Quantcast
Channel: European Film Star Postcards
Viewing all 4108 articles
Browse latest View live

Christiane Hörbiger

0
0
Christiane Hörbiger (1938) is an Austrian television and film actress, born into a well-known actors family. Since 1955, she made a name for herself on stage and television and in several films.

Christiane Hörbiger-Wessely in Kronprinz Rudolfs letzte Liebe (1956)
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel. Photo: Sascha-Lux / Constantin / Lilo. Publicity still for Kronprinz Rudolfs letzte Liebe/Mayerling (Rudolf Jugert, 1956).

Christiane Hörbiger in Kronprinz Rudolfs letzte Liebe (1956)
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1617. Photo: Sascha-Lux / Constantin / Lilo. Publicity still for Kronprinz Rudolfs letzte Liebe/Mayerling (Rudolf Jugert, 1956).

No doubt whose offspring she was


Christiane Hörbiger was born in 1938 in Vienna, Austria. She is one of the three actress daughters of the famous Austrian actors Attila Hörbiger and Paula Wessely. Her uncle is the equally known Paul Hörbiger. Her sisters are Elisabeth Orth and Maresa Hörbiger, and she is also the aunt of German-Austrian actor Christian Tramitz.

Christiane made her film debut in the female lead of Der Major und die Stiere/The Major and the Steers (Eduard von Borsody, 1955) with Fritz Tillmann and her father Attila Hörbiger.

She started to study acting at the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar, but broke off her studies when she received another offer for a film role. She played with her mother Paula Wessely in Die Wirtin zur Goldenen Krone/The landlady of the Golden Crown (Theo Lingen, 1955).

In the historical drama Kronprinz Rudolfs letzte Liebe/Mayerling (Rudolf Jugert, 1956), she then played Baroness Marie Vetsera opposite Rudolf Prack as Crown Prince Rudolf. She was credited as Christiane Hörbiger-Wessely. The director insisted that Christiane Hörbiger used both her parents' names (Wessely and Hörbiger) to leave the audience no doubt whose offspring she was.

For Jugert, she also appeared in the Heimat drama Der Meineidbauer/The Perjurer (Rudolf Jugert, 1956) with Carl Wery and Heidemarie Hatheyer. Another Heimat drama was Der Edelweißkönig (Gustav Ucicky, 1957) with Rudolf Lenz. She played a supporting part in the comedy Immer die Radfahrer/Always the cyclists (Hans Deppe, 1958) with Heinz Erhardt.

Her stage debut in 1959 as Recha in Lessings Nathan der Weise at the Burgtheater, was not a success. From 1960 till 1961, she played at the Städtischen Bühnen Heidelberg, and from 1961 till 1966 she was back in Vienna at the Burgtheater. Later she played several important stage roles at the Schauspielhaus Zürich.

Christiane Hörbiger in Immer die Radfahrer (1958)
German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, no. FK 4242. Photo: Dittner / Mundus / Ulrich Film / DFH. Publicity still for Immer die Radfahrer/Always the cyclists (Hans Deppe, 1958).

Christiane Hörbiger
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg. Photo: Winfried Rabanus, München.

I am the White Clown


From 1960 on, Christiane Hörbiger played in various German and Austrian TV films and series. Incidentally, she appeared in such feature films as the fantasy Der Bauer als Millionär/The Farmer as Millionaire (Alfred Stöger, Rudolf Steinboeck, 1961) with Käthe Gold, the fairy-tale Der Verschwender/The Wasteful (Kurt Meisel, 1964) with Walther Reyer, and Versuchung im Sommerwind/Temptation in the Summer Wind (Rolf Thiele, 1972) as the assistant of Helmut Käutner.

She played the lead in the popular TV series Das Erbe der Guldenburgs/The Legacy of the Guldenburgs (Jürgen Goslar, Gero Erhardt, 1987-1990) about an aristocratic German family (The Guldenburgs) and the various relationships and problems the family goes through. The success of the series caused a second start of her career.

In the 1990s, she returned to the cinema in films such as the comedy Schtonk (Helmut Dietl, 1992), the slightly fictionalised story of an art forger (Uwe Ochsenknecht), a journalist desperate for a big story (Götz George), and the biggest press scandal in German history: the Hitler Diaries.

From 1998 until 2002, she played the eponymous role in the Austrian TV series Julia - eine ungewöhnliche Frau/Julia - An Extraordinary Woman. In 1995, she was a member of the jury at the 45th Berlin International Film Festival.

Hörbiger keeps working for television. Her most recent feature film is the crime comedy Mean Parents Suck (William Shepherd, 2010) in which she played a Kindergarten teacher who kills mean parents. Her only foray so far into voice acting has been the role of Mrs. Caloway (the dairy cow) in the German-language version of Disney's Home on the Range (Will Finn, John Sanford, 2004).

Christiane Hörbiger was married twice: from 1962 till 1967 to director Wolfgang Glück and later to Swiss journalist Rolf R. Bigler. From this marriage comes the son Sascha Bigler (1968), who she raised alone after the death of her husband. Sascha Bigler lives in Los Angeles today and works as a director. Her later partner was Gerhard Tötschinger. From 1984 until his death in 2016, the couple lived alternately in Vienna, Baden near Vienna and Zurich.

In 2008 Christiane Hörbiger published her autobiography Ich bin der Weiße Clown (I am the White Clown). She won many awards. In 2001, she received Germany's most important medal, the Bundesverdienstkreuz. In 2004, she was awarded as Kammerschauspielerin in Austria.

Christiane Hörbiger
German autograph card by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg. Photo: Werner Grecht, Wien.

Sources: Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.

Le chemineau (1905)

0
0
Among Pathé Frères's filmmakers, Albert Capellani was one of the main pioneers, who developed and systematised several techniques of representation which set the standard in the narrative cinema. One of his first films was Le chemineau/The Tramp (Albert Capellani, 1905), based on the first part of Victor Hugo's novel Les misérables. In the short silent film Jean Valjean, who was granted lodging by the parish priest of a village, steals several silver candlesticks and escapes the arrest thanks to the false testimony of the priest. Unclear is who the actors are, but sets were made by Hugues Laurent. The beautiful series of hand-coloured postcards were published by Croissant in Paris.

Le chemineau
French postcard by Croissant, Paris, no. 3664. Photo: Film Pathé. Still for Le chemineau/The Tramp (Albert Capellani, 1905). It's winter, snow falls on the desolate countryside. An exhausted tramp asks in vain for an alimony from passers-by.

Le chemineau
French postcard by Croissant, Paris, no. 3664. Photo: Film Pathé. Still for Le chemineau/The Tramp (Albert Capellani, 1905). The tramp presents himself at the presbyterium and is hosted by the pastor, who lets him dine at his table and sleep in his bed, while he himself sleeps in his chair.

Les Miserables in five minutes


Director Albert Capellani was a neglected but important film pioneer. Recent retrospectives of his restored films, e.g. at Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna in 2012, and special DVD editions attest to Capellani's contribution in the use of deep staging shots, various changes in framing and even rudimentary editing techniques.

Capellani, born in 1874 in Paris, directed films between 1905 and 1922. One of his brothers was the actor-sculptor Paul Capellani. Albert studied acting under Charles le Bargy at the Conservatoire de Paris. Starting his career as an actor, he worked with the director André Antoine at the Théâtre Libre and the Odéon. He then began directing plays for the Odéon, working alongside renowned actor and director Firmin Gémier. In 1903, he became the head of the Alhambra music hall in Paris. He continued to work as an actor and director until he received a job offer from the Pathé Frères studio in 1905.

For Pathé Frères, Albert Capellani tended to specialise in several genres: costume dramas with historical and biblical themes, fables, fantastic adventures and melodramas often based on famous novels. Le Chemineau/The Tramp (1905), one of his first films, was such a melodrama. In 5 minutes, it stages an episode from Les Miserables by Victor Hugo in which Jean Valjean, who is granted lodging by mr. Myriel, the parish priest of a village, steals several silver candlesticks and escapes the arrest thanks to the false testimony of the priest. In the US Le Chemineau premiered in 1906 and was inappropriately titled The Strong Arm of the Law.

Richard Abel in his article Capellani avant Griffith, 1906-1908 in The Ciné Goes to Town : French Cinema, 1896-1914: "The film mainly uses the usual representation system of the beginnings of the cinema: its six exhibition boards, the majority of which consist of long shots, were filmed in studio with decorations painted on panels for indoor and outdoor scenes. The first two paintings, for example, depict a winter landscape with a small village (church included) visible in the distance, in the background, while in the foreground, the tired silhouette of Jean Valjean staggers in the falling snow."

However, Abel sees at least three occurrences of unusual framing or editing choices: "What is particularly surprising, in the very first painting, is to see Valjean arrive thanks to an unexpected big plan that not only serves to catch the spectator but also to describe briefly the character, emphasizing his disillusioned gaze, his sad mouth and ragged appearance. After being rejected by a series of peasants on his way and facing a woman opening the door where he just knocked, Valjean appears in front of the presbytery door and is invited by a maid to enter a small room where the priest is seated at the table. This scene follows its movement through a sequence of exterior and interior shots, from one side of the door (on the right of the screen) to the other (on the left of the screen)."

"When the servant surprises him with a plate of food in her hand, a horizontal panning to the right reveals an adjoining room where the priest and the maid lead him to spend the night. This sequence continues, while he discovers, in the background, a cupboard filled with silverware, stuffs the candlesticks in a bag and, in a reverse plane of horizontal panning to the left, goes on tiptoe in front of the priest asleep in the first room and go out the door. Only one of the two final plans has been preserved: the picture of the interior of a shop where Valjean pledges candlesticks, the maid, unsure of nothing, enters and is shocked to see them; the gendarmes stop him. The final painting apparently brings the viewer back into the priest's room, but probably without the need for a similar panoramic view, when the latter declares to the gendarmes, against all odds, in a recreated intertitle: 'Let this man go, I gave him the candlesticks'."

Richard Abel concludes: "During this period of transformation (c. 1906-1908), Capellani and his fellow directors at Pathé Frères, but also Alice Guy and especially Louis Feuillade at Gaumont, successfully tested many narrative and representative strategies that would characterize the narrative discourse of French cinema during the most most of the 1910s. The American filmmakers, first at Vitagraph, then at Biograph, where D.W. Griffith began shooting films in the summer of 1908, would develop them even more and lay the groundwork for what would be called later 'Hollywood classic cinema'. Although there is little direct evidence, French films, particularly those of Capellani, most likely have had a strong impact on American cinema as they were widely distributed and screened in the United States. Pathé films not only served to close the variety shows in hundreds of theaters, they also formed the main entertainment of the Nickelodeon, a new kind of theaters, which quickly counted by the thousands from early 1907 onwards."

Albert Capellani made a feature-length version of Les Miserables in 1912. He worked in the US from 1914 to 19 22, under contract to Metro, wheren he frequently directed Alla Nazimova and Clara Kimball Young. Then he stopped with film making and returned to Paris. There he died in 1931, neglected and only 57 years old. The film director Roger Capellani was his son.

Le chemineau
French postcard by Croissant, Paris, no. 3664. Photo: Film Pathé. Still for Le chemineau/The Tramp (Albert Capellani, 1905). At night, the tramp sees golden objects that serve for mass in a cupboard in the bedroom. He sticks them in his bag and secretly sneaks away, trying not to awake the pastor.

Le chemineau
French postcard by Croissant, Paris, no. 3664. Photo: Film Pathé. Still for Le chemineau/The Tramp (Albert Capellani, 1905). Arrested at a jeweller, to whom he tries to sell his loot, the gendarmes bring him back to the pastor.

Le chemineau
French postcard by Croissant, Paris, no. 3664. Photo: Film Pathé. Still for Le chemineau/The Tramp (Albert Capellani, 1905). Despite all, the pastor wants to exonerate the miserable man's soul and tells a lie to the gendarmes: I gave the objects myself to him. The thief repents.


Le chemineau (Albert Capellani, 1905). Source: History VA (YouTube). The last part of the film is missing.

Sources: Richard Abel ('Capellani avant Griffith, 1906-1908', 1895, 68, 2012, p. 15), Fondation Jerome Seydoux (French), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.

Horst Caspar

0
0
German actor Horst Caspar (1913-1952) was prominent in German theatre, radio and a few films in the 1930s and 1940s. His postwar career was cut short by his sudden death at 39.

Horst Caspar
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3155/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Tobis.

Horst Caspar
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3208/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Tobis / Dähn.

Mischling of the second degree


Horst Joachim Arthur Caspar was born in 1913 in Radegast, Germany. He was the son of Max Caspar, an army officer. He had one Jewish grandparent. Caspar’s mother named Emmy (birth name Hentschel) was twelve years younger than his father. She was the daughter of a hotelier. She gave birth to three sons: Theodor, Hans and Horst. Emmy passed away of a pneumonia at the age of 25 years, when Horst was only 18 months old.

He was raised by an aunt in Berlin, Nora Hartwich, and attended the Treitschke-Reform-Realgymnasium in Berlin-Wilmersdorf. In 1932 he took his abitur (school leaving exam), but did not go to university, since he had already decided to be an actor.

The Roman herald in William Shakespeare’s Coriolan was Caspar's first stage role, performed in 1933. He took acting lessons at the school of Ilka Grüning and Lucie Höflich, along with future stars of German cinema such as Lilli Palmer, Inge Meysel and Brigitte Horney.

In 1933, the handsome young man was taken up by the director Saladin Schmitt and became a leading man at the Bochumer Stadttheater. In Bochum, he performed in plays by William Shakespeare and Friedrich Schiller, often in youthful heroic roles.

Under the Nazi regime's anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws, Horst Caspar was classed as a Mischling (mixed race) of the second degree. Despite his part-Jewish ancestry, he continued to work as an actor. This was partly because he enjoyed the protection of Saladin Schmitt, who as a homosexual was no friend of the Nazi regime.

But he also enjoyed the patronage of Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Goebbels personally vetted cases of part-Jewish performers and allowed a number of popular part-Jewish actors to continue working.

When he gave his final performance in Bochum in Richard II in 1939, he received 108 curtain calls. He moved to Munich where he was working at the Munich Kammerspiele (1938-1940).

His first leading film role was as the young Schiller in Friedrich Schiller – Der Triumph eines Genies/Friedrich Schiller – The Triumph of a Genius (Herbert Maisch, 1940). The film focuses on the early career of the German poet Friedrich Schiller.

Horst Caspar
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3397/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Tobis / Dähn.

A 'rare and special privilege'


In 1940, Horst Caspar joined one of the most important German theatres of the time, the Schiller Theatre in Berlin. He worked there until 1944 when the theatre was closed as a result of the war.

In 1942 he also performed at the prestigious Burgtheater in Vienna. This was regarded as a 'rare and special privilege' for a part-Jewish actor in a city where all Jews had been purged from cultural life.

In 1943, Caspar was engaged by film director Veit Harlan to play the young Prussian field marshal August Neidhardt von Gneisenau in Kolberg (Veit Harlan, 1945). He defended the fortress town of Kolberg against the troops of the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte in 1807, alongside the city’s mayor (Heinrich George) and lieutenant Schill (Gustav Diessl). The film entered production in 1943, and was made in Agfacolor with high production values.

At a cost of more than eight million marks, it was the most expensive German film of World War II, with the actual cost suppressed to avoid adverse public reaction. Produced on the orders of Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels, it was intended as a Nazi propaganda piece to bolster the will of the German population to resist the Allies. The result was a monumental, but historically inaccurate propaganda film, Kolberg (Veit Harlan, 1945), one of the last films of the Third Reich.

This was only Caspar's second leading film role, but it is the one for which he is now best remembered, despite the fact that film was finished only shortly before the end of World War II and was seen by few people at the time.

In 20 January 1944, Horst Caspar married 22-year-old actress Antje Weisgerber. She gave birth to a son called Frank and a daughter named Renate.

After the end of WW II, Caspar moved to Düsseldorf where he joined the ensemble of the Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus. In 1949 he played the leading role in the film Begegnung mit Werther (Karlheinz Stroux, 1949).

His last role was in the crime film called Epilog. Das Geheimnis der Orplid/The Orplid Mystery (Helmut Kautner, 1950). He played a reporter named Peter Zabel who wants to solve the reasons behind a ship disaster.

Caspar also performed the character of Goethe’s Faust in a radio play produced by the German radio station WDR in 1949 and 1952. In 1952 he recorded an LP of poetry readings, including works by Schiller and Goethe.

In December 1952, Horst Caspar suddenly died of a stroke in Berlin. He was only 39. Tragically, his son Frank died on the day of his father's funeral, aged eight. His widow, Antje Weisgerber, had a successful film career extending into the 1970s. All three are buried at St Anne's churchyard in Berlin-Dahlem.

Horst Caspar
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3438/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Tobis / Dähn.

Sources: Filmportal.de, Radegast-Anhalt.de, Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.

Photo by Nicola Perscheid

0
0
German photographer Nicola Perscheid (1864-1930) is primarily known for his artistic portrait photography. He developed the 'Perscheid lens', a soft focus lens for large format portrait photography. For several film star postcards of the 1910s and 1920s by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Photochemie, Rotophot and Ross Verlag, Perscheid took the photos.

Lisa Weise
Lisa Weise. German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin Wilm., no. 5209. Photo: Nicola Perscheid.

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

Grete Weixler
Grete Weixler. German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K 1324. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.

Lu Synd
Lu Synd. German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin. no. K. 1605. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.

Nils Chrisander
Nils Chrisander. German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin., no. 1642. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.

Court photographer


Nicola Perscheid was born as Nikolaus Perscheid in Moselweiß near Koblenz (now part of Koblenz), Germany, in 1864. There he also went to school.

At the age of 15, he began an apprenticeship as a photographer in the studio Reuss & Müller in Koblenz. Subsequently, Perscheid earned his living as an itinerant photographer. He worked in Saarbrücken, Trier, and Colmar, but also in Nice, Vienna, or Budapest.

In Klagenfurt in Austria he finally found a permanent position and on 1 March 1887, he became a member of the Photographic Society of Vienna (Wiener Photographische Gesellschaft). In 1889, he moved to Dresden, where he initially worked in the studio of Wilhelm Höffert, a well-known studio in Germany at that time.

In 1891, Perscheid opened his own studio in Görlitz. The next year, he was appointed court photographer at the court of Albert, King of Saxony. In 1894, he moved to Leipzig, where he mainly made conventional studio photography.

Perscheid had his first publication of a photo in a renowned photography magazine in 1897, and from then on his work started to show new artistic impulses. He brought what was then a newer, painterly side to photography. His photography focused on portraiture, and especially his portraits of women are often in soft focus.

From 1899 to 1902, he participated in numerous national and international exhibitions in connection with the art photography movement and the artistic criteria this movement proclaimed. Perscheid also had contacts with the artist Max Klinger,whom he also photographed.

As an established and well-known photographer, he moved in 1905 to Berlin, where he opened an elegant studio. Among the celebrities he portrayed are the physician Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, politician Paul von Hindenburg, singer Fritzi Massari, author Gerhart Hauptmann and flying ace Manfred von Richthofen. 

From 1903 on, he experimented with early techniques for colour photography, without much success. When his assistant Arthur Benda left him in 1907, Perscheid gave up these experiments altogether.

His portraits, however, won him several important awards. In 1909 he received the Grand Silver Medal, the highest award for professional photographers at the 38th convention of the German Photographers Association in Weimar.

Apparently his studio was not an economic success: he sold it in 1912. In October 1913, he held a course at the Swedish society of professional photographers, the Svenska Fotografernas Förbund, which must have been a success as it was praised even ten years later. In 1923, he followed a call by the Danish college for photography in Kopenhagen.

Max Landa
Max Landa. German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K 2391. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.

Maria Widal
Maria Widal. German postcard in the Filmsterne series by Rotophot, no. 112/1. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.

Paul Heidemann
Paul Heidemann. German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 124/1. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.

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

Paul Hartmann
Paul Hartmann. German postcard in the Film-Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 161/3. Photo: Nicole Perscheid, Berlin.

The Perscheid lens


Sabine Schnakenberg notes about Nicola Perscheid: "With Rudolph Dührkoop (1848-1918) and Hugo Erfurth (1875-1948) Perscheid belonged to those professional photographers who followed their own design ideas and were able to implement them for a small, affluent clientele. Characteristic was their closer examination of the person to be portrayed, whereby Perscheid succeeded in fulfilling the demanded contemporary demands on 'individuality', 'characteristics' and 'truth' of the portrayed by the use of simple clothes and backgrounds, the abandonment of studio props and to fulfill the economical use of retouching while exploiting the technical potential."

Perscheid had several students who would later become renowned photographers themselves. Arthur Benda studied with him from 1899 to 1902, and joined him again in 1906 as his assistant for experimenting with colour photography. Benda left Perscheid in 1907. Together with Dora Kallmus, he went to Vienna and worked in her studio Atelier d'Ora, which he eventually took over. The studio continued to exist under the name d'Ora-Benda until 1965.

Kallmus herself also had studied from January to May 1907 at Perscheid's. Henry B. Goodwin, who later emigrated to Sweden and in 1913 organised Perscheid's course there, studied with Perscheid in 1903. In 1924 the Swedish photographer Curt Götlin studied at Perscheid's studio. Perscheid also influenced the Japanese photographer Toragorō Ariga, who studied in Berlin from 1908 to 1914 and also followed Perscheid's courses. He returned in 1915 to Japan.

The Perscheid lens was developed around 1920. It is a soft-focus lens with a wide depth of field, produced by Emil Busch AG in Rathenow Germany, after the specifications of Perscheid. The lens is designed especially for large format portrait photography. Ariga introduced the Perscheid lens in Japan, where it became very popular amongst Japanese portrait photographers of the 1920s.

Even after the sale of his studio, Perscheid continued to work as a photographer and even rented other studio rooms in 1917. In these years, he made dozens portraits of film stars of the burgeoning German silent cinema. They were used for postcards by such Berlin publishers as Verlag Hermann Leiser, Photochemie and Rotophot with was later transformed into Ross Verlag.

Besides artistic photography, Perscheid also always did 'profane' studio portraits, for instance for the Postkartenvertrieb Willi Sanke in Berlin that between 1910 and 1918 published a series of about 600 to 700 numbered aviation postcards, including a large number of portraits of flying aces, a number of which were done by Perscheid.

Towards the end of the 1920s, Perscheid had severe financial problems. In autumn 1929 he had to sub-rent his apartment to be able to pay his own rent. Shortly afterwards, he suffered a stroke, and was hospitalised in spring of 1930. While he was at the hospital, his belongings, including his cameras and photographic plates, but also all his furniture were auctioned off to pay his debts.

Two weeks after the auction, on 12 May 1930, Nicola Perscheid died at the Charité hospital in Berlin.

Henny Porten
Henny Porten. German postcard in the Film Sterne Series by Rotophot, no. 167/2. Photo: Nicola Perscheid / Messter Film, Berlin.

Arnold Rieck
Arnold Rieck. German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 185/4. Photo: Nicola Perscheid / Messter Film, Berlin.

Hella Moja
Hella Moja. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 313/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Nicola Perscheid.

Ernst Hofmann
Ernst Hoffmann. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 439/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.

Margarete Schlegel
Margarete Schlegel. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 841/1, 1925-1926. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.

Sources: Sabine Schnakenberg (Deutsche Biografie - German), Lomography and Wikipedia.

Gilberte Savary

0
0
French child actress Gilberte Savary (1921-1992) appeared in six films such as Le rêve (1931), La ronde des heures (1931) and Les Miserables (1934).

Gilberte Savary
French postcard in the Nos Artistes series. Caption: Jeune Vedette des Films Parlants (Young star of the sound cinema).

Gilberte Savary
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Édition, Paris, no. 2064. Photo: Studio Arnal, Paris.

Gilberte Savary
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 718.

The daughter of a clown


Gilberte Thérèse Louise Savary was born in 1921 in Paris.

She made her film debut as a little girl in the silent film La faute de Monique/Monique’s fault (Maurice Gleize, 1928), with Sandra Milovanoff and Rudolf Klein Rogge.

The following year, she had a small part in the Alexandre Dumas adaptation Le collier de la reine/The Queen's Necklace (Tony Lekain, Gaston Ravel, 1929) starring Marcelle Chantal and Diana Karenne.

She had one of the leading roles in the circus drama La ronde des heures/Round of Hours (Alexandre Ryder, 1931) as the daughter of clown André Baugé. The success of the film made her a child star and in 1931, she appeared in a total of four films.

One was a bit role in Tout ça ne vaut pas l'amour/All that is not worth the love (Jacques Tourneur, 1931) with Marcel Lévesque and the young Jean Gabin both falling in love with Josseline Gael.

Gilberte Savary
French postcard by Photo Combier, Macon. Photo: Arnal, Paris. Caption: Gilberte Savary, star of Boite à Joujoux/The Toy-Box. The most amazing artist of the era of sound cinema, radio, Music Hall.

Gilberte Savary
French postcard by Photo Combier, Macon. Caption: "Our artists. Gilberte Savary, realistic star of Boite à Joujoux/The Toy-Box."

A mystical atmosphere


In 1923, director Jacques de Baroncelli had made the fairy tale-like Le rêve/The Dream (1923), a silent film version of the sixteenth volume in Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart saga.

In 1931 he made a sound version, Le rêve/The Dream (1931), now with Gilberte Savary as a lost child who is adopted by a humble family. When she has grown up, the girl (now played by Simone Genevois) falls in love with the bishop's son (Jaque Catelain), and the old man who plans a beau marriage is not prepared to accept it.

D.B. DuMonteil at IMDb: “The painstaking pictures, the use of the settings in the cathedral and of the canticles create a mystical atmosphere. Unfortunately, the two lovers verge on ludicrous. Simone Genevois's and Jacques Catelain's playing make the movie some kind of middle-brow show. A curiosity.”

Finally in her last film appearance, Savary played the young Eponine Thénardier in the epic Les Miserables (Raymond Bernard, 1934) starring Harry Baur as ex-convict Jean Valjean and Charles Vanel as the obsessive police inspector Javert.

Now an adolescent, Gilberte retired from the screen. Marlene Pilate suggests at La Collectionneuse that Savary possibly also worked on stage and for the radio. And indeed Gilberte Savary appeared as variety artist singing chansons in theatres, even in the Netherlands in 1938.

Little is known about her later life. Gilberte Savary died in 1992 in Clayes-sous-Bois near Paris, when she was 70.

Gilberte Savary
French postcard by Photo Combier, Macon. Caption: "En souvenir des films Gilberte Savary." With pictures of Tout ça ne vaut pas l'amour a.k.a. Un vieux garçon (Jacques Tourneur, 1931), Le collier de la reine/The Queen's Necklace (Tony Lekain, Gaston Ravel, 1929), La ronde des heures/Round of Hours (Alexandre Ryder, 1931) and Le rêve/The Dream (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1931).

Gilberte Savary
French postcard. Photo: Studfio Intran.

Sources: Marlene Pilaete (La Collectionneuse – French), D.B. DuMonteil (IMDb), Delpher (Dutch), Wikipedia (French) and IMDb.

Frida Gombaszögi

0
0
Frida Gombaszögi (1890–1961) was the first Hungarian actress who represented the modern acting style in plays by Molnar, Chekhov and Gorky. During her long and impressive career, she also appeared in silent films and one sound film.

Frida Gombaszögi
Hungarian postcard. Publisher: Globus, Budapest. Photo: Angelo Photos. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Enchanted Prince


Frida Gombaszögi was born Friderika Vilma Grün in Budapest, Hungary in 1890. Her sisters Ella, Irèn en Margit would all become actresses. Ella became a comic actress, but Frida specialised in drama.

In 1909 Frida started her stage career after the completion of the Színiakadémián (Hungarian Theatre Academy). She was signed by László Beöthy, director of the Magyar Színház (Hungarian Theatre).

With her sophisticated appearance, her polished movements and cultured speech culture, and her intelligent, expressive play, she created modern dramatic heroines in plays by Ferenc Molnar, Henrik IbsenAnton Chekhov and Maxim Gorky. Between 1916 and 1933 she was a member of the Vígszínház (Comedy Theatre).

During that period, she also played in silent Hungarian films. She made her film debut opposite Victor Varconi in Farkas/The Wolf (1917), based on a play by Ferenc Molnar in which she had appeared on stage. The film was directed by Mihály Kertész, who would later become known as Hollywood director Michael Curtiz.

In 1918, she starred in A Szerelem bolondjai/The Fools of Love (Carl Wilhelm, 1918) and another Molnar adaptation, A testör/The bodyguard (Alexander Antalffy, 1918).

The following year, she co-starred with her sister Ella Gombaszögi in Átok vára/Bane's castle (Károly Lajthay, 1919) and Sundal/Sund (Károly Lajthay, 1919). The two sisters also appeared in Vorrei morir/I Want to Die (Károly Lajthay, 1919). The film starred Károly Mihályfi, and the Gombaszögi sisters only played supporting parts in it.

Her final silent film was Tláni, az elvarázsolt hercegasszony/False, he is an enchanted prince (Károly Lajthay, 1920). In this film she played the female lead opposite Pál Lukács, who would later become a renowned, Oscar winning Hollywood star under the name Paul Lukas.

Frida Gombaszögi
Hungarian postcard by Reinitz Jòzsef, Budapest / Terjeszti Gonda Oszkàr, Budapest. Photo: Angelo, 1918.

Killed by a Bomb


In 1919, Frida Gombaszögi was shot by a young man, probably a fan, who then committed suicide. The actress was severely injured in her face, and for a long time it was unsure if she could ever return to the stage. Her first appearance after healing was received with a loud celebration. The cosmetic-dermatologist Ernő László had almost eliminated all traces of the injury. Frida's sister, Irén later married László and in 1939 the couple moved to the US.

Frida Gombaszögi was married three times. Her first husband was stage and film actor Rajnai Gábor, whom she married in 1909. They divorced in 1918 but they would stay friends during her whole life.

In 1922, she married journalist and publisher Miklós Andornak, who was killed in 1933 by a bomb. Frida Gombaszögi retired from the stage and became the owner and CEO of her husband's Atheneum Publishing company and Az Est (The East) newspaper.

Her third husband was writer, poet, journalist, producer, playwright and politician Jenő Heltai.

After the war she worked again for the Vígszínház and also for the prestigious Nemzeti Színház (National Theatre). She also worked as a drama teacher at the Színművészeti Főiskola between 1953 and 1956.

In 1956 she also appeared in a sound film, Az élet hídja/The Bridge of Life (Márton Keleti, 1956).

Her career was again interrupted by the political manoeuvres of the communist regime and she had to leave Budapest and work in a provincial theatre. At the end of her life she also worked for television.

Why she did not appear in more films is not clear. Her sister Ella Gombaszögi was a well known film actress during the 1930s.

Frida Gombaszögi died in 1961 in Budapest. She was 70.

Paul Lukas
Paul Lukas. Hungarian postcard by FMSI, no.17. Photo: Korvin / Joe May Film.

Sources: Takács István (szineszkonyvtar.hu - Hungarian), György Székely (Magyar színházművészeti lexikon - Hungarian), Wikipedia (Hungarian) and IMDb.

Käthe Gold

0
0
Austrian actress Käthe Gold (1907–1997) was a successful theatre actress who worked in Austria, Germany and Switzerland. Her stage career prevented her from appearing in many films, although she did a few memorable performances.

Käthe Gold
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3731/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann/UFA.

Shrew


Katharina Stephanie Gold was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1907 and was the daughter of a Viennese locksmith.

She attended acting lessons at the Akademie für Musik und darstellende Kunst Wien (Academy of Music and Performing Arts Vienna).

In 1926 she made her stage debut as Bianca in Der Widerspenstigen Zähmung (The Taming of the Shrew) and from 1927 on she worked in Bern, Mönchengladbach, Breslau (today Wrocław), Munich and between 1932 and 1935 in Vienna at the Theater in der Josefstadt.

In 1935 she went to Berlin, where she remained until 1944. It was during those years that she had her greatest stage successes under the direction of Gustav Gründgens at the Preußischen Staatstheater (Prussian State Theatre).

She shone in such roles as Gretchen in Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Faust, Ophelia in William Shakespeare's Hamlet, and Nora in Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House.

Gold's stage career prevented her from appearing in many films. She made her film debut for the UFA as Alkmene in Amphitryon/Amphitryon - Happiness from the Clouds (Reinhold Schünzel, 1935), a musical comedy about the ancient Greeks starring Willy Fritsch.

In Andere Welt/Other World (Marc Allégret, Alfred Stöger, 1937) she co-starred with Karl Ludwig Diehl. She played Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s heroin Minna von Barnhelm in the comedy Das Fräulein von Barnhelm/Minna von Barnhelm (Hans Schweikart, 1940) with Ewald Balser and Theo Lingen.

Käthe Gold
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3631/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Binz / UFA.

Käthe Gold
German postcard, no. 222. Photo: Starfoto / Herzog Filmverleih.

Karl May


In 1944 Käthe Gold went to Zurich, Switzerland, and in 1947 she returned to Vienna. There she played at the Burgtheater and the Akademietheater and again enjoyed great successes. In 1985 she retired from the stage.

In the cinema, she appeared opposite René Deltgen in Augen der Liebe/Eyes of Love (Alfred Braun, 1951), and opposite Paul Hubschmidin Palace Hotel (Emil Berna, Leonard Steckel, 1952).

Also notable were Rose Bernd (Wolfgang Staudte, 1957) featuring Maria Schell, and the biopic Karl May (Hans-Jürgen Syberberg, 1976) featuring director Helmut Kaütner as the author of the Winnetou novels.

Her last film role was as Martha, the wife of author Robert Musil, in the Austrian production Die Reise ins tausendjährige Reich (Jürgen Kaizik, 1980). On TV she played again Ibsen’s Nora in Nora (Hanns Farenburg, 1955), Linda opposite Heinz Rühmann in Der Tod des Handlungsreisenden (1968), a German language version of Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and opposite Cornelia Froboess in the comedy Der Wald/The Forrest (Wolfgang Glück, 1971).

She also had guest appearances in the popular TV krimis Der Kommissar/The Commissionar (1973-1974) and Derrick (1988).

In 1997, Käthe Gold died in her native Vienna, aged 90.

Käthe Gold
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3372/1, 1941-1944. Photo: K.L. Haenchen.


Scenes from the Burgtheater production Anatol by Arthur Schnitzler with Robert Lindner as Anatol.

Sources: Aeiou (German), Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.

Frank Lawton

0
0
English actor Frank Lawton (1904-1969) was a handsome leading men in British and American films of the 1930s. Later he became a popular character performer, best remembered as Bruce Ismay in the Titanic drama A Night to Remember (1958).

Frank Lawton
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 494. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.



Frank Lawton was born Frank Lawton Mokeley in 1904 in St Giles, London. His parents were stage players Daisy May Collier and Frank Lawton.

His first major screen credit was the lead role opposite Madeleine Carroll in the drama Young Woodley (Thomas Bentley, 1930) based on the controversial play by John van Druten. A school prefect becomes attracted to the headmaster's wife. The film, like the play, was noted for its subversive attitude to authority. The pompous and cold headmaster (Sam Livesey) is portrayed as the villain of the work. The film was not a major success when it was released despite its large budget and well-known subject matter.

That same year, he appeared in the Mystery Birds of Prey/The Perfect Alibi (Basil Dean, 1930) with Robert Loraine and Warwick Ward.

Alfred Hitchcock directed him in The Skin Game (Alfred Hitchcock, 1931), based on a play by John Galsworthy revolving around two rival families, the Hillcrists and the Hornblowers, and the disastrous results of the feud between them.

Another well-received film was the drama Michael and Mary (Victor Saville, 1931), in which he played the illegitimate son of Edna Best and Herbert Marshall. It was based on a play of the same name by A.A. Milne. Lawton played the lead in the romantic drama After Office Hours (Thomas Bentley, 1932), based on the 1931 play London Wall by John Van Druten with several of the cast reprising their roles from the original stage production.

Lawton moved to Hollywood to appear in the epic Pre-Code drama Cavalcade (Frank Lloyd, 1933), based on a play by Noël Coward, and starring Diana Wynyard and Clive Brook. The story presents a view of English life during the first quarter of the 20th century from New Year's Eve 1899 through New Year's Day 1933. The film won three Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, was the second most popular movie in the US in 1933 and made over US $1 million in the UK.

He then appeared in another John Galsworthy adaptation, the Mystery One More River (James Whale, 1934), with Diana Wynyard, Colin Clive and Mrs. Patrick Campbell. Lawton’s most significant role in Hollywood was as the adult David Copperfield in MGM's Charles Dickens adaption David Copperfield (George Cukor, 1935) with Freddie Bartholomew as the young David.







Frank Lawton also appeared in the Science fiction film melodrama The Invisible Ray (Lambert Hillyer, 1936) with Boris Karloff and Béla Lugosi, and the horror film The Devil-Doll (Tod Browning, 1936) starring a cross-dressing Lionel Barrymore, but he never made the breakthrough in Hollywood.

He returned to the British film and theatre. He starred in the British drama The Mill on the Floss (Tim Whelan, 1936) opposite Victoria Hopper, Geraldine Fitzgerald and James Mason, and later appeared in the thriller The Four Just Men/The Secret Four (Walter Forde, 1939) based on a novel by Edgar Wallace about four British World War I veterans who unite to work in secret against enemies of the country.

During the war, he rose to the rank of major and was awarded the U.S. Legion of Merit for liaison work in France. In the cinema, he appeared in the propaganda film Went the Day Well? (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1942) adapted from a story by Graham Greene about how an English village is taken over by Nazi paratroopers.

After the war, he had a supporting part in the successful The Winslow Boy (Anthony Asquith, 1948) with Robert Donat, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Margaret Leighton. His later films include Gideon's Day (John Ford, 1958) with Jack Hawkins, the Titanic drama A Night to Remember (Roy Ward Baker, 1958) starring Kenneth More, and Michael Powell’s The Queen's Guards (1961) with Daniel and Raymond Massey. He was married to actress Virginia Earl and later to actress Evelyn Laye until his death. They acted together several times, including in the TV series My Husband and I. In 1969, Frank Lawton died in Marylebone, London. He was 64.

Sources: John "J-Cat" Griffith (Find A Grave), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Dvije sirotice (1919)

0
0
Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans is a silent film, made in the former Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenes, now Croatia. The film, directed by Alfred Grinhut a.k.a. Alfred Grünhut, was produced in 1918 by Croatia Film and distributed in 1919 by Jugoslavija Film in Zagreb. The film is considered lost. The rare, sepia postcards used for this post are from the collection of Ivo Blom. The film was based on the famous French play Les deux orphelines by Adolphe d'Ennery and Eugène Cormon (1874), which was adapted many times for film - the most famous one being D.W. Griffith's version Orphans of the Storm (1921). Dvije sirote stars Zorka Grund, playing both orphans. Other actors are Zorka's father Arnošt Grund, August Cilić, Ervin Vilković, and director Alfred Grünhut.

Dvije sirotice (1919)
Former Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenes (now Croatian) postcard by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 7. August Cilić in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grinhut a.k.a. Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

August Cilić (1891-1963), was a Croatian actor, comedian and director of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, and the Croatian National Theatre in Varaždin.

Dvije sirote (1919)
Former Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Croatian) postcards by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 8. Arnošt Grund, Jovanka Jovanovic and Vlasta Dryak in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grinhut a.k.a. Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

Tenor and actor Arnošt Grund (1866-1929) was born and educated in Prague. In 1895, Stjepan Miletić brought him to Zagreb. There, he fell in love with Croatian art, and remained in Zagreb until his death. Grund was a pioneer of the Croatian cinema, working as actor, screenwriter and director. Jovanka (Ivanka) Jovanović (born Dvorniković) (1887-1963) was a Serbian-Croatian actress. Vlasta Dryak (1911-2006) must have been just a child of 7 or 8 when she played in Dvije sirote. When she was 21 she became a stage actress and was successful at the Croatian National Theatre.

Dvije sirote (1919)
Former Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Croatian) postcards by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 9. Zorka Grund and Josip Pavic in in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grinhut a.k.a. Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

Zorka Kremzar, born Zorka Grund (1900-?), was a Croatian film actress. She was the daughter of Arnošt Grund, a director of the Czech origin, and sister of Milada Grund, who performed under the pseudonym of Milada Tana. Zorka Grund later became a filmmaker, according to Croatian sources.

Josip Pavic (1887-1936), born in Trasnik (Bosnia and Herzegovina) was a stage actor, primarily performing at the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, Croatia, where his bronze bust is featured in the grand hall. While he was a renowned actor in many roles, his most famous role was as Hamlet. With other actors, he helped to build the 2nd instalment of the National Theatre, located in Split, Croatia. In 1919 Pavic acted in five silent films, among which Dvije sirote and Vragoljanka. In 1936 Pavic died in Zagreb from cirrhosis of the liver and heart failure. His funeral was attended by hundreds of his fans.

Dvije sirote (1919)
Former Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Croatian) postcards by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 10. Alfred Grünhut in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grinhut a.k.a. Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

Alfred Grinhut or Alfred Grünhut (1882-1946) was a Croatian and Yugoslav actor and director, known as the author of two films lost today: Vragoljanka (1919) and Dvije sirote (1919), in which he also acted. He also acted in Brisem i sudim (Arnost Grund, 1919) and Dvorovi u samoci (Tito Strozzi, 1925) too.

The first Croatian film companies


As Croatian film historian Dejan Kosanovic indicates in his study Kinematografija i film i Kraljevini SHS/Kraljevini Jugoslaviji 1918-1941 (2011), domestic film production in Croatia started during the First World War.

In 1917, Hamilkar Bošković and Julien Bergmann founded the first Croatian film company, Croatia. They engaged Croatian actors and directors and Austrian technicians. The first Croatian film director was Joseph Halle, who made most of the films of the Croatia company. At the end of 1918 Bošković and Bergmann sold their rights to the new company Hermes or New Croatia, which was active until 1920.

Early 1919, Hamilkar Boskovic founded with Theodore Milic the company Jugoslavija Film. April 1919 Milic was in Paris and bought Pathé cameras and equipment. Among the film company members were three actors of the National Theatre, Alfred Grünhut, Tito Marquis Strozzi and Dragutin Horvat. Alfred Grünhut (1882-1946) had already directed two films and played in several other films of the former Croatia film company.

The first and very ambitious project of Jugoslavija Film was the film Brišem i sudim/B. and the judge, a grand melodrama for which the scenario was written in Slovenian and Croatian by theatre actor and director Ignjat (Ignatius) Borštnik (1858-1919), who also played the main role in the film. The director was Arnošt Grund (1866-1929), a Czech theatre actor and director who lived and worked in Zagreb since 1895, while the cameraman was one of the pioneers of the Austrian film Ljudevit Šašek (Ludwig Schaschek).

The scenographer for Brišem i sudim/B. and the judge was the Zagreb painter Otto Antonini (1849-1937), whom Jugoslavija engaged as a painter of sets and props. He also painted the decorations for film posters and for interiors in the films, and he produced the trademark of the company - three girls holding the coats of arms of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes.

As Brišem i sudim was successful, soon more films of Jugoslavija followed, such as Jeftina košta (Arnost Grund, 1919), based on a script by Grund and filmed by Schaschek, and U lavljem kavezu (1919), scripted and directed by Arnošt Grund. Jugoslavaija also distributed films by others, such as those by the Austrian company Sascha-Film.

Dvije sirote (1919)
Former Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Croatian) postcards by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 11. Milica Mihicic, Zorka Grund and Bogumila Vilhar in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grinhut a.k.a. Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

Bogumila Vilhar (1882-1962) was a Croatian stage and screen actress. From 1905, she continuously acted at the Croatian National Theatre, apart from breaks at Osijek (1919-1921) and Split (1922-1924). She played in Shakespeare and Schiller classics and also in many plays by domestic authors. Vilhar is also known for the film Lisinski (Oktavijan Miletic, 1944), a biopic of Croatian composer Vatroslav Lisinski.

Milica Mihičić (1864-1950) first appeared on stage in 1890 in Zagreb, where she acted as an extraordinary actress for the following 50 years. At the beginning of her career she performed in various roles in dramas, ballet and operettas. She continued as an actress in French Salon prose theatre. Her second vocation was the psychological realistic drama. Mihičić appeared also in the film Dama sa crnom krinkom/The Lady with the Black Curse (1919).

Dvije sirote (1919)
Former Kingdom of Yugoslavia (now Croatian) postcards by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 12. Jovanka Jovanovic and Vlasta Dryak in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grinhut a.k.a. Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

Dvije sirote (1919)
Former Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenes postcard by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 13. Ivo Mirjev in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

Ivo Mirjev aka Ivan Mirjev and Ivan de Dominis-Mirjev (1894-1967) was a Croatian actor and theatre director.

Passion for adventure


Dvije sirote/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grünhut, 1919) is based on the 1874 French play Les deux orphelines and situated in the eighteenth century, shortly before the French Revolution. The orphan Henriette Gerard accompanies Louise, her blind adoptive sister, to Paris. The two girls hope to find a doctor who will cure Louise of her blindness. On the basis of the postcards, it seems that Zorka Grund played both Louise and Henriette.

Henriette is kidnapped by the Marquis de Presles, a rogue who decides to make her his toy. Louise is no more fortunate than her sister: left to herself, she falls into the hands of Madame Frochard, an alcoholic shrew who will constantly humiliate and torment her to force her to beg by singing in the streets.

The kind Chevalier de Vaudry in vain tries to help Henriette to find Louise again. Henriette is imprisoned, while Louise suffers equally on the streets, only helped by Pierre. The outbreak of the French Revolution aggravates the situation, and Henriette and Vaudry risk to die under he guillotine. In the end all will be saved: Louise will cured from her blindness, while Henriette can marry Vaudry.

During only two years, 1919 and 1920, Jugoslavija produced 9 documentaries films, 11 special issues and 5 feature films, but apparently faced financial difficulties, so it transformed into a joint stock company in order to attract more stockholders and increase capital. The two founders were replaced by Marcel Kolin. He expanded the company, opened offices in Split and Belgrade (1922), and even a film academy (also 1922).

However, Jugoslavija's sixth and last feature film was Strast za pustolovinama/Passion for adventure (1922) by the Russian director Aleksandar Aleksandrovič Vereščagin and scripted possibly by Josip Halle. Local distributors and cinema owners by then were more interested in foreign films. The shareholders of Jugoslavija backed out in 1922, so the company went bankrupt in 1923. Without help of the state, the young Croatian cinema petered out.

Dvije sirote (1919)
Former Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenes postcard by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 14. Zorka Grund in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

Zorka Kremzar, born Zorka Grund (1900-?), was a Croatian film actress. She was the daughter of Arnošt Grund, a director of the Czech origin, and sister of Milada Grund, who performed under the pseudonym of Milada Tana. Zorka Grund later became a filmmaker.

Dvije sirote (1919)
Former Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenes postcard by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 15. Zorka Grund in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

Dvije sirote (1919)
Former Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenes postcard by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 16. Zorka Grund and Ervin Vilkovic in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

Dvije sirote (1919)
Former Kingdom of Serbs, Croatians and Slovenes postcard by Jugoslavija Film, Zagreb, no. 17. Franjo Stosek and Josip Horvat in Dvije sirote/Dvije sirotice/The Two Orphans (Alfred Grünhut, 1919).

Franjo Sotošek (1881-1945) was a Croatian actor. Under the pseudonym Franjo André he performed at the Zagreb National Theatre (1899-1900), then in the traveling company of D. Freudenreich. Between 1904 and 1938 he was a member of the Zagreb National Theatre.

Sources: Dejan Kosanovic (Kinematograija a i film u kraljevini shs/kraljevini Jugosviji 1918-1941 - Croatian), Mirror mmg,  Hrvatska Enciclopedija (Croatian), Wikipedia (Croatian) and IMDb.

Arnold Rieck

0
0
German humorist, couplet singer and actor Arnold Rieck (1876-1924) was a forerunner of the stand-up comedians of today. He was also one of the first stage actors who started to perform in films.

Arnold Rieck
German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 185/4. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin / Messter Film, Berlin.

Arnold Rieck
German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 265. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

Arnold Rieck
German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 280. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

A comedian against his will


Arnold Rieck was born in 1876 in Berlin. As a boy he always joined the gallery of the Royal Playhouse to see Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet.

He took acting lessons, but his slender height smashed his aspirations of becoming a tragic hero career and - against his will – he became a comedian. Rieck first made his name as a singer of couplets and as a solo entertainer with humorous antics. Thus he became the forerunner of the classic stand-up comedian.

In 1897 he made his stage debut in Gera. In 1899, the Berliner Operette was born at the Apollo Theatre and Rieck got the role of tailor Lämmermeyer in the new operetta Frau Luna (Ms. Luna) composed by Paul Lincke. The success was sensational.

And from then on, Rieck appeared on several metropolitan stages. His most successful period was as a star of the Berlin Thalia Theatre. There he could be seen in such popular comedies as Charleys Tante (Charley's aunt) and in the new Berlin operettas by composer Jean Gilbert.

According to himself, Arnold Rieck also was the first German stage actor, who moved over to the cinema. At the turn of the century, he appeared as the title figure in such short farces as Der Geck im Damenbade/The Dude in the ladies' bath and Piefke mit dem Floh/Piefke with the flea. Initially Rieck got a dozen plates per shooting day instead of payment. Later he received as a first fee 18 marks per day with a three-day shooting schedule.

At the Messter studio, he starred in such short comedies as Die fünf Sinne/The five senses (N.N., 1906) and Prinzess Rosine/Princess Rosine (N.N., 1907). The following year he appeared for the Duskes film studio in other comedy shorts like Prosit Neujahr 1909/Happy New Year 1909 (N.N.1908) with Emmy Wehlen, and Die Dollar-Prinzessin/The Dollar Princess (Alfred Duskes, 1908).

Next to Guido Thielscher, Leo Peukert and Guido Herzfeld, Rieck became one of the best known representatives of the early cinema farces. In 1910 he made for the Vitascope company in Berlin the military comedy short Es wär’ so schön gewesen/It would have been so nice (director unknown, 1910).

Arnold Rieck and Helene Ballot perform Vielliebchen (1909)
Arnold Rieck and Helene Ballot perform the song Essen wir mal Vielliebchen. German postcard by F.F. S. L.J., no. 2304/7, 1909. Caption: "Vielliebchen. Wer verliert nun lieber Schatz, Giebt dem Andern einen Schmatz, Und so wird uns nie zu viel, Das Vielliebchenspiel." (Philopena. Who now loses dear treasure, Give the other a smack, And so its never too much, The Many-lovers-game.) Essen wir mal Vielliebchen was a song from the operetta Mitternachtsmädchen by Victor Hollaender, first performed at the Odeon in Berlin in 1908.

Arnold Rieck
German postcard by NBC.

A stock stiff, comical type in an ancient costume


During the first World War, Arnold Rieck amused in numerous silent comedies as a stock stiff, comical type in an ancient costume. Successful examples are the comedies Musketier Kaczmarek/Musketeer Kaczmarek (Carl Froelich, 1915) with Ressel Orla, Der standhafte Benjamin/The staunch Benjamin (Robert Wiene, 1916) with Guido Herzfeld, and Brautfahrt/Lehmann's Honeymoon (Robert Wiene, 1916).

In the latter, he played a stiff gymnasium Professor of Greek history who dreams that he travels to antic Hellas and falls in love with a Greek beauty. In order to persuade the daydreaming Professor to marry his cousin, his family dress themselves up as Ancient Greeks.

With his high hat, roast skirt, umbrella and embroidered travel bag, Rieck reminded his public of long outdated times, and he was not afraid to ridicule himself.

Shortly after the war, his type of humour felt outdated and Rieck was replaced by more subtle comedians. American stars such as Charles Chaplin and Buster Keaton now dominated the German screens.

In the 1920s Rieck refocused on his stage career and worked as a humorist at Berlin's Komische Oper and the new Operetta Theater in Leipzig.

In 1924, Arnold Rieck collapsed on stage in Leipzig and died unexpectedly, only 48 years old. His final film appearance had been a supporting role in the Henny Porten drama Mutter und Kind/Mother and Child (Carl Froelich, 1924). Sound recordings of the comedian have survived on gramophone and Zonophon records and Edison cylinders.

Arnold Rieck
German postcard by NPG, no. 895. Photo: Anny Eberth, Berlin.

Arnold Rieck
German postcard by NPG, no. 896. Photo: Anny Eberth, Berlin.

Sources: Gerold Ducke (Die Geschichte Berlins – German), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.

Photo by Dührkoop

0
0
Rudolf Dührkoop (1848-1918) was a famous German portrait photographer. He also made artistic photographs in the style of Pictorialism. After his death his studio was taken over by his daughter Minya. In the following decades, the studio portrayed many German film actors. After Minya's death in 1929, the studio kept the name Dührkoop as a brand for quality portrait photography.

Henny Porten
Henny Porten. German postcard by Meissner & Buch, Leipzig. Photo: Rud. Dührkoop. A typical Pictorialist photo by Dührkoop. Pictorialism refers to a style in which the photographer has somehow manipulated what would otherwise be a straightforward photograph as a means of 'creating' an image rather than simply recording it. A pictorial photograph appears to lack a sharp focus (some more so than others), is printed in one or more colors other than black-and-white (ranging from warm brown to deep blue) and may have visible brush strokes or other manipulation of the surface.

Paul Heidemann as Teddy
Paul Heidemann as Teddy. German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 5233. Photo: R. Dührkoop.

Charles Willy Kayser
Charles Willy Kaiser. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 385/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Rudolph Dührkoop Phot.

Werner Fuetterer
Werner Fuetterer. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3465/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Dührkoop, Berlin.

Ruth Weyher
Ruth Weyher. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 4032/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Dührkoop, Berlin.

Showing artistic aspirations


Rudolph Dührkoop was born as the son of a carpenter, Christian Friederich Dührkoop and his wife, Johanna Friederica Emile, in Hamburg in 1848. In 1870 he took part in the Franco-German War. Two years later, he returned home, went into business and married Maria Louise Caroline Matzen, with whom he had two daughters: Hanna Maria Theresia (1872) and Julie Wilhelmine (1873), called Minya.

Dührkoop was interested in photography from the 1870s onwards and gradually acquired the necessary techniques, in particular the collodion process, with limited resources. Collodion, a flammable, syrupy solution of cellulose nitrate in ether and alcohol could be used as an alternative to egg white on glass photographic plates. Collodion reduced the exposure time necessary for making an image.

In 1882, Rudolph Dührkoop published for the first time a photograph in Photographisches Wochenblatt, a Berlin photographic magazine. The following year, he opened a studio in Hamburg and actually became a professional photographer without any training.

Dührkoop started his professional career with making 'Cartes-de-Visite', a kind of business cards with small photos. In addition, he mainly made portrait photographs.

Dührkoop quickly gained success, was often asked to photograph prominent German personalities and in 1886 he became a member of the leading 'Deutschen Photographen-Verein'. Since 1887, Minya worked as an assistant of her father in his studio. From that time they also showed artistic aspirations and in 1898 they held their first exhibition, with a series of portraits by Minya.

From that time on, the fame of the Dührkoops fame rose all over Germany and later internationally. They opened a second studio in Berlin, Rudolph published in leading photo magazines such as Die Kunst in der Photographie and also wrote articles about portrait photography.



Olga Tschechowa
Olga Tschechova. German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 4033/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Dührkoop, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Hans Stüwe
Hans Stüwe. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4237/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Dührkoop, Berlin.

Hans Adalbert Schlettow
Hans Adalbert Schlettow. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4647/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Dührkoop, Berlin.

Hertha Thiele
Hertha Thiele. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6845/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Gerstenberg-Dührkoop, Berlin.

Camilla Horn
Camilla Horn. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7916/2, 1932-1933. Photo: Gerstenberg-Dührkoop, Berlin.

A successful father-daughter business


In 1904, Rudolf and Minaya Dührkoop took part in the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in Saint Louis, where they came into contact with well-known pictorialist art photographers such as Gertrude Käsebier and George Eastman.

In 1905, Rudolph became the first German member of the prestigious English Royal Photographic Society and in 1906 of the Pictorialist photography association Linked Ring. In addition to his artistic work, Dührkoop always remained active as a portrait photographer and in his career he portrayed a large amount of well-known German personalities.

Minya had worked in the Hamburg studio of her father with growing independence. In 1894, she married the Spanish photographer Luis Diez Vazquez. By 1900 she and father were operating different branches of their Berlin business. The following year she divorced her husband but retained his name Diez in her name.

Father and daughter Dührkoop had a successful business and they took portraits of many notable subjects, including several film actors like Henny Porten and Paul Heidemann. They mixed in artistic circles and they owned a modernist painting by Alma del Banco.

Rudolf Dührkoop died in 1918, 69 years old. After his death his studio was taken over by Minya. One of her contacts was German dancer and actress Lavinia Schulz and her husband Walter Holdt. Schulz's Expressionist costumes were photographed by Diez-Dührkoop. On 18 June 1924, Schulz, in financial ruin, shot Holdt, and then turned the gun on herself. They both died from their wounds.

Minya Diez-Dührkoop died in 1929 in Hamburg. Joachim Gerstenberg became the new owner of Foto-Atelier Dührkoop. In the following years, the studio produced several portraits of German film stars like Hertha ThieleCamilla Horn and cheeky little Peter Bosse, credited as Atelier Dührkoop, Gerstenberg-Dührkoop or simply Dührkoop. The studio remained active during the war years into the 1950s.

Peter Bosse
Peter Bosse. German Postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1276/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Dührkoop.

Rolf Weih
Rolf Weih. German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3586/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Dührkoop.

Sonja Sutter (1931-2017)
Sonja Sutter. East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, no. 661, 1958. Photo: DEFA / Dührkoop. Publicity still for Lissy (Konrad Wolf, 1957).

Hardy Krüger
Hardy Krüger. German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3058. Photo: Dührkoop / Ufa.

Sabine Bethmann
Sabine Bethmann. German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4230. Photo: Dührkoop / Ufa.

Sources: Allison Meier (Hyperallergic), Wikipedia (English, German and Dutch)

Edna Best

0
0
Ladylike British actress Edna Best (1900-1974) entered films in 1921. She is best remembered as the mother in the original version of Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and as the second wife of film star Herbert Marshall. She worked both on stage and in the cinema, in the United Kingdom and in the United States.

Edna Best
British postcard in the Colourgraph Series, London, no. C. 227. Photo: Janet Jevons.

Edna Best
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 631a. Photo: Janet Jevons.

Fallen Angel 


Edna Clare Best was born in in Hove, Sussex, in 1900. She was educated in Brighton and later studied dramatic acting under Miss Kate Rorke who was the first Professor of Drama at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. She also won a silver swimming cup as the lady swimming champion of Sussex.

At the age of seventeen, she made her debut at the Grand Theatre, Southampton, as Ela Delahay in Charley's Aunt (1917). She played Peter Pan three years later and married the first of her actor husbands, Seymour Beard. For a time she played in musical comedies. Her first real London stage hit was in 1925 in the title role of The Constant Nymph opposite Noël Coward, and, subsequently, John Gielgud.

Another stage success was Fallen Angel with Tallulah Bankhead. In The Constant Nymph, she also enjoyed a successful run on Broadway in 1926, which was followed by another Margaret Kennedy play, Come With Me. She married her co-star, Herbert Marshall, after divorcing Beard in 1928.

In 1921 she made her film debut in the title role of the silent comedy Tilly of Bloomsbury (Rex Wilson, 1921) with Henry Kendall and Isabel Jeans. She then starred in the silent drama A Couple of Down and Outs (Walter Summers, 1923). The film sought to raise public sympathy for veterans of the First World War struggling in the years of peace as well as animals who had undergone war service. Director Summers, who had himself served during the conflict, made a number of films using the war as backdrop.

From 1930 on, she appeared in such sound films as Loose Ends (Norman Walker, 1930) with Owen Nares and Miles Mander, a drama made at Elstree Studios. In the crime film Escape (Basil Dean, 1930), she co-starred with Gerald du Maurier and Gordon Harker. Harker played a convict, who escapes from Dartmoor Prison and is hunted across the moors by policemen to whom it is an unpleasant reminder of their experiences during the First World War. It was the first film released by Associated Talking Pictures, a British company with ties to the Hollywood studio RKO, which later relocated and became Ealing Studios. The film was made at Beaconsfield Studios which had been recently equipped for making sound films.

She co-starred with Carlyle Blackwell in Beyond the Cities (Carlyle Blackwell, 1930), a ‘quota quickie’ released by Paramount Pictures. In 1931, she costarred with her second husband Herbert Marshall in the drama Michael and Mary (Victor Saville, 1931), for which they recreated their roles from the London stage. The film, which also starred Elizabeth Allan and Frank Lawton, was voted the third best British film of 1932, and was the first of the Edna Best and Herbert Marshall co-starring talkies. Next they co-starred in the racehorse drama The Calendar (T. Hayes Hunter, 1931) based on a novel by Edgar Wallace, and the drama The Faithful Heart (Victor Saville, 1932).

Edna Best
British postcard by Film Weekly Series, London.

Edna Best
British postcard by Film Weekly Series, London, no. 2.

The Man Who Knew Too Much


Edna Best is best remembered for her role as the mother of kidnap victim Nova Pilbeam in the 1934 version of Alfred Hitchcock's thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much, featuring Peter Lorre. It was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock's British period.

At the time, The New York Times praised the film as the "raciest melodrama of the new year", noting that it was "excitingly written" and an "excellently performed bit of story-telling". The review praised Alfred Hitchcock as "one of England's ablest and most imaginative film makers”. In a retrospective review, film historian Dave Kehr contrarily argued that "Although the film is fast and consistently clever, it is more deeply flawed than any other Hitchcock film of the period, failing to find a thematic connection between its imaginative set pieces."

Edna Best moved to Hollywood where she appeared in the Pre-Code film The Key (Michael Curtiz, 1934) with William Powell and Colin Clive. The story concerns a love set during the Irish War of Independence. Among her other film credits are Intermezzo: A Love Story (Gregory Ratoff, 1939) with Leslie Howard and Ingrid Bergman, Swiss Family Robinson (Edward Ludwig, 1940), The Late George Apley (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947) with Ronald Colman, and the romantic fantasy The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947) starring Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison.

Her final film was the thriller The Iron Curtain (William Wellman, 1948), starring Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney. I.S. Mowis at IMDb: “All in all, Edna's film appearances were few and far between, and only a handful adequately showcased her talents as an actress otherwise so abundantly evident from the body of her work in the theatre.”

From 1939 a U.S. resident and a nationalised citizen by the early 1950s, Best continued her triumphant returns to the stage. Her most celebrated performances on Broadway were in Terence Rattigan's The Browning Version as downtrodden housewife Millie Crocker-Harris and in Harlequinade (1949) and as the titular character Jane (1952) in a play adapted by S.N. Behrman from a W. Somerset Maugham short story.

In 1957, Edna Best received a nomination for an Emmy Award for her role in the TV play This Happy Breed (Noël Coward, Ralph Nelson, 1957). She had appeared on television as early as 1938, in a live production of the play Love from a Stranger, adapted from the Agatha Christie short story Philomel Cottage by Frank Vosper.

Best was married three times and divorced twice. Her first marriage, to William Seymour Beard, ended in divorce in 1928. The London Divorce Court gave Beard custody of the couple's twins (James and John Beard) in granting the divorce "owing to the misconduct of his wife, Miss Best, with Mr. Marshall." The ‘Mr. Marshall’ referred to was actor Herbert Marshall, whose divorce from Hilda Lloyd Marshall ("owing to the misconduct of her husband ... with ... Miss Edna Best") was granted in the same court session.

Later, Best was married to Marshall from 1928, until 1940, and they had a daughter, actress Sarah Marshall. In 1940, Best married talent agent Nat Wolff in Las Vegas, Nevada. The judge who granted the divorce from Marshall after a five-minute closed hearing, performed the marriage a few minutes later. Best suffered a stroke in 1959, the year her husband died. She retired from acting in the early 1960s. In 1974, Edna Best died in a clinic in Geneva, Switzerland, aged 74.

Edna Best
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 71. Photo: Foulsham & Banfield.

Edna Best and Herbert Marshall
With Herbert Marshall. British postcard in the Film Partners series, London, no. P 72. Photo: Gainsborough.

Edna Best
British postcard. Photo Dorothy Wilding.

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Los Angeles Times, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Elisabeth Bergner

0
0
The profoundly sensitive acting of Austrian-British actress Elisabeth Bergner (1897-1986) influenced the German cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. 'Die Bergner' as she was known in Germany, specialised in Hosenrollen (androgynous trouser roles), in films and on stage. Nazism forced her to go in exile, but she worked successfully in the West End, and later on Broadway. After the war, she returned to Germany, where she became one of the grande dames of film, television and cinema.

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1289/1, 1927-1928. Photo: G. Trautschold, Berlin. This was a postcard for the stage play Kreidekreis (Chalk Circle), a Chinese fairy tale by German writer Klabund (or Alfred Georg Hermann Henschke). After the first night in January 1925 in Meissen with Klabund's future wife Carola Neher in the lead, Elisabeth Bergner henceforth played the lead, e.g. at the Deutsches Theater in Berlin from October 1925. The play was very successful and inspired two operas by Zemlinsky and Mors, as well as Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle.

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3228/2, 1928-1929. Photo: M. v. Bucovich (Atelier K. Schenker). Publicity still for Doña Juana/Donna Juana (Paul Czinner, 1928).

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3228/3, 1928-1929. Photo: M. von Bucovich (Atelier K. Schenker). Publicity still for Doña Juana (Paul Czinner, 1928).

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 6465. Photo: Poetic-Film. Publicity still for Doña Juana (Paul Czinner, 1928).

Elisabeth Bergner in Doña Juana (1928)
Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 5113. Photo: Poetic-Film / Verleih: E. Weil & Co. Publicity still for Doña Juana (Paul Czinner, 1928).


Taking Berlin by storm


Elisabeth Bergner was born as Elisabeth Ettel in 1897 in Drohobycz, Austria-Hungary (now Drogobych, Ukraine). She was the daughter of a merchant, Emil Ettel, and his wife Anna Rosa Wagner. Soon after her birth, the family, whose surname had been changed to the more German-sounding Bergner, moved to Vienna.

In 1911 she was enrolled at a private acting school and from 1912 to 1915 she attended the Academy for Music and the Performing Arts. She started acting in Innsbruck in 1915. By the end of that year she had already appeared in the major role of Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

In 1916 she moved to Zürich, where she performed at the highly-regarded Stadttheater (Municipal Theatre). She also worked as an artist's model. She posed for the expressionist sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck, who apparently committed suicide in 1919 because Bergner rejected his advances. She eventually moved to Munich, and in 1921 to Berlin.

On stage as Rosalind in William Shakespeare's As You Like It (a role in which she played a record 566 consecutive performances), she took Berlin by storm and won plaudits not only from theatregoers but also from such critics as Kurt Tucholsky.

She made her film debut in Der Evangelimann/The Evangelist (Holger-Madsen, 1924) with Paul Hartmann. Under Max Reinhardt's direction she reached international fame in the stage production of Saint Joan (1924) by George Bernard Shaw.

She specialised in playing Hosenrollen (women in trousers with childlike or boyish traits), and captivated spectators and critics in such stage productions as Romeo and Juliet, Queen Christine, and Camille.

Elfi Pracht-Jörns describes the 'Bergner Phenomenon' beautifully: "Seemingly contradictory elements created an inimitable aura, the magic she projected: she was at one and the same time both a tender, fragile child-woman and a 'femme fatale'. Behind her dreamy manner and engrossed concentration one could detect intellect, vitality, tenderness, a strong will, humour and wit. With her androgynous appearance, nervous gestures and capacity for total selflessness, Bergner embodied a new, erotic ideal, a complex, fastidious type of female."

Hungarian director Paul Czinner, who had come to Germany from Budapest via Vienna, gave Elisabeth Bergner a role in Nju - Eine unverstandene Frau/Husbands or Lovers (Paul Czinner, 1924). The film was an instant success, and Czinner became both her artistic and private partner.

Their successful collaboration also included films like Der Geiger von Florenz/The Violinist of Florence (1926), Liebe/Love (1927), Doña Juana (1928), and the Arthur Schnitzler adaptation Fräulein Else/Miss Else (1929). Among her co-stars were the great film actors Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt, and Albert Bassermann.

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1846/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Trude Geiringer & Dora Horovitz, Wien. (The upper and lower edges of this card were cut off by a previous owner).

Elisabeth Bergner in Liebe (1927)
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 825/1. Photo: Phoebus-Film / Distr. E. Weil & Co. Elisabeth Bergner in the German silent film Liebe/Love (Paul Czinner, 1927), based on Honoré de Balzac's novel La duchesse de Langeais.

Elisabeth Bergner
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5689. Photo: Poetic Film / Lux-Film Verleih.

Elisabeth Bergner
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 6127. Sent by mail in the Netherlands in 1931. Photo: Mondial-Film A.G.

Albert Steinrück and Elisabeth Bergner in Fräulein Else (1929)
German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin-Wilm, no. 6657. Photo: Poetic-Film. Publicity still for Fräulein Else/Miss Else (Paul Czinner, 1929), with Albert Steinrück and based on the play by Arthur Schnitzler.

Charming her audience in an almost hypnotic way


With the coming of sound, Elisabeth Bergner began to portray a more sentimental and delicate woman. Soon critics labelled her characters as fragile, emotional, or nervous. Bergner acted her roles in such a manner as to charm her audience in an almost hypnotic way.

Czinner allowed her to play the whole gamut of emotional experience in a series of films. The peak of her career is represented by her work in two films. In the first, Ariane (Paul Czinner, 1931), an adaptation of a novel by the French author Claude Anet, Bergner played a girl who plunges into adventure with an older, more experienced man (Rudolf Foster).

The second is the drama Der träumende Mund (Paul Czinner, 1932), an adaptation of a play by Henri Bernstein. Here, Bergner played a sensitive, pure woman who cannot escape her passion for a musical virtuoso, but does not want to hurt her loving husband. This film was remade by Czinner in 1937 as Dreaming Lips, with Bergner again in the leading role.

When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Bergner, who was in England working on a new film, did not return to Berlin. Bergner and Czinner, who were both Jews, went in exile in London, where they had married in 1931. She particularly infuriated the Hitler regime by encouraging other famous actors to leave Germany, even sending them money to help them escape.

Rapidly learning English, she was soon able to resume her former stage and screen career. Her stage debut as Gemma Jones in Escape Me Never (1933) was met with great enthusiasm, and she repeated the role in New York (1935) and again for the film version, Escape Me Never (Paul Czinner, 1935), which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Another film The Rise of Catherine the Great (Paul Czinner, 1934) was banned in Germany because of the government's racial policies, reported Time magazine (26 March 1934).

Her stage work in London included The Boy David (1936) by J.M. Barrie, his last play which he wrote especially for her. She repeated her stage role of Rosalind, opposite Laurence Olivier's Orlando, in As You Like It (1936), the first sound film version of William Shakespeare's play, and the first sound film of any Shakespeare play filmed in England. Bergner had previously only played the role on the German stage, and several critics found that her accent got in the way of their enjoyment of the film, which was not a success. In 1938 she became a citizen of Great Britain.

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5659/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Nero-Film. Still for Ariane (Paul Czinner, 1931).

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5230/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Frh. von Gudenberg, Berlin.

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5229/1, 1930-1931. Sent by mail in 1930. Photo: Atelier Gerstenberg, Berlin.

Rudolf Forster and Elisabeth Bergner in Der träumende Mund (1932)
Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 6508, distributed in the Netherlands by Jacob Stuvé's echte Nougat. Photo: Mondial Film / Matador Film. Publicity still for Der träumende Mund/Dreaming Lips (Paul Czinner, 1932) with Rudolph Forster.

Elisabeth Bergner and Rudolph Forster in Der träumende Mund
Dutch postcard by Fim Film, no. 454. Publicity still for Der träumende Mund/Dreaming Lips (Paul Czinner, 1932) with Rudolph Forster.

A Fan Called Eve


In 1940, Elisabeth Bergner and her husband emigrated to the United States. There, Bergner had to begin her career anew. While Czinner had no difficulty finding work in Hollywood, it was only at the end of 1941 that she herself received a major role in the anti-Nazi film Paris Calling (Edwin L. Marin, 1941) with Randolph Scott, which was not a success.

She returned to the stage and scored a Broadway triumph in The Two Mrs. Carrolls, which was performed more than three hundred times in 1943–1944 and earned her the Delia Austrian Medal of the Drama League of New York.

An incident with a fan/aspiring actress, while Bergner was performing in The Two Mrs. Carrolls on Broadway, inspired Mary Orr to write her short story The Wisdom of Eve. The story was ultimately filmed as All about Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950). In the story Eve does not get a comeuppance - as was required by the Hollywood Production Code for the film - but gets away with everything and is last seen heading to Hollywood with a thousand dollar a week contract in her pocketbook.

After the war, Bergner worked in New York, for instance in the title role of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi in 1946. In 1950 she returned to England, and in 1954 temporarily to Germany. For nearly two decades she performed intermittently in German and Austrian theatres, and in 1970 she made her debut as a director.

In 1961, after a 20-year absence, she made a come-back for the cinema. The child-woman had been transformed into a charming, though occasionally unfathomable, old lady. Among her later film appearances were Die glücklichen Jahre der Thorwalds/The Happy Years of the Thorwalds (John Olden, Wolfgang Staudte, 1962) with Hansjörg Felmy, Cry of the Banshee (Gordon Hessler, 1970) starring Vincent Price, Strogoff (Eriprando Visconti, 1970), Der Fussgänger/The Pedestrian (Maximilian Schell, 1973), and Der Pfingstausflug/The Pentecost Outing (Michael Günther, 1978) with Martin Held.

Elisabeth Bergner won awards at the Berlin Film festivals of 1963 and 1965. She became the first actress to win the Schiller Prize (1963) for contributions to German cultural life. She also received the Ernst Lubitsch Prize in 1979, and the Eleonora Duse Prize of the city of Venice in 1982. In the Berlin district of Steglitz a city park was named after her.

Husband Paul Czinner died in 1972. Her last TV performance was the lead role in Wenn ich dich nicht hätte/When I Wouldn't Have You (Konrad Sabrautzky, 1984) with Rudolph Platte. Elisabeth Bergner passed away in 1986 in her London home, aged 88. A year later her memoirs, Bewundert viel und viel gescholten (Greatly admired and often cursed), were published. The book received favourable reviews.

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1141/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Ernst Sandau, Berlin.

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Verlag Herm. Leiser, Berlin-Wilm, no. 6741. Photo: Trude Geiringer & Dora Horovitz, Wien.

Elisabeth Bergner
Vintage postcard, no. 3950. Photo: Trude Geiringer & Dora Horovitz, Wien.

Elisabeth Bergner
British postcard by Real Photograph, no. 96. Photo: British & Dominions Films.

Elisabeth Bergner in Catherine the Great (1934)
British postcard by De Reszke Cigarettes, no. 24. Photo: British and Dominions. Publicity still for Catherine the Great (Paul Czinner, 1934).

Elisabeth Bergner in Escape Me Never (1935)
British postcard by De Reszke Cigarettes, no. 28. Photo: British and Dominions. Publicity still for Escape Me Never (Paul Czinner, 1935).

Hugh Sinclair and Elisabeth Bergner in Escape Me Never (1935)
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 165. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for Escape Me Never (Paul Czinner, 1935) with Hugh Sinclair.

Elisabeth Bergner in Escape Me Never (1935)
Dutch postcard by Loet C. Barnstijn. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for Escape Me Never (Paul Czinner, 1935).

Elisabeth Bergner
German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 894. Photo: Hilde Zenker, Berlin.

Sources: Elfi Pracht-Jörns (Jewish Women's Archive), Karel Tabery (Filmreference.com), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Androom (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Jean Gabin

0
0
French actor and war hero Jean Gabin (1904-1976) was one of the greatest stars of the European cinema. In the 1930s he became the personification of the tragic romantic hero of the poetic realist film. Whether he played the legionnaire (Gueule d'amour), the deserter (Le Quai des brumes) or the head gangster (Pépé le Moko), Gabin was impeccable, bringing a tragic humanity to each of his appearances which the public adored. After the war Gabin was reborn as a tough anti-hero, set in his beliefs, feared and respected by all, the Godfather of French cinema.

Jean Gabin
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 23.

Jean Gabin in Gueule d'amour (1937)
French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 29. Photo: Star. Publicity still for Gueule d'amour/Madeleine (Jean Grémillon, 1937).

Jean Gabin
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 1160. Photo: Films Osso. Publicity still for Le quai des brumes/Port of Shadows (Marcel Carne, 1938).

Jean Gabin in Le jour se lève (1939)
French postcard by Edit. Chantal, Rueil (S.-O.), no, 49B. Photo: Raymond Voinquel / Sigma. Publicity still for Le jour se lève/Daybreak (Marcel Carne, 1939).

Jean Gabin
French postcard by Edition Chantal, Paris, no. 49.

Jean Gabin
French collectors card by Massilia.

From Bottom To Top


Jean Gabin was born Jean-Alexis Gabin Moncorgé in Paris, in 1904. He grew up in the village of Mériel in the Seine-et-Oise département, about 35 km north of Paris. His parents, Ferdinand Moncorgé and Hélène Petit, were entertainers, who performed in local cafés.

Jean worked as a labourer, but from an early age, entertainment was in his blood. At 18, he took a turn at the Folies-Bergère. He then appeared in revues and operettas, singing and dancing, and becoming famous for his imitation of Maurice Chevalier.

Through a chance meeting with the singer Mistinguett in 1928, he was given a spot at the Moulin-Rouge. This led to uncredited parts in two silent sketch films Ohé! Les valises/Hey! Suitcases (1928) and Les Lions/The Lions (1928) with the comic Raymond Dandy.

Two years later, he easily made the transition to sound film in the Pathé Frèresproduction Chacun sa Chance/Everyone a chance (René Pujol, Hans Steinhoff, 1930). In this film he appeared with Gaby Basset, whom he had married in 1927.

Gabin made more than a dozen films over the next four years, including Méphisto (Henri Debain, Georges Vinter, 1930), Tout ça ne vaut pas l'amour/While it's not worth the love (Jacques Tourneur, 1931), Coeur de lilas/Lilac (Anatole Litvak, 1932), Les gaietés de l'escadron/Fun in Barracks (Maurice Tourneur, 1932), La Foule hurle (John Daumery, Howard Hawks, 1932) and Du haut en bas/From Top to Bottom (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933).

He gained real recognition for his performance in Maria Chapdelaine (Julien Duvivier, 1934) starring Madeleine Renaud. Cast as a romantic hero opposite Annabella in the war drama La Bandera/Escape from Yesterday (Julien Duvivier, 1936) established Gabin as a major star.

He teamed up with Julien Duvivier again, this time in La belle équipe/They Were Five (1936) and in the highly successful Pépé le Moko (1937) that became one of the top grossing films of 1937 worldwide. Its popularity brought Gabin international recognition.

That same year, he starred in the masterpiece La grande Illusion/The Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937) an anti-war film that was a huge box office success and given universal critical acclaim, even running at a New York City theatre for an unprecedented six months.

This was followed by another one of Renoir's great successes: La bête humaine/The Human Beast (Jean Renoir, 1938), a Film Noir tragedy based on the novel by Émile Zola and starring Gabin and Simone Simon, as well as Le quai des brumes/Port of Shadows (1938) and Le jour se lève/Daybreak (1939) with Arletty, two of director Marcel Carné's most acclaimed films.

Jean Gabin in Chacun sa chance (1930)
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 692. Photo: Film Pathé-Natan. Publicity still for Chacun sa chance/Everyone a chance (René Pujol, Hans Steinhoff, 1930).

Jean Gabin
French postcard by Edition Chantal, Paris, no. 49. Photo: Pathé-Consortium.

Jean Gabin in La bandera (1935)
French postcard, no. 49. Photo: publicity still for La Bandera (Julien Duvivier, 1935).

Jean Gabin in Gueule d'amour (1937)
French postcard by Erpé, no. 567. Photo: Film ACE, Paris. Publicity still for Gueule d'amour/Madeleine (Jean Grémillon, 1937).

Jean Gabin, Dalio, Julien Carette, Gaston Modot and Pierre Fresnay in La grande illusion (1937)
French postcard by Crépa, Editeur, Paris. Photo: Sam Lévin. Publicity still for La grande illusion/The Grand Illusion (Jean Renoir, 1937) with Jean Gabin, Dalio, Julien Carette, Gaston Modot and Pierre Fresnay.

Jean Gabin
French postcard by Edit. Chantal, Rueil, no. 49B.

Jean Gabin
French postcard by Viny, no. 12. Photo: Paris Film.

Jean Gabin
French postcard by edition Chantal, Paris, no. 49A. Photo: Paris Film Production.

Marlene


Jean Gabin was flooded with offers from Hollywood. For a time he turned them all down until the outbreak of World War II. Following the German occupation of France, he joined Jean Renoir and Julien Duvivier in the United States.

He had divorced his second wife Suzanne Mauchain in 1939, and during his time in Hollywood, Gabin began a torrid romance with film star Marlene Dietrich.

His Hollywood film career proved to be less successful: he made two films, Moon Tide (Archie Mayo, 1942) and The Impostor (Julien Duvivier, 1944), both of which were flops. Scheduled to star in an RKO film, at the last minute he demanded Dietrich be given the co-starring role. The studio refused. After Gabin remained steadfast in his demand, he was fired, and the film project was shelved.

Undaunted, he enlisted in 1943 as a tank commander in the Forces françaises libres. He earned the Médaille Militaireand a Croix de Guerrefor his wartime valour fighting with the Allies in North Africa. Following D-Day, Gabin was part of the military contingent that entered a liberated Paris. Captured on film by the media is a scene where an anxious Marlene Dietrich is waiting in the crowd when she spots Gabin onboard a battle tank and rushes to him.

In 1946, Gabin was hired by Marcel Carné to star in the film, Les Portes de la Nuit/Gates of the Night, but his conduct got him fired again. He then found a French producer and director willing to cast him and Marlene Dietrich together in the box office success Martin Roumagnac/The Room Upstairs (Georges Lacombe, 1946), but their personal relationship soon ended.

After the box office failure of Miroir/Mirror (Raymond Lamy, 1947) Gabin returned to the stage, but there too, the production was a financial disaster. He was cast in the lead role of Au-Delà Des Grilles/The Walls of Malapaga (René Clément, 1949) that won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. Despite this recognition, the film did not do well at the French box office, and the next five years brought little more than repeated box office failures.

Jean Gabin
French postcard by S.E.R.P., Paris, no. 135. Photo: Studio Harcourt.

Jean Gabin
French postcard by S.E.R.P., Paris, no. 22. Photo: Studio Harcourt.

Jean Gabin
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 1094. Offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Marcel Bougureau.

Jean Gabin, Maria Félix
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, Dutch licence holder for Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Templehof, no. 1501. Photo: Serge Beauvarlet / Franco London Film, Paris. Publicity still for French Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1954) with Maria Félix.

Jean Gabin in Chiens perdus sans collier (1955)
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 2042. Photo: Pallas Film. Publicity still for Chiens perdus sans collier/The Little Rebels (Jean Delannoy, 1955).

Lemon Prize


Jean Gabin's career seemed headed for oblivion. In 1953 he was the male winner of the Lemon Prize, awarded by French journalists to the nastiest French actors. However, he made a comeback in the classic policier Touchez pas au grisbi/Don't Touch the Loot (Jacques Becker, 1954) with René Dary. His performance earned him critical acclaim, and the film was a very profitable international success.

Later, he worked once again with Jean Renoir on French Cancan (1955), with María Félixand Françoise Arnoul. Over the next twenty years, Gabin made close to 50 more films, most of them very successful commercially and critically, including many for Gafer Films, his production partnership with fellow actor Fernandel.

One of his most popular personalities was inspector Maigretfrom the detective novels by Georges Simenon in Maigret tend un piège/Maigret Sets a Trap (Jean Delannoy, 1958) and Maigret et l'affaire Saint-Fiacre/Maigret and the St. Fiacre Case (Jean Delannoy, 1959). But he was also able to play all other kind of people: aristocrats, farmers, thieves and managers.

With age, a new Gabin persona emerged, more solid, more self-assured, yet always human. His co-stars included French cinema stars as his good friend Lino Venturain Razzia sur la Chnouf/Razzia (Henri Decoin, 1955), Bourvil in La traversée de Paris/The Trip Across Paris (Claude Autant-Lara, 1956), Brigitte Bardot in En cas de malheur/In Case of Adversity (Claude Autant-Lara, 1958), Jean-Paul Belmondo in Un singe en hiver/A Monkey in Winter (Henri Verneuil, 1962), Simone Signoret in Le Chat/The Cat (Pierre Granier-Deferre, 1971), and Alain Delon in Mélodie en sous-sol/Any Number Can Win (Henri Verneuil, 1963), Le Clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil, 1969), and Deux hommes dans la ville/Two Men in Town (José Giovanni, 1973).

In 1960 Gabin was made an Officier de la Légion d'honneur (officer of France's Legion of Honor). Gabin never stopped working and when death surprised him in 1976 he was still an institution for the French audience. His last film was the comedy L'Année sainte/Holy Year (Jean Girault, 1976).

Jean Gabin died in 1976 of a heart attack in the Parisian suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. His body was cremated and with full military honours, his ashes were dispersed into the sea from the military ship Détroyat.

Since 1949, he had been married to Dominique Fournier, who had been a mannequin for couturier Lanvin. They had three children, Valérie Moncorgé, Florence Moncorgé and Mathias Moncorgé. He had bought a sprawling farm in Normandy, and was as contented in his life as the country farmer as he was acting in front of a film camera. The Musée Jean Gabin in his native town, Mériel, contains his story and features his war and film memorabilia.

Jean Gabin
French postcard by Editions et Impressions Combier, Mâcon, no. 3. Illustration: Jean-Pierre Gillot.

Jean Gabin in Le jardinier d'Argenteuil (1966)
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for Le jardinier d'Argenteuil/The Gardener of Argenteuil (Jean-Paul Le Chanois, 1966).

Bernard Blier and Jean Gabin in Le cave se rebiffe (1961)
French postcard by Editions Hazan, Paris, 1991, no. 6251. Photo: publicity still for Le cave se rebiffe/Money Money Money (Gilles Grangier, 1961) with Bernard Blier.

Jean Gabin and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Un Singe en Hiver (1962)
Czech collectors card by Pressfoto, Praha (Prague), no. S 125/6, 1966. Publicity still for Un Singe en Hiver/A Monkey in Winter (Henri Verneuil, 1962) with Jean-Paul Belmondo.

Alain Delon, Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura in Le clan des Siciliens (1969)
French postcard by Finart-Print (DR), no. 304. Photo: publicity still for Le clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil, 1969) with Alain Delon, Jean Gabin and Lino Ventura.

Lino Ventura, Jean Gabin and Alain Delon in Le clan des Siciliens (1969)
Romanian postcard by Cas Filmului Acin, no. 436. Photo: publicity still for Le clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (Henri Verneuil, 1969) with Lino Ventura and Alain Delon.

Jean Gabin in Le soleil des voyous (1967)
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, no. 152/72. Photo: Unifrance Film. Publicity still for Le soleil des voyous/Leather and Nylon (Jean Delannoy, 1967).

Jean Gabin in Le soleil des voyous (1967)
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, no. 2917, 1967. Photo: Unifrance Film. Publicity still for Le soleil des voyous/Leather and Nylon (Jean Delannoy, 1967).


Trailer Pépé le Moko (1937). Source: neondreams 25 (YouTube).


Trailer La grande Illusion/The Grand Illusion (1937). Source: Danios 12345 (YouTube).


Trailer for French Cancan (1955). Source: BFI Trailers (YouTube).


Trailer En Cas de Malheur (1958). Source: films7story (YouTube).


Trailer Le clan des Siciliens/The Sicilian Clan (1969). Source: Dicfish (YouTube).

Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Volker Boehm (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

My Fair Lady (1964)

0
0
Today, EFSP starts two months of posts with European postcards for Hollywood film stars and/or films. Thursday is the day for the film specials, and our first movie is special! 

My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964) is one of the all-time great movie musicals, featuring classic songs by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe and the wonderful costumes by Cecil Beaton. The film won eight Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Rex Harrison in his legendary performance as misanthropic phonetics professor Henry Higgins. But Audrey Hepburn failed to be nominated for Best Actress. The Oscar was won by Julie Andrews for Mary Poppins, in what many observers saw as a backlash against Andrews' not being cast in the film after originating the role of Eliza on stage.

Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964)
Spanish postcard by Oscarcolor. Photo: Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964).

Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964)
East-German postcard by VEB-Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2988. Retail price: 0,20 MDM. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964). Costume: Cecil Beaton.

The delusive dream of a man forming his own perfect woman


My Fair Lady was adapted by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe as a stage musical from the the 1913 brilliant stage play Pygmalion by George Bernard Shaw about the delusive dream of a man forming his own perfect woman.

In Edwardian London, Professor Henry Higgins, a scholar of phonetics, believes that the accent and tone of one's voice determines a person's prospects in society. Outside Covent Garden on a rainy evening in 1912, he boasts to a new acquaintance, Colonel Hugh Pickering, himself an expert in phonetics, that he could teach any person to speak in a way that he could pass them off as a duke or duchess at an embassy ball.

Higgins selects as an example a young flower girl, Eliza Doolittle, who has a strong Cockney accent. Higgins tells Pickering that, within six months, he could transform Eliza into a proper lady, simply by teaching her proper English.

Eliza's ambition is to work in a flower shop, but her thick accent makes her unsuitable. Having come from India to meet Higgins, Pickering is invited to stay with the professor. The following morning, face and hands freshly scrubbed, Eliza shows up at Higgins' home, offering to pay him to teach her to be a lady. Pickering is intrigued and offers to cover all expenses, should the experiment be successful.

My Fair Lady became the longest-running Broadway musical with in the leads Rex Harrison as Henry and Julie Andrews as Eliza. With the same cast, the musical also became a huge success in London. Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe made a great musical score. Most of their songs would become standards over the years that delighted audiences all over the world.

However, when Hollywood producer Jack Warner decided to make a film version of the hit musical, he felt that Andrews, at the time unknown beyond Broadway, wasn't bankable. He replaced her with Audrey Hepburn, a wonderful film actress but not a real singer. Hepburn's singing was dubbed by Marni Nixon, who had dubbed Natalie Wood in West Side Story (1961). Supporting roles went to Stanley Holloway (as Eliza's father, dustman Afred P. Doolittle), Gladys Cooper (Henry's mother Mrs. Higgins), Wilfrid Hyde-White (Colonel Pickering) and Jeremy Brett as the young playboy Freddy.

Audrey Hepburn and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady (1964)
Dutch postcard by Int. Filmpers, Amsterdam, no. 1306. Photo: Warner Bros. Rex Harrison and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964).

Audrey Hepburn and Wilfrid Hyde-White in My Fair Lady (1964)
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 261. Wilfrid Hyde-White and Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964).

How could Eliza be played by anyone else than Julie Andrews?


With a production budget of $17 million, My Fair Lady became the most expensive film shot in the United States up to that time. George Cukor created an elegant, colourful adaptation of the beloved stage musical and Rex Harrison did another winning performance. But how did Audrey Hepburn? The move to choose her over Julie Andrews had puzzled many in the theatrical world. How could Eliza be played by anyone else than Andrews?

Hepburn played the unschooled street urchin with a sweet, naive charm. Eliza goes through many forms of speech training, such as speaking with marbles in her mouth, enduring Higgins' harsh approach to teaching and his treatment of her personally. She makes little progress, but just as she, Higgins, and Pickering are about to give up, Eliza finally 'gets it'; she instantly begins to speak with an impeccable upper class accent. As the elegant and beautiful lady at the end of the film, Hepburn literally glows in the exquisite costumes designed for her by Cecil Beaton. She is a perfect match to Harrison's Higgins.

Ephraim Gadsby at IMDb: "The old furors over Audrey Hepburn seem silly in hindsight. Hepburn replaced Julie Andrews, a wonderful singer-actress who had created the role, not only on Broadway but in London. But Andrews was not a familiar face to movie-goers and no one knew if she'd hold an audience in the movies as in the live theaters. Too, Hepburn was an inspired choice, since her background probably would make Eliza Doolittle's transformation from flower-selling gutter-snipe into a lady of quality more believable (Hepburn's mother was a baroness)."

Richard Gilliam in his review at AllMovie: "Exquisitely produced by Warner Bros, it represents the zenith of the movie musical as an art form and as popular entertainment. Rex Harrison leads an impeccable cast, and, yes, that's Marni Nixon singing for Audrey Hepburn, but Hepburn is perfectly cast otherwise. The major star of the film is perhaps set designer/costume designer Cecil Beaton, whose visual contributions immediately impacted European and U.S. fashion trends."

In 1998, the American Film Institute named My Fair Lady (1964) the 91st greatest American film of all time. Critic Roger Ebert put the film on his 'Great Movies' list: "My Fair Lady is the best and most unlikely of musicals, during which I cannot decide if I am happier when the characters are talking or when they are singing. The songs are literate and beloved; some romantic, some comic, some nonsense, some surprisingly philosophical, every single one wonderful."

Audrey Hepburn, Jeremy Brett and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady (1964)
East-German postcard by VEB-Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2989. Retail price: 0,20 MDM. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964) with Audrey HepburnJeremy Brett and Rex Harrison.

Audrey Hepburn in My Fair Lady (1964)
East-German postcard by VEB-Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 3028. Retail price: 0,20 MDM. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for My Fair Lady (George Cukor, 1964).


Trailer My Fair Lady (1964). Source: YouTube (ManUtd1962).

Sources: Roger EbertHal Erickson (AllMovie), Richard Gilliam (AllMovie), Ephraim Gadsby (IMDb), Dennis Littrell (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Charles Farrell

0
0
Good-looking American actor Charles Farrell (1900-1990) was a Hollywood matinee idol of the Jazz Age and Depression era. Now, he seems forgotten, but between 1927 and 1934, he was a very popular team with Janet Gaynor. They appeared in 12 screen romances, including 7th Heaven (1927), Street Angel (1928), and Lucky Star (1929). Farrell retired from films in the early 1940s, but TV audiences of the 1950s would see him as Gale Storm's widower dad in the popular television series My Little Margie (1952-1955).

Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell in Seventh Heaven
Italian postcard offered by Cioccolata Lurati, no. 124. Photo: Fox. Publicity still for Seventh Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927) with Janet Gaynor.

Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell in Lucky Star (1929)
French postcard by Cinémagazine Edition (CE), Paris, no. 821. Photo: Fox. Publicity still for Lucky Star (Frank Borzage, 1929) with Janet Gaynor.

Greta Nissen and Charles Farrell in Fazil (1928)
British postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3917/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Fox. Publicity still for Fazil (Howard Hawks, 1928) with Greta Nissen.

Charles Farrell
Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 5889. Photo: Max Munn Autrey / Fox.

Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor in The First Year (1932)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6128/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Fox. Publicity still for The First Year (William K. Howard, 1932) with Janet Gaynor.

The pivotal role as the Parisian sewer cleaner Chico


Charles David Farrell was born in 1900 in Onset, Massachusetts, the only son in his family. His father owned a lunch counter where films were shown on the upper floor which introduced Farrell to the world of cinema.

He briefly attended Boston University to study business while playing in the football team but dropped out to become an actor in the theatre. This didn’t go well with his family, especially his father, so Farrell was on his own. He took any acting job possible that would get him financially and professionally closer to his goal of being in the cinema.

The handsome young actor decided to move to California and to try his luck in Hollywood. For Paramount Pictures, Farrell did extra work for films ranging from The Hunchback of Notre Dame (Wallace Worsley, 1923) with Lon Chaney, Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923), and The Cheat (George Fitzmaurice, 1923) with Pola Negri.

Farrell continued to work throughout the next few years in relatively minor roles without much success. After three years as an extra he was given a good role in Old Ironsides (James Cruze, 1926). Then his big break came when Fox Studios signed him and gave him the pivotal role as the Parisian sewer cleaner Chico in the romantic drama 7th Heaven (Frank Borzage, 1927). He was paired with fellow newcomer Janet Gaynor. The film was a public and critical success and won an Academy Award.

The studio noticed the audiences growing a craze for Farrell and Gaynor and they would go on to co-star in more than a dozen films throughout the late 1920s and into the talkie era of the early 1930s. The plots of the Gaynor-Farrell films were fit for a fairytale book where love conquers all and the good prevail, with convincing acting that makes you believe it.

Director of three of these films was Frank Borzage, known for stories set in a surreal or ethereal like world. Farrell and Gaynor were romantically involved from about 1926 until her first marriage in 1929. Shaken by the death of his close friend, actor Fred Thomson, Farrell proposed marriage to Gaynor around 1928, but the couple was never married.

Years later, Gaynor explained her breakup with Farrell: "I think we loved each other more than we were 'in love.' He played polo, he went to the Hearst Ranch for wild weekends with Marion Davies, he got around to the parties - he was a big, brawny, outdoors type... I was not a party girl... Charlie pressed me to marry him, but we had too many differences. In my era, you didn't live together. It just wasn't done. So I married a San Francisco businessman, Lydell Peck, just to get away from Charlie."

Another success for Farrell was The Red Dance (Raoul Walsh, 1928) in which Dolores del Rio co-starred as a poor girl-turned-dancer who falls in love with Farrell’s character of Grand Duke Eugene during the Bolshevik Revolution. Two months before the stock market crash, Farrell and Gaynor starred in the unique and heartfelt WWI love story, Lucky Star (Frank Borzage, 1929).

The Depression was just beginning when Farrell’s made his last and one of his best silents film, City Girl (F.W. Murnau, 1930). He plays Lem, a young man from the country sent to the city for business who falls in love with the waitress at the lunch counter named Kate (Mary Duncan). Rachel at Vintage Stardust: "His acting brought elegance even during the most emotional scenes and refreshed the image of masculinity in film even after he successfully transitioned into sound. Oh and he was one of the first to go nude in film (in The River from 1929 (sic) there’s a brief scene where he swam nude and is about to get out of the water completely before he sees a woman nearby.)" Sadly, Frank Borzage's masterpiece The River (1928) is partially lost.

Charles Farrell
British postcard in the Colourgraph Series, London, no. C 65.

Charles Farrell
British card.

Charles Farrell
French postcard by J.R.P.R., Paris, no. 207. Photo: Fox.

Charles Farrell and Dolores Del Rio in The Red Dance (1928)
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 827. Photo: Max Munn Autrey / Fox Film. Publicity still for The Red Dance (Raoul Walsh, 1928) wirh Dolores del Rio.

Charles Farrell in The Red Dance (1928)
British postcard, no. 9 of a fifth series of 25 Cinema Stars, issued with Sarony Cigarettes. Photo: publicity still for The Red Dance (Raoul Walsh, 1928).

Bringing a new definition of men in cinema


Unlike many of his silent screen peers, Charles Farrell had no 'voice troubles' and remained a publicly popular actor throughout the sound era. Rachel at Vintage Stardust: "Well mannered and athletically built, Farrell’s roles were dramatic but often romantic leads that brought a new definition of men in cinema. His gentleness in his characters created the idea that men could be sensitive and kind yet strong at the same time. Not to say that men from this era couldn’t be this way in real life but to it was rare in film to depict men as being vulnerable."

In 1931 he married actress Virginia Valli, with whom he stayed together until her death in 1968. In the 1930s, Farrell became a resident of the desert city of Palm Springs, California. In 1934, he opened the popular Palm Springs Racquet Club in the city with his business partner, fellow actor Ralph Bellamy.

By the mid 1930s his career declined. Rumours point to his personal life or lack of memorable scripts. The type of leading men was also changing with the Depression. The scripts Farrell received included musicals which did not allow him to showcase his acting range. An exception was Change of Heart (John G. Blystone, 1934).

During World War II, Farrell served in the Navy. A major player in the developing prosperity of Palm Springs in the 1930s through the 1960s, Farrell was elected to the city council in 1946 and elected mayor of the community in 1948, a position that he held until he submitted his resignation in 1953 due to a return to acting.

In 1952, more than a decade after his career in motion pictures had ended, Farrell began appearing on the television series My Little Margie, which aired on CBS and NBC between 1952 and 1955. He played the role of the widower Vern Albright, the father of a young woman, Margie Albright (Gale Storm), with a knack for getting into trouble. In 1956, Farrell starred in his own television program, The Charles Farrell Show.

For the remainder of his life Farrell managed the Palm Springs Racquet Club until the late 1960s, and kept out of the Hollywood spotlight. He died of a heart attack in 1990.

At the time of his death, he felt forgotten as an actor and his films were too dated to be appreciated. But in 1990, a 35mm print of his previously considered lost film Lucky Star (1929) was discovered in the Nederlands Filmmuseum in Amsterdam. It was restored for its 1990 revival premiere at Le Giornate del Cinema Muto, the silent film festival in Pordenone, Italy. And audiences started a new craze for Farrell and Gaynor.

Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor
British postcard by Abdulla Cigarettes, no. 15. Photo: Fox.

Charles Farrell
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4171/1, 1929-1930. Photo:  Fox.

Charles Farrell
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5995. Photo: Fox.

Charles Farrell
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4862/2. Photo: Fox.

Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell in Sunnyside Up (1929)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5001/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Fox. Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell in the early sound film Sunnyside Up (David Butler, 1929).

Charles Farrell
British postard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 332.

Charles Farrell in High Society Blues (1930)
Photo postcard delivered by the Dutch East Indies. Toko Ang West, Bandoeng. Photo: publicity still for High Society Blues (David Butler, 1930).

Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor in Delicious (1931)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6452/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Fox. Publicity still for Delicious (David Butler, 1931) with Janet Gaynor.

Charles Farrell and Janet Gaynor
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 71466/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Fox. With Janet Gaynor.

Sources: Rachel (Vintage Stardust), Guy Bellinger (IMDb), Bill Takacs (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Photo by Freulich

0
0
Polish-born photographer Roman Freulich (1898–1974) was a pioneer in the Hollywood film industry, who worked for Universal and later for Republic. He made countless popular glamour shots of the stars which were also used for many European film star postcards, but he also did still photography for several classic films and made some interesting independent films. His brother Jack and nephew Henry were also well known Hollywood photographers.

Conrad Veidt and Mary Philbin in The Man Who Laughs (1928)
Conrad Veidt and Mary Philbin. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 105/1. Photo: Universal Pictures Corp. Publicity still for The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni, 1928).

Harry Carey
Harry Carey. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the series Les Vedettes de Cinema, no. 6. Photo: Universal Film / Roman Freulich, no. 203.

Ivan Mozzhukhin in Surrender (1927)
Ivan Mozzhukhin. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3179/4, 1928-1929. Photo: Roman Freulich / Universal / Matador. Publicity still for Surrender (Edward Sloman, 1927).

Lya de Putti
Lya de Putti. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3370/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Roman Freulich.

Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein (1935)
Boris Karloff and Elsa Lanchester. American postcard by Classico San Francisco, no. 233/007. Photo: Roman Freulich / Universal Pictures. Publicity still for The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935).

Universal


Roman Freulich was born in 1898 in Czestochowa, Poland, Russian Empire (now Czestochowa, Slaskie, Poland). His parents were no longer young — Isaac Freulich was probably about 50 in 1898 and Nisla was 41. At Roman’s birth, his oldest sibling, his sister Sura Rifka was 20. His oldest brother Jacob, was 18.

He attended both grammar school and gymnasium — the equivalent of an American high school. He was quick to learn and did well in his studies — he became proficient in Russian, Polish, German and Yiddish — and acquired a taste for art, literature and classical music.

As a young teen he became active in the Jewish Socialist movement. Probably against the wishes of his mother and his father he began distributing literature for the movement in his after school time.

Late in 1912, Roman’s after school political activities became worrisome, and he immigrated with his father and a sister to the United States to join his eldest brother Jack (Jacob) in the Bronx. Freulich trained with New York photographer Samuel Lumiere.

In 1920, Freulich moved to Hollywood, where his brother Jack had become a portrait photographer at Universal Pictures. Jack's son, Henry Freulich, would also become a well known still photographer in Hollywood during the 1920s.

According to IMDb, Roman did the still photography for the silent film Outside the Law (Tod Browning, 1920), but it probably was his brother Jack while Roman was confined to a Sanatorium at the time.

In October 1920, Jack had checked Roman into the Barlow Tubercular Sanatorium in Chavez Ravine near downtown Los Angeles. Roman spent the next 15 months of his life there.

In 1922, Roman met his future wife, Katia Merkin. After his honeymoon, a job as a still photographer at Universal was waiting for Roman in California.

During his first 12 years at Universal, he worked closely with his brother and undoubtedly learned a great deal about production work, publicity shots and portraiture.

Among the films for which he did the still photography are The Phantom of the Opera (Rupert Julian, 1925) with Lon Chaney, The Man Who Laughs (Paul Leni, 1928) starring Conrad Veidt, All Quiet on the Western Front (Lewis Milestone, 1930), and Dracula (Tod Browning, 1931) featuring Bela Lugosi.

He also did the still photography for the horror films by James Whale, Frankenstein (James Whale, 1930) with Colin Clive and Boris Karloff, The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932), The Invisible Man (James Whale, 1933) featuring Claude Rains, and The Bride of Frankenstein (James Whale, 1935) with Boris Karloff  and Elsa Lanchester.

Another horror classic for which he did the still photography is The Black Cat (Edward G. Ulmer, 1934) starring both Boris Karloff  and Bela Lugosi.

Later in the 1930s, he photographed for Universal such musicals as the Deanna Durbin vehicles One Hundred Men And A Girl (Henry Koster, 1937) and Mad About Music (Norman Taurog, 1938) and The Under-Pup (Richard Wallace, 1939) with Gloria Jean.

In 1941, 1942, 1944, and 1947 he won awards at the Hollywood Studio Still Photography Show, sponsored by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Virginia Vally
Virginia Vally. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 556/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Roman Freulich. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Eddie Polo
Eddie Polo. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 587/1. Photo: Roman Freulich / Transocean-Film Co., Berlin.

Art Acord
Art Acord. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 712/2, 1925-1926. Photo: Roman Freulich / Universal.

Charles Puffy
Charles Puffy. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1207/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Roman Freulich / Unfilman (Universal).

André Mattoni
André Mattoni. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3064/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Roman Freulich.

Republic


In 1944, Roman Freulich was offered a position at Republic Studios as head of its still department. During his 13 years at Republic the Western played the same role as the horror film had played at Universal — it was the company bread and butter.

Thus photographs of John Wayne, Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, 'Wild Bill' Elliot, Gabby Hayes, Gene Autrey and the Sons of the Pioneers began to take a prominent place in Roman’s portfolio.

He photographed Roy Rogers Westerns like Don't Fence Me In (John English, 1945) but also She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (John Ford, 1949), Sands of Iwo Jima (Allan Dwan, 1949) and John Ford’s The Quiet Man (1952), all starring John Wayne.

In the late 1950s, after Republic ceased production, Freulich freelanced, mostly for United Artists, until the mid-1960s. He worked on such B-films as the prostitution drama Vice Raid (Edward L. Cahn, 1959) with Mamie van Doren, and the Western Young Jesse James (William F. Claxton, 1960).

Freulich's immigration to America and the loss of his family members who had remained in Poland during the Holocaust are two legacies that distinguished Freulich from his fellow cameramen in Hollywood. In 1938. Freulich had made a trip to Poland in part to encourage family members to immigrate to the United States. He made photos of his family in Lodz and also made images of street scenes in Łódź, and two images taken in Warsaw.

The remarkable output of Freulich's independent work, consisting of film projects that ventured far beyond the relative professional shelter provided by his popular glamour shots. Freulich sought to give voice to the voiceless as evidenced in his self-produced short film Broken Earth (Roman Freulich, 1936) – the first film to feature a black actor (Clarence Muse) in a starring role – as well as his collaborations with the actor Paul Robeson.

Freulich authored Soldiers in Judea, Stories and Vignettes of the Jewish Legion (1964) and The Hill of Life (1968), a fictionalised biography of Joseph Trumpeldor.

Two years later, he worked for the last time as still photographer on a film, Tora, Tora, Tora (Richard Fleischer, Kinji Fukasaku, 1970).

Roman Freulich died in 1974 in West Los Angeles. He was 76.

Reginald Denny
Reginald Denny. British postcard in the Picturegoer series, no. 74. Photo: Roman Freulich.

Ivan Mozzhukhin
Ivan Mozzhukhin. German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 1265/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Roman Freulich. Publicity still for Surrender (Edward Sloman, 1927).

Lya de Putti
Lya de Putti. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3178/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Roman Freulich.

Conrad Veidt
Conrad Veidt. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 3919/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Roman Freulich.

Boris Karloff in Frankenstein (1931)
Boris Karloff. American postcard by Classico San Francisco, no. 233/06. Photo: Roman Freulich / Universal Pictures. Publicity still for Frankenstein (James Whale, 1931).

Sources: Joan Abramson (The Halborns), Sarah A. Buchanan (History of Photography), Mptv, Wikipedia and IMDb.

November and December will be EFSP's Hollywood months with European postcards of American film stars and films. From the 1920s on, the Hollywood studios had their own photo departments, so we will stop with our series on photographers and start a new series on the Hollywood studios. It starts next Saturday, 10 November, with Warner Bros.

Gloria Grahame

0
0
American stage, film, television actress and singer Gloria Grahame (1923-1981) was often cast in Film Noirs as a tarnished beauty with an irresistible sexual allure. She received an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress nomination for Crossfire (1947), and would later win the award for The Bad and the Beautiful (1952). Her best known films are Sudden Fear (1952), Human Desire (1953), The Big Heat (1953), and Oklahoma! (1955), but her film career began to wane soon afterwards.

Gloria Grahame in Naked Alibi (1954)
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1190. Photo: Universal International. Publicity still for Naked Alibi (Jerry Hopper, 1954).

A Tart with a Heart


Gloria Grahame Hallward was born in in Los Angeles, California in 1921. Her father, Reginald Michael Bloxam Hallward, was an architect and author; her mother, Jeanne McDougall, who used the stage name Jean Grahame, was a British stage actress and acting teacher. Her older sister, Joy Hallward became an actress who married John Mitchum, the younger brother of Robert Mitchum.

During Gloria's childhood and adolescence, her mother taught her acting. Grahame attended Hollywood High School before dropping out to pursue acting. She was signed to a contract with MGM Studios under her professional name after Louis B. Mayer saw her performing on Broadway.

Grahame made her film debut as a tart-with-a-heart in the sex comedy Blonde Fever (Richard Whorf, 1944) with Philip Dorn, and then scored one of her most widely praised roles as the flirtatious Violet Bick, saved from disgrace by James Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life (Frank Capra, 1946). MGM was not able to develop her potential as a star and her contract was sold to RKO Studios in 1947.

She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress in Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk, 1947), a Film Noir which deals with the theme of anti-Semitism. During this time, she made films for several Hollywood studios. For Columbia Pictures, Grahame starred with Humphrey Bogart in another Film Noir, In a Lonely Place (Nicholas Ray, 1950), a performance for which she again gained praise.

In 1952, Grahame starred in four major Hollywood-productions, including a part in the Film Noir Sudden Fear (David Miller, 1952), starring Joan Crawford, and a reunion with James Stewart in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Greatest Show on Earth, which won the Best Picture Oscar in 1953.

Gloria Grahame in Sudden Fear (1952)
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 791. Photo: RKO. Publicity still for Sudden Fear (David Miller, 1952).

Gloria Grahame in The Glass Wall (1953)
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, no. 032. Photo: Columbia. Publicity still for The Glass Wall (Maxwell Shane, 1953).

The Mysterious Bad Girl of Film Noir


29-year-old Gloria Grahame was on the verge of superstardom, when she herself won the Supporting Actress Oscar for her performance in The Bad and the Beautiful (Vincente Minnelli, 1952), starring Lana Turner and Kirk Douglas.

Sadly, following her Oscar victory, the beauty Grahame embodied so artfully on screen never reflected the personal turmoil festering under the surface. Her two marriages had ended in a divorce: one from allegedly abusive actor Stanley Clements (1945-1948), the other from Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray (1948-1952), with whom she had a son, Timothy.

In the following years, her image hardened as the mysterious bad girl of Film Noir in The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953) and Human Desire (Fritz Lang, 1954). In a classic, horrifying off-screen scene in The Big Heat, her character, mob moll Debby Marsh is scarred by hot coffee thrown in her face by Lee Marvin's character.

In 1954, she acted and sang in the adaptation of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein’s musical Oklahoma! (Fred Zinnemann, 1955) as the 'girl who can’t say no,' Ado Annie. That same year she married writer-producer Cy Howard. After Oklahoma!, Grahame scaled back her work. There were rumours that she had been difficult to work with on the set of Oklahoma!.

Two years later, she divorced Howard. In 1960, she married former stepson Tony Ray, son of Nicholas Ray. This led Nicholas Ray and Cy Howard to each sue for custody of each's child by Grahame, putting gossip columnists and scandal sheets into overdrive. Rumours circulated that Grahame had initially seduced Tony when he was just 13. Along with her tarnished professional reputation, this gossip made her a Hollywood outcast.

Gloria Grahame
Dutch postcard.

Gloria Grahame
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. D 7. Photo: Paramount.

A nervous breakdown and electroshock therapy


In the 1960s, Gloria Grahame dedicated herself to raising her growing family after having two sons with Tony. The stress of the scandal, her waning career and her custody battle with Howard took its toll on Grahame and she had a nervous breakdown. She later underwent electroshock therapy in 1964.

After that, she began a slow return to the theatre. She popped up as an occasional guest on TV series, and when she found her way back to the big screen, it was in exploitation films like Blood and Lace (Philip S. Gilbert, 1971) and Mama’s Dirty Girls (John Hayes, 1974).

In March, 1974, Grahame was diagnosed with breast cancer. She underwent radiation treatment, changed her diet, stopped smoking and drinking alcohol, and also sought homoeopathic remedies. In less than a year the cancer went into remission. Grahame never reclaimed her former glory, but the Oscar itself stood proudly on her mantel, an enduring reminder of her accomplishments.

In 1978, she met aspiring actor Peter Turner, while she was in Britain working on a stage production of W. Somerset Maugham’s Rain. Although Turner was nearly three decades her junior, they had a whirlwind romance. She co-starred in the British heist film A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square (Ralph Thomas, 1979) starring Richard Jordan, Oliver Tobias, and David Niven.

In 1980 followed her last major film, Melvin and Howard, (Jonathan Demme, 1980), in which she played Mary Steenburgen’s mother. The cancer returned in 1980 but Grahame refused to acknowledge her diagnosis or seek radiation treatment. Despite her failing health, Grahame continued working in stage productions in the United States and the United Kingdom.

At age 57, Gloria Grahame died in 1981 in a New York hospital from cancer-related complications. Peter Turner wrote about their love story in his memoir, Film Stars Don’t Die in Liverpool, which director Paul McGuigan adapted in 2017 into an excellent film starring Annette Bening and Jamie Bell.


Trailer The Big Heat (1953). Source: Chloroform and Silver Nitrate (YouTube).


Trailer Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool (2017). Source: El Proyector MX (YouTube).

Sources: Joey Nolfi (Entertainment Weekly), Wikipedia and IMDb.

American Vedettes, Part 1

0
0
Before World War I, the European film industry ruled the world. The war destroyed the French studios and Hollywood started its victory in the international cinemas. And audiences all over the world simply loved the American movies, even in France. They adored the new American 'vedettes', as a popular series of film star postcards by Paris publisher A.N. (A. Noyer) shows: Les Vedettes de Cinéma. The postcards were published in the 1920s and today EFSP presents 14 postcards of the series with Hollywood men. The ladies will follow tomorrow.

Harry Carey
Harry Carey. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 6. Photo: Roman Freulich / Universal.

Douglas MacLean
Douglas MacLean. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 17. Photo: Paramount.

Walter Hiers
Walter Hiers. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 19. Photo: Paramount.

Theodore Roberts
Theodore Roberts. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 21. Photo: Paramount.

Thomas Meighan
Thomas Meighan and his children. French postcard by A.N. Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 21. Photo: Paramount.

William Hart
William Hart. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 32. Photo: Film Paramount.

Sessue Hayakawa
Sessue Hayakawa. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 58.

Douglas Fairbanks Jr.
Douglas Fairbanks junior. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 71. Photo: Paramount.

Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks
Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 85. Photo: United Artists.

Jackie Coogan Les Vedettes de Cinéma
Jackie Coogan on board of SS Leviathan in 1924. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 88. Photo: Rol.

Edmund Lowe
Edmund Lowe. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 190. Photo: Fox.

Antonio Moreno
Antonio Moreno. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 220. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn Production.

Ramon Novarro
Ramon Novarro. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 229. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn Production.

Conway Tearle
Conway Tearle. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 230. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn Production.

Rudolph Valentino
Rudolph Valentino. French postcard by A.N. in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, Paris, no. 244. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for The Son of the Sheik (George Fitzmaurice, 1926).

To be continued.

See here our earlier post on A.N., Paris.

American Vedettes, Part 2

0
0
On 28 October 2017, EFSP published our first selection from the French series Les Vedettes de Cinéma. The series was published in the 1920s by A.N. (Armand Noyer), located at Boulevard de Strasbourg in Paris. Then we focused on European stars, now on Hollywood stars. Yesterday we did a post on the male American stars, today we present 15 female stars of silent Hollywood.

Gladys Walton
Gladys Walton. French postcard by A.N., Paris in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 2. Photo: Universal.

Baby Peggy
Baby Peggy. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 4. Photo: Universal.

Constance Talmadge
Constance Talmadge. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 12. Photo: B. Frank Puffer / First National Location.

Norma Talmadge
Norma Talmadge. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 14. Photo: F.N. - Location (First National).

Gloria Swanson
Gloria Swanson. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 18. Photo: Paramount.

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

Betty Compson
Betty Compson. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 30. Photo: Paramount.

Wanda Hawley
Wanda Hawley. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 35. Photo: Paramount.

Lila Lee
Lila Lee. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 38. Photo: Paramount.

Mary Miles Minter
Mary Miles Minter. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 40. Photo: Paramount.

Pearl White
Pearl White. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 55.

Judy King
Judy King. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 199. Photo: Albert Witzel / Fox.

Margaret Livingston
Margaret Livingston. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 204. Photo: Albert Witzel / Fox.

Gertrud Olmstead
Gertrud Olmstead. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 207. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn Production.

Claire Windsor
Claire Windsor. French postcard by A.N., Paris, in the Les Vedettes de Cinéma series, no. 214. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn Production.

November and December will be EFSP's Hollywood months with European postcards of American film stars and films. From the 1920s, the Hollywood studios had their own photo departments, so we will stop with our series on photographers and start a new series on the Hollywood studios. It starts next Saturday, 10 November, with Warner Bros.
Viewing all 4108 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images

Vimeo 10.7.0 by Vimeo.com, Inc.

Vimeo 10.7.0 by Vimeo.com, Inc.

HANGAD

HANGAD

MAKAKAALAM

MAKAKAALAM

Doodle Jump 3.11.30 by Lima Sky LLC

Doodle Jump 3.11.30 by Lima Sky LLC

Doodle Jump 3.11.30 by Lima Sky LLC

Doodle Jump 3.11.30 by Lima Sky LLC

Vimeo 10.6.1 by Vimeo.com, Inc.

Vimeo 10.6.1 by Vimeo.com, Inc.

Vimeo 10.6.0 by Vimeo.com, Inc.

Vimeo 10.6.0 by Vimeo.com, Inc.

Re:

Re:

Re:

Re: