European Film Star Postcards

German actor Heiner Lauterbach (1953) had his breakthrough in the landmark comedy Männer…/Men… (Doris Dörrie, 1985) and continued to appear in more than 100 films and TV productions. He was also often the German voice for Richard Gere and Jack Nicholson.

German autograph card.

Men...

Heiner Lauterbach was born in Köln (Cologne), Germany, in 1953.

He started his career in 1975 and had small parts in sex comedies like Schulmädchen-Report 9: Reifeprüfung vor dem Abitur/When Girls Make Love (Walter Boos, 1975). He also appeared in several German TV shows like the Krimi Derrick (1978-1979).

Lauterbach had his breakthrough in the landmark comedy Männer…/Men… (Doris Dörrie, 1985). A successful, womanizing middle-aged man (Lauterbach) decides to move out of the house he shares with his wife after she confesses to having an affair. He looks for a new place to live and ends up moving into his wife's lover's (Uwe Ochsenknecht) apartment as a roommate. For his role Lauterbach won the Bundesfilmpreis (West-Germany’s national film award). Männer… was chosen as West Germany's official submission to the 59th Academy Awards for Best Foreign Language Film, but did not manage to receive a nomination.

He also appeared in Dörrie’s comedy Paradies/Paradise (Doris Dörrie, 1986) starring Katharina Thalbach. He got a leading role in the European television crime TV-series Eurocops (1988-1992), a co-production between seven European TV stations. He also played the title role in the TV film Ignaz Semmelweis - Arzt der Frauen/Ignaz Semmelweis - Doctor of women (Michael Verhoeven, 1989).

Next followed the German children's film Charlie & Louise – Das doppelte Lottchen/Charlie & Louise (Joseph Vilsmaier, 1994), co-starring with Corinna Harfouch as the parents of the twins of the title. The film is of course an adaptation of the famous novel Das doppelte Lottchen (The double Lottie) by Erich Kästner.

Lauterbach had a supporting part in the comedy Das Superweib/The Superwife (Sönke Wortmann, 1996) with Veronica Ferres and Til Schweiger. He starred in the TV film Opernball/Opera Ball (Urs Egger, 1998) in which thousands of people are killed in a Neo-Nazi terrorist attack taking place during the Vienna Opera Ball. The film also starred Franka Potente, Richard Bohringer, and Gudrun Landgrebe.

German postcard.

German promotion card for Laudier.

Life as an orgy

Heiner Lauterbach played Ufa-producer Erich Pommer in the biopic Marlene (Joseph Vilsmaier, 2000) starring Katja Flint as Marlene Dietrich. He reunited with director Doris Dörrie for Erleuchtung garantiert/Enlightenment Guaranteed (Doris Dörrie, 2002). The film is often seen as a sequel of sorts to Männer…/Men… (Doris Dörrie, 1985) with the same starring actors (albeit as different characters) and a similar existential storyline, and was sometimes billed as such.

In 2005 Lauterbach made his debut as a director with the TV comedy Andersrum/Other way. He had a leading role in the prestigious television film Dresden (Roland Suso Richter, 2006), set during the bombing of Dresden in World War II. The €10 million production was shot on original locations in Dresden and Chemnitz. A cinema version was released in 2010.

Lauterbach is considered Germany's best paid television actor, earning 15,000 euro per day. Another prestige picture was the Russian action war drama Stalingrad (Russian: Сталинград) (Fedor Bondarchuk, 2013), the first Russian film produced using the IMAX format. Reception of the film was mixed. It was praised for stunning visuals, sound editing, music, and acting, but at the same time criticized for direction and melodramatic plot. However, it was a huge box office hit in Russia, earning a total of US $51,700,000.

Heiner Lauterbach is also the German voice for several American actors, including Richard Gere, Jack Nicholson, Christopher Walken, Kevin Costner and Christopher Reeve. Lauterbach was married between 1985 and 2001 to German actress Katja Flint who is the mother of his son Oscar (1988). During the late 1990s he had a relationship with actress Jenny Elvers. Since 2001 he has been married to Viktoria Skaf. They have two children: Maya (2002) and Vito (2007).

His autobiography Nichts ausgelassen! (Nothing left out) gained a lot of media attention. He described his life "as an orgy" and wrote openly about his affairs and drug addiction. Heiner Lauterbach resides on Lake Starnberg, Bavaria with his family.

German postcard.

Scene from Männer…/Men… (Doris Dörrie, 1985). Source: wps1712 (YouTube).

Sources: Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.

British actor John Gregson (1919-1975) was one of the favourites of the Ealing comedies of the 1950s. He was often typecast in 'stiff upper lip' military roles.

British collectors card, no. 22. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation. Publicity still for The Battle of the River Plate (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1956).

Men of Integrity

John Gregson was born Harold Thomas Gregson in 1919, in Liverpool, UK, of Irish descent.

He began his career as a telephone engineer who dabbled in amateur dramatics. Gregson served aboard a minesweeper with the Royal Navy during World War II. At one point, his minesweeper was torpedoed and he was rescued from the sea with a knee injury.

After demobilisation in 1945, he joined the Liverpool Old Vic for a year, making his stage debut in The Knight of the Burning Pestle. Then he moved on to Perth Theatre in Perth, Scotland. Here he met his future wife, actress Ida Reddish from Nottingham, who used the stage name Thea Gregory and had recently arrived from the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. In 1947 they moved to London and married there.

He acted alongside Robert Donat and Margaret Leighton in A Sleeping Clergyman at the West End Criterion Theatre in 1947. During the same period, he was also cast in his first film, the romantic period melodrama Saraband for Dead Lovers/Saraband (Basil Dearden, 1948), though his scenes ended up being cut. Undeterred, Gregson established himself as a popular favourite in subsequent Ealing comedies and later as a long term contractee with the Rank Organisation.

His screen personae tended to be men of integrity: regular guys who don't necessarily finish on top, introspective, somewhat diffident, and often troubled. His most fondly remembered role was that of vintage car enthusiast Alan McKim, in the comedy Genevieve (Henry Cornelius, 1953). Gregson, Dinah Sheridan, Kenneth More and Kay Kendall played two couples involved in a veteran automobile rally.

Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “Gregson achieved worldwide popularity as Alan McKim in the wistful comedy Genevieve (1953); though he spent virtually the entire film behind the wheel of a vintage automobile, Gregson didn't know how to drive--and so far as his co-stars were concerned, he was a very slow learner.”

British postcard in the Film Star Autograph Portrait series by Celebrity Autographs, London, no. 52. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation.

British postcard in the Greetings series. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation.

One of the most popular local stars at the box office

Between 1948 and 1971, John Gregson appeared in 40 films. He played in the Ealing comedies Whisky Galore!/Tight Little Island (Alexander Mackendrick, 1949) starring Basil Radford, The Lavender Hill Mob (Charles Crichton, 1951) with Alex Guinness and Stanley Holloway, and The Titfield Thunderbolt (Charles Crichton, 1953), about a group of villagers trying to keep their branch line operating after British Railways decided to close it.

For several years British exhibitors listed Gregson as one of the most popular local stars at the box office. He had a role in Walt Disney’s live action adventure film Treasure Island (Byron Haskin, 1950) and was featured in The Treasure of Monte Cristo (Monty Berman, 1961) starring Rory Calhoun.

Gregson became somewhat typecast in traditional 'stiff upper lip' military roles. His best known drama films include the war films The Battle of the River Plate/Pursuit of the Graf Spee (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1956), Angels One Five (George More O'Ferrall, 1952) and Above Us the Waves (Ralph Thomas, 1955) with John Mills.

In the 1960s, film opportunities began to diminish, and he turned more and more towards television. He starred as Commander George Gideon in the 26 episodes of the series Gideon's Way/Gideon C.I.D. (1965-1966). He also appeared in The Saint (1966) with Roger Moore, and a popular comedy adventure series with Shirley MacLaine, Shirley's World (1971-1972).

He alternated television work with acting on stage, as well as doing voice-overs and appearing in commercials for Hamlet cigars. His final film roles were in the mystery The Night of the Generals (Anatalole Litvak, 1967) starring Peter O’Toole, and the thriller Fright (Peter Collinson, 1971) with Honor Blackman and Susan George.

In 1975, John Gregson died from a heart attack near Porlock Weir, Somerset, aged 55, whilst on holiday walking a trail. He was married till his death to Thea Gregory, with whom he had six children.

British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. D. 198. Photo: Associated British Pathé.

Scene from Genevieve (1953). Source: webothlovesoup (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), I.S.Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

A pre-announcement. From 3 till 10 October, the 34th edition of the silent film festival Le Giornate del Cinema Muto will take place in Pordenone, Italy. We will be there. One of the sections is about the forzuti, the strong men of the silent Italian cinema, like Luciano Albertini. Although this section will focus on the films Albertini made in Germany, today EFSP has a film special about one of Albertini's earlier Italian films, the four part serial Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921), produced by his own production company, Albertini Film.

Italian postcard. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Imperia,the most beautiful Roman courtesan, will select the bandit Scalabrino for one night of love, causing the hate and jealousy of Sandrigo.

Falsely accused

The plot of Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921) reminds of Alexandre Dumas' novel The Count of Monte Christo.

Luciano Albertini plays Rolando Candiano, son of the Doge of Venice. Rolando is falsely accused of murder by his enemies.

One enemy, the Inquisitor Foscari (Armand Pouget) plots to become Doge himself, another (Altieri - Luigi Stinchi ) wants to steal the daughter of Dandolo (Bonaventura Ibanez), the beautiful Leonora (Carolina White), Rolando's fiancee, a third (Imperia - Antonietta Calderari) is a courtesan rejected by Rolando, and the fourth is Bembo (Agostino Borgato).

Imperia has killed a suitor, the men use her rejection by Rolando to push her to revenge herself and accuse Rolando. On the day of his marriage Rolando is arrested, trialled and passes the Bridge of Sighs before entering lifetime imprisonment.

His father is dethroned as Doge, blinded and reduced to a wandering beggar. His mother is mocked by the mob but saved by the courageous and good-hearted bandit Scalabrino (Onorato Garaveo), with whom Imperia had one night of love, resulting in her daughter Bianca.

There is also Sandrigo who hates Scalabrino who humiliated him in the past. Years after, Rolando manages to escape with the help of Scalabrino and take revenge.

The false Doge Foscari is dethroned but escapes the same fate of Doge Candiano, being blinded, as Candiano prevents the horrific act to happen twice. Foscari goes mad instead.

Italian postcard. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: The wrath of the torturer will fall upon the generous Rolando, who is innocently accused of having killed Giovanni Davila, who actually has been struck by Imperia's dagger (Imperia while signing the accusation).

Luciano Albertini in Il ponte dei sospiri

Italian postcard. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Publicity still of Luciano Albertini as Rolando Candiano in Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). From left to right Agostino Borgato (Bembo), Luigi Stinchi (Altieri), sig. Pieri (the Doge Candiano), an unknown actor as a soldier, Armand Pouget (the Inquisitor Foscari), Luciano Albertini (Rolando Candiano), Carolina White (Leonora) and Bonaventura Ibanez (her father Dandolo). Caption: On the auspicious eve of the wedding Rolando is arrested, and not the white bridal room and the kiss of his most beautiful bride await him but the Bridge of Sighs.

Italian postcard. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: The young and very brave son of Doge Candiano, Rolando (Luciano Albertini), is pushed into prison by halberds.

Italian postcard. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Misfortune is lurking for Dandolo (Bonaventura Ibanez) (Altieri follows Dandolo to challenge him to death).

Italian postcard. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Inana, prays for the soul of the unfortunate Dogaressa, Rolando's mother - saved from the mad ire of the populace by the bandit Scalabrino.

Acrobatic and daredevil acting

Muscular Italian actor Luciano Albertini (1882-1945) is best remembered for his acrobatic and daredevil acting in Italian and German silent cinema.

The serial Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921) was his last and most prestigious film in Italy, before pursing a very successful career in Germany with his own company Albertini Film, with Phoebus and finally with Aafa Film.

In 2002 the Roman Cineteca Nazionale restored the film in colour, in collaboration with Cineteca Italiana of Milan, Museo Nazionale del Cinema of Turin and Cinémathéque Suisse of Lausanne.

The restored film was presented at the 2004 Giornate del Cinema Muto. Film scholar Vittorio Martinelli considered it his best film.

Italian postcard. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Bembo tries to cheat Imperia and take her daughter from her, in whom he is madly in love with, but Rolando (Luciano Albertini) watches over her and will prevent the deceit which might strike the very sweet Bianca.

Italian postcard. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Imperia smiles perfidiously with her mysterious, deep eyes, satisfied about her atrocious revenge, unsuspecting that her penalty is awaiting her.

Opera Singer

One of the leading ladies of Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921) is the American opera singer Carolina White.

White was born in 1885 in Grafton, Mass., and had a short-lived film career. She played opposite the famous opera singer Enrico Caruso in My Cousin (Edward José, 1918).

In 1921 she played the love interest of Luciano Albertini in Il ponte dei sospiri (Domenico Gaido, 1921) which was partly shot on location in Venice.

After that Carolina White didn't act in film anymore. She died in Rome in 1961.

Italian postcard. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Altieri longs for the moment in which he can finally kiss his wife on her lips. But Leonora heroically remains faithful to her old and unforgotten love. Only Rolando may enjoy the divine kiss from her lips.

Italian postcard. Photo: Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Leonora chases her husband, about whom she has discovered the infamy and complicity with Imperia to Rolando's detriment.

Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano, no. 56. Photo: La Fotominio. Carolina White in Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921).

Sources: E Muto Fu (Italian), sempre in penombra (Italian) and IMDb.

Silky, English actress Joan Greenwood (1921-1987) made several memorable appearances in classic film comedies of the 1940s and 1950s. Her husky, sultry voice was her trademark, and in 1995 she was ranked number 63 on Empire magazine's list of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history.

British postcard by Astra. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation.

British autograph card.

British postcard.

A Special Blend of the Aristocratic and the Sultry

Joan Greenwood was born in Chelsea in 1921 as the daughter of renowned British artist Sydney Earnshaw Greenwood.

She was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made her stage debut at age 18. Three years later she was cast by Leslie Howard opposite himself in the wartime morale-booster The Gentle Sex (Leslie Howard, 1942). On the stage she appeared with Donald Wolfit's theatre company in the years following World War II.

The gifted Greenwood possessed a special blend of the aristocratic and the sultry which made her extremely useful for a time in British film. Between 1948 and 1958 she made several memorable screen appearances, most notably as Sibella, the bewitching, blackmailing mistress of anti-hero Dennis Price in the black comedy Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949), and as the Honourable Gwendolen Fairfax in the film adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (Anthony Asquith, 1952).

She also appeared in two Ealing comedies, Whisky Galore! (Alexander Mackendrick, 1949) and as the mercenary lady friend of inventor Alec Guinness in The Man in the White Suit (Alexander Mackendrick, 1952).

In 1954, she starred in her first Broadway production, The Confidential Clerk. Other films in which she appeared include Monsieur Ripois (René Clément, 1954) starring Gérard Philipe, Father Brown (Robert Hamer, 1954) opposite Alec Guinness, the Gothic Swashbuckler Moonfleet (Fritz Lang, 1955) with Stewart Granger, and Stage Struck (Sidney Lumet, 1958) starring Henry Fonda.

Vintage postcard. Photo: Eagle Lion.

Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht.

German postcard by Film-Postkartenverlag Hbg., Bergedorf, no. 159. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation.

German collectors card, no. 4408. Photo: Fox Film.

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 1068, 1959. Photo: J. Arthur Rank. Publicity still for The Importance of Being Earnest (Anthony Asquith, 1952).

More Eccentric Than Sexy

From the 1960s on Joan Greenwood specialized in highly enjoyable character roles, still classy and authoritative but more eccentric than sexy. Her films included the Jules Verne based Mysterious Island (Cy Endfield, 1961), and Tom Jones (Tony Richardson, 1963), for which she was nominated for a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actress.

In 1960, Greenwood appeared as the title character in a stage production of Henrik Ibsen's Hedda Gabler at The Oxford Playhouse. Starring opposite her as Brack was the actor André Morell. They fell in love and flew in secret to Jamaica, where they were married, remaining together until his death in 1978.

On TV she appeared as Lady Carlton, a quirky romance novelist and landlady to the main characters in the British sitcom Girls On Top (1985) with Dawn French and Jennifer Saunders.

In 1987 Joan Greenwood died of a heart attack in London five days prior to her 66th birthday. Her last film was the fine Charles Dickens adaptation Little Dorrit (Christine Edzard, 1988), made the year of her death. She and André Morell had one child, actor Jason Morell.

Trailer Kind Hearts and Coronets (1949). Source: Hermthy (YouTube).

Trailer The Importance of Being Earnest (1952). Source: MOVIECLIPS Classic Trailers (YouTube).

Trailer of Mysterious Island (1961). Source: Plamen Plamenov (YouTube).

Trailer of Tom Jones (1963). Source: R6dw6C (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia, TCM Movie Database, and IMDb.

German actress Elfriede Heisler (1885-1919) was a star of the early silent film era. She appeared in 11 German and Austrian films and her career was promising, but at 33, she committed suicide.

Elfriede Heisler in Ich hab dich geliebt bis in den Tod (1918)

German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K.2491. Photo: Jupiter-Film Ges. Photo: publicity still for Ich habe dich geliebt bis in den Tod//I have loved you to death (1918).

The wandering Jew

Elfriede Heisler was born Elfriede Quabius in 1885 in Breslau, Germany (according to some sources, she was born in 1889).

She started her acting career in the theatre. Heisler worked in the provinces and later at the Friedrich-Wilhelmstädtischen Schauspielhaus in Berlin. In 1910 she got an engagement at the Königliche Berliner Schauspielhaus, where she played leading roles in light entertainment plays.

In 1912, she made her camera debut and played under the direction of Emil Albes in short silent films like Der Dritte/The Third (Emil Albes, 1912) with Hans Mierendorf, and Fürstenliebe/Royal Love (Emil Albes, 1912) starring Hugo Flink.

IMDb only mentions three of her later films: the patriotic drama Schwert und Herd/Sword and Hearth (Georg Victor Mendel, 1916) starring Carl de Vogt, Die lachende Maske/The Laughing Mask (Willy Zeyn, 1918) with Rosa Valetti, and the biblical epic Das Buch Esther/The Book of Esther (Uwe Jens Krafft, Ernst Reicher, 1919). Co-director Ernst Reicher played Ahasver or the wandering Jew, and Stella Harf played Queen Esther.

Elfriede Heisler in Die Liebe fand den Rechten Weg (1918)

German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K.2489. Photo: Jupiter-Film Ges. Photo: publicity still for Die Liebe fand den rechten Weg/Love was on the right path (N.N., 1918).

Suicide

At Steffi-Line, Stephanie D’heil mentions also the film Seltsame Seelen/Strange Souls (Emil Albes, Margot Meyer, 1918), and Thomas Staedeli at Cyranos adds Die Tarantella/The Tarantella (N.N., 1912) with Hugo Flink and Ludwig Trautmann, and Frauchen in Nöten/Owner in trouble (William Karfiol, 1918) with Kurt Vespermann.

In Austria she played for Jupiter Film in Ich habe Dich geliebt bis in den Tod/I have loved you to death (1918), Das Glück im Rinnstein/The happiness in the gutter (1918), and Die Liebe fand den rechten Weg/Love was on the right path (1918), with Erwin Fichtner.

When her final film, Das Buch Esther/The Book of Esther, was first shown in the cinemas in 1919, the star of the film was no longer alive.

Elfriede Heisler had died in 1919 in the aftermath of a suicide attempt with Veronal (barbital). Reportedly, the motive for the suicide attempt was an unhappy love affair. She was only 33.

German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K.2492. Photo: Jupiter-Film Ges. Photo: publicity still for Ich habe dich geliebt bis in den Tod/I have loved you to death (N.N., 1918). Her co-star in this film was Erwin Fichtner.

German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K.2493. Photo: Jupiter-Film Ges. Photo: publicity still for Ich habe dich geliebt bis in den Tod//I have loved you to death (N.N., 1918).

Sources: Stephanie D’heil (Steffi-Line - German), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), The German Early Cinema Database, Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.

Gusta Chrispijn-Mulder (1876-1955) was a Dutch stage and screen actress. She played character parts in many Dutch film comedies of the 1930s. Because of her work during the Second World War, she was sentenced in 1945 to be expelled from the stage for five years.

Dutch postcard by Ed. Weenenk & Snel, The Hague.

Frou-frou

Gusta Chrispijn-Mulder was born Augusta Geertruida Maria Mulder in Amsterdam in 1876. Her parents were Herman Mulder and Augusta Maria Hilverdink.

As ‘Guusje Mulder’ she debuted in 1893 at the Amsterdam Salon des Variétés under direction of M. Kreukniet and H. Poolman. She then acted with the Van Lier Brothers in plays such as Victorien Sardou’s Frou-frou.

Subsequently she was engaged for 10 years by the Nederlandsch Toneel. In 1911 she went to the Toneelvereniging and performed in the major Dutch plays Vorstenschool (Kings School) by Multatuli and Allerzielen (All Souls) by Herman Heijermans.

Chrispijn-Mulder also worked at the Rotterdams Toneel. In 1917 she moved to the Hofstad Toneel in The Hague, in 1924 at the Odeon-Theatre in the same city.

Louis Chrispijn junior. Dutch postcard by Weenenk & Snel, Den Haag. Photo: Willem Coret.

Famous for her clear declamation

In 1902 Gusta Chrispijn was married to actor-director Louis Chrispijn junior (1876-1931) and was the mother of actress Lous (Louise) Chrispijn (1898-1940). Apparently their daughter was born before they were married.

While her husband had been active as director and actor in silent cinema in the 1910s, Gusta didn’t act in silent films. When sound cinema set in in the Netherlands, though, Gusta Chrispijn-Mulder, who was famous for her clear declamation, often played supporting parts.

She was often casted as negative characters, such as the acrimonious Arabella who is taught a lesson in the Dutch comedy De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (Jaap Speyer, 1935), starring Sylvain Poons as Arabella’s husband Josef.

Other parts followed in the comedies Het meisje met den blauwen hoed/The Girl with the Blue Hat (Rudolf Meinert 1934), starring Truus van Aalten and Roland Varno, Malle gevallen/Silly Situations (Jaap Speyer, 1934), starring Louis Borel, Roland Varno and Jopie Koopman, De vier Mullers/The four Mullers (Rudolf Meinert, 1934), starring Johan Heesters, and Amsterdam bij nacht/Amsterdam by Night (Alex Benno, 1936), starring Louis de Bree and Annie van Duyn.

In 1937-1938 she did a 10-months stage tour with the company of Cor Ruys through the former Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia).

Her last film part was as director of the orphanage in Vadertje Langbeen/Daddy Longlegs (Friedrich Zelnik, 1938), based on Jean Webster’s novella Daddy-Long-Legs and its subsequent play, and starring Lily Bouwmeester as the girl who falls in love with her benefactor (Paul Storm).

Mary Smithuysen, Gusta Chrispijn-Mulder, Sylvain Poons, De familie van mijn vrouw

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Film. Publicity still for De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (Jaap Speyer, 1935) with Mary Smithuysen and Sylvain Poons.

Loesje Bouwmeester in De familie van mijn vrouw

Expelled from the stage for five years

During the Second World War Gusta Chrispijn-Mulder, who had already lost her husband in 1931 also lost her daughter, who died at the age of 42 in July 1940.

During the war Gusta didn’t act in films, though some of her 1930s films were still shown in cinemas. There had been a plan in late 1940 to act in short films by director Gerard Rutten, but this project never materialised.

In addition to some radio work and declamation lessons, she mainly acted on stage at the theatre companies De Voortrekkers, Noordhollands Toneel and De Komedianten. At the Noordhollands Toneel she was one of the best paid actresses, earning 5000 guilders per year, and in plays directed by Jan de Vos she had leads, though being in her sixties already.

Because of this she was sentenced in 1945 to be expelled from the stage for five years, but in 1947 this was withdrawn.

Gusta Chrispijn-Mulder died at age 78 in Amsterdam in 1955. She was buried on the Amsterdam cemetery Zorgvlied.

Roland Varno and Truus van Aalten a.o. in Het meisje met den blauwen hoed (1934)

Dutch postcard by M. B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Filma. Publicity still for Het Meisje met de Blauwe Hoed/The Girl with the Blue Hat (Rudolf Meinert, 1934) with a.o. Roland Varno and Truus van Aalten.

Clip from De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (Jaap Speyer, 1935). Source: Eye (YouTube).

Clip from Amsterdam bij nacht/Amsterdam by Night (Alex Benno, 1936). Source: Eye (YouTube).

Sources: Eyefilm, Delpher and IMDb.

Sessue Hayakawa (1889–1973) was a Japanese actor who starred in more than 80 American, Japanese, French, German, and British films. He was the first Asian actor to find stardom first in Hollywood and later in Europe. His 'broodingly handsome' good looks and typecasting as a sinister villain with sexual dominance made him a heartthrob among female audiences in the 1910s and early 1920s. Nowadays he is best remembered for his Oscar-nominated turn as Japanese POW camp commander Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).

British Real Photograph postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 224.

French card, no. 638.

The Cheat

Sessue Hayakawa (早川雪洲) was born Kintaro Hayakawa in the village of Nanaura, now part of the city of Minamibosō in Japan in 1889. His father was the provincial governor and his mother a member of an aristocratic family of the 'samurai' class. The young Hayakawa wanted to become a career officer in the Japanese navy, but he was turned down due to problems with his hearing.

He studied political economics at the University of Chicago to fulfil his family's wish that he become a banker. After his second year of studies at the University of Chicago, Hayakawa decided to quit school and return to Japan. He travelled to Los Angeles and during his stay, he discovered the Japanese Theatre in Little Tokyo and became fascinated with acting and performing plays. It was around this time that he assumed the name Sessue Hayakawa.

One of the productions in which Hayakawa performed was called The Typhoon. Legendary producer-director Thomas Ince saw the production and offered to turn it into a silent movie with the original cast. The Typhoon (Reginald Barker, 1914) became an instant hit and was followed by two additional pictures produced by Ince, The Wrath of the Gods (Reginald Barker, 1914) co-starring his new wife, actress Tsuru Aoki, and The Sacrifice (?, 1914). With Hayakawa's rising stardom, Jesse L. Lasky offered Hayakawa a contract at Famous Players-Lasky (now Paramount Pictures).

Hayakawa's second film for Famous Players-Lasky, The Cheat (Cecil B. DeMille, 1915) with Fannie Ward, was a huge success. Again, he distinguished himself by giving a naturalistic performance. Following The Cheat, Hayakawa became a top leading man for romantic dramas in the 1910s and early 1920s.

His 'broodingly handsome' good looks and typecasting as a sinister villain with sexual dominance made him a heartthrob among American women, and the first male sex symbol of Hollywood, several years before Rudolph Valentino. He became one of the highest paid stars of his time, earning $5,000 per week in 1915, and $2 million per year through his own production company, Haworth Pictures, during the 1920s.

Wikipedia: "During the height of his popularity, critics hailed Hayakawa's Zen-influenced acting style. Hayakawa sought to bring muga, or the 'absence of doing,' to his performances, in direct contrast to the then-popular studied poses and broad gestures. He was one of the first stars to do so, Mary Pickford being another."

Hayakawa and wife Tsuru Aoki lived in a landmark home, built in the style of a French castle. He drove a gold plated Pierce-Arrow and entertained lavishly in his 'Castle' which was known as the scene of some of Hollywood's wildest parties. But in 1923, his waning popularity and a bad business deal forced Hayakawa to leave Hollywood.

British postcard in the Pictures Portrait Gallery by Pictures Ltd, London, no. 45.

British postcard. Photo: Anderson / Walker.

French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, no. 16.

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

Yoshiwara

The next 15 years Sessue Hayakawa performed in New York, in Europe and in Japan. In France, he starred in La bataille/The Battle (Sessue Hayakawa, Édouard-Émile Violet, 1923), a popular melodrama spiced with martial arts. He also appeared in the French crime drama J'ai tué!/I Have Killed (Roger Lion, 1924) with Huguette Duflos.

In the UK, he made Sen Yan's Devotion (A.E. Coleby, 1924) and The Great Prince Shan (A.E. Coleby, 1924) with Ivy Duke. In 1925, he wrote a novel, The Bandit Prince, and adapted it into a short play. In 1930, he performed in Samurai, a one-act play written especially for him, for Great Britain's King George V and Queen Mary,

In 1931 Hayakawa returned to Hollywood to make his talking-picture debut playing Fu Manchu in Daughter of the Dragon (Lloyd Corrigan 1931), featuring Anna May Wong. Sound revealed that he had a heavy accent, and his acting got poor reviews.

He returned to Japan where he made a series of films before once again going to France. There he made the geisha melodrama Yoshiwara (Max Ophüls, 1937) with Pierre Richard-Willm. He also appeared in a French remake of The Cheat called Forfaiture (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937), playing the same role that over 20 year earlier had made him one of the biggest stars in the world.

Sessue Hayakawa played a Samurai in the German-Japanese co-production Atarashiki tsuchi/The New Earth (1937), which was co-directed by Arnold Fanck and Mansaku Itami.

Later, he found himself trapped and separated from his family, when the Germans occupied France in 1940. Hayakawa made few films during these years, but supported himself by selling watercolours. He joined the French Resistance and helped Allied flyers during the war.

Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa in Daughter of the Dragon (1931)

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6403/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for Daughter of the Dragon (Lloyd Corrigan, 1931) with Anna May Wong.

French postcard by Edit. Chantal, no. 518. Photo: U.F.S.C.

French card, no. 37. Photo: Discina.

French postcard. Photo: Studio Carlet ainé, no. 33.

The Bridge on the River Kwai

After the war, Sessue Hayakawa's friendships with American actors led him to return to Hollywood. In 1949, Humphrey Bogart's production company located Hayakawa and offered him a role in Tokyo Joe (Stuart Heisler, 1949). Before issuing a work permit, the American Consulate investigated Hayakawa's activities during the war and found that he had in no way contributed to the German war effort.

Hayakawa followed Tokyo Joe with Three Came Home (Jean Negulesco, 1950), in which he played real-life POW camp commander Lieutenant-Colonel Suga, opposite Claudette Colbert. He had re-established himself as a character actor.

His on-screen roles of the 1950s can best be described as the honourable villain, a figure exemplified by his portrayal of Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai (David Lean, 1957). The film won the 1957 Academy Award for Best Picture and Hayakawa received a nomination for Best Supporting Actor, losing to Red Buttons. He was also nominated for a Golden Globe for the role that he called the highlight of his career.

After that film, Hayakawa largely retired from acting. Throughout the rest of his life he performed on a handful of television shows and a few films. He played the pirate leader in Disney's Swiss Family Robinson (Ken Annakin, 1960) and his final film appearance was in the Japanese film Junjô nijûsô (1967).

Sessue Hayakawa retired from film in 1966. After his wife's death he returned to Japan where he became a Zen master and a drama coach. He authored his autobiography, Zen Showed Me the Way, and appeared on the NBC interview program Here's Hollywood. Hayakawa died in Tokyo in 1973, from a cerebral thrombosis, complicated by pneumonia.

Scene from The Cheat (1915). Source: Kopernikanische Wende (YouTube).

Trailer The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Source: SuperUnknown (YouTube).

Source: Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Last Tuesday, 23 June 2015, Turkish-French actress and singer Magali Noël has died. She acted in French and Italian films between 1951 and 2002. The sexy actress was an object of desire in three masterpieces of Federico Fellini. As a singer she had one of the first French Rock & Roll hits, which was forbidden for a long time because of its risqué lyrics. Magali Noël was 83.

French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 866. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 414. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 958, offered by Les carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 1010. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Hurt me Johnny

Magali Noël was born Magali Noëlle Guiffray in Izmir, Turkey in 1932. At the age of seven, she emigrated with her family from Turkey to France in 1939.

She studied singing, music and dance, and at age 16 she made her first appearance as a cabaret singer and then occurred in revues. She also studied drama with Catherine Fontenay and then appeared in her first stage plays. In 1951 her film career began with parts in the comedies Demain nous divorçons/Tomorrow we divorce (Louis Cuny, 1951) with Sophie Desmarets, and Seul dans Paris/Alone in Paris (Hervé Bromberger, 1951) as the young wife of Bourvil.

She was noticed for the first time when she appeared in the Film Noir Du rififi chez les hommes/Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955) starring Jean Servais. James Travers at Films de France: “As the film’s stunning femme fatale, the actress Magali Noël had her big break, which would lead her to be cast by Federico Fellini in La Dolce Vita (1960) and two subsequent films. It is Noël who sings the film’s notorious (and often unfairly reviled) musical number, which explains what the slang word Rififi means - a violent confrontation between rival gangs.”

She showed that she was a luscious actress with a fiery temperament in films like Razzia sur la chnouf/Razzia (Henri Decoin, 1955) with Jean Gabin, Les Grandes Manœuvres/The Grand Maneuver (René Clair, 1955) with Gérard Philippe, and Elena et les homes/Paris Does Strange Things (Jean Renoir, 1956) featuring Ingrid Bergman.

In 1956, her recording career began in France, and her most famous song was Fais-moi mal, Johnny (Hurt me Johnny), written by Boris Vian. This song was one of the first Rock & Roll songs with French lyrics. It was forbidden on the radio for a long time due to its risqué lyrics describing – with a great sense of humour and derision – a sadomasochistic episode.

Belgian-Dutch postcard by D.R.C., no. 1393. Licency holder for Ufa. Photo: Cinephonie / Union Film.

Italian postcard by Foto S.P.E.S., Roma, no. 648. Photo: E.R.A. Cinematografica. Publicity still for E arrivata la parigina/The Parisienne has arrived (Camillo Mastrocinque, 1958).

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. FK 3336. Photo: Eberhardt Schmidt / Ufa.

A symbol of Fellini's sexual fantasies

Magali Noël’s film career took a new turn when she appeared as Fanny in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) starring Marcello Mastroianni. She later was again a symbol of sexual fantasies as Fortunata in Satyricon (1969) and especially in Amarcord (1973).

In Amarcord, Noël played a sexy provincial hairdresser with the evocative nickname Gradisca (Taste it). Robert Firsching at AllMovie: “Federico Fellini's warmly nostalgic memory piece examines daily life in the Italian village of Rimini during the reign of Mussolini, and won the 1974 Academy Award as Best Foreign Film. The film's greatest asset is its ability to be sweet without being cloying, due in great part to Danilo Donati's surrealistic art direction and to the frequently bawdy injections of sex and politics by screenwriters Fellini and Tonino Guerra. Fellini clearly has deep affection for the people of this seaside village, warts and all, and communicates it through episodic visual anecdotes which are seen as if through the mists of a favourite dream”.

Noël also had a key role in another masterpiece, Costa Gravas’ political thriller Z (1968), which won the Palme d’Or in Cannes, Dan Pavlides at AllMovie: “Z won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film of 1969, was 14th in terms of box-office success, and hit an international nerve in the age of social unrest, government cover-up, and political assassinations. All those involved worked on the film for a reduced rate with an option for royalties based on earnings at the theater window. The letter Z in the Greek alphabet means ‘he is alive’.”

Belgian postcard by D.R.C. Holland, no. 3336. Photo: Eberhardt Schmidt / Ufa.

French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 897. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris. Offered by Les Carbones Korès, no. 1115. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Costume of Magali Noël (Gradisca) in Amarcord (Federico Fellini 1973) at a costume exhibition in Cinecittà, Roma. Photo: Bob, Truus & Jan Too!@Flickr.

Successful return to the music-hall

Despite Magali Noël's work for Fellini and Costa-Gravas, producers offered her less work. So she returned successfully to the music-hall. Later a new generation of directors started to offer her roles. Among her later films are Les Rendez-vous d’Anna/Anna's Meetings (Chantal Akerman, 1978), Le chemin perdu/The lost way (Patricia Moraz, 1980) with Charles Vanel, and La Mort de Mario Ricci/The Death of Mario Ricci (Claude Goretta, 1982) featuring Gian Maria Volonté.

From 1980 on, her career extended to television films. Among her later feature films are La Fidélité/Fidelity (Andrzej Zulawski, 2000) as the mother of Sophie Marceau, and the thriller The Truth About Charlie (Jonathan Demme, 2002) with Mark Wahlberg. Magali Noël’s last film appearance was in Rien que du bonheur (Denis Parent, 2003).

Magali Noël had a daughter with actor Jean-Pierre Bernard, and two sons, who she had adopted when she remarried. She died in the retirement home in Chateauneuf-Grasse where she lived.

Magali Noël and Boris Vian sing Fais moi mal Johnny. Source: marco17220 (YouTube).

Magali Noël sings Le Rififi in Du rififi chez les hommes/Rififi (1955). Source: Dive Italiane (YouTube).

Italian trailer for Totò e Cleopatra (1963). Source: Film&Clips (YouTube).

Trailer Amarcord (1973). Source: Danios12345 (YouTube).

Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Robert Firsching (AllMovie), Dan Pavlides (AllMovie), Le Monde (French), Magali Noël.ch (French in archive), Wikipedia and IMDb.

German actor and writer Hardy Krüger (1928) was a tall, blond, blue-eyed heartthrob of the European cinema in the 1950s. He played friendly soldiers and adventurers in numerous German, British and French films and also in some Hollywood classics. Although he often was typecasted as the Aryan Nazi, he hated wearing the brown uniform.

German postcard by Ufa Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 1182. Photo: Lilo / NDF Film / Schorcht Film. Publicity still for Muss man sich gleich scheiden lassen?/Does one have to get divorced right away? (Hans Schweikart, 1953).

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf., no. 326. Photo: Constantin-Filmverleih GmbH.

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf., no. 2727. Photo: Rank / Seeliger. Still for The One That Got Away (Roy Ward Baker, 1957).

German postcard, no. 1251. Photo: Wesel / Berolina Film / Deutsche Film Hansa. Publicity still for Banktresor 713/Bank Vault 713 (Werner Klingler, 1957).

British postcard by East-West Publishers.

Young Eagle

Franz Eberhard August Krüger was born in 1928 in Berlin. He was the son of engineer Max Krüger.

From 1941 on Hardy attended the Adolf-Hitler-Schule at Burg Sonthofen, an elite Nazi boarding school. Here the blonde and handsome 15 year old was cast for the film Junge Adler/Young Eagles (Alfred Weidenmann, 1944) starring Willy Fritsch. This propagandafilm for the Wehrmacht was filmed in the huge Ufa studio in Babelsberg.

After his successful performance as the apprentice Bäumchen, director Wolfgang Liebeneiner tried to persuade him to continue his film career. In March 1945 the young Krüger was drafted into the SS Division 'Nibelungen', where he was drawn into heavy fighting before being captured by US forces in Tirol.

After his release he began to write but did not publish. Instead he started to perform in German theatres.

In 1949 he made his first post-war film, the comedy Diese Nacht vergess Ich nie/I'll Never Forget That Night (Johannes Meyer, 1949), with Gustav Fröhlichand Winnie Markus. In the following years his film career took off.

German postcard by Ufa Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 1659. Photo: Marszalek / Capitol Film / Prisma.

German postcard by Ufa Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3057. Photo: Dührkoop / Ufa.

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

German postcard by Ufa Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3622. Photo: Wesel.

German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4615. Photo: Ufa.

Effortlessly Natural Attitude

Hardy Krüger became known as a handsome young man with an effortlessly natural attitude in such films as Illusion in Moll/Illusion in a Minor Key (Rudolf Jugert, 1952) starring Hildegard Knef, the drama Solange Du da bist/As Long as You're Near Me (Harald Braun, 1953) with O.W. Fischer, and the comedy Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach/The Girl on the Roof (Otto Preminger, 1953) with Johannes Heesters.

The latter was the German version of the Hollywood production The Moon is Blue (Otto Preminger, 1953) starring William Holden and Maggie McNamara. Hardy Krüger and co-star Johanna Matz also appeared uncredited as tourists at the Empire State Building sequence in the American version.

The quality of some of his next films did not match his talents. And although the jungle fantasy Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald/Liane, Jungle Goddess (Eduard von Borsody, 1956) with a briefly topless Marion Michael was one of the biggest German box office hits of the 1950s, he declined to star in further Liane films for 'artistic reasons'.

German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 403. Photo: Witt / Schorchtfilm. Publicity still for Ich heisse Niki/My Name is Nicky (Rudolf Jugert, 1952).

Maria Schell and Hardy Krüger in So lange Du da bist (1953)

East-German postcard by Reichenbach, no. 691/56. Photo: NDF / Schorchtfilm. Publicity still for So lange Du da bist/As Long as You're Near Me (Harald Braun, 1953) with Maria Schell.

Tilda Thamar and Hardy Krüger in Muss man sich gleich scheiden lassen? (1953)

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, no. 912. Photo: NDF / Schorchtfilm. Publicity still for Muss man sich gleich scheiden lassen?/Does one have to get divorced right away? (Hans Schweikart, 1953) with Tilda Thamar.

German postcard by Ufa Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3743. Photo: Wesel / Berolina Film / Deutsche Film Hansa. Publicity still for Banktresor 713/Bank Vault 713 (Werner Klingler, 1957)

Helga Martin and Hardy Krüger in Banktresor 713 (1957)

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 3747. Photo: Wesel / Berolina Film / Deutsche Film Hansa. Publicity still for Banktresor 713/Bank Vault 713 (Werner Klingler, 1957) with Helga Martin.

Soldiers and adventurers

Hardy Krüger is fluent in English, French and German, and found himself in demand by British, French, American and German producers.

J. Arthur Rank cast him in three British pictures practically filmed back-to-back. The first one was The One That Got Away (Roy Ward Baker, 1957), the story of the positive and unpolitical lieutenant Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war to successfully escape from numerous British POW camps during the Second World War and return to Germany.

The second was the comedy Bachelor of Hearts (Wolf Rilla, 1958), and the third the thriller Blind Date (Joseph Losey, 1959) with Stanley Bakerand Micheline Presle. In reviews Hardy, was described as 'ruggedly handsome' and a 'blond heartthrob'.

Despite anti-German sentiment still prevailing in postwar Europe, he became an international favorite. He appeared in the German Shakespeare update Der Rest ist Schweigen/The Rest Is Silence (Helmut Käutner, 1959), and in the French WW II adventure Un taxi pour Tobrouk/Taxi for Tobruk (Denys de La Patellière, 1960).

A highlight was the French drama Les dimanches de Ville d'Avray/Sundays and Cybele (Serge Bourguignon, 1962). This hauntingly beautiful film about a platonic relationship between a former bomber pilot with a war trauma and amnesia, and a 12-year-old orphan girl (Patricia Gozzi), was awarded with the 1962 Best Foreign Film Academy Award. It paved Krüger's way to Hollywood.

German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, no. 2134. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Film. Publicity still for The One That Got Away (Roy Ward Baker, 1957).

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, no. 2799. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Film. Publicity still for The One That Got Away (Roy Ward Baker, 1957).

Dutch postcard by NV v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 759. Photo: Rank Film for The One That Got Away (1957).

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf., no. 783. Photo: Rank. Still for Bachelor of Hearts (Wolf Rilla, 1958).

German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4334. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Film. Publicity still for Bachelor of Hearts (Wolf Rilla, 1958).

Hollywood

In the USA, Hardy Krüger started in the African adventure Hatari! (Howard Hawks, 1962), at the side of John Wayne and Elsa Martinelli.

His later films included Hollywood productions like the original version of The Flight of the Phoenix (Robert Aldrich, 1965) about the survivors of a plane crash in the middle of the Sahara desert, and the war comedy-drama The Secret of Santa Vittoria (Stanley Kramer, 1969) with Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani.

In the star studded war epic A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977), he portrayed a Nazi General. Hardy Krüger related during the shooting how he hated to wear a Nazi uniform. Between takes he wore a topcoat over his SS uniform so as "not to remind myself of my childhood in Germany during WW II." Although he often played German soldiers, his characters were mostly positive, he personified the 'good German'.

Krüger also appeared in many European productions like Le Chant du monde/Song of the World (Marcel Camus, 1965) with Catherine Deneuve, the controversial box office hit La Monaca di Monza/The Nun of Monza (Eriprando Visconti, 1969) about a 17th-century Italian nun's long repressed sexual passion, the Italian-Russian coproduction Krasnaya palatka/The Red Tent (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1969) starring Sean Connery, and the murder mystery À chacun son enfer/To Each His Hell (André Cayatte, 1977) with Annie Girardot.

During that period, he made his sole appearance in a film of the New German Cinema in Peter Schamoni's comedy-western Potato Fritz/Montana Trap (Peter Schamoni, 1976).

Most memorable is his role as the Prussian Captain Potzdorf in the Oscar winner Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975) featuring Ryan O'Neal. His last film appearance was in the Swedish-British thriller Slagskämpen/The Inside Man(Tom Clegg, 1984) starring Dennis Hopper .

Belgian card by Cox, no. 35.

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb. Starfoto, no. 1467. Photo: Hardy Krüger in the German-British film Alles spricht gegen van Rooyen/Blind Date (Joseph Losey, 1958-59).

Belgian collector's card, no. 93.

German collector's card by Luxor.

German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg, no. 4552. Photo: Gloria Film. Publicity still for Los pianos mecánicos/The Uninhibited (Juan Antonio Bardem, 1965).

Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor, no. 156.

A globe-trotter for TV

In the 1970s he had taken up writing fiction and non-fiction, and he started a new career as a globe trotter for TV. In 1983, after several novels, story collections, and a children's book he published the novel Junge Unrast, an only slighty disguised autobiographic account of his life.

On television, he played the role of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the popular American TV series War and Remembrance (Dan Curtis, 1989) starring Robert Mitchum. In 2011 appeared as the pater familias in the TV film Die Familie/The Family (Carlo Rola, 2011) with Gila von Weitershausen as his wife.

Hardy Krüger married three times. His marriages with actress Renate Densow and Italian painter Francesca Marazzi ended in a divorce. He married his current wife the American Anita Park in 1978. He has three children. His daughter by Renate Densow, Christiane Krüger (born in 1945, when he was only 17) and his son by Francesca Marazzi, Hardy Jr. Krüger are both actors too.

Hardy Krüger was awarded many times for his work. In 2001 he was made Officier de la Légion d’Honneur in France, and in 2009, Germany honoured him with the Großes Verdienstkreuz (Great Cross of Merit). Hardy and Anita Krüger live in a log cabin in Skyland, California, on top of Los Angeles, and in Hamburg.

American trailer for Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald/Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956). Source: Sleaze-o-rama (YouTube).

Trailer for The One That Got Away (1957). Source: VCIClassicMovies (YouTube).

Hardy Krüger sings I'm A Lonely Man. From the film Blind Date (1959). Source: Rudi Polt (YouTube).

Trailer for Hatari (1962). Source: ParamountmoviesDigital (YouTube).

Trailer for Barry Lyndon (1975). Source: Vsible Movie Trailers (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Stephanie D'heil (Steffi-line - German), Tom Hernandez (IMDb), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Yes, this week, we're back in Italy for the 29th Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna! One of this edition's sections is Technicolor & Co. It is a rediscovery of the original colour of film with a special celebration of Technicolor, which in 2015 turns 100! The section includes the last film made in Technicolor, The Thin Red Line (1998) by Terrence Malick, and the digital restoration of Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (1939) in 3D, an ‘impossible’ restoration of a film that was not originally conceived in three dimensions. And today, there is that wonderful classic The Thief of Bagdad (1941) by Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell and Tim Whelan. Alas, not all our postcards are in Technicolor.

Italian programme card for Il Cinema Ritrovata 2011. Photo: publicity still for The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, Alexander Korda, Zoltan Korda, William Cameron Menzies, 1940) with June Deprez as the Princess and Conrad Veidt as Jaffar. Vivien Leigh was originally cast in the role of the Princess, but when, in late 1938, she won the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Producer Alexander Korda gave the role to Duprez.

The best Arabian Nights adventure ever

There have been several film versions of the story of the good-natured young thief of ancient Bagdad (as it was once spelled). Raoul Walsh made the first, silent, rendering of Thief of Bagdad in 1924, starring Douglas Fairbanks. Still a marvellously entertaining film.

But the best Arabian Nights adventure ever is the 1940's Technicolor version of The Thief of Bagdad. It has a startling, magical panoply of top quality special effects, which still work their charm after more than seventy years, a stellar cast and wonderfully catchy music. The Thief of Bagdad is simply one of the best fantasy films ever made. But who was the director?

Bruce Eder at AllMovie: "Essentially behind (the original director Ludwig) Berger's back, British director Michael Powell was brought in to shoot various scenes - and Powell's scheduled work grew in amount and importance whilst, in the meantime, Korda himself did his best to undercut Berger on his own set; and while publicly siding with Berger on the issue of the music, he also undercut Berger's chosen composer (Oscar Straus) by bringing in Miklos Rozsa and putting him into an office directly adjacent to Berger's with a piano, to work on a score. Eventually, Berger was persuaded to walk away from the project, and American filmmaker Tim Whalen, who had just finished work on another Korda-produced movie (Q Planes) was brought in to help augment Powell's work."

Producer Alexander Korda was so demanding that he went through six directors during the production of The Thief of Bagdad, including his brother Zoltan Korda and leading art director William Cameron Menzies. For the special effects, from a magic flying carpet to the gargantuan genie who pops out of a bottle with a tornado-like black swirl, two men were responsible: Lawrence W. Butler and Tom Howard. Both had long and distinguished careers in technical wizardry.

Bruce Eder: "Accounts by those involved have varied across the decades, but most maintained that hardly anything directed by Berger made the final cut; the film is considered a prime example of Powell's early output, displaying the wit, flair, and stylish camerawork that would inform his subsequent work."

German collectors card by Küno's Film-Foto in the series Der Dieb von Bagdad, no. 1, presented by Sparkasse bank. Photo: publicity still for The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940) with Sabu as Abu.

John Justin and Sabu in The Thief of Bagdad (1940)

German collectors card by Küno's Film-Foto in the series Der Dieb von Bagdad, no. 2, presented by Sparkasse bank. Photo: publicity still for The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940) with John Justin as Ahmad and Sabu as Abu.

A genie with an attitude

The Thief of Bagdad stars Sabu as the boy thief, Abu, the debuting John Justin as the dreamily in love prince Ahmad and young up-and-coming starlet June Duprez as the lovely princess sought by Ahmad and pursued by the evil vizier, Jaffar, played by a sinister Conrad Veidt. Rex Ingram plays the giant genie in the bottle who has an equally massive attitude.

The story focusses on Prince Ahmad, the rightful King of Bagdad. The idealistic prince wants to slum it amongst his people for a while to check things out. But the evil Vizier Jaffar takes his chance to imprison the beggar-prince and seize the throne.

Ahmad is cast into the palace dungeon where he meets Abu, the best thief in all Bagdad. Together they escape and make their way to Basra where Ahmad falls in love with the beautiful Princess.

However, Jaffar also journeys to Basra, for he desires the Princess. Her father, the Sultan (Miles Malleson, who also wrote the screenplay), is fascinated by the magical mechanical flying horse Jaffar offers and agrees to the proposed marriage. Upon hearing the news, the Princess, by now deeply in love with Ahmad, runs away.

The prince and thief are haunted by Jaffar. He magically blinds Ahmad and turns Abu into a dog. The spell can only be broken if Jaffar holds the Princess in his arms.

It's just the start of Ahmad and Abu's dazzling adventures that involve an all-seeing magic jewel, a giant spider, a flying carpet and that massive Djinn in a bottle.

German collectors card by Küno's Film-Foto in the series Der Dieb von Bagdad, no. 3 presented by Sparkasse bank. Photo: publicity still for The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940) with Sabu.

German collectors card by Küno's Film-Foto in the series Der Dieb von Bagdad, no. 4, presented by Sparkasse bank. Photo: publicity still for The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940) with Rex Ingram as the Djinn.

The tops of the actresses' costumes had to be buttoned up

Filming of The Thief of Bagdad began at London's Denham Studios, which had just merged with J. Arthur Rank's nearby Pinewood Studios.

Because of the Blitz, the production had to be relocated to Hollywood. There was such a long break in production, Sabu's early scenes had to be re-shot because he had grown several inches.

When filming began in the US, the stricter censorship codes of the Hays Office there were applied. One of the most obvious differences between the scenes shot in the UK and those filmed in the USA is that the tops of the actresses' costumes were buttoned up all the way to satisfy the Hays Office. That kind of clue makes it easier to identify the US-shot scenes than trying to spot differences in the sets.

The film won three Oscars: Production design by William Cameron Menzies and Vincent Korda, Cinematography by George Perinal and Special effects by Osmond Borradaile . Furthermore one nomination for the evocative and oriental musical score by Miklos Rozsa.

Trailer for The Thief of Bagdad (Ludwig Berger, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, 1940). Source: Plamen Plamenov (YouTube).

Sources: Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Il Cinema Ritrovato 2015, Wikipedia and IMDb.

This week, we're in Bologna at Il Cinema Ritrovato. Our favourite venue is the giant screen in Piazza Maggiore where we will experience tonight "the extravagant cinematic inventions of The Third Man" - according to the Festival website. Just like her co-stars Joseph Cotten, Orson Welles and Trevor Howard, the female Italian star of this British classic is unforgettable... Strikingly beautiful Alida Valli (1921-2006) started as Italy’s sweetheart of the early 1940s. She fascinated audiences with her flawless porcelain face, her dark, voluptuous hair and her green, expressive eyes, but also with her ability to simultaneously hide and reveal a character's thoughts and emotions. In a career that spanned seven decades, she appeared in more than 110 films including such classics as Luchino Visconti's Senso (1954), Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Grido (1957) and Bernardo Bertolucci's Strategia del ragno (1970). And The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949).

Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F. Edit.), no. 4240. Photo: I.C.I. / Vaselli.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 210, 1941-1944. Photo: Difu.

Italian postcard by Aser, Roma, no. 250. Photo: Pesce.

Alida Valli, 2, Joseph Cotten, The Third Man

Still from The Third Man (1949) with Alida Valli and Joseph Cotten. Source: Dr. Macro's.

Dutch postcard by Takken, Utrecht, no. 1683. Photo: publicity still for Senso (Luchino Visconti, 1954).

Italian postcard by Alterocca, Terni, no. 49474.

Cinécitta

Alida Valli was born as Alida Maria Laura von Altenburger in Pola, a town located in Italy’s Istria region (now Pula, the town currently is part of Croatia) in 1921. Her father, Baron Gino Altenburger, was a philosophy professor and part-time music critic of aristocratic Austrian descent (Alida’s title was Baroness of Marckenstein and Frauenberg) and her mother, Silvia Oberecker della Martina, was a piano teacher of mixed German-Italian parentage (some sources state that she was of Slovenian-Italian descent). Not long after Alida's birth, the family moved to Como, where Alida attended a local school.

Following her father’s death, she and her mother went to Rome where Alida studied acting at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia(CSC), the film academy set up by Benito Mussolini. In 1936, at the age of 15, Alida Altenburger made her first film appearance in the Cinecittà studios with a bit part in I Due sergenti/The Two Sergeants (Enrico Guazzoni, 1936) starring Gino Cervi.

Her surname was changed to the more Italian-sounding Valli (supposedly found by chance in the phone book). In the following years, she often starred in the escapist Telefoni Bianchi productions – the ‘white telephone’ comedies and melodramas always set in very luxurious and wealthy environments.

In 1937, she appeared in the comedy L'amor mio non muore.../A Night in May (Raffaello Matarazzo, 1937), in which she played opposite the Neapolitan acting family Eduardo, Peppino, and Titina DeFilippo.

Her first big success came with the comedies Mille lire al mese/One Thousand Lire per Month (Max Neufeld, 1939) as a beauty with too many worshippers including Osvaldo Valenti, and Assenza ingiustificata/Absence Without Leave (Max Neufeld, 1939), as a young woman who decides to go back to school without the knowledge of her doctor husband (Amedeo Nazzari).

She proved her versatility with the costume drama Manon Lescaut (1940, Carmine Gallone), based on a novel by Abbé Prevost, in which she played the title role opposite matinee idol Vittorio De Sica. Valli’s popularity in the Italian film industry was now near its peak. A poll in the late 1930s had placed her behind only Assia Norisas the most popular female star in the country.

Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1939.

Italian postcard by Rizzoli, Milano, 1941. Photo: Venturini.

Italian postcard by Zincografica, Firenze. Photo: Scalera Film / Era Film, Roma. Publicity still for Noi Vivi/We the Living (Goffredo Alessandrini, 1942).

Italian postcard. With Fosco Giachetti.

Italian postcard by ASER (A. Scaramaglia Ed. Roma), no. 109.

Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 20750. Photo: Bragaglia.

Italy's Sweetheart

By the early 1940s, Alida Valli was top of the bill and became known as ‘Italy’s Sweetheart’. Italcine signed her to a five-year contract. She won an acting award at the Venice Film Festival for Piccolo mondo antico/Old-Fashioned World (Mario Soldati, 1941) with Massimo Serato, about a woman traumatized by her child's death.

During the Second World War, another major success followed with Stasera niente di nuovo/Nothing New This Evening (Mario Mattoli, 1942), the story of a prostitute who refuses help from the reporter (Carlo Ninchi) who loves her. In the film Valli gets to sing Giovanno D’Anzi’s massive hit Ma l’amore no.

For the 19-year-old star, fame and adulation brought both riches and difficulties. Next she played a counter-revolutionary opposite Fosco Giachetti and Rossano Brazzi in Noi Vivi - Addio Kira/We the Living (Goffredo Alessandrini, 1942), based on Ayn Rand's anti-Communist novel. The films were successful, and the public easily realized that they were as much against Fascism as Communism. After several weeks, however, the films were pulled from theatres as the German and Italian governments, which abhorred communism, found out the story also carried an anti-fascist message.

With the Nazi push into Italy, she briefly left film making and hid in a friend's apartment to avoid recruitment into propaganda efforts. Others who joined her there were the jazz composer and surrealist painter Oscar De Mejo, who became her husband in 1944, and jazz pianist Piero Piccioni, who would much later become her lover.

After the war it was the title role in Eugenia Grandet/Eugenie Grandet (Mario Soldati, 1947), an adaptation of Honoré de Balzac’s novel, that marked her return to form. As the suffering Eugenia, she won a best actress Nastro d’Argento award from the Union of Italian Film Journalists, and caught the eye of independent Hollywood producer David O. Selznick.

Selznick signed her to a contract, and groomed her for a major English-language career. She was given a screen billing with just her surname - Valli - to recall the European glamour of ‘Garbo’. However, she was plunked in mediocre fare and, with a language barrier, had a catatonic presence that did not showcase the emotion she brought to her earlier Italian period. American audiences yawned at Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1947), in which she was murder suspect Maddalena Paradine defended by Gregory Peck, and The Miracle of the Bells (Irving Pichel, 1948) with Frank Sinatra, in which she played a dead actress whose story is told in flashback.

Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 22820. Photo: I.C.I. / Pesce.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3783/1, 1941-1944. Photo: DIFU.

Italian postcard. Photo: RKO.

Dutch postcard. Photo: RKO Radio Films.

Dutch postcard.

Vintage postcard by IBIS, no. 137.

A Classic Of Unremitting Political Cynicism

With Selznick's approval, Alida Valli left for England where she was cast as a mysterious Czech refugee Anna Schmidt wanted by the Russians in post-war Vienna in The Third Man (Carol Reed, 1949). Anna is the devoted lover of Harry Lime (Orson Welles), a racketeer in the black-market world.

The Third Man has since become a classic of unremitting political cynicism, aided by an unexpected zither soundtrack and unforgettable, powerful scenes. One of the best is the final shot in a cemetery, which shows her walking directly past the bumbling American hero (Joseph Cotten), a pulp novelist who, despite all evidence to the contrary, wants to view her character as a damsel in distress.

Valli returned permanently to Europe in 1951 to star opposite Jean Marais in Les Miracles n’ont lieu qu’une fois/Miracles Only Happen Once (Yves Allégret, 1951). It is the story of two enamoured students who, after being separated by the war, are reunited ten years later only to discover that they have changed.

Luchino Visconti offered her the lead role in Senso/Livia (Luchino Visconti, 1954), a beautiful period piece of romance and betrayal based on a novel by Camillo Boito. Set in mid-1800s Venice during the Risorgimento, the film revolves around a Venetian countess torn between nationalistic feelings and an adulterous love for an officer (Farley Granger) of the occupying Austrian forces. Her passionate performance is considered by some the apex of her career, and won her a Best Actress Crystal Starfrom the French Film Academy. (Senso’s loss at the 1954 Venice Film Festival - the Golden Lion for Best Film went to Renato Castellani’s Romeo and Juliet - caused a furore).

Italian postcard. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F. Edit.), no 2220. Photo: RKO Radio.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 503. Photo: R.K.O. Radio.

Jean Marais and Alida Valli in Les Miracles n'ont lieu qu'une fois (1951)

German postcard by Wilhelm Schulze-Witteburg Graphischer Betrieb (WS-Druck), Wanne Eickel. Photo: Deutsche Commerz Film GmbH. Publicity still of Jean Marais and Alida Valli in Les Miracles n'ont lieu qu'une fois/Miracles Only Happen Once (Yves Allégret, 1951).

Alida Valli and Jean-Pierre Aumont in Ultimo incontro (1951)

Vintage Postcard, no. 952. Publicity still for Ultimo incontro/Last Meeting (Gianni Franciolini, 1951) with Jean-Pierre Aumont.

Alida Valli and Farley Granger in Senso (1954)

Italian postcard by Rotocalco Dagnino, Torino. Photo: Lux Film. Alida Valli and Farley Granger as countess Livia Serpieri and Lt. Franz Mahler in Luchino Visconti's historical film Senso (1954).

Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F. Edit.), no. 2925. Photo: Titanus.

Sex and Drugs Scandal

As her career was beginning to pick up steam again, Alida Valli became involved in a sex and drugs scandal following the mysterious death of a 20-year-old fashion model named Wilma Montesi, whose body was found on a beach near Rome. Prolonged investigations resulted, involving sensational allegations of drugs and sex orgies in Roman society. Among the accused – all of whom were acquitted, leaving the case unsolved – was Valli's lover, jazz musician Piero Piccioni (son of the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs). Alida Valli was divorced from Oscar De Mejo in 1952, and she claimed that she and Piccioni were staying at a villa in Capri at the time of the death of Montesi. This was a factor in his acquittal at the trial.

The scandal inspired Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita/The Sweet Life (1960). In 1957 Valli once again made a glorious come-back with her role in another classic of the European cinema, Michelangelo Antonioni's Il Grido/The Cry (1957) with Steve Cochran. She played a weary and impoverished woman who rejects her working-class lover.

In Italy, she was also well-known for her stage appearances. She had easily moved from ingénue to vivid character roles. In 1956, she made her stage début, starring under the direction of her future husband Giancarlo Zagni at Palermo’s Teatro Biondoin Henrik Ibsen’s Rosmersholm, William Archibald’s The Innocents, and Luigi Pirandello’s L’uomo, la bestia e la virtù/The Man, the Beast and Virtue. She was to appear in more than thirty plays in the next four decades.

Among her later films were La Grande strada azzurra/The Wide Blue Road (Gillo Pontecorvo, 1957) starring Yves Montand, the horror masterpiece Les Yeux sans visage/Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju, 1960), Une Aussi longue absence/The Long Absence (Henri Colpi, 1962), Ophelia (Claude Chabrol, 1963) with Juliette Mayniel, El hombre de papel/The Paper Man (Ismael Rodriguez, 1963), Edipo re/Oedipus Rex (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1967) with Silvana Mangano, La prima notte di quiete/The Professor (Valerio Zurlini, 1972), starring Alain Delon, and La Chair de l'orchidée/Flesh of the Orchid (Patrice Chéreau, 1975), starring Charlotte Rampling.

She worked three times with Bernardo Bertolucci, in La strategia del ragno/The Spider's Stratagem (1970), Novecento/1900 (1976), and La Luna/Luna (1979). She also worked with such horror masters as Mario Bava in La Casa dell'esorcismo/The House of Exorcism (1973) and Dario Argento in Suspiria (1977) and Inferno (1980).

More recent were her roles in Il Lungo silenzio/The Long Silence (1993, Margaretha von Trotta) and A Month by the Lake (John Irvin, 1995). Her final film role was in Semana Santa/Angel of Death (Pepe Danquart, 2002), with Mira Sorvino.

In 2006, Alida Valli died in Rome at the age of 84. She had two sons with Oscar De Mejo, Carlo De Mejo and Lorenzo 'Larry' De Mejo. Her grandson Pierpaolo De Mejo is an actor and director, who made the documentary Come diventai Alida Valli/How I Became Alida Valli (2008) about his grandmother.

Trailer for The Third Man (1949). Source: Britmovies (YouTube).

Trailer for Senso (1954). Source: The Criterion Collection (YouTube).

Trailer for Il Grido/The Cry (1957). Source: Danios 12345 (YouTube).

Trailer for La strategia del ragno/The Spider's Stratagem (1970). Source: Dive Italiane (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.

Trailer for Suspiria (1977). Source: Oliver Gašpar (YouTube).

Sources: Michael Plass (Alida Valli Net) (German), Adam Bernstein (Washington Post), Andre Soares (Alternative Film Guide), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia, Reel Classics, and IMDb.

We're back in Italy at the 29th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. One of the sections I'm curious about is Beautiful youth: Renato Castellani. The Italian film director and screenwriter made that wonderful young love trilogy of Neorealism: Sotto il sole di Roma/Under the Sun of Rome (1948), È primavera.../Springtime in Italy (1950) and Due soldi di speranza/Two Cents Worth of Hope (1952). In the latter, which is screened today, the female lead is played by little known Maria Fiore (1935–2004). The Italian film actress appeared in 50 films between 1952 and 1999. Throughout the 1950s and in the early 1960s, she played in a great number of romantic comedies and musicals, often set in Naples.

Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., Firenze, no 2917. Photo: Cines. Publicity still for Tempi nostri - Zibaldone n. 2/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954).

A determined young woman

Maria Fiore was born Jolanda Di Fiore in Rome in 1935.

She made an impressive film debut at the young age of 17 in the neo-realistic masterpiece Due soldi di speranza/Two Cents Worth of Hope (Renato Castellani, 1952), the third in director Castellani's young love trilogy. The story concerns the romance between the strong-willed and free-spirited Carmela (Fiore) and Antonio (Vincenzo Musolino). At the 1952 Cannes Film Festival, the film shared the Grand Prix with Orson Welles’ Othello (1952).

Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “The ardor is one-sided at first, but Carmela is a determined young woman, willing to scale and conquer any obstacle in pursuing her heart's desire. Once he's ‘hooked,’ Antonio scurries from job to job to prove his financial viability. Faced with the hostility of their parents, Carmela and Antonio symbolically shed themselves of all responsibilities to others in a climactic act of stark-naked bravado.”

Fiore then co-starred with Sophia Loren in the drama-comedy La domenica della buona gente/Good Folk’s Sunday (Anton Giulio Majano, 1953) and played the title role opposite Henri Vidal in Scampolo 53 (Giorgio Bianchi, 1953), one of the many film versions of the Dario Niccodemi play.

The next year, she played an important supporting part in Carosello napoletano/Neapolitan Carousel (Ettore Giannini, 1954), the first major Italian musical of the post-war era. Léonide Massine starred as Antonio Petito, a notable Pulcinella performer, and an important figure of Neapolitan theatre in the 19th century. The film was entered into the 1954 Cannes Film Festival.

During the next decade, Fiore starred in a great number of romantic comedies and musicals, often set in Naples. Titles include Graziella (Giorgio Bianchi, 1955) with Jean-Pierre Mocky, I pappagalli/The Parrots (Bruno Paolinelli, 1955) starring Aldo Fabrizi and Alberto Sordi, Serenata a Maria/Serenade for Maria (Luigi Capuano, 1957), and Malafemmena (Armando Fizzarotti, 1957). These films were popular in Italy, but less known abroad.

Later, when the Peplum genre became popular, she also appeared credited as Joan Simons in epics like Ercole l'invincibile/Hercules the Invincible (Alvaro Mancori, 1964).

Italian postcard by Levibrom, Milano.

Rambo's Revenge

Maria Fiore disappeared from the big screen in the mid-1960s to concentrate on the dubbing firm she had set up.

She returned to popular success through hit TV mini-series such as Joe Petrosino (Daniele D'Anza, 1972) with Adolfo Celi, Accadde a Lisbona/It happened in Lisbon (Daniele D'Anza, 1974) with Paolo Stoppa, L'ultimo aereo per Venezia/The last plane to Venice (Daniele D'Anza, 1977) with Massimo Girotti, Quei 36 gradini/Those 36 steps (Luigi Perelli, 1984) with Gérard Blain, Little Roma (Francesco Massaro, 1988) and Pronto Soccorso/First Aid (Francesco Massaro, 1990-1992).

In the cinema she could be seen in the anthology film Se permettete parliamo di donne/Let's Talk About Women (Ettore Scola, 1964) with Vittorio Gassman, and the crime film L'onorata famiglia - Uccidere è cosa nostra/The Big Family (Tonino Ricci, 1973).

In 1975, Fiore played a supporting role in the Poliziotteschi film Il giustiziere sfida la città/Syndicate Sadists (Umberto Lenzi, 1975), starring Joseph Cotten and Tomas Milian. This film, also known as Rambo's Revenge and One Just Man, was one of director Lenzi's many efforts in the crime thriller genre. Tomas Milián plays Rambo, an ex-cop who seeks revenge against two powerful crime families who were responsible for the murder of his friend. The film predates Ted Kotcheff's First Blood (1982), the film which introduced audiences to the John Rambo of author David Morrell by seven years. Milian happened to read Morrell's novel while flying from the U.S. to Rome. Loving the story he tried to talk some Italian producers into making a film out of it, with him starring as John Rambo. Nothing came of this, but he was allowed to use the Rambo moniker in the next Poliziottesco he starred in.

Fiore’s last film was E insieme vivremo tutte le stagioni/And together we will live all seasons (Gianni Minello, 1999), starring Franco Citti.

In 2004, Maria Fiore died in Rome of lung cancer. She was 68.

Final scene of Due soldi di speranza/Two Cents Worth of Hope (1952). Source: Ugo Tramontano (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Guy Bellinger (IMDb), Wikipedia (English and Italian), and IMDb.

We're in Italy at the 29th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna. One of the sections is about ‘Sweden's illustrious gift to Hollywood’, Ingrid Bergman (1915-1982). In the 1940s, the fresh and naturally beautiful actress won three times the Oscar, twice the Emmy, and once the Tony Award for Best Actress. Little known is that before she went to Hollywood she already had a European film career. This morning I am gonna see one of her early successes, En kvinnas Ansikte (Gustav Molander, 1938), which was remade in Hollywood as A Woman's Face (George Cukor, 1941) with Joan Crawford in the Bergman role.

Vintage postcard by PE, no. 595. Photo: RKO Radio Pictures.

Dutch postcard by DRC/MEPA. Photo: MGM.

Dutch postcard, no. 3320. Photo: MGM (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer).

Italian postcard, no. 3161. Photo: R.K.O. Radio Pictures. Publicity still for Joan of Arc (Victor Fleming, 1948).

Summer Break

Ingrid Bergman was born in Stockholm, Sweden in 1915 to a Swedish father and a German mother.

At age 17, she had a taste of acting when she played an uncredited role of a girl standing in line in the Swedish film Landskamp (Gunnar Skoglund, 1932). The next year she was accepted to the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm, but she soon decided that stage acting was not for her.

During her first summer break, she was hired at a Swedish film studio to work in film full time. Her first film part was in Munkbrogreven/The Count of the Old Town (Edvin Adolphson, 1935), where she had a speaking part as Elsa Edlund.

The following years she made a dozen films in Sweden that established her as a class actress. Among them were Bränningar/The Surf (Ivar Johansson, 1935) and Dollar (Gustaf Mollander, 1938).

Another film, En kvinnas ansikte (Gustaf Molander, 1938) would later be remade as A Woman's Face with Joan Crawford. Bergman also made a film in Germany, Die Vier Gesellen/The Four Companions (Carl Froelich, 1938).

Dutch postcard.

Italian postcard by Casa Edite Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze. Photo: RKO.

Dutch postcard by S. & v. H., A. Photo: M.P.E.A.

Dutch postcard by J. Sleding N.V., Amsterdam, no. 102/1250.

Intermezzo

Ingrid Bergman's breakthrough film was Intermezzo (Gustaf Molander, 1936), in which she played a pianist who has a love affair with a celebrated and married violinist, played by Gösta Ekman.

Hollywood producer David O. Selznick saw it and sent a representative from MGM to gain the rights to the story and have the actress signed to a contract. Ingrid went to California and starred in MGM's remake Intermezzo: A Love Story (Gregory Ratoff, 1939), reprising her original role.

The film was a hit and so was Ingrid. Her beauty was unlike anything the movie industry had seen before and her acting was superb. She was under contract to go back to Sweden to film En enda natt/One Single Night (Gustaf Molander, 1939) and Juninatten/A Night in June (Per Lindberg, 1940).

Back in the US she appeared in three films, all well-received. In 1942 she played in only one film, but that film, Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942), would make her a huge star. Bergman chose her roles well after Casablanca.

In 1943 she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role in Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls (Sam Wood, 1943), the only film she made that year. The critics and public didn't forget her when she made Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944) the following year - her role as the persecuted wife of Charles Boyer got her the Oscar for Best Actress.

In 1945 Ingrid played in Spellbound (Alfred Hitchcock, 1945) with Gregory Peck, Saratoga Trunk (Sam Wood, 1945) and The Bells of St. Mary's (Leo McCarey, 1945), for which she received her third Oscar nomination for her part as Sister Benedict.

Italian postcard by Casa Editr. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 2045. Photo: Warner Bros.

Big Belgian card by Chocolaterie Clovis, Pepinster. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.

Small card. Photo: MGM. Photo: still from Gaslight (George Cukor, 1944) with Charles Boyer.

German postcard by Film-Postkartenverlag Hbg.-Bergedorf, no. 150. Photo: RKO. Publicity still for Notorious (Alfred Hitchcock, 1946).

Jeanne d'Arc

Ingrid Bergman also worked with Alfred Hitchcock on another classic, Notorious (1946) with Cary Grant, and the less successful Under Capricorn (1949) with Joseph Cotten.

Bergman went to Alaska during World War II in order to entertain troops. Soon after the war ended, she also went to Europe for the same purpose, where she was able to see the devastation caused by the war. It was during this time that she began a relationship with the famous photographer Robert Capa.

She made no films in 1947, but bounced back with a fourth nomination for Joan of Arc (Victor Fleming, 1948). She played the part of Jeanne d'Arc three times in her career: on stage in 1946 in Maxwell Anderson's Joan of Lorraine for which she won the Tony Award, in the film version in 1948, and in 1954 in the Italian film Giovanna d'Arco al rogo/Joan of Arc at the Stake (Roberto Rossellini, 1954), based on a 1935 dramatic oratorio by Arthur Honegger.

But in 1949 Saint Ingrid first would suffer a sudden and disastrous fall from grace.

Dutch postcard. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for Joan of Arc (1948).

Dutch postcard, no. 3161. Photo: publicity still for Joan of Arc (1948).

Dutch postcard. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for Joan of Arc (1948).

Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc (Victor Fleming 1948)

British postcard, no. W 762. Photo: R.K.O. Publicity still for Joan of Arc (1948).

Scandal

In 1949 Ingrid Bergman went to Italy to film Stromboli (1950), directed by Roberto Rossellini. She fell in love with him and got pregnant. The pregnancy caused a huge scandal in the United States. It even led to Bergman being denounced on the floor of the US Senate by Edwin C. Johnson, a Democratic senator, who referred to her as "a horrible example of womanhood and a powerful influence for evil." In addition, there was a floor vote, which resulted in her being made persona non grata.

The scandal forced Ingrid Bergman to exile herself to Italy, leaving her husband, Dr. Petter Lindström, and daughter, Pia Lindström in the United States. Dr. Lindström eventually sued for desertion and waged a custody battle for their daughter.

In 1950 Bergman married Rossellini and the same year their son, Renato Roberto, was born. In 1952 Ingrid had twins, Isotta and Isabella Rossellini. Isabella would later become an outstanding actress in her own right, as did her halfsister Pia.

From 1950 to 1955 Bergman and Rossellini made six films together: Stromboli (1950), Europa '51/No Greater Love (1952), a segment of Siamo donne/We, the Women (1953), Viaggio in Italia/Voyage in Italy (1954), La paura/Fear (1954) and Giovanna d'Arco al rogo/Joan of Arc at the Stake (1954). These films were ahead of their time but were generally not received well, especially in the US, where many conservative political and religious leaders still raised a hue and cry about her past.

Bergman also starred in Jean Renoir's Elena et les Hommes/Elena and Her Men (1956), a romantic comedy where she played a Polish princess caught in political intrigue. Although the film wasn't a success, it has since come to be regarded as one of her best performances.

Finally, after being exiled from Hollywood for seven years, Bergman returned opposite Yul Brynner in the title role in Anastasia (Anatole Litvak, 1956), which was filmed in England. For this she won her second Academy Award. She had scarcely missed a beat. The award was accepted for her by her friend Cary Grant. Bergman would not make her first post-scandal public appearance in Hollywood until the 1958 Academy Awards, when she was the presenter of the Academy Award for Best Picture. Furthermore, after being introduced by Cary Grant and walking out on stage to present, she was given a standing ovation.

In 1957 she had divorced Rosselini and in 1958 she married Lars Schmidt, a theatrical entrepreneur from a wealthy Swedish shipping family. After all the years she spent away from Hollywood, she still managed to maintain her status as a major star, as the success of films like Indiscreet (Stanley Donen, 1958) opposite Cary Grant and The Inn of the Sixth Happiness (Mark Robson, 1958) with Curd Jürgens showed.

German postcard by ISV, no. A 58. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Publicity still for Anastasia (Anatole Litvak, 1956).

French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 198. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 389. Photo: Sam Lévin.

American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, Ca., no. Personality 77.

Emmy Award

In the 1960s, Ingrid Bergman concentrated on stage work and television appearances, collaborated with her husband, theatrical producer Lars Schmidt, in such TV plays as The Turn of The Screw (John Frankenheimer, 1960) for which she won an Emmy Award, and Twenty-Four Hours in a Woman's Life (Silvio Narrizano, 1961).

She didn't appear in as many films as she had before, but she continued to bounce between Europe and the US making films. After a long hiatus, Bergman appeared in Cactus Flower (Gene Saks, 1968), with Walter Matthau and Goldie Hawn. In 1972, Senator Charles H. Percy entered an apology into the Congressional Record for the attack made on Bergman 22 years earlier by Edwin C. Johnson.

Bergman won her third Academy Award for her role as Greta Ohlsson in Murder on the Orient Express (Sidney Lumet, 1974). Her performance is contained in a single scene: her interrogation by Poirot, captured in a single continuous take, nearly five minutes long. By 1975 Ingrid Bergman was divorced again.

In her final big-screen performance in Höstsonaten/Autumn Sonata (Ingmar Bergman, 1978) she had her seventh Academy Award nomination. Bergman plays in this film a celebrity pianist who returns to Sweden to visit her neglected daughter, played by Liv Ullmann. Though she didn't win the Oscar, many felt it was the best performance of her career.

French postcard by Editions P.I. Paris, no. FK 1585. Photo: Lars Looschen.

German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto. Photo: Joe Niczky, Munich.

French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris. Photo: Studio Harcourt.

Dutch postcard by REB.

As Time Goes By

In the late 1970s Ingrid Bergman first discovered the symptoms of cancer and underwent a mastectomy. Her last role was in the television film A Woman Called Golda (Alan Gibson, 1982), about the late Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir.

Ingrid Bergman died in 1982, in London, the day after having a small party with a few friends for her 67th birthday. At her burial a single violin played the song As Time Goes By, the theme from Casablanca, recalling her most famous role, that of Ilsa Lund.

That year her daughter, Pia Lindström accepted the Emmy Award as Best Actress that Ingrid won posthumously for A Woman Called Golda.

Seventeen years later, in 1999, she was ranked #4 in the American Film Institute's list of greatest female screen legends. Later she was ranked #5 in Premiere's list of 'The 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time'. Ingrid Bergman continues to be a cultural icon - for her films and for her innocent, natural beauty.

Ingrid Bergman in a scene from Die Vier Gesellen (1938). Source: Herweniel (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.

Scenes from Notorious (1946). Music by Sergei Rachmaninoff. Source: MovieMusic (YouTube).

Theatrical trailer for Anastasia (1956). Source: CaptainBijou (YouTube).

Scene from Elena et les Hommes (1956) with Mel Ferrer. Source: Anmili (YouTube).

Sources: Denny Jackson, Naim81 and Ezio Flavio de Freitas (IMDb), Wikipedia, Hitchcock.tv and IMDb.

One of the Hollywood sections at Il Cinema Ritrovato this year is Seriously funny, a retrospective of the films by director Leo McCarey. He made Duck Soup (1933) with the Marx Brothers and Ruggles of Red Gap (1935) with Charles Laughton (1899–1962), which is shown twice this week. The portly, versatile British-American stage and film actor was one of the most popular actors of the 1930s and 1940s. He gave great performances as Nero, Henry VIII, Inspector Javert, Captain Bligh, Rembrandt, Quasimodo, and of course as Ruggles, the British butler who is brought to the Wild, Wild West.

Vintage postcard. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for Ruggles of Red Gap (1935).

British postcard by Milton, no. 44. Photo: Paramount Pictures.

French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 1026. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).

Dutch postcard, no. 705. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Mutiny on the Bounty (1935).

Overweight and Not The Best Looking of Men

Charles Laughton was born to a wealthy hotel owning family in Scarborough, England, in 1899. He was the son of Robert Laughton and his wife Elizabeth Conlon, who was a devout Roman Catholic. They ran the Victoria Hotel, a well-known retreat for the middle class. Laughton and his two younger brothers thrived in the spacious hotel, always finding new places to play.

Laughton attended Stonyhurst College, a Jesuit school, in Lancashire, England. He was assigned the roll of a portly innkeeper in the school’s production of The Private Secretary. Even though the role was a minor one, he loved the opportunity to let out his artistic flair. In 1917, just 18 he was sent onto the battlefields of Europe. He joined the war at its conclusion, but none the less suffered not only a gas attack but also some deep mental scars.

He started work in the family hotel business, while participating in amateur theatricals in Scarborough. Finally he was allowed by his family to become a drama student at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) in 1925, where he received the gold medal. Laughton made his stage début in 1926 at the Barnes Theatre, as Osip in Gogol's comedy The Government Inspector, in which he also appeared at the London Gaiety Theatre. In the following years he appeared in many West End productions.

Overweight and not the best looking of men, many of the leading roles were not available to him. Despite this he impressed audiences with his talent and played classical roles in two plays by Anton Chekhov, The Cherry Orchard and The Three Sisters. One of his earliest stage successes was as Hercule Poirot in Alibi (1928), a stage adaptation of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In fact he was the first actor to portray Agatha Christie's Belgian detective.

That same year Laughton also played the lead role of Harry Hegan in the world première of Sean O'Casey's The Silver Tassie in London, and he played the title role in Arnold Bennett's Mr Prohack. Elsa Lanchester was also in the cast. Coming from a bohemian background, Lanchester was lively and strong willed. She fell for the reserved and sensitive Laughton and despite his suppressed feelings of homosexuality the two began a courtship. In 1929 they married.

Laughton went on to play the title role in Mr Pickwick after Charles Dickens, and Tony Perelli in Edgar Wallace's On the Spot. Another success was his role as William Marble in Payment Deferred. He took this last play across the Atlantic and in it he made his American début in 1931, at the Lyceum Theatre in New York. He returned to London for the 1933 - 1934 Old Vic Season and was engaged in four Shakespeare roles.

In 1936, he went to Paris and appeared at the Comédie-Française as Sganarelle in the second act of Molière's Le Médecin malgré lui He was the first English actor to appear at that theatre, acted the part in French and received an ovation.

Laughton commenced his film career in England while still acting on the London stage. He took small roles in three short silent comedies starring his wife Elsa Lanchester, Daydreams (Ivor Montagu, 1928), Blue Bottles (Ivor Montagu, 1928) and The Tonic (Ivor Montagu, 1928) which had been specially written for her by H. G. Wells. He made a brief appearance as a disgruntled diner in another silent film Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont, 1929) with Anna May Wong.

Laughton appeared with Elsa Lanchester again in Comets (Sasha Geneen, 1930), featuring assorted British variety acts. In this ‘film revue’ they duetted in The Ballad of Frankie and Johnnie. The couple made two other early British talkies: Wolves (Albert de Courville, 1930) with Dorothy Gish from a play set in a whaling camp in the frozen north, and Down River (Peter Godfrey, 1931) in which he played a murderous, half-oriental drug-smuggler.

British postcard.

British postcard. Photo: Paramount. Caption: Vic-Wells Shakespeare Co.

Charles Laughton, Claudette Colbert in The Sign of the Cross (1932)

British postcard in the series Film Shots by Film Weekly. Photo: Paramount. publicity still of The Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. De Mille, 1932) with Claudette Colbert.

Austrian postcard by Verlag Hubmann (HDH Verlag), Wien (Vienna), no. 3390. Photo: publicity still for Salome (William Dieterle, 1953) with Charles Laughton as King Herod.

On Course For Instant International Stardom

Charles Laughton’s New York stage début in 1931 immediately led to film offers and Laughton's first Hollywood film was the classic horror comedy The Old Dark House (James Whale, 1932) with Boris Karloff. Laughton played a bluff Yorkshire businessman marooned during a storm with other travellers in a creepy mansion in the Welsh mountains. In the Encyclopedia of British Film, Anthony Slide calls it Laughton’s ‘greatest work in the US’.

He then played a demented submarine commander in The Devil and the Deep (Marion Gering, 1932) with Tallulah Bankhead, Gary Cooper and Cary Grant and followed this with his famous role as the perverted Nero in The Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. DeMille, 1932). He then repeated his stage role as a murderer in Payment Deferred (Lothar Mendes, 1932), played H. G. Wells's mad vivisectionist Dr. Moreau in Island of Lost Souls (Erle C. Kenton, 1932), and the meek raspberry-blowing clerk in the brief segment of If I Had a Million (1932) that was directed by Ernst Lubitsch.

In all, he appeared in six Hollywood films during 1932, a remarkable movie 'apprenticeship' which set him on course for instant international stardom. His association with film director Alexander Korda began with The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), loosely based on the life of King Henry VIII of England. Laughton won an Academy Award for his role, the first British actor to do so.

He continued to act occasionally in the theatre. After the success of The Private Life of Henry VIII he appeared at the Old Vic Theatre in 1933 in roles as Macbeth, Lopakin in The Cherry Orchard, Prospero in The Tempest and Angelo in Measure for Measure. His 1947 American production of a new English version of Bertolt Brecht's play Galileo became legendary. Laughton played the title role at the play's premiere in Los Angeles on 30 July 1947 and later that year in New York. This staging was directed by Joseph Losey.

Laughton preferred a film career though and in 1933 he returned to Hollywood where his next film was White Woman (Stuart Walker, 1933) in which he co-starred with Carole Lombard as a cockney river trader in the Malaysian jungle. Then came The Barretts of Wimpole Street (Sidney Franklin, 1934) as Norma Shearer's overbearing father, Les Misérables (Richard Boleslawski, 1935) as inspector Javert, and Ruggles of Red Gap (Leo McCarey, 1935) as the very English and selfless butler transported to early 1900s America. One of his most famous screen roles was Captain William Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935), co-starring with Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian.

Back in England, and again with Alexander Korda, he played the title role in Rembrandt (1936). In 1937, also for Korda, he starred in an ill-fated film version of Robert Graves’ classic novel, I, Claudius (Josef von Sternberg, 1937), which was abandoned during filming owing to the injuries suffered by co-star Merle Oberon in a car crash.

After I, Claudius, he and the ex-pat German film producer Erich Pommer founded the production company Mayflower Pictures in the UK, which produced three films starring Laughton: Vessel of Wrath/The Beachcomber (Erich Pommer, 1938), based on a story by W. Somerset Maugham, with Elsa Lanchester; St. Martin's Lane/Sidewalks of London (Tim Whelan, 1938), a story about London street entertainers that also featured Vivien Leigh and Rex Harrison; and Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1939), with Maureen O'Hara. The latter was based on a novel about Cornish smugglers by Daphne du Maurier, and it was the last film Alfred Hitchcock directed in Britain before moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s.

The films produced were not successful enough, and the company was saved from bankruptcy when RKO Pictures offered Laughton the title role of Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) directed by William Dieterle. Laughton and Pommer had plans to make further films, but the outbreak of World War II, which implied the loss of many foreign markets, meant the end of the company.

Belgian collectors card by Kwatta, Bois d'Haine, no. C. 152. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Publicity still for Arch of Triumph (Lewis Milestone, 1948).

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 294. Photo: Universal International.

Italian programme card for Il Cinema Ritrovata 2003. Photo: publicity still for The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955) with Robert Mitchum.

The Night of the Hunter

Although the 1930s were Charles Laughton’s best cinematic years, there were as well some remarkable post-1930s performances. An example is the cowardly schoolmaster in occupied France in This Land is Mine (Jean Renoir, 1943). He played a modest, henpecked husband who eventually murders his wife in The Suspect (1944), directed by Robert Siodmak, who later became a good friend of Laughton. He played sympathetically an impoverished composer-pianist in Tales of Manhattan (Julien Duvivier, 1942) and starred in an updated version of Oscar Wilde's The Canterville Ghost (Jules Dassin, 1944).

Apart from these, he would enjoy his work in the two comedies he made with Deanna Durbin, It Started with Eve (Henry Koster, 1941) and Because of Him (Richard Wallace, 1946). He portrayed a bloodthirsty pirate in Captain Kidd (Rowland V. Lee, 1945) and a malevolent judge in Alfred Hitchcock's The Paradine Case (1948) with Alida Valli. Laughton played a megalomaniac press tycoon in The Big Clock (John Farrow, 1948) starring Ray Milland. Laughton made his first colour film in Paris as Inspector Maigret in The Man on the Eiffel Tower (Burgess Meredith, 1949).

In 1950, Laughton and Lanchester became American citizens. In one of his funniest roles of the 1950s, he played a tramp in O. Henry's Full House (Henry Koster a.o., 1952), in which he had a one-minute scene with Marilyn Monroe. In later years he was frequently accused by the critics to ham, although he remained a popular star. He became a pirate again, buffoon style this time, in Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd (Charles Lamont, 1952). He guest-starred in an episode of the Colgate Comedy Hour on TV that also featured Abbot and Costello and that was notable for his delivery of the Gettysburg Address.

He played Herod Antipas in Salome (William Dieterle, 1953) with Rita Hayworth in the title role, and repeated his role as Henry VIII in Young Bess (George Sidney, 1953) starring Jean Simmons. He returned to England for a memorable turn in Hobson's Choice (David Lean, 1954) as the patriarch brought to heel opposite John Mills.

Laughton directed several plays on Broadway. His most notable box-office success as a director came in 1954, with The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial, a full-length stage dramatization by Herman Wouk of the court-martial scene in Wouk's novel The Caine Mutiny. In 1955, Laughton directed (but did not act in) the film The Night of the Hunter. This poetic thriller has become a critical and cult favourite thanks to Laughton's intriguing combination of expressionism and realism, a fine script co-written by James Agee and compelling performances by an excellent cast headed by Robert Mitchum as a psychotic preacher and Lillian Gish as a resolute farm woman. At the time of its original release, however, it was a critical and box-office failure, and Laughton never had another chance to direct a film.

Laughton received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for his role as Sir Wilfrid Robarts in the screen version of Agatha Christie's play Witness for the Prosecution (Billy Wilder, 1957) with Marlene Dietrich. He played a British admiral in the Italian war film Sotto dieci bandiere/Under Ten Flags (Duilio Coletti, 1960) and worked for the only time with Laurence Olivier in Spartacus (Stanley Kubrick, 1960) as a wily Roman senator.

He also gave highly successful one-man reading tours for many years. His material ranged from the Bible to Jack Kerouac's The Dharma Bums. His final film was Advise and Consent (Otto Preminger, 1962), for which he received favourable comments for his performance as a southern US Senator (for which accent he studied recordings of Mississippi Senator John Stennis).

Laughton worked on the film, while he was dying. In January 1962 he had been diagnosed with cancer after being hospitalized with a collapsed vertebrae following a fall in the bath. Over the course of his final eleven months, his weight dropped to just ninety pounds. Following Laughton's death in 1962, Laughton's wife Elsa Lanchester wrote a memoir in which she stated that they never had children because Laughton was actually homosexual. The lesbian and gay Fyne Times writes about the couple: “Only two years into the marriage, Lanchester learnt of her husband’s homosexuality. Although she was initially shocked and deeply upset, over time the couple began to develop an altered relationship, one of close friendship. They decided to remain married, although both of them took lovers, and were instead constant companions, looking after and supporting each other as in any other marriage.”

Chicken eating scene from The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). Source: adam28xx's channel (YouTube).

Theatrical Trailer for Mutiny On The Bounty (1935). Source: MOVIE Channel (YouTube).

Laughton's recitation of the Gettysburg Address in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935). Source: MediaMayhem (YouTube).

Trailer for The Night of the Hunter (1955). Source: enneme (YouTube).

Sources: Anthony Slide (Encyclopedia of British Film), Gloria (Rooting for Laughton), Fyne Times, TCM, Wikipedia and IMDb.

At Il Cinema Ritrovato 2015 (27 June - 4 July 2015) in Bologna, a new, multi-year project starts with brand new restorations of the films of Buster Keaton (1895–1966). The Keaton Project will be launched with the screening of the silent short One Week (1920) and with the silent feature Sherlock Jr. (1924), an early example of film within a film. The film showcases all of Buster Keaton’s virtues: his deadpan humour, his innovative technical accomplishments, his amazing stunts and perfect gags. The two restorations will be presented tonight in Piazza Maggiore in Bologna accompanied live by Timothy Brock’s original scores and performed by the Bologna Opera House Orchestra.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4704/1, 1929-1930. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for The Hollywood Revue of 1929 (Charles Reisner, 1929) with Keaton as Princess Raja. This performance must have been inspired by the Egyptian dance in The Cook (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, 1918).

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1834/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Fanamet. Publicity still for Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgewick, Buster Keaton, 1929).

The great stone face

Buster Keaton was born Joseph Frank Keaton in 1895 into a vaudeville family. His father was Joseph Hallie ‘Joe’ Keaton, who owned a travelling show with Harry Houdini called the Mohawk Indian Medicine Company. Keaton was born in Piqua, Kansas, the small town where his mother, Myra Keaton (née Myra Edith Cutler), happened to go into labour.

By the time he was 3, Keaton began performing with his parents in The Three Keatons. He was being thrown around the stage and into the orchestra pit, or even into the audience. His little suits even had a handle concealed at the waist, so Joe could sling him like luggage. "It was the roughest knockabout act that was ever in the history of the theatre," Keaton told the historian Kevin Brownlow. It led to accusations of child abuse, and occasionally, arrest. However, Buster Keaton was always able to show the authorities that he had no bruises or broken bones.

Noticing that his laughing drew fewer laughs from the audience, Keaton adopted his famous deadpan expression whenever he was working. For the rest of his career, Keaton was 'the great stone face', with an expression that ranged from the impassive to the slightly quizzical.

By the time he was 21, his father's alcoholism threatened the reputation of the family act, so Keaton and his mother, Myra, left for New York, where Buster Keaton's career swiftly moved from vaudeville to film. In February 1917, Keaton met Roscoe ‘Fatty’ Arbuckle at the Talmadge Studios in New York City, where Arbuckle was under contract to Joseph M. Schenck. He was hired as a co-star and gag man, making his first appearance in the short The Butcher Boy (Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle, 1917).

Keaton appeared in a total of 14 Arbuckle shorts, running into 1920. They were popular and, Keaton and Arbuckle became close friends. Keaton was one of few people to defend Arbuckle's character during accusations that he was responsible for the death of actress Virginia Rappe in 1921.

In The Saphead (Herbert Blaché, Winchell Smith, 1920), Keaton had his first starring role in a full-length feature. It was a success and Schenck gave him his own production unit, Buster Keaton Comedies. He made a series of two-reel comedies, including One Week (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1920), The Boat (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1921), Cops (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1922), and The Paleface (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1922).

Keaton then moved to full-length features. His first feature, Three Ages (Edward F. Cline, Buster Keaton, 1923), was produced similarly to his short films, and was the dawning of a new era in comedic cinema, where it became apparent to Keaton that he had to put more focus on the story lines and characterization. His most enduring features include Our Hospitality (John G. Blystone, Buster Keaton, 1923), The Navigator (Donald Crisp, Buster Keaton, 1924), Sherlock Jr. (Buster Keaton, 1924), College (James W. Horne, Buster Keaton, 1927), and The General (Clyde Bruckman, Buster Keaton, 1927).

My favourite is The General, set during the American Civil War. The film combines physical comedy with Keaton's love of trains, including an epic locomotive chase. Employing picturesque locations, the film's storyline re-enacted an actual wartime incident. Though it would come to be regarded as Keaton's greatest achievement, the film received mixed reviews at the time. It was too dramatic for some filmgoers expecting a lightweight comedy. It was an expensive misfire, and Keaton was never entrusted with total control over his films again. His distributor, United Artists, insisted on a production manager who monitored expenses and interfered with certain story elements.

Belgian postcard by Ed. Weekblad Cinema, Antwerpen. French written caption: Buster Keaton, born in 1895, on the stage 24 hours after his birth, in the arms of his father.

The worst decision of his life

Buster Keaton endured this treatment by United Artists for two more feature films, including Steamboat Bill Jr. (Charles Reisner, Buster Keaton, 1928), and then exchanged his independent setup for employment at Hollywood's biggest studio, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Keaton's loss of independence as a filmmaker coincided with the coming of sound films (although he was interested in making the transition) and mounting personal problems.

In 1921, Keaton had married Natalie Talmadge, sister-in-law of his boss, Joseph Schenck, and sister of actresses Norma Talmadge and Constance Talmadge. She co-starred with Keaton in Our Hospitality. The couple had two sons, James (1922-2007) and Robert (1924–2009), but after the birth of Robert, the relationship began to suffer. Influenced by her family, Talmadge decided not to have any more children and this led to the couple staying in separate bedrooms. Her financial extravagance (she would spend up to a third of his salary on clothes) was another factor in the breakdown of the marriage.

Keaton signed with MGM in 1928, a business decision that he would later call the worst of his life. He realized too late that MGM’s studio system would severely limit his creative input. For instance, the studio refused his request to make his early project, Spite Marriage (Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton, 1929), as a sound film and after the studio converted, he was obliged to adhere to dialogue-laden scripts.

However, MGM did allow Keaton some creative participation on his last originally developed/written silent film The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick, Buster Keaton, 1928). which was his first project under contract with them. Keaton was forced to use a stunt double during some of the more dangerous scenes, something he had never done in his heyday, as MGM wanted badly to protect its investment.

Some of his most financially successful films for the studio were during this period. MGM tried teaming the laconic Keaton with the rambunctious Jimmy Durante in a series of films, The Passionate Plumber (Edward Sedgwick, 1932), Speak Easily (Edward Sedgwick, 1932), and What! No Beer? (Edward Sedgwick, 1933).

In the first Keaton pictures with sound, he and his fellow actors would shoot each scene three times: one in English, one in Spanish, and one in either French or German. The actors would phonetically memorize the foreign-language scripts a few lines at a time and shoot immediately after.

In 1932, Nathalie Talmadge had divorced Keaton, taking his entire fortune and refusing to allow any contact between Keaton and his sons, whose last name she had changed to Talmadge. Keaton was reunited with them about a decade later when his older son turned 18. With the failure of his marriage, and the loss of his independence as a filmmaker, Keaton lapsed into a period of alcoholism.

Buster Keaton, Anita Page, Cliff Edwards

Dutch postcard by JosPe, no. 310. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Publicity still for Sidewalks of New York (Zion Myers, Jules White, 1931).

The King of the Champs Elysees

Buster Keaton was so demoralized during the production of What! No Beer? (Edward Sedgwick, 1933) that MGM fired him after the filming was complete, despite the film being a resounding hit. In 1933, he married his nurse, Mae Scriven, during an alcoholic binge about which he afterwards claimed to remember nothing. Scriven herself would later claim that she didn't know Keaton's real first name until after the marriage. When they divorced in 1936, it was again at great financial cost to Keaton.

In 1934, Keaton accepted an offer to make an independent film in Paris, Le Roi des Champs-Élysées/The King of the Champs Elysees (Max Nosseck, 1934) with Paulette Dubost. In England, he made another film, The Invader/An Old Spanish Custom (Adrian Brunel, 1936).

Upon Keaton's return to Hollywood, he made a screen comeback in a series of 16 two-reel comedies for Educational Pictures. Most of these are simple visual comedies, with many of the gags supplied by Keaton himself, often recycling ideas from his family vaudeville act and his earlier films. The high point in the Educational series is Grand Slam Opera (Buster Keaton, Charles Lamont, 1936), featuring Buster in his own screenplay as a contestant in a radio amateur hour show hoping to win the first price... by dancing and juggling.

When the series lapsed in 1937, Keaton returned to MGM as a gag writer, including the Marx Brothers films At the Circus (Edward Buzzell, 1939) and Go West (Edward Buzzell, 1940), and providing material for Red Skelton. He also helped and advised Lucille Ball in her comedic work in films and television. In 1939, Columbia Pictures hired Keaton to star in ten two-reel comedies, running for two years. The director was usually Jules White, whose emphasis on slapstick and farce made most of these films resemble White's Three Stooges comedies. Keaton's personal favourite was the series' debut entry, Pest from the West (Del Lord, 1939), a shorter, tighter remake of The Invader (1936). Keaton's Columbia shorts rank as the worst comedies he made.

Charlie Chaplin. East-German collectors card, no. III/18/211, 1955. Photo: United Artists. Publicity still for Limelight (1952).

Another chance at the brass ring

Buster Keaton's personal life stabilized with his 1940 marriage with Eleanor Norris, a 21-year-old dancer. She stopped his heavy drinking, and helped to salvage his career. He abandoned Columbia for the less strenuous field of feature films. Throughout the 1940s, Keaton played character roles in features. He made his last starring feature El Moderno Barba Azul/Boom In The Moon (Jaime Salvador, 1946) in Mexico.

Critics rediscovered Keaton in 1949. He had cameos in such films as In the Good Old Summertime (Robert Z. Leonard, 1949), Sunset Boulevard (Billy Wilder, 1950), and Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson, 1956), and did innumerable TV appearances. Keaton also appeared in a comedy routine about two inept stage musicians in Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (1952).

In 1954, Keaton and his wife met film programmer Raymond Rohauer, with whom the couple would develop a business partnership to re-release Keaton's films. Around the same time, after buying the comedian's house, the actor James Mason found numerous cans of Keaton's films. Keaton had prints of the features Three Ages, Sherlock, Jr., Steamboat Bill, Jr., College (missing one reel) and the shorts The Boat and My Wife's Relations, which Keaton and Rohauer transferred to safety stock from deteriorating nitrate film stock. Unknown to them at the time, MGM also had saved some of Keaton's work: all his 1920-1926 features and his first eight two-reel shorts.

In 1962 came a retrospective at the Cinematheque Francaise in Paris, and in 1965 a tribute at the Venice Film Festival. "I can't feel sorry for myself," he said in Venice. "It all goes to show that if you stay on the merry-go-round long enough you'll get another chance at the brass ring. Luckily, I stayed on."

In 1960, Keaton had returned to MGM for the final time, playing a lion tamer in an adaptation of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (Michael Curtiz, 1960). Later Keaton played a cameo in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (Stanley Kramer, 1963) and starred in four films for American International Pictures: Pajama Party (Don Weis, 1964), Beach Blanket Bingo (William Asher, 1965), How to Stuff a Wild Bikini (William Asher, 1964) and Sergeant Deadhead (Norman Taurog, 1964). As he had done in the past, Keaton also provided gags for the four AIP films.

In 1965, Keaton starred in the short film The Railrodder (Gerald Potterton, Buster Keaton, 1965) for the National Film Board of Canada. Wearing his traditional pork pie hat, he travelled from one end of Canada to the other on a railway motorcar, performing a few stunts similar to those in films he did 50 years earlier. The film was Keaton's last silent screen performance.

He also played the central role in Samuel Beckett's Film (Alan Schneider, 1965) and travelled to Italy to play a role in Due Marines e un Generale/War Italian Style (Luigi Scattini, 1965), with Italian comedy duo Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia.

Keaton's final film was A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (Richard Lester, 1966) which was filmed in Spain in September-November 1965. He amazed the cast and crew by doing many of his own stunts. Shortly after completing the film, Keaton died of lung cancer in 1966 at his home in Woodland Hills, California. He was 70. In 1987, the documentary, Buster Keaton: A Hard Act to Follow, directed by Kevin Brownlow and David Gill, won two Emmy Awards.

One Week (1920). Source: (YouTube).

Trailer for The General (1927). Source: Fandor Movie Trailers (YouTube).

The Railrodder (1965). Source: NFB (YouTube).

Sources: Roger Ebert, Nicolette Olivier (IMDb), New York Times, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

A highlight at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2015 is the open-air screening tonight of Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) in a magical black and white, thanks to a new restoration. Today's post is about Alain Delon (1935), the actor who played Rocco in this landmark Italian film. Delon was the breathtakingly good-looking James Dean of the European cinema of the late 1950s and early 1960s who proved in this film that he was also a magnificent actor.

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, 1967. retail price: 0,20 MDN.Photo: publicity still for Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960).

French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 22. Photo: Sam Lévin.

German postcard by Krüger. Photo: Ufa.

German postcard by ISV, no. H 25.

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

Spanish postcard, no. 161. Photo: Philippe R. Doumic.

Spanish postcard by Bergas Ind. Graf., Barcelona, no. 463, 1967.

Stormy Childhood

Alain Fabien Maurice Marcel Delon was born in Sceaux, a suburb of Paris in 1935. His parents, Édith Arnold and Fabien Delon, divorced when Delon was four. He had a stormy childhood and was six times expelled from different schools.

At 14, Delon left school, and worked for a brief time at his stepfather Paul Boulogne's butcher shop. Three years later, the 17-year-old enlisted in the French Marines, serving in 1953-1954 in Indochina as a parachutist. In 1956, after being dishonourably discharged from the military, he returned to France. He had little money and worked at various odd jobs, including as a waiter, salesman, and porter in the Les Halles market.

During this time he became friends with the actress Brigitte Auber, and joined her on a trip to the Cannes Film Festival, where his film career would begin with a screentest for David O’Selznick. He didn't go to Hollywood, but decided to stay in France, and he made his film debut in Quand la femmes s'en mele/Send a Woman When the Devil Fails (Yves Allégret, 1957).

In 1958, during the making of the love story Christine (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1959) he met Romy Schneider. They would be engaged till 1964.

Delon’s first outstanding success came with the role of the parasite Tom Ripley in the sundrenched thriller Plein soleil/Purple Noon (René Clément, 1960), based on the crime novel The Talented Mr. Ripley by Patricia Highsmith. Delon presented a psychological portrait of a murderous young cynic who attempts to take on the identity of his victim. The cricics liked his performance. According to Wikipedia, Highsmith herself was also a fan of his portrayal.

German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne Eickel, no. 419. Photo: Sam Lévin, 1957.

French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 1004. Offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 1026. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Belgian postcard by D.R.C, licency holder for Belgium and Belgian Congo of Universum Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. 4615. Photo: Sam Lévin / UFA.

Dutch postcard by Muziekparade, Hilversum, no. AX 4701. Photo: Hafbo / Sam Lévin.

French postcard by Editions du Globe (EDUG), Paris, no. 838. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. 3980. Photo: N.V. Meteor Film / Speva / Play Art Prod. Publicity still for Christine/Liebelei (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1958).

The Eclipse

Luchino Visconti offered Alain Delon a totally different role in Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960). In this film, he plays the devoted Sicilian immigrant Rocco, who accepts the greatest sacrifices to save his characterless brother Simon, played by Renato Salvatori. Delon received international recognition for this role.

The following year Alain Delon made his stage debut in Paris in Dommage qu'elle soit une putain/'Tis Pity She’s a Whore, alongside Romy Schneider. The play, written by John Ford, was directed by Luchino Visconti. The production cost a reported 60 million francs and broke box office records. It ran for more than 8 months.

Delon also gave tremendous performances in L'Eclisse/The Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) opposite Monica Vitti, and the epic Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) starring opposite Burt Lancaster and Claudia Cardinale. L’Eclisse won the Special Prize of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival, and the following year Il Gattopardo won the Golden Palm in Cannes.

After these acclaimed Italian films, Alain Delon returned to France and to the crime film in Mélodie en sous-sol/The Big Snatch (Henri Verneuil, 1963) with Jean Gabin. This classic genre film was distinguished by a soundly worked-out screenplay, by careful production and by excellent performances of both Gabin and Delon.

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam, no. 1383. Photo: Unifrance Film / Ufa.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. FK 44. Photo: Unifrance / Ufa.

Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. 6176.

German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 444. Photo: Privat.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. FK 42. Photo: Unifrance Film / Philippe R. Doumic.

French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 1151A, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane.

French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 1161, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane. Photo: Pierre Manciet.

A bid for American stardom

By now Hollywood studios were very interested in him and Alain Delon decided to make a bid for American stardom. In 1965, MGM signed him to a five picture contract. The first movie of this deal was Les Félins/Joy House (René Clément, 1964), shot in France with Jane Fonda. He then followed it up with two more films for the studio: the all-star The Yellow Rolls Royce (Anthony Asquith, 1965), in which Delon had a relatively small role, and Once a Thief (Ralph Nelson, 1965), where he co-starred with Ann-Margret.

Delon signed a three picture deal with Columbia, for whom he appeared in the big budget action film Lost Command (Mark Robson, 1966) with Anthony Quinn. Universal Studios used Delon in a Western, opposite Dean Martin, Texas Across the River (Michael Gordon, 1966).

For Seven Arts he starred in Paris brûle-t-il?/Is Paris Burning? (René Clément, 1966) about the liberation of Paris in August 1944 by the French Resistance and the Free French Forces. This was a massive hit in France but performed disappointingly at the US box office - as did all of Delon's Hollywood financed films. After six Hollywood movies Delon returned to France.

In the late sixties, Delon came to epitomise the calm, psychopathic hoodlum, staring into the camera like a cat assessing a mouse. His tough, ruthless side was used to grand effect in Le Samouraï/The Godson (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967), maybe Delon’s finest moment. Later Melville directed him again in the crime films Le Cercle Rouge/The Red Circle (1970) with Bourvil and Yves Montand, and Un Flic/A Cop (1972) with Catherine Deneuve.

In 1968 Delon also in real life got involved in a murder scandal when one of his bodyguard was found shot dead on a garbage dump nearby Delon's house. Eventually Delon was cleared of all charges.

In the cinema, he had a huge success in the bloodstained Borsalino (1970, Jacques Deray). He and Jean-Paul Belmondo played small-time gangsters who become kings of the Marseilles underworld of the 1930s. He also produced Borsalino, and the film became one of France’s highest grossing films of the time. Between 1968 and 1990 he went on to produce 26 films.

Alain Delon and Romy Schneider in Christine

Dutch postcard by Takken, Utrecht. Photo: NV Meteor Film. Publicity still for Christine/Liebelei (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1958) with Romy Schneider.

French postcard by the Bibliothèque Nationale Paris / Imp. Bussière A.G., Paris, 1990. Photo: Roger Pic. Alain Delon in the play Dommage qu'elle soit une p.../'Tis Pity She’s a Whore directed by Luchino Visconti (1961).

German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/95. Photo Sam Lévin. Another sexy publicity photo for Amours célèbres (Michel Boisrond, 1961) with Brigitte Bardot.

Monica Vitti and Alain Delon in L'eclisse, 1962

Small Romanian collectors card by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for L'eclisse/The Eclypse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) with Monica Vitti.

Alain Delon and Shirley MacLaine in The Yellow Rolls-Royce (1964)

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 313. Photo: publicity still for The Yellow Rolls-Royce (Anthony Asquith, 1964) with Shirley MacLaine.

Small Romanian collectors card. Photo: publicity still for Le Samouraï (Jean-Pierre Melville, 1967) with Nathalie Delon.

Catherine Deneuve and Alain Delon in Le choc (1982)

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for Le choc/Shock (Robin Davis, 1982) with Catherine Deneuve.

Roles Against Type

In later years Alain Delon won critical acclaim for roles against type. In the Kafkaesk thriller Mr. Klein (Joseph Losey, 1976) he was brilliant as the icily sinister art trader in German-occupied France.

In 1985 he was awarded the César Award as Best Actor for his role as an alcoholic in Notre histoire/Our Story (Bertrand Blier, 1984). Another acclaimed role was the homosexual Baron de Charlus in the fine Marcel Proust adaptation Un amour de Swann/Swann in Love (Volker Schlöndorf, 1984).

And in 1990, Delon worked with New Wave auteur Jean-Luc Godard on Nouvelle vague/New Wave (1990), in which he played twins. He also directed two films himself, Pour la peau d'un flic/For a Cop's Hide (1981) and Le Battant/The Fighter (1983).

A string of box office disasters in the next years culminated in 1998 in the unexpected failure of Une chance sur deux/Half a Chance (Patrice Leconte, 1998) in which Alain Delon was reunited with Jean-Paul Belmondo. Delon announced that he would give up acting.

For his impressive film career he received the Legion d'Honneur, the highest French decoration. Delon acquired Swiss citizenship in 1999, and the company managing products sold under his name is based in Geneva. Since the formation of a perfume label in his name, Delon has had a variety of products sold under his name including wristwatches, clothing, eyewear, stationery and cigarettes.

French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 469. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Spanish postcard by Bergas Ind. Graf., no. 572.

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.

French postcard by Editions F. Nugeron, no. Star 28.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 3453. Photo: Michel Ginfray.

Astérix

Alain Delon returned in the cinema as Julius Cesarin Astérix aux Jeux Olympiques/Asterix at the Olympic Games (Frederic Forestier, Thomas Langmann, 2008), and he reunited with former girlfriend Mireille Darc in a stage adaptation of The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller at the Marigny Theatre in Paris.

Alain Delon has a son, Christian Aaron Boulogne 'Ari' Päffgen (1962), from a relationship with German singer/supermodel Nico. The child was raised mostly by Delon's mother and stepfather. He broke the relationship with his mother after she insisted on taking care of Ari. They spoke again when his step-father died in 1988, the same year Nico died.

From his first marriage to Nathalie Delon (Nathalie Barthélemy) he has another son, Anthony Delon (1964), who also acted in a number of films. Then he was a longtime companion of actress Mireille Darc from 1968 to 1982. Then he had a relationship with Anne Parillaud.

From his second marriage with former Dutch model Rosalie van Breemen he has a son Alain-Fabien (1990) and a daughter Anouchka (1994). Rosalie was 21 when she met Alain who was 52. They lived together from 1987 till 2001.

Today, Alain Delon lives in Geneva, Switzerland. He acquired Swiss citizenship in 1999, and the company managing products sold under his name is based in Geneva. His most recent film appearance was in the Russian comedy S Novym godom, mamy!/Happy New Year, Mommies! (Artyom Aksyonenko, Sarik Andreasyan, Anton Bormatov, Dmitriy Grachev, Klim Poplavskiy, 2012).

Trailer for Plein Soleil/Purple Noon (1960). Source: Criterion Dungeon (YouTube)

Trailer Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and his Brothers (1960). Source: Filmmuseum Amsterdam (YouTube).

Trailer for Mélodie en sous-sol/The Big Snatch (1963). Source: Curtis Hayden (YouTube).

Trailer Le Samouraï/The Godson (1967). Source: Edwin Nieves (YouTube).

Trailer La Piscine/The Pool (1968). Source: Filmmuseum Amsterdam (YouTube).

Sources: Alain Delon.ch, Wikipedia, Sarah (IMDb), Il Cinema Ritrovato and IMDb.

We are still at Il Cinema Ritrovato 2015 in Bologna. One of the sections is 1915: Cinema of A Hundred Years Ago. The heyday of the dazzling Italian divas, like Francesca Bertini, Lyda Borelli and fascinating and enigmatic Pina Menichelli (1890-1984). With her contorted postures and disdainful expression, she was the most bizarre Italian silent film diva. Her film Il fuoco/The Fire (1915) was shown earlier this week.

Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 377. Photo: Pinto, Roma.

Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 411. Photo Pinto, Roma.

Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano (Milan), no. 410. Photo: Pinto.

French postcard by BPA, Rueil.

Italian postcard, no. 47.

Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 409. Photo: Pinto, Roma.

Notre Dame des Spasmes

Giuseppina Menichelli was born in Castroreale, Italy, in 1890. She was a sister of singer and actress Dora Menichelli.

After starting her film career at the Roman Cines company in 1913, Pina was catapulted into stardom by Giovanni Pastrone's D'Annunzian film Il Fuoco/The Fire (1915) co-starring with Febo Mari. Il Fuoco tells the love story of a young, vulnerable painter and a wealthy woman. The film's erotic atmosphere caused it to be banned and prompted clerical demonstrations against the film.

Because of her femme fatale, men devouring type, and her extreme and sudden gestures she was nicknamed 'Notre Dame des Spasmes'. Menichelli did however know how to play also in a more restrained way, as Tigre Reale/Royal Tiger (Giovanni Pastrone, 1916) showed.

The script was based on a book by Giovanni Verga and was scripted by the author himself. Verga was a Sicilian writer known for his realist (verismo) fiction rather than for his symbolist-decadent works. Despite this the story of Tigre Reale is a melodrama, full of unlikely twists and turns, but the public was held, mesmerized, by the fascinating and enigmatic Menichelli.

Italian postcard by Ed. Vettori, Bologna. Photo: still from Tigre Reale (Giovanni Pastrone, 1916).

Italian postcard. Photo: probably still from Tigre reale (Giovanni Pastrone, 1916).

Italian postcard by Vettori, Bologna, no. 461. Pina Menichelli and Alberto Nepoti, probably in Tigre reale (Giovanni Pastrone, 1916).

Pina Menichelli in IL padrone delle ferriere

Italian postcard by Vettori, Bologna. Photo: publicity still for Il padrone delle ferriere (Eugenio Perego, 1919). The other actress must be Lina Millefleurs.

Italian postcard by Edizione G.B. Falci, no. 262. Photo: publicity still of Pina Menichelli and Livio Pavanelli in La seconda moglie (Amleto Palermi, 1922).

Italian postcard by Rinascimento Film, Roma. Photo: publicity still of Pina Menichelli in La seconda moglie (Amleto Palermi, 1922).

The Letter

La dama de chez Maxim's (Amleto Palermi, 1923) was one of Pina Menichelli's last films. With this film and with Occupati d'Amelia (Telemaco Ruggeri, 1925), both adaptations of boulevard comedies by Georges Feydeau, Menichelli proved she was well able to do comedy and not only melodramatic and 'vampy' films. In both films one of her co-stars was the French comedian Marcel Lévesque, on the far right on the card below.

After these comedies, however, Pina Menichelli withdrew from the cinema and held back any attempt to interview her.

Pina Menichelli died in 1984 in Milan. Fifteen years later she was one of the divas featured in Diva Dolorosa (Peter Delpeut, 1999).

In her fascinating, ironic text, Short Manual for the Aspiring Scenario Writer, the French author Colette gave a typical description of the femme fatale in cinema, largely based on Pina Menichelli.

Talking about the 'arms' of the femme fatale Colette indicates the hat and the rising gorge: "The femme fatale' s hat spares her the necessity, at the absolute apex of her wicked career, of having to expend herself in pantomime. When the spectator sees the evil woman coiffing herself with a spread-winged owl, the head of a stuffed jaguar, a bifid aigrette, or a hairy spider, he no longer has any doubts; he knows just what she is capable of. And the rising gorge? The rising gorge is the imposing and ultimate means by which the evil woman informs the audience that she is about to weep, that she is hesitating on the brink of crime, that she is struggling against steely necessity, or that the police have gotten their hands on the letter. What letter? THE letter."

Pina Menichelli and Milton Rosmer in La donna e l'uomo

Italian postcard by Ed. G.B. Falci, Milano. Pina Menichelli and Milton Rosmer in the Italian silent film La donna e l'uomo (Amleto Palermi, 1923), produced by Rinascimento Film and distributed by UCI.

Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano Milan) for one of Pina Menichelli's last films La biondina (Amleto Palermi, 1923), based on a book by Marco Praga and tells the tragedy of a woman whose husband kills her in the end. It seems that Italian censorship forced the scriptwriter to add morality to the film, so Praga's tragedy is framed within a story about a modest, conventional wife who, encouraged by her friend, dreams of breaking out, but then reads Praga's book and decides to remain honest and loyal. The actress on the left on the card could be the friend (Gemma de' Ferrari).

Pina Menichelli in La dame de chez Maxim

Italian postcard (G.B. Falci, Milano) for Pina Menichelli's last film La dame de Chez Maxim (Amleto Palermi, 1923). Menichelli played the legendary Môme Crevette in one of the many film adaptations of Georges Feydeau's classic boulevard comedy.

Italian postcard. Photo: G.B. Falci, Milano. Publicity still for La dama de chez Maxim's (1923) with Marcel Lévesque at far right.

Italian postcard. Photo: G.B. Falci, Milano. Publicity still for La dama de chez Maxim's (1923).

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio), Greta de Groat (Unsung Divas of the Silent Screen), Il Cinema Ritrovato 2015 and IMDb.

At the 29th edition of Il Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, which ended yesterday, one of the programs was Beautiful youth: Renato Castellani. The Italian film director and screenwriter made the wonderful young love trilogy of Neorealism with Sotto il sole di Roma (1948), È primavera...(1950) and Due soldi di speranza (1952), about which I wrote about last week in my post about Maria Fiore. After the trilogy, Castellani won the Grand Prix in Cannes with a film adaptation of the ultimate drama of young love, Romeo and Julia (1954). Handsome Lithuanian-born actor Laurence Harvey (1928–1973) played a terrific Romeo in this film. Harvey is best known for his lead performance as a ruthless social climber in Room at the Top (1959), but there is much more to tell about his career and life.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 551. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation. Publicity still for Romeo and Juliet (1954).

A terrific Romeo

Laurence Harvey was born in the town of Joniškis, Lithuania in 1928. He maintained throughout his life that his birth name was Laruschka Mischa Skikne, but it was actually Zvi Mosheh Skikne. He was the youngest of three boys born to Ella Skikne Zotnickaita and Ber Skikne, a Lithuanian Jewish family.

Aged five, his family emigrated to South Africa, where he was known as Harry Skikne. He grew up in Johannesburg, and as a teenager he served with the entertainment unit of the South African Army during the Second World War in Egypt and Italy.

After moving to London, he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art where he became known as Larry. After leaving RADA early, he began to perform on stage in regional theatre. He made his cinema debut as Laurence Harvey in the British horror film House of Darkness (Oswald Mitchell, 1948).

After this the Associated British Picture Corporation (ABPC) offered him a two year contract and he appeared in several of their lower budget films such as the film noir Man on the Run (Lawrence Huntington, 1949) starring Derek Farr, and the narcotics crime drama Cairo Road (David MacDonald, 1950). After failing in the commercial theatre in London's West End, Harvey joined the company of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon for the 1952 season.

His film career got a boost when he appeared in Women of Twilight (Gordon Parry, 1952) opposite René Ray. This crime drama was made by Romulus Films who signed Harvey to a long-term contract. He secured a small role in a Hollywood film, Knights of the Round Table (Richard Thorpe, 1953), and was cast with Rex Harrison in King Richard and the Crusaders (David Butler, 1954).

That year he also played Romeo in Renato Castellani's adaptation of William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet (1954), narrated by John Gielgud. Patrick Hunter at IMDb: “a very worthwhile movie, especially for Shakespeare fans. I personally think Laurence Harvey is a terrific Romeo. Yes, he's a bit of a simp, but that's the character. In fact, Harvey is the screen's best Romeo; he's a lot more passionate than Leslie Howard in the MGM version, and he speaks the verse better than either DiCaprio or Leonard Whiting in the two subsequent versions.”

British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. W 883. Photo: British Associated Pathé.

Notorious for his high-spending, high-living ways

Laurence Harvey was now established as an emerging British star. He was cast as the writer Christopher Isherwood in I Am A Camera (Henry Cornelius, 1955), with Julie Harris as Sally Bowles. Later, the musical Cabaret would also be based on the same books by Christopher Isherwood.

Harvey also appeared on American TV and on Broadway. He made his Broadway debut in 1955 in the play Island of Goats. The play closed after one week, though his performance won Harvey a 1956 Theatre World Award. A hit in France was the film Three Men in a Boat (Ken Annakin, 1956) with Shirley Eaton. Harvey appeared twice more on Broadway, in 1957 with Julie Harris in William Wycherley's The Country Wife, and as William Shakespeare's Henry V in 1959, as part of the Old Vic company, which featured a young Judi Dench as Katherine, the Daughter of the King of France.

Jon C. Hopwood writes at IMDb: “The colorful Harvey, a press favorite, became notorious for his high-spending, high-living ways. He found himself frequently in debt, his travails faithfully reported by entertainment columnists. More fame was to come.“

His breakthrough to international stardom came in 1959 when he was cast as the social climber Joe Lampton in Room at the Top (Jack Clayton, 1959). The film was produced by British film producing brothers Sir John and James Woolf of Romulus Films and Remus Films. For his performance, Harvey received a BAFTA Award nomination and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor, the first person of Lithuanian descent to be nominated for an acting Oscar. His co-star, Simone Signoret, did win the Oscar for her performance. Room at the Top (1959) and Look Back in Anger (Tony Richardson, 1959) inaugurated the ‘kitchen sink’ cinema, the New Wave that revolutionized Britain’s film industry.

German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 1322. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation. Publicity still for Romeo and Juliet (1954).

Decline

During the 1960s, Laurence Harvey appeared in several major films. He starred in Butterfield 8 (Daniel Mann, 1960) opposite Elizabeth Taylor, and John Wayne's epic The Alamo (1960), released within a month of each other. Harvey was then cast in the film version of the war drama The Long and the Short and the Tall (Leslie Norman, 1961) with Richard Todd. The role had earlier made Peter O'Toole prominent in the West End, but O'Toole was not yet established in cinema and Harvey was clearly more ‘bankable’.

Other films included Walk on the Wild Side (Edward Dmytryk, 1962) with Barbara Stanwyck, a young Jane Fonda and Capucine; the film adaptation of Tennessee Williams'Summer and Smoke (Peter Glenville, 1961) with Geraldine Page, and Darling (John Schlesinger, 1965) with Julie Christie and Dirk Bogarde.

He also appeared as a brainwashed former Korean War POW in the Cold War thriller The Manchurian Candidate (John Frankenheimer, 1962). He became very good friends with his co-star Frank Sinatra, and was a member in good standing of high society, then dubbed ‘The Jet Set’.

His career began to decline from the mid-1960s. The remake of W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage (Ken Hughes, 1964) was a failure, as was The Outrage (Martin Ritt, 1964) starring Paul Newman, a remake of Akira Kurosawa's classic Rashômon (1950). Harvey reprised his Oscar-nominated role as Joe Lampton in the sequel Life at the Top (Ted Kotcheff, 1965), but the film was not a success.

Harvey returned to Britain to make the comedy The Spy with a Cold Nose (Daniel Petri, 1966) with Daliah Lavi. His last hurrah was his appearance in the spy thriller A Dandy in Aspic (1968), of which he took the direction over after the original director Anthony Mann died during shooting.

In settlement of a dispute with Woodfall Films over the rights to The Charge of the Light Brigade (Tony Richardson, 1968), Woodfall cast him in their version as a Russian prince. He performed as cast, but was never seen as the Prince in the finished film. The only part of his performance remaining in the final cut is a brief appearance of him in the background of one shot, as an anonymous member of a theatre audience.

Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. C-222. Photo: M.G.M. Publicity still for The Outrage (Martin Ritt, 1964).

Guest murderer of the week

Laurence Harvey played out his career largely in undistinguished films, TV work and the occasional supporting role in a major production. In The Magic Christian (Joseph McGrath, 1969), he recited Hamlet's soliloquy, almost nude and very thin.

A promising project, Orson Welles'The Deep (1970) with Jeanne Moreau, was never finished. One of his better performances from this period was in an episode of Rod Serling's TV series Night Gallery (1971). He was also guest murderer of the week on Columbo: The Most Dangerous Match (1973) as a chess champion who murders his opponent. He directed himself in the last picture in which he appeared, Welcome to Arrow Beach (1974).

Harvey was married three times. In 1957 he married actress Margaret Leighton, whom he had met on the set of The Good Die Young (1954). They divorced in 1961. His second marriage in 1968 was to Joan Perry Cohn, who was 17 years his senior and the widow of film mogul Harry Cohn of Columbia Pictures. Finally he married Paulene Stone. Harvey met Stone on the set of A Dandy in Aspic, and while still married to Cohn he became a father for the first time when Stone gave birth to a daughter, Domino, in 1969. Eventually, Harvey divorced Cohn and married Stone in 1972.

Harvey was bisexual. His long-term lover was his manager James Woolf, who had discovered Harvey in the 1950s. A heavy smoker and drinker, Harvey died from stomach cancer in 1973. He was only 45. His daughter, Domino (1969–2005), who worked as a bounty hunter, was only 35 when she died. They are buried together in Santa Barbara Cemetery in Santa Barbara, California, USA.

Trailer for Romeo and Juliet (1954). Source: HanseSound Musik und Film GmbH (YouTube).

Complete film I am a camera (1955). Source: LostCinemaChannel (YouTube).

Sources: Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Austrian film actor Gerhard Riedmann (1925–2004) was the romantic lead in German and Austrian musical comedies, operettas and Heimatfilms of the 1950s and 1960s.

German postcard, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-52. Photo: Werler / Prisma-Film.

German postcard by Franz Josef Rudel, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2291. Photo: CCC / Deutsche Film Hansa / A. Grimm.

The Bird Seller

Gerhard Anton Riedmann was born in Vienna, the capital of Austria in 1925. He was the son of a railway official. Riedmann studied music (violin) for one year and then moved to the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar. His first stage parts were at the Theater an der Josefstadt in Vienna.

In 1948 he made his film debut with an uncredited bit role in Das andere Leben/The Different Life (Rudolf Steinboeck, 1948), made by the crew and cast of the Viennese Theater an der Josefsstadt. At IMDb, Martin Kukuczka writes: “The story is based upon the novel by Alexander Lernet-Holenia. Interestingly, it has not lost any of its vigour or message and still appears to work perfectly as a post-WWII social insight and, more powerfully, the judgment of the time.”

Riedmann had his breakthrough as Adam, the title character in Der Vogelhändler/The Bird Seller (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1953), based on the popular operetta by Carl Zeller. His co-stars were Ilse Werner, Wolf Albach Retty and Eva Probst, who would become his first wife.

Next he played the male lead in another operetta, Der Vetter aus Dingsda/The Cousin from Nowhere (Karl Anton, 1953), also starring Vera Molnar and Grethe Weiser. The film was based on the 1921 operetta Der Vetter aus Dingsda composed by Eduard Künneke. Another popular operetta adaptation was Der Zigeunerbaron/The Gypsy Baron (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1954) with Paul Hörbiger and Margit Saad.

In 1955 he played King Ludwig II in the American biographical film Magic Fire (William Dieterle, 1955) about the life of composer Richard Wagner (Alan Badel). The film depicted King Ludwig II's patronage of Wagner, without going into much detail about the king's controversial personality. The film, produced by independent film studio Republic Pictures, used a very large cast, opulent sets, and lavish costumes. Magic Fire was shot in Italy and Germany over 12 weeks. Since Republic was known primarily for Westerns and adventure serials, Magic Fire was one of the rare ‘prestige’ films to be produced by studio chief Herbert Yates. Nevertheless, critical response was mixed and box office receipts in the U.S. were disappointing.

Riedmann then played the title roles in the drama Oberwachtmeister Borck/Sergeant Borck (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1955) and the German musical Der Bettelstudent/The Beggar Student (Werner Jacobs, 1956) with Waltraut Haas and Elma Karlowa and based on the operetta Der Bettelstudent by Karl Millöcker. After a Polish aristocrat refuses to marry a Colonel, he manoeuvers to force her to marry a penniless student in revenge. The following year, he played the lead in Der Graf von Luxemburg/The Count of Luxemburg (Werner Jacobs, 1957) based on the operetta Der Graf von Luxemburg by Franz Lehár.

German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 898. Photo: Berolina-Film / Allianz Film / Filip. Publicity still for Der Vogelhändler/The Bird Seller (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1953).

German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 1127. Photo: Berolina-Film / Herzog-Film / Wesel. Publicity still for Der Zigeunerbaron/The Gypsy Baron (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1954).

Belgian postcard by DRC, no. 3692. Photo: Arthur Grimm / Ufa.

German autograph card. Photo: Algefa / Allianz / Grimm. Publicity still for Oberwachtmeister Borck/Sergeant Borck (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1955).

Margit Nünke and Gerhard Riedmann in Geliebte Bestie (19590

Dutch postcard by DRC Holland, no. 1223. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still for Geliebte Bestie/Hippodrome (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1959) with Margit Nünke.

Waldrausch

During the early 1960s, Gerhard Riedmann continued to star in light entertainment films like the Austrian comedy Ich heirate Herrn Direktor/I'm getting married to the director (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1960) with Heidelinde Weiss, and the Heimat film Waldrausch (Paul May, 1962) starring Marianne Hold. In Waldrausch, Riedmann played an architect, who proposes a plan to build a damn, flooding a valley. A farmer tries to block the ambitious plans.

When the German cinema imploded, he focused more on television, where he remade old film successes as Der Vogelhändler (Kurt Wilhelm, 1960). He then had a supporting part in the Czechoslovak film Dýmky/The Pipes (Vojtěch Jasný, 1966), which was entered into the 1966 Cannes Film Festival.

In Italy, he co-starred in the Spaghetti Western Clint il solitario/Clint the Stranger (Alfonso Balcázar, 1967) with George Martin and Marianne Koch. He also starred in Die nackte Bovary/Madame Bovary (Hans Schott-Schönbinger, 1969) with Edwige Fenech as Gustave Flaubert’s heroin.

In 1977 he played a supporting part in the remake of Waldrausch (Horst Hächler, 1977) starring Uschi Glas. His last screen role was in the TV series Der Bergdoktor/The mountain doctor (1992–1997).

When not acting in films or on stage (notably at the Munich Kammerspiele), he was employed as Project Director in his father-in-law's glass and optics factory.

Gerhard Riedmann died in Kematen in the Tyrol region of Austria. He was married to the actress Eva Probst from 1954 till 1960. His second marriage was to Anita Swarowski. Since 1991 he was married to Gertrud Anna Wettstein. He had seven children.

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 1986. Photo: Neubach / Constantin / Bockelberg. Publicity still for Die Fischerin vom Bodensee/The Fisher-girl from Lake Bodensee (Harald Reinl, 1956).

Austrian postcard by Kellner-Fotokarten, Wien, no. 1059. Photo: Neubach / Constantin. Publicity still for Die Prinzessin von St. Wolfgang/The Princess of St. Wolfgang (Harald Reinl, 1957).

German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 432. Photo: Saschafilm.

German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3829. Photo: Meroth / Sascha Film / Gloria.

German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3326. Photo: Berolina-Film / Constantin-Film / Wesel. Publicity still for Liebe ist ja nur ein Märchen/Love is just a fairytale (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1955).

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

Lou Tellegen (1883-1934) was considered one of the best-looking actors of the silent screen - first in France and later in the United States. He made three pictures with Sarah Bernhardt. Then the ‘Stage Adonis’ starred in a London production of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray. In Hollywood he married opera diva Geraldine Farrar and co-starred with her in three of her films. As the silent era ended, Tellegen's career was also over. He finished his tempestuous life by committing hara-kiri with a pair of golden scissors, as the legend goes.

British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 212.

The Divine Sarah

Lou Tellegen (or Lou-Tellegen) was born as Isidor Louis Bernard Edmon van Dommelen in Sint-Oedenrode, The Netherlands, in 1883 (several sources mistakenly mention 1881). He was the illegitimate child of former army lieutenant Isidor Louis Bernard Edmon Tellegen and actress Anna Maria van Dommelen. His family moved a year later to Nijmegen and then to Amsterdam.

Lou made his stage debut in 1903 with the stage company Rotterdamsch Tooneel of Dieck van Eysden. He moved to Brussels and later to Paris, where he worked as a model for such artists as Lacroix, Constantin Meunier and Auguste Rodin, and as a prize-boxer. He studied at the Conservatoire Nationale de Musique et de Déclamation, and worked for the Théâtre de l'Odéon under André Antoine, the innovative founder of the Théâtre Libre. Tellegen became an eager and dedicated stage actor with Italy’s most famous actress at the time, Eleonora Duse.

Later he met dandy-actor Edouard de Max, who introduced him to Sarah Bernhardt. Eventually Lou co-starred in several roles with the Divine Sarah, and was also romantically involved with her. In 1910, he made his motion picture debut as Armand Duval alongside Bernhardt in La dame aux camellias/Camille (Louis Mercanton, 1911), a French silent film based on the play by Alexandre Dumas, fils.

In 1910, Tellegen and Bernhardt travelled to the United States to appear on stage in Jeanne d’Arc (Joan of Arc). The New York Times first published, and then retracted, the announcement of their impending marriage. She was 37 years his senior.

Back in France, they made their second film together, Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth/Queen Elizabeth (Henri Desfontaines, Louis Mercanton, 1912). The film was an adaptation of a play by Émile Moreau about episodes of the life of Elizabeth I, Queen of England (1533-1603), and focussed on her ill-fated love affair with Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex (Tellegen). It was an enormous success in the U.S., where it was distributed by a young Adolph Zukor.

The following year, Bernhardt and Tellegen appeared again together in Adrienne Lecouvreur/An Actress's Romance (Henri Desfontaines, Louis Mercanton, 1913). This film is considered a lost film. In the summer of 1913, Tellegen went to London where he produced, directed and starred in the Oscar Wilde play The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Edouard de Max. French postcard.

Sarah Bernhardt. Postcard sent from Leipzig, 31 October 1905, to Laibach, Krain, Austria (now Ljubljana, Slovenia). The author wrote in German but using the Greek alphabet and signed Hugo Reizenbach. The adressee was Christl Kantz.

One of the Best-looking Actors on Screen

Invited back to the United States, Lou Tellegen worked in the theatre and soon became a matinee idol. One of the reviews read: 'French romance, hand-kissing romance, dashing romance, it lives again with Tellegen'. His leading role in the melodrama Maria Rosa was a spectacular success.

Samuel Goldwyn, at the time financial director of the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Company, saw Tellegen in 1915 in this play and offered him a contract for six films. His American film début was The Explorer (George Melford, 1915), followed by The Unknown (George Melford, 1915), both with Dorothy Davenport as his co-star.

Considered one of the best-looking actors on screen, Tellegen starred in numerous silent films opposite such stars as Sessue Hayakawa, in The Victoria Cross (Edward LeSaint, 1916), and Nell Shipman, in The Black Wolf (Frank Reicher, 1917).

In 1916, he married Geraldine Farrar, a well-known opera diva turned film actress, who was herself known to be the lover of Germany's Crown Prince Wilhelm of Germany. He appeared with Farrar in three films: The World and Its Woman (Frank Lloyd, 1919), Flame of the Desert (Reginald Barker, 1919) and The Woman and the Puppet (Reginald Barker, 1920). Their marriage did not last and they divorced in 1923.

Lou Tellegen had become an American citizen in 1918. He combined his work in the cinema with a successful stage career. Tellegen also worked as a producer and co-wrote two successful plays - Blind youth (1917) with Willard Mack, and The lust of gold (1919) with Andor Garvay – which earned him a lot of money.

For Vitagraph and Fox Film he appeared in numerous silent films including The Redeeming Sin (J. Stuart Blackton, 1925) with Alla Nazimova and Parisian Love (Louis J. Gasnier, 1925) with Clara Bow.

One of his memorable roles was as the corrupt Sheriff in John Ford's Western 3 Bad Men (1926) who wore a white hat instead of the stereotypical bad guy black hat. He directed a film starring Dolores del Rio, No Other Woman (Lou Tellegen, 1928), but it was not a success.

Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 921. Photo: Fox Film.

French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 307. Photo: (Max Munn) Autrey / Fox Film.

Harakiri

After his face was damaged in a hotel fire in 1929 and sound film had arrived, Lou Tellegen’s fame faded. According to novelist Kathy Charles, Lou possessed “a high-pitched voice that could curl the hairs on your neck, Tellegen’s career was destroyed by the advent of dialogue in the cinema, and he instantly became a has-been.”

Among his rare sound film appearances were a supporting part in the crime film Enemies of the Law (Lawrence C. Windom, 1931) with Mary Nolan, and a bit part in Caravane (Erik Charell, 1934) starring Charles Boyer. Employment was not forthcoming and debt-ridden, he went bankrupt.

He was diagnosed with cancer, though this information was kept from him, and he became despondent. In 1934, Tellegen locked himself in the bathroom of a mansion of a female admirer, the rich widow Edna Cuhady, on North Vine Street in Los Angeles. He shaved and powdered his face, and while standing in front of a full-length mirror, he committed hara-kiri by stabbing himself seven times with a pair of golden scissors (which had his name engraved on them). Reportedly he was surrounded by newspaper clippings of his career, which he had always cut with the same golden scissors.

According to a 1934 article in Time Magazine, the many obituaries “told how at 15 he ran off with his father's mistress, how he specialized in love-making while he was successively a baker's assistant, a trapeze artist, a model for Auguste Rodin (Eternal Springtime, the original which is now in the Metropolitan Museum), how he first arrived in the U.S. as Sarah Bernhardt's leading man. The final Hollywood picture was of a broken, hollow-eyed matinee idol who kept having his face lifted.“

These obituaries were mostly taken from Tellegen's highly fictitious memoir, Women Have Been Kind (1931). Dorothy Parker called it "rubbish" in Vanity Fair, and suggested the title should have been Women Have Been Kind - of Dumb. Tellegen's wives were Countess Jeanne de Brouckère (1903-1905) - an artist whom he had met while he was an artist’s model in Paris and with whom he had a daughter, Diane; Geraldine Farrar (1916-1923); Isabelle Craven Dilworth - an actress with the stage name Nina Romano (1923-1928) with whom he had a son, Rex; and actress and former Ziegfield girl Eve Casanova (1930-1934).

When asked to comment on Tellegen's death, Geraldine Farrar replied candidly: "Why should that interest me?" The Tellegen interlude, the prima donna claimed long ago, left only "a surface scar." His wife Eve Casanova sent her regrets from New York but did not have the time to attend his funeral. All in all, only 37 family members and friends showed up for the funeral of a man that at one time had millions of fans worldwide.

Lou Tellegen was burned to ashes which, as a last theatrical gesture, he ordered sprinkled on the waves of the Pacific. Posthumously his last film was released, the drama Together We Live (Willard Mack, 1935). In 2011, David W. Menefee published The Rise and Fall of Lou Tellegen.

Short clip from from Les Amours de la reine Élisabeth/Queen Elizabeth (1912). Robert Devereux (Tellegen) is executed. Queen Elizabeth (Sarah Bernhardt) visits his corpse, and mourns for him. Source: swagner99 (YouTube).

Long clip from Parisian Love (Louis Gasnier, 1925) with Lou Tellegen and Clara Bow. Source: classicmoviegirl91 (YouTube).

Sources: Bob Bertina (Lou Tellegen. Een Hollander in Hollywood, VN Bijlage 1985 - Dutch), A.J.C.M. Gabriëls (Institute of Netherlands History), Erik Brouwer (De Volkskrant - Dutch), Kathy Charles (John Belushi is Dead), Allan Ellenberger (Hollywoodland), Time, Wikipedia and IMDb.