl Schultze Theatre in Hamburg, returning to Vienna in the following year and being employed at a summer theatre, Danzer’s Orpheum, until 1904. At around this time she was baptised as a Protestant and in 1903 she gave birth to a daughter, Liesl.

She had her first sensational success in revue at the Metropol-Theater in Berlin in 1904. She refined her vocal abilities in the next years and soon belonged to the most elegant performers of her time.

In 1907, she made her cinema debut for Messter Film in the short 'tonbild' (sound picture) Komm du kleines Kohlenmädchen (1907) opposite Joseph Giampietro. The next year, she made several more of such short films with a song on a sound disk for Deutsche Bioscop GmbH, like Trallala Lied/Trallala Song (1908), Donnerwetter, tadellos/Gosh, faultless (1908) with Henry Bender, and Auf ins Metropol/On to the city (1908). For Deutsche Film, she made Viola (1912).

On stage, her real breakthrough occurred in 1911, when she appeared as a guest artist at Max Reinhardt’s Künstlertheater in Jacques Offenbach’s La Belle Hélène, alongside Maria Jeritza. From then on Massary reigned over the Berlin stage, which was at the time the centre of cabaret, revue and operetta. Among the works created especially for her was the operetta Die Kaiserin (The Empress) by Leo Fall (1915). Under Bruno Walter she sang the title role in Franz Lehar’s Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow) and Adele in Johann Strauss’s Die Fledermaus (The Bat). During World War I, she performed for the soldiers of the Imperial German Army in theatres in occupied Belgium.

In 1915 she appeared in the silent film Der Tunnel/The Tunnel (William Wauer, 1915) starring Friedrich Kayßler and Hermann Vallentin. It was the first of several film adaptations of Bernhard Kellermann's 1913 novel Der Tunnel about the construction of a vast tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean connecting Europe and America. The film was made by Paul Davidson's PAGU production company, with sets designed by art director Hermann Warm, five years before he designed Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari/The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920). Massary’s later films were Die Rose von Stambul/The Rose of Stamboul (Felix Basch, Arthur Wellin, 1919) and Narrentanz der Liebe/Mie (Arthur Wellin, 1920), opposite Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur.

Fritzi Massary
German postcard by G.G. & Co., Serie 535/2. Photo: Gerlach.

Fritzi Massary
German postcard by G.G. & Co., Serie 536/2. Photo: Gerlach.

A butt of anti-Semitic propaganda


Fritzi Massary was closely associated with the composer Oscar Strauss, creating roles in six of his operettas. In 1920, she worked with Strauss on the hit Der letzte Walzer (The Last Waltz). Her biographer Robert Wennersten explained her popularity in an interview with Kevin Clarke: “Her singing voice was not exceptional, but her delivery of the songs certainly was. Take “Oh-la-la” from Der Letzte Walzer: every time those syllables came around she sang them differently, and every variation was funny or slightly salacious.”

Massary was so popular that she had an important impact to the fashion of her times. At the height of her career – between 1918 and 1932 – Massary asked for and was given complete control over her productions. Everything – the supporting cast, the costumes, the sets, the props and lighting – was subject to her approval.

Massary’s career in Germany came to an abrupt end when she became a butt of the anti-Semitic propaganda because of her Jewish marriage with actor Max Pallenberg. In late 1932 the couple left Germany, shortly before the Nazis seized dictatorial power in a paramilitary revolution and declared a Third Reich. The couple travelled through Austria and Switzerland, but in 1934 Max Pallenberg died in a plane crash in Karlsbad. Fritzi had now lost everything.

She moved to London, where she became friends with Noël Coward and starred in his theatrical musical Operette in 1938. In February 1939, shortly before the outbreak of World War II, she moved to Beverly Hills, California to join her daughter’s family, and lived there among other exiles such as Elisabeth Bergner, Fritz Kortner, Ernst Lubitsch, Thomas Mann and Max Reinhardt.

She put an extended effort into continuing her career, going to New York to look for Broadway roles and talking to Hollywood directors about film roles. To no avail, unfortunately. From then on, she focused on her garden and her dogs. Beginning in 1952, she regularly spent summers in Germany. In 1957, Germany honoured her with the Großes Bundesverdienstkreuz (Grand Cross of Merit).

She continued to reside in Beverly Hills until her death in Los Angeles in 1969. Fritzi Massary was married twice, first to an eye doctor Bernhard Pollack in 1914. Massary's second marriage was to the Austrian actor Max Pallenberg, from 1917 till his death in 1934. With Karl-Kuno Rollo Graf von Coudenhove, she had her only child, Elisabeth Maria Karl (called Liesl) (1903–1979). Liesl later married the author Bruno Frank. Though Coudenhove was Liesl's father, Massary was never married to him.

Fritzi Massary
German postcard by Genossenschaft Deutscher Bühnen-Angehorigen, Berlin / Verband der konzertierenden Künstler Deutschlands, Berlin. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin.

Fritzi Massary
German postcard by Ross Verlag / W.J. Morlins, Berlin, no. 427/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Karl Schenker.

Fritzi Massary
German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 278. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.

Sources: Beatrix Borchard (Jewish Women’s Archive), Kevin Clarke (Operetta Research Center), Stadtmuseum Berlin (German), Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.

Hannjo Hasse

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East German actor Hannjo Hasse (1921-1983) was the most sinister bad guy of the DEFA films. In the Eastern, the communist version of the Western, he often played greedy pioneers who seek to dispossess Native Americans.

Hannjo Hasse in Spur des Falken (1968)
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 3165, 1968. Photo: DEFA / Pathenheimer. Publicity still for Spur des Falken/Trail of the Falcon (Gottfried Kolditz, 1968).

Hannjo Hasse
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 1517, 1961. Photo: Kurt Wunsch.

Margit Bara and  Hannjo Hasse in Polnocná omsa
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 1834, 1963. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: publicity still for Polnocná omsa/Midnight Mass (Jiri Krejcik, 1962) with Margit Bara.

Sinister characters


Hannjo Hasse was born in Bonn, Germany, 1921.

Hannjo began his adult life working in an office. In 1938, he began to study acting at Lilly Ackermann’s Ausbildungsanstalt für deutschen Bühnennachwuchs (Institute for Stage Artists' Education) in Berlin.

In 1941, he was drafted for military service during World War II. After the end of the war and his release from captivity, Hasse returned to Weimar, where he spent another six months to complete his drama training.

He made his debut on stage in the Nordhausen Theater, where he was also employed as a dramaturge. In 1951, Hasse made his first screen appearance, playing a minor role in Der Untertan/The Kaiser's Lackey (Wolfgang Staudte, 1951), based on Heinrich Mann's 1918 satirical novel by the same name. It was a huge success.

He also played a supporting part in Ernst Thälmann (Kurt Maetzig, 1954), a film in two parts about the life of the leader of the Communist Party of Germany during much of the Weimar Republic.

Hasse worked in theatres in Eisleben, Burg bei Magdeburg and Schwerin, before settling at the Hans Otto Theater in Leipzig, where he was a member of the regular cast between 1954 and 1962. Afterwards, he moved to Berlin's Volksbühne, and then to the Deutsches Theater. Hasse played a wide range of supporting characters, from Malvolio to the Fledermaus.

From the late 1950s, Hasse focused mainly on cinema and television work. Although his earlier stage roles were mostly comical in nature, in the cinema he depicted sinister characters almost solely.

He played the lead in the war film Der Fall Gleiwitz/The Gleiwitz Case (Gerhard Klein, 1961). The film themes the SS stage-managed Gleiwitz incident at the evening of 31 August 1939. This served national-socialist propaganda as a pretext to start second World War by raiding Poland the next day. The plot was reconstructed exactly according to the statements of SS-Man Alfred Naujocks before British authorities at the Nuremberg trials.

Hasse’s other films included the Czech drama Vyšší princip/Higher Principle (Jiří Krejčík, 1960), the espionage thriller Reserviert für den Tod/Reserved for the Death (Heinz Thiel, 1963) with Hans-Peter Minetti, and the propaganda film An französischen Kaminen/At A French Fireside (Kurt Maetzig, 1963) with Arno Wyzniewski. The latter was one of eight major DEFA pictures made between 1959 and 1964 that centered on the theme of the Cold War, with an underlying message that East Germany had to defend itself from the West.

Hannjo Hasse in Die Söhne der großen Bärin (1966)
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 2.547, 1966. Photo: DEFA / Pathenheimer. Publicity still for Die Söhne der großen Bärin/The Sons of Great Bear (Josef Mach, 1966).

Hannjo Hasse and Brigitte Krause in Die Söhne der großen Bärin (1966)
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 2.546, 1966. Photo: DEFA / Pathenheimer. Publicity still for Die Söhne der großen Bärin/The Sons of Great Bear (Josef Mach, 1966).

Hannjo Hasse in Spur des Falken (1968)
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 3181, 1968. Photo: DEFA / Pathenheimer. Publicity still for Spur des Falken/Trail of the Falcon (Gottfried Kolditz, 1968).

A revisionist Western


In 1966, Hannjo Hasse appeared in Die Söhne der großen Bärin/The Sons of Great Bear (Josef Mach, 1966), starring the Yugoslav actor Gojko Mitić in the leading role of Tokei-ihto. The picture is a revisionist Western, pioneering the genre of the Ostern (Eastern), and emphases on the positive portrayal of Native Americans, while presenting the Whites as antagonists. It is one of the most successful films produced by the DEFA studio.

Renate Seydel, who interviewed Hasse in 1966, commented that he was the most perennial villain in the actors' ensemble of DEFA and Deutscher Fernsehfunk. The favourable reception of The Sons of Great Bear surpassed by far what DEFA directors had anticipated. This paved the way for a dozen Easterns featuring Indians as the heroes, often portrayed by Mitić and this series became the studio's best known and most successful film series.

Hasse appeared in five Easterns, including Spur des Falken/Trail of the Falcon (Gottfried Kolditz, 1968) and Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970) with Armin Müller-Stahl. Hasse is also remembered for depicting SD Colonel von Dietrich in the Yugoslav partisan film Valter brani Sarajevo/Walter Defends Sarajevo (Hajrudin Krvavac, 1971).

In addition to those entertainment films, he also portrayed historical antagonists in several bleaker pictures dealing with the recent past, like Adolf Eichmann in the film Lebende Ware/Living Cargo (Wolfgang Luderer, 1966) - based on the blood for goods affair, and as Reynhard Heydrich in the Czech-Russian war thriller Sokolovo (Otakar Vávra, 1975). Hasse told Seydel that he considered those roles as having educational value, in order to "demonstrate the full horror of Fascism" to younger viewers.

In 1971, Hasse was awarded the Art Prize of the German Democratic Republic. He also dubbed many films and was the German voice for Philippe Noiret, Pierre Brasseur and Yves Montand.

His later films include the Polish historical film Kopernik/Copernicus (Ewa Petelska, Czesław Petelski, 1973), the fairytale film Wer reißt denn gleich vorm Teufel aus/The Devil's Three Golden Hairs (Egon Schlegel, 1977) and the comedy Einfach Blumen aufs Dach/Simply flowers at the roof (Roland Oehme, 1979).

His final bigger role was in the TV comedy Es war so nett in unserem Quartett/It was so fine in our quartet (Robert Trösch 1983).

Hannjo Hasse died in Falkensee in the GDR in 1983 and is buried in the Südwestkirchhof Stahnsdorf. He was 61.

Hannjo Hasse
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 2790, 1967.

Hannjo Hasse
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 4869, 1969. Photo: Uhlenhut.

Armin Mueller-Stahl and Hannjo Hasse in Tödlicher Irrtum (1970)
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 58/70. Photo: DEFA / Blümel Publicity still for Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970) with Armin Mueller-Stahl.

Armin Mueller-Stahl and Hannjo Hasse in Tödlicher Irrtum (1970)
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 85/70d. Photo: DEFA / Blümel. Publicity still for Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970) with Armin Mueller-Stahl.

Sources: Tom B. (Westerns… all’ Italiana), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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