European Film Star Postcards

American Va-va-voom singer Abbe Lane (1932) achieved her greatest success as the vocalist for Xavier Cugat's orchestra, but she also appeared in American and several Italian films. The beautiful, curvaceous Lane was nicknamed 'the swingingest sexpot in show business.'

German card by Ufa, no. 1039. Photo: Ufa.

Xavier Cugat. Promotion card by Philips, no. GF 025 66/13.

Nightclub Sensation

Abbe Lane was born Abigail Francine Lassman to a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, in 1932. She began her career as a child actress on radio and in movie shorts by Vitaphone. From there she progressed to singing and dancing on Broadway.

At 16, she appeared on Broadway in George Abbot's Barefoot Boy with Cheek. A year later, she was a featured vocalist on the Vincent Lopez television show and worked on stage in a Michael Todd production of As the Girls Go.

Bandleader Xavier Cugat spotted her calypso number in that stage show and hired her as a vocalist for his famous orchestra. In 1952, the two married and Cugat influenced her music which favoured Latin and rumba styles.

With her palpable sexuality she became a nightclub sensation as well as a fixture on television variety shows, such as Toast of the Town. She attracted attention in talk shows for her suggestive comments such as "Jayne Mansfield may turn boys into men, but I take them from there". Her costume for an appearance on the Jackie Gleason Show was considered too revealing and she was instructed to wear something else.

Lane made her Hollywood debut in the Western Wings of the Hawk (Budd Boetticher, 1953), followed a year later by Ride Clear of Diablo (Jesse Hibbs, 1954) starring Audie Murphy. Cugat supervised her musical number in another WesternThe Americano (William Castle, 1955), starring Glenn Ford.

When the live Xavier Cugat Show premiered in 1957, Lane was front and centre. She recorded a series of Latin jazz-inspired LPs for RCA. In 1958 she collaborated with Tito Puente on the top-selling record album Be Mine Tonight and she also starred opposite Tony Randall in the Broadway musical Oh, Captain!. Lane later recorded her songs in that musical on a solo album.

Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 113.

French postcard by Editions P.I.. Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 1034. Photo: Paolo Costa / Rapho.

Too sexy for the RAI

Despite these successes, Hollywood offered Abbe Lane mainly decorative parts and like many other American stars, she moved to Rome to work in Italian films. In 1955 she and Cugat toured Italy, where she co-starred in the film Quando tramonta il sole/Sunset in Naples (Guido Brignone, 1955). Her attempts to promote the project were complicated when Italian television network RAI called her 'too sexy' to appear on air.

More Italian films soon followed, like the drama I girovaghi/The Wanderers (Hugo Fregonese, 1956) starring Peter Ustinov, and the comedy Tempo di villeggiatura/Time of Vacation (Antonio Racioppi, 1956) with Vittorio de Sica. As Eva, she played the female lead in the Italian comedy Totò, Eva e il pennello proibito/Toto in Madrid (Stefano Vanzina, 1959) starring Totò and Louis de Funès.

When Cugat moved back to New York, Lane chose to stay in Italy. The distance proved too much for the couple, and they divorced in 1964. Lane remained in the public eye throughout the 1960s, guest-starring on TV series including F Troop (1966), The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1966), The Flying Nun (1968), and The Brady Bunch (1970), but her career flagged throughout the 1970s. She appeared in a segment of Twilight Zone: The Movie (George Miller, 1983) in the role of an airline stewardess and did some final TV appearances.

In 1992 Abbe Lane unexpectedly resurfaced with But Where Is Love?, an autobiographical novel about a Broadway ingénue who falls in love with a Latin bandleader. Since 1964, she is married to Peter Leff.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, presented by Les Carbones Korès Carboplane, no. 996. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for Maracaibo (Cornel Wilde, 1958).

Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, no. 858.

Sources: Frank Thistle (Adam), Carina MacKenzie (Los Angeles Times), Jason Ankeny (AllMusic), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Fresh-faced Patricia Roc (1915-2003) was between 1943 and 1953 one of Britain's top 10 box office stars. The elegant, well spoken actress seemed the epitome of the English rose. She had international success in such Gainsborough costume dramas as Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945) and The Wicked Lady (1945), and in When the Bough Breaks (1947) as an unmarried mother.

British postcard. Photo: J.A. Rank Org.

British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 1122. Photo: Omnia Films.

British postcard. Photo: Gainsborough.

Vintage postcard. Photo: Eagle Lion.

Lady in Distress

Patricia Roc was born Felicia Miriam Ursula Herold in London in 1915. She was the adoptive daughter of a Dutch-Belgian father, André Riese, a wealthy stockbroker, and a half-French mother. She had two sisters called Marie-Louise and Barbara. ‘Pat’ did not learn that she was adopted as a baby until she was 34 when she needed her birth certificate in order to marry her second, French husband.

Roc was educated at private schools in London, followed by a finishing education in Paris. In 1937 she joined London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). A year later she started as a stage actress, debuting in a Guy Bolton revue, Nuts And May (1938).

She was seen in this production by film mogul Alexander Korda who cast her in a minor role in the romantic comedy The Divorce of Lady X (Tim Whelan, 1938) starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier.

Korda then offered her a leading role as the Polish Princess in the costume epic The Rebel Son (Adrian Brunel, Albert de Courville, Alexis Granowsky, 1938). This was an English-language version of the French film Tarass Boulba (Alexis Granowsky, 1936) starring Harry Baur, utilising much of the action footage from the earlier film.

She learned the trade in a few B-films as a 'lady in distress', including the Edgar Wallace thrillers The Gaunt Stranger (Walter Forde, 1938) and The Mind Of Mr Reeder (Jack Raymond, 1939).

Roc came into her own in patriotic films backing the war effort. She helped Alastair Sim fight the closing of a village hall in Let The People Sing (John Baxter, 1941) based on a novel by J.B. Priestley, and she supported Vera Lynn, the 'Forces' Sweetheart', in We'll Meet Again (Philip Brandon, 1942), a story loosely based on Lynn’s rise to radio fame.

British postcard.

Dutch postcard.

Dutch postcard by Uitgeverij Takken, Utrecht, no. 3105.

Dutch postcard, no. 3238. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Org.

Demure Lower-middle-class Girl

In 1943 Patricia Roc became one of Britain's 10 box-office stars for 10 consecutive years, surpassed only by Margaret Lockwood. In the Gainsborough production Millions Like Us (Sidney Gilliat, Frank Launder, 1943), she played the demure lower-middle-class girl who is called up for war service and is directed into a factory making aircraft parts. She marries a young airman (Gordon Jackson) but he is killed in action.

The Rank Organization(with the distinctive logo of the Gongman) contracted her. Rank was the largest and most vertically-integrated film company in Britain, owning distribution, exhibition and production facilities (including the Gainsborough Studios). The head of the studio, J. Arthur Rank described Roc as ‘the archetypal British beauty, the Goddess of Odeon's’.

'Pat' co-starred with Phyllis Calvert, Jean Kent and Flora Robson as internment camp inmates in Two Thousand Women (Frank Launder, 1944), who secretly assist the underground.

She then achieved her greatest level of popularity in a series of escapist melodramas for Gainsborough. In these films Roc usually represented the stereotype of the sweet young thing, menaced by ‘bad girls’ like Jean Kent or Margaret Lockwood, or by rakes like James Masonor Stewart Granger.

Love Story (Leslie Arliss, 1944) allowed her to play a concert pianist ánd Margaret Lockwood's jealous rival for Stewart Granger's love. In one scene they had to slap each other's faces, but she later commented that she and Lockwood remained always the best of friends.

They again played rivals in the costume dramas The Wicked Lady (Leslie Arliss, 1945) and Jassy (Bernard Knowles, 1947). The most famous of these films is The Wicked Lady, the top box-office draw of 1946 in the UK. Roc is back in the ‘nice girl’ role and has her fiancé stolen from her by Lockwood, her best friend. Lockwood does the 'dirty' on Roc again in Jassy by pinching Dermot Walsh from her.

Another huge success was the melodrama Madonna of the Seven Moons (Arthur Crabtree, 1945) in which she played the daughter of Phyllis Calvert (although the two actresses differed only four months in age). The films were loathed by critics and loved by the public.

Roc's more overt sexuality in these films was downplayed for the American market. Her - and Lockwood’s - cleavage led US censors to call for retakes to de-emphasise it.

In the US Roc made only one film, Walter Wanger's production Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur, 1946). In this offbeat Western she again loses the hero (Dana Andrews) to the bigger star (Susan Hayward). This brief move to Hollywood was a loan-out arrangement between Rank and Universal Studios of British in return for American film actors.

During filming, Roc was romantically linked with Ronald Reagan. The following year the romance resumed when Reagan came to Great Britain to make The Hasty Heart (Vincent Sherman, 1949).

Roc played a tempestuous orphan girl in a Scottish fishing village in her next film, The Brothers (David MacDonald, 1947). The orphan has her pick of men, causing rivalry, murder, suicide and ritual killing in the highly superstitious community. The grim tale was not popular at the time but has since gained in reputation.

Dutch postcard by J.S.A. Photo: Universal M.P.E.

British postcard.

Norvegian postcard by Enerett K. Harstad, Kunstforlag, Oslo, no. 57. Photo: Rank.

British postcard in the A Real Photograph series, no. F. S. 38. Patricia Roc with pet Peke 'Floppy' welcome some of the 25,000 guests at the Sunday Pictorial Film Garden Party.

The Goddess of the Odeons

Patricia Roc’s career reached another peak in 1948 with When The Bough Breaks (Lawrence Huntington, 1948), an adoption drama that mirrored her own life, and with the musical One Night With You (Terence Young), 1948. During the shooting of the latter film film she met and fell in love with the French director of photography André Thomas, who was to become her second husband.

Roc was married three times. In 1939 - two weeks after the start of the war, the 24-year-old actress had married for the first time, to the 44-year-old Canadian osteopath Dr. Murray Laing. The union swiftly foundered, and they divorced in 1944. In 1949 she married André Thomas, and they moved to Paris.

Roc's contract with Rank had ended and she started to work in France. Her French films included the anthology Retour à la vie/Return to Life (Georges Lampin, André Cayatte, Henri-Georges Clouzot, Jean Dréville, 1949), and the Georges Simenon adaptation L'homme de la tour Eiffel/The Man on the Eiffel Tower (Burgess Meredith, 1949) starring Charles Laughtonas inspector Jules Maigret.

Thomas was unable to have children, which Roc wanted. She had an affair with her co-star Anthony Steel during the filming of Something Money Can't Buy (Pat Jackson, 1952). And in 1952 Roc gave birth to a son Michael as a result of the affair. Thomas agreed to raise Michael as his own and Michael was not told the truth about his father's identity until he was in his mid-40s.

Roc appeared in the Italian films La mia vita è tua/My Life is Yours (Giuseppe Masini, 1953), Le avventure di Cartouche/Cartouche (Steve Sekely, Gianni Vernuccio, 1954) opposite Richard Baseheart, and the woman's film La vedova X/The Widow (Lewis Milestone, 1955).

After the death of Thomas, Roc returned to England in 1957. She appeared in only 3 more films including Bluebeard's Ten Honeymoons (W. Lee Wilder, 1960) in which she played one of the rich victims, thrown off a railway bridge by George Sanders. She also made a few television appearances such as the first episode of The Saint (1962) with Roger Moore as Simon Templar.

She married a third and final time, to businessman Walter Reif, in 1964, and retired from acting. Known as Felicia Reif, Patricia Roc was all but forgotten until she hit the headlines again in 1975 when she was fined £25 for shoplifting from Marks & Spencer in Oxford Street. She later stated that it was purely absent-mindedness, but she pleaded guilty in the hope of avoiding publicity.

The following year, she and her husband moved to a house overlooking the Lago Maggiore in Locarno, Switzerland. There she died in 2003 of kidney failure, aged 88. Recently a biography of Patricia Roc was published, Patricia Roc: The Goddess of the Odeons (2010) by Michael Hodgson.

Excerpt from Millions Like Us (1943). Source: Takethetube9010 (YouTube).

Trailer of The Wicked Lady (1945). Source: Littleshoemaker (YouTube).

Scene from Holiday Camp (1947). Source: Feverpitch96 (YouTube).

Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Henry Jaremko (The Wicked Lady), Tom Vallance (The Independent), Tony Williams (Encyclopedia of British Film), BBC News, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Raymond Souplex (1901–1972) was a French character actor, scriptwriter and singer. With Jane Sourza he formed a popular comedy duo, although they had their biggest successes on the radio. Souplex became a TV star as a police commissioner in the long running police series Les Cinq Dernières Minutes.

French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 1173. Photo: Harcourt.

Philosophically minded tramps on a park bench

Raymond Souplex was born as Raymond Guillermain in 1901 in Paris. He was the son of a public servant and the youngest of four children. In 1920, he tried to enter the Conservatoire but failed.

But while he studied law and his first job as a clerk, he composed songs and wrote sketches. He became a singer and performed in the cabarets and dinner theatres in Paris. In this period he met Jane Sourza who became his accomplice for many years and not his girlfriend as was long believed.

From 1935, he participated in radio broadcasts of Radio Cité with Noël-Noël,Saint-Granier and Jane Sourza. With the latter, he played a pair of philosophically minded tramps on a park bench in the comedy show Sur le banc (The bench).

In 1954, Robert Vernay made the film Sur le banc, based on this radio show. Souplex played again the lead role of the tramp opposite Jane Sourza and Julien Carette. James Travers at Films de France: “Unlike the radio show that inspired it, the film version of Sur le banc was never going to end up a classic, but the combined talents of Souplex and Sourza, pepped up with a generous dash of Julien Carette, make it a pleasing enough timewaster on a dull afternoon.”

Raymond Souplex’ film career had started in 1939 with the film Sur le plancher des vaches/On dry land (Pierre-Jean Ducis, 1939) with Noël-Noël. At the time, Souplex had already become quite popular. During the Second World War, he continued to perform on stage, on the radio and in films.

In Les Surprises de la radio/The Surprises of the radio (Marcel Aboulker, 1940), he played himself in the middle of other big French stars of the era. He also participated with artists like Fréhel and Lys Gauty, in a tour along the factories of the Third Reich where many French people had to labour forced by the Service du travail obligatoire (Compulsory Work Service; STO). He got a reprimand for this tour after the Liberation.

French postcard by Ed. Chantal, Rueil, no. 101. Photo: Carlet.

The five last minutes

After the war, Raymond Souplex resumed his show Sur le banc (The bench), now for Radio Luxembourg, from 1949 till 1963. He returned to the screen in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Manon (1948) alongside Cécile Aubry, Serge Reggianiand Michel Bouquet.

Actor/journalist/screenwriter Henri Jeanson chose him to play an aging crooner in Lady Paname (Henri Jeanson, 1950) alongside Louis Jouvet and Suzy Delair.

In 1957, Claude Loursais gave him the lead role in the French television series Les Cinq Dernières Minutes/The Five Last Minutes, in which he played the police inspector (from 1965 on Commissioner) Antoine Bourrel. This Columbo-like role was inspired by the thriller Identité judiciaire/Paris Vice Squad (Hervé Bromberger, 1951) in which he played an identical character.

The collaboration with Claude Loursais lasted 56 episodes from 1958 to 1972. In the series Bourrel is assisted by inspector Dupuy, played by Jean Daurand. The two actors became so popular that they also appeared together as a police tandem in two films: L'assassin viendra ce soir/The assassin will come tonight (Jean Maley, 1964) and La Malédiction de Belphégor/The Curse of Belphegor (Georges Combret, Jean Maley, 1967) with Dominique Boschero.

In 1972, Raymond Souplex died in Paris of lung cancer at the age of 71. The filming of the fifty-sixth episode of Les Cinq Dernières Minutes was not finished yet. This episode would never be completed. A square in the 18th arrondissement of Paris, where Souplex has long lived on the corner of Montcalm and Marcadet street now bears his name. His wife died in 1993 and their daughter Perrette Souplex is also an actress.

Jane Sourza and Souplex as the tramps Carmen and La Hurlette in Sur le banc. Source: Chaîne de holdabaum (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.

Jean Daurand as Dupuy and Souplex as Bourrel in the episode Dans le pétrin/In trouble (Claude Loursais, 1959) of Les Cinq Dernières Minutes/The Five Last Minutes. Source: Cripure Louis (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.

Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.

An early example of the Spaghetti Western is Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West (Mario Costa, 1964). It was the Western debut of Gordon Scott, former Tarzan and hero of several Peplums. The muscular American starred as the legendary frontier scout and showman of the title. The film was a co-production of Italy, France and West Germany, which explains perhaps why the collectors cards in this post are German.

Gordon Scott in Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del Far West (1965)

German collectors card by J & M Serienbilder Produktion Saar, no. 35. Photo: Gloria Film. Publicity still for Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West (Mario Costa, 1965) with Gordon Douglas. Caption: "Buffalo Bill, der Held des Wilden Westens ohne Furcht und Tadel, fürchtete selbst die gefährlichtsen Gegner nicht. Er ist entschlossen den illegalen Waffenhändlern das Handwerk zu legen." (Buffalo Bill, the hero of the Wild West without fear and without reproach, did not fear even the most dangerous opponent. He is determined to put down the business of the illegal arms dealers.)

German collectors card by J & M Serienbilder Produktion Saar, no. 46. Photo: Gloria Film. Publicity still for Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West (Mario Costa, 1965). Caption: "Der erste Schurke, Big Sam, ist gefasst. Buffalo Bill hat bei ihm die Schiesseisen für die Rothäute gefunden. Big Sam gehört zu den Banditen, auf deren Konto die neunen Kämpfe zwischen Sioux und Weissen kommen." (The first villain, Big Sam is taken. Buffalo Bill has found at his place the firearms for the Redskins. Big Sam is one of the bandits, on whose account comes the new fighting between Sioux and whites.)

Buffalo Bill's Wild West

Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del Far West (1965) was not only the first Western of Gordon Scott, but also of veteran director Mario Costa. Costa, who had directed Scott in the Peplum Il gladiatore di Roma/Gladiator of Rome (1962), took the name of John Fordson. But the son of John Ford, the Italian was not exactly. Buffalo Bill would turn out to be his only Western.

There have been countless films and TV-films about Buffalo Bill, including Buffalo Bill (William A. Wellman, 1944) featuring Joel McCrea, Pony Express(Jerry Hopper, 1953) with Charlton Heston, and Buffalo Bill and the Indians, or Sitting Bull's History Lesson (Robert Altman, 1976) starring Paul Newman.

The real Buffalo Bill was William Frederick Cody (1846-1917), an American scout, bison hunter, and showman. During the American Civil War, he served for the Union from 1863 to the end of the war in 1865. Later he served as a civilian scout to the US Army during the Indian Wars, receiving the Medal of Honor in 1872. One of the most colorful figures of the American Old West, Buffalo Bill started performing in shows that displayed cowboy themes and episodes from the frontier and Indian Wars. He founded his Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1883, taking his large company on tours.

Buffalo Bill’s Wild West toured Europe eight times, the first four tours between 1887 and 1892, and the last four from 1902 to 1906. In 1890 Cody met Pope Leo XIII, and that year, a competition took place in Italy. Buffalo Bill had met some of the Italian 'butteri' (Italian cowboys) and said his men were more skilled at roping calves and performing other similar actions. A group of Buffalo Bill's men challenged nine butteri, led by Augusto Imperiali in Rome. The Italian butteri easily won the competition and Augusto Imperiali became a sort of local hero after the event.

In the film Colonel William Cody, alias Buffalo Bill (Gordon Scott), intends to put an end to the dishonest relations between a gang of white swindlers and the Indian, Yellow Hand (Mirko Ellis). So he goes to the chief of Yellow Hand's tribe, White Fox (Feodor Chaliapin Jr.), and tries to convince him to sign a peace treaty with the Federal troops. In order to avoid this, the gun runners abduct White Fox's daughter, Silver Moon Ray (Catherine Ribeiro), attempting to put the blame on the soldiers of Colonel Peterson (Roldano Lupi).

The big showdown at the end of the film takes place in a cavalry fort with the Indians scaling the walls and gives Buffalo Bill a run for his money. It was all spectacularly filmed by Massimo Dallamano, who also was the cinematographer for Per un pugno di dollari/A Fistful of Dollars (Sergio Leone, 1964).

German collectors card by J & M Serienbilder Produktion Saar, no. 48. Photo: Gloria Film. Publicity still for Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West (Mario Costa, 1965). Caption: "Buffalo Bill kennt keinen Pardon für Bösewichte. Viele Gefahren haben den gerechten Indianerfreund hart gemacht. Das schwerste Abenteur steht den edlen Kämpfer noch bevor." (Buffalo Bill knows no mercy for the bad guys. Many threats have made the fair Indians friend hard. His hardest adventure is still to come for the noble fighter.)

German collectors card by J & M Serienbilder Produktion Saar, no. 49. Photo: Gloria Film. Publicity still for Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West (Mario Costa, 1965) with Gordon Scott, Catherine Ribeiro and Feodor Chaliapin Jr. Caption: "Auch die schöne Tochter 'Mondstrahl' des Häuptlings 'Weisser Fuchs' ist Buffalo Bill, dem berühmten tapferen Mann der Weissen, zugetan. Sie versorgt seine Verwundung aus dem Kampf gegen den Sioux 'Gelbe Hand'." (The beautiful daughter 'Moonbeam' of chief 'White Fox' is devoted to Buffalo Bill, the famous brave man of the white. She cares for his wounds from the fight against the Sioux 'Yellow Hand'.)

Hans von Borsody in Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del Far West (1965)

German collectors card by J & M Serienbilder Produktion Saar, no. 55. Photo: Gloria Film. Publicity still for Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West (Mario Costa, 1965). Caption: "Captain Hunter zerrt verzweifelt an den Fesseln. Der mutige Freund Buffalo Bills muss zusehen, wie im Lager der skalpgierigen Sioux-Krieger die Tochter seines Colonels gemartert werden soll." (Captain Hunter drags desperately at the chains. The courageous friend of Buffalo Bill must watch how the daughter of his colonel will be martyred in the camp of the scalp greedy Sioux Warriors.)

Adorable old-fashioned

Although I called Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del Far West/Buffalo Bill, Hero Of The West in the lead of this post a Spaghetti Western, it isn't quite like what you usually associate with this genre. Most of the pre-Sergio Leone Westerns made in Italy resemble conventional Hollywood horse operas. Reviewer Wizard-8 at IMDb: "The movie plays out like it was made by American filmmakers, from the standard western plot right down to the musical score."

The basic premise of Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del Far West also seems to be inspired by the Karl May films, like Der Schatz im Silbersee/Treasure of Silver Lake (Harald Reinl, 1963) and Winnetou - 1. Teil/Apache Gold (Harald Reinl, 1963), that precipitated the Spaghetti Western boom.

Another reviewer at IMDb, Steve Nyland, is positive about the casting of Gordon Scott as Buffalo Bill Cody: "Gordon Scott is well cast & appropriately larger than life as the Indian fighter turned US Army scout Buffalo Bill Cody, trading in his Samson tunic for a buckskin jacket + goatee. (...). And he plays Cody pretty much as he played the Son of Hercules: Strapping, brawny, beefy, but surprisingly intelligent, insightful, and considerate of even the guy whom he beats the stuffing out of in a bar room brawl. He is almost insufferably good, working for the native Indians to live side by side with his fellow Palefaces and keep the two sides from massacring each other."

Scott as Buffalo Bill is not working for himself to obtain vast sums of money like the bounty hunters in later Spaghetti Westerns. Instead, he is on a mission of mercy authorized by the President to root out injustice.

Steve Nyland: "The spaghetti genre itself had also changed by the time this film was circulating, with the more stylish approaches of DJANGO and Sergio Leone's 'Dollar' films making the more traditionalist approach seen here look a bit old fashioned by comparison. And that's exactly why I adore it: Here's a spaghetti western from the infancy of the genre when they were still making movies about good guys & bad guys, Injuns and the cavalry, and a do-gooder hero designed to be rooted for like he was Audie Murphy or something. The change of pace is quite refreshing."

Gordon Scott in Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west (1964)

German collectors card by J & M Serienbilder Produktion Saar, no. 59. Photo: Gloria Film. Publicity still for Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West (Mario Costa, 1965). Caption: "Der erfolglose Angriff des Häuptlings 'Gelbe Hand' aus Fort Adam galt auch der Tochter des grossen Indianenführers 'Weiser Fuchs'. Ihre Verletzung stammt aus einem erbitterten Nahkampf, in den Buffalo Bill tollkühn eingegriffen hat." (The unsuccessful attack of the chief 'Yellow Hand' from Fort Adam applied also the daughter of the great Indian leader 'White Fox'. Her injury is from a fierce close combat, in which Buffalo Bill has intervened foolhardy.)

Gordon Scott and Mirko Ellis in Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del Far West (1965)

German collectors card by J & M Serienbilder Produktion Saar, no. 67. Photo: Gloria Film. Publicity still for Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West (Mario Costa, 1965) with Mirko Ellis and Gordon Scott (at right). Caption: "Wieder beweist der feige Häuptling Gelbe Hand'' im atemberaubenden Zweikampf mit Buffalo Bill seine Heimtücke. Er schmettert den Tomahawk auf den waffenlosen Gegner und deshalb verachten ihn jetzt sogar die eigenen Stammesgenossen." (Again the cowardly chief Yellow Hand hows his maliciousness in a breathtaking duel with Buffalo Bill. He smashes the Tomahawk on his unarmed opponent and therefore even his own tribesmen now despise him.)

German collectors card by J & M Serienbilder Produktion Saar, no. 68. Photo: Gloria Film. Publicity still for Buffalo Bill, l'eroe del far west/Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West (Mario Costa, 1965). Caption: "In einem Zweikampf auf Leben und Tod hat Buffalo Bill, der berühmteste Held des Wilden Westens, seinen gefährlichsten Feind bezwungen. Der edle Kämpfer schenkt seinem Gegner das Leben. Die Indianer selbst sollen seine Strafe bestimmen." (In a duel to death, Buffalo Bill, the famous hero of the Wild West, has defeated his most dangerous enemy. The noble warrior gives his opponent his life. The Indians themselves have to determine his punishment.)

Sources: Steve Nyland (IMDb), Wikipedia, IMDb and The Spaghetti Western Database.

Italian actress Luisa Garella (1913-?) was a supporting actress of the Italian cinema of the late 1930s and early 1940s. After the war she disappeared.

Italian postcard by Aser, no. 151. Photo: Luxardo Scia Film.

Getting stuck in the sand

Luisa Garella was born as Luisa Gargarella in Firenze (Florence) in 1913 (according to Les gens du Cinema; Wikipedia and IMDb mention 1921 as her birth year).

She made her film debut in a minor role in Paraninfo/The Matchmaker (Amleto Palermi, 1934). In 1936 she played the girlfriend of George Rigaud in the French-Italian drama L'esclave blanc/Black Jungle (Jean-Paul Paulin, 1936).

DB DuMonteil at IMDb: “'L'Esclave Blanc' was recently brought out of oblivion, thanks to a DVD release, with English subtitles. First intended for Carl Theodore Dreyer, who used to talk about the white man, ‘getting stuck in the sand’ in a country which was not his. Jean-Paul Paulin's work is very obscure, even for French viewers: when he replaced Dreyer, he had already made three movies, two of which are still screened on TV: ‘La Femme Nue’ and the rather funny comedy ‘l'Abbé Constantin’. He called it a day in 1950, 26 years before he died. To write that ‘L'Esclave Blanc’ is a colonialist movie is to state the obvious: the last pictures show a peaceful land, under the white man's watchful eye.”

Italian postcard.

The Woman in black

The following year, Luisa Garella played Hedwig in the comedy L'uomo che sorride/The man who smiles (Mario Mattioli, 1937) opposite Vittorio De Sica and Assia Noris.

In 1941 she played Franca in a version of the comedy Scampolo (Nunzio Malasomma, 1941) with Amedeo Nazzari and Lilia Silvi in the title role. Another film in which she played a supporting role was the thriller Grattacieli/Skyscrapers (Guglielmo Giannini, 1943) in the role of Helga Manners. Again under the direction of Giannini, she played Carla Rossiter in 4 ragazze sognano/4 girls dream (Guglielmo Giannini, 1943) co-starring with Vanna Vanni and Valentina Cortese.

That same year, she also appeared in the film La signora in nero/The Woman in black (Nunzio Malasomma, 1943), in the role of Rosetta May. Because of the war, the film was released somewhat haphazardly. It was briefly shown in December 1943 in Rome, but most of the Italian public had to wait until 1945 to see it. It eventually went on general release in June 1946.

After this brief film career, Luisa Garella seems to have abandoned the cinema. There is very little information about her later years. Considering her age Italian Wikipedia presumes that she has deceased. IMDb however mentions one post-war credit: a small part in an American TV series, Conrad Nagel Theater (1955). So maybe Luisa Garella emigrated to the US.

Sources: Les gens du Cinema (French), Wikipedia (Italian), and IMDb.

Melina Mercouri (1920-1994), was a vivacious, free-spirited Greek actress, singer and politician. She met international success in the films Pote Tin Kyriaki/Never on Sunday (1960), Phaedra (1962), Topkapi (1964), and Promesse de l'aube/Promise at Dawn (1970), all directed by her husband Jules Dassin.

Italian postcard. Photo: Dear Film. Publicity still for 10:30 P.M. Summer (Jules Dassin, 1966).

A free-spirited prostitute

Melina Mercouri (Greek: Μελίνα Μερκούρη) was born as Maria Amalia Mercouri in 1920. Her father was former cavalry officer and member of parliament, Stamatis Mercouris, and her mother Eirini Lappa. Her Grandfather had been Mayor of Athens.

When Melina completed her secondary education, she attended the National Theatre's Drama School, much against the desires of her parents. After her graduation in 1944, Mercouri joined the National Theatre of Greece and played the role of Electra in Eugene O'Neill's play Mourning Becomes Electra in 1945.

In 1949, she had her first major stage success playing Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire, written by Tennessee Williams and staged by Karolos Koun's Art Theatre. Until 1950, she also worked in the same theatre in plays by Aldous Huxley, Arthur Miller and André Roussin.

She then moved to Paris, where she appeared in boulevard plays by Jacques Deval and Marcel Achard, and met famous French playwrights and novelists such as Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, Colette and Françoise Sagan. In 1953, she received the Marika Kotopouli Prize and returned to Greece two years later. At the Kotopouli-Rex Theatre, Mercouri starred in plays like Macbeth by William Shakespeare and L'Alouette by Jean Anouilh. Her first husband was a wealthy landowner Panos Harokopos. They had married in 1941 and divorced in 1962.

She made her film debut as a young, wild woman who doesn't want to compromise and settle down in Stella (Michael Cacoyannis, 1955). The film sparked great controversy, and although it was initially rejected by Greek critics, it is now considered one of the five greatest Greek films. Stella received special praise at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival, where Mercouri met American film director Jules Dassin, who would become her husband in 1966, her mentor, and director.

Their first professional pairing was Celui qui doit mourir/He Who Must Die (Jules Dassin, 1957), based on the novel Christ Recrucified by Nikos Kazantzakis, and starring Jean Servais and Carl Möhner. The film is set in a Turkish-occupied Greek village shortly after World War I. The villagers put on a Passion Play, with ordinary people taking the roles of Jesus, Peter, Judas, etc. Staging the play leads to them rebelling against their Turkish rulers in a way that mirrors Jesus's story. Other films by Dassin and featuring Mercouri followed, such as La Legge/The Law (Jules Dassin, 1959) with Gina Lollobrigida.

Mercouri became well-known to international audiences when she starred in the romantic comedy Pote Tin Kyriaki/Ποτέ Την Κυριακή/Never on Sunday (Jules Dassin, 1960), in which Dassin was the director and co-star. The film tells the story of Ilya, a self-employed, free-spirited prostitute who lives in the port of Piraeus in Greece, and Homer, an American tourist from Middletown, Connecticut — a classical scholar enamoured with all things Greek. Homer feels Ilya's life style typifies the degradation of Greek classical culture and attempts to steer her onto the path of morality, while at the same time Ilya loosens the uptight Homer up. As Ilya, Mercouri earned the Best Actress Award at the 1960 Cannes Film Festival and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress and the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.

Spanish postcard by Productos Compactos, S.A., no. B 3768, 1991.

Minister for Culture

Melina Mercouri went on to star opposite Anthony Perkins in Phaedra (Jules Dassin, 1962), a modern adaption of Euripides' classic tragedy Hippolytus. For her part she was nominated again for the BAFTA Award and the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Drama.

The recognition of her acting talent did not stop and her role in the heist film Topkapi (Jules Dassin, 1964) granted her one more nomination, this time for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actress in Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

She worked with other noted directors such as Vittorio De Sica at the Commedia all'italiana Il giudizio universale/The Last Judgement (1961), Carl Foreman at the Anglo-American war film The Victors (1963), and Juan Antonio Bardem at Los pianos mecánicos/The Uninhibited (1965) with James Mason and Hardy Krüger.

She continued her stage career in the Greek production of Tennessee Williams'Sweet Bird of Youth (1960), under the direction of Karolos Koun. In 1967, she played on Broadway the leading role in Illya Darling, a musical version of her film Pote tin Kyriaki/Never on Sunday (1960). For this part she was nominated for the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Leading Actress in a Musical, while her performance in the film La Promesse de l'aube/Promise at Dawn (Jules Dassin, 1970) earned her another Golden Globe Award nomination.

Mercouri concentrated on her stage career for the following years, playing in the Greek productions of The Threepenny Opera and, for a second time, Sweet Bird of Youth, in addition to the ancient Greek tragedies Medea and Oresteia.

She retired from film acting in 1978, when she played in her last film, Kravgi gynaikon/Κραυγή Γυναικών/A Dream of Passion (Jules Dassin, 1978). The story follows Mercouri as Maya, an actress playing Medea, who seeks out Brenda Collins, (Ellen Burstyn), a woman who is in jail for murdering her own children to punish her husband for his infidelity.
Mercouri’s last performance on stage was in the opera Pylades at the Athens Concert Hall in 1992, portraying Clytemnestra.

When Greece was overtaken by a military junta in 1966, Mercouri ardently protested this affront to the world's oldest democracy. As a result, her citizenship was revoked, and from 1967 through 1974 she was denied re-entry into her native country. During these seven years of her exile in France, Mercouri recorded some highly popular records, Melina Mercouri, L oeillet rouge, si Melina m etait contee, Je suis Grecque, including famous Greek and French songs.

In 1977, she became a member of the Hellenic Parliament and in 1981 the first female Minister for Culture of Greece. Mercouri was the person who, in 1983, conceived and proposed the program of the European Capital of Culture, which has been established by the European Union since 1985. She was a strong advocate for the return to Athens of the Elgin marbles, the marbles which were removed from the Parthenon, and are now displayed in the British Museum. She served as Greece's Minister of Culture from 1981 to 1990. In 1990, she ran for mayor of Athens, but was defeated.

In 1994, Melina Mercouri died from lung cancer at the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City, at the age of 73. She was the step-mother of three children by Jules Dassin, including the French singer Joe Dassin.

Trailer for Pote Tin Kyriaki/Ποτέ Την Κυριακή/Never on Sunday (1960). Source: Withlotsabutta (YouTube).

Trailer for Phaedra (1962). Source: Fejedelem1986 (YouTube).

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

German film actor Ludwig Trautmann (1885-1957) was the first German film star. Between 1912 and 1955, he appeared in 69 films, and also wrote, produced and directed several films. In the Nazi period he was prosecuted because of homosexual acts.

German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1671.

German postcard by PNG, no. G 1029/3.

German postcard by NPG (Neue Photographische Gesellschaft), no. 1029/6.

A Castle with 22 Rooms

Ludwig Trautmann was born in Dachsbach, Germany, in 1885. He learned for salesman but in 1901 he made his stage debut. He later worked for theatres in Bochum, Konstanz und Hermannstadt. A cinema owner in Baden-Baden introduced him to film.

In 1912 he signed a contract with the Bioskop-Filmgesellschaft (Bioskop Film Studio). It was the first film contact ever signed in Germany. Trautmann appeared in such short silent films as Madeleine (Emil Albes, 1912) and Die schwarze Natter/The Black Adder (Franz Hofer, 1913).

He soon became known as detective Brown in short silent films directed by Harry Piel, starting with Der Triumph des Todes/The Triumph of Death (Harry Piel, 1912) and Schatten der Nacht/Shadows of the Night (Harry Piel, 1913).

In Austria he played a priest in Der Pfarrer von Kirchfeld/The Priest from Kirchfeld (Jacob Fleck, Luise Fleck, 1914) starring Max Neufeld. He appeared opposite Henny Porten in Gretchen Wendland (Curt A. Stark, 1914), Das Ende vom Liede/The End of the Song (Rudolf Biebrach, 1915) and Die Ehe der Luise Rohrbach/The Marriage of Luise Rohrbach (Rudolf Biebrach, 1917), also with Emil Jannings.

In 1916 he appeared opposite the other superstar of the silent German cinema, Asta Nielsen in Dora Brandes (Magnus Stifter, 1916) and Das Liebes-ABC/The ABC of Love (Magnus Stifter, 1916).

Ludwig Trautmann had become a very successful film actor. He was the darling of the women and on the height of his career he bought a castle with 22 rooms for the in those days outrageous sum of DM 480.000.--.

He was in a position to found his own film company, and during World War I, he directed, produced and wrote several films. Among these films are Das Geheimnis der Villa Dox/The Secret of Villa Dox (Ludwig Trautmann, 1916) and Filmelend: Das Glashausmädchen/Film Misery – The Glass House Girl (Ludwig Trautmann, 1919).

German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1595. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1596. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

Imprisoned For Homosexual Acts

Ludwig Trautmann worked in the early 1920s with director Siegfried Dessauer on such films as Frauen…/Women… (Siegfried Dessauer, 1920) and Die goldene Mauer/The Golden Wall (Siegfried Dessauer, 1921) with Mabel May-Yong.

He had a small part in the epic Marie Antoinette - Das Leben einer Königin/Marie Antoinette, the Life of a Queen (Rudolf Meinert, 1922) starring Italian diva Diana Karenne and filmed on location in Paris, but the film offers became scarce.

Between 1925 and 1932 Trautmann did not appear in the cinema, but then he reappeared in supporting roles in films like Die elf Schill'schen Offiziere/The eleven Officers of Major Von Schill (Rudolf Meinert, 1932) with Hertha Thiele, and Trenck - Der Roman einer großen Liebe (Ernst Neubach, Heinz Paul, 1932) starring Hans Stüwe.

He also appeared in the Ufa production Ein Mann will nach Deutschland/A Man Wants to Get to Germany (Paul Wegener, 1934) with Karl Ludwig Diehland had a bit part in Ein idealer Gatte/An Ideal Husband (Herbert Selpin, 1935) based on the famous play by Oscar Wilde.

Between July and October 1935 Trautmann was imprisoned for homosexual acts. (Homosexual acts between males were a crime at the time in Germany and many other countries. Trautmann was imprisoned because of paragraph 175, a notorious provision of the German Criminal Code dating from 1871. The Nazis broadened the law in 1935; in the prosecutions that followed, thousands died in concentration camps. Between 1871 and 1994 around 140,000 men were convicted under the law).

German postcard by Photochemie, no. K 1587. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

German postcard by Photochemie, no. K.1594. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

A Cheerful Trip in the Past

After he was released from prison, Ludwig Trautmann was banned from the Reichstheaterkammer and the Reichsfilmkammer, so it was impossible for him to work as an actor in Nazi-Germany anymore. He left for France, but in 1939 he returned to Germany. In 1940 he was again imprisoned for six months because of his homosexuality.

After the war Ludwig Trautmann worked for the Volksbühne Berlin. He produced the documentary Eine Fröhliche Fahrt in die Vergangenheit/A cheerful trip in the past (1949). In 1951 he was a member of the jury at the 1st Berlin International Film Festival.

He also played a few more film roles. He had bit parts in the comedies Postlagernd Turteltaube/Poste Restante Turtledove (Gerhard T. Buchholz, 1952), and in Briefträger Müller/Mailman Mueller (Hohn Reinhardt, 1953) starring Heinz Rühmann.

His last film was the DEFA production Robert Mayer - der Arzt aus Heilbronn/Robert Mayer, the Doctor from Heilbronn (Helmut Spiess, 1955).

In 1957 and after a long illness, Ludwig Trautmann died in a Berlin hospital. He was 71.

German postcard, no. 9613. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Vintage postcard by FUPRA.

Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (English and German), and IMDb.

Handsome American leading man Guy Madison (1922-1996) appeared in 85 films, on radio, and television. In the 1940s, he started as a fresh-faced dreamboat. He became a hero to the Baby Boom generation as James Butler Hickock in the television series Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1951-1958). After the Hickok series ended, Madison became a star of the European cinema.

Dutch postcard.

German postcard, no. 8 (1-56). Photo: CCC Produktion / Constantin. Publicity Still for Old Shatterhand (Hugo Fregonese, 1964). Caption: "Captain Bradley ist der Anführer eines Siedlertrecks, der nach Westen will." (Captain Bradley leads a group of settlers, who want to go west).

Major heartthrob material

Guy Madison was born in 1922 as Robert Ozell Moseley in Pumpkin Center, California, and was reared in nearby Bakersfield. His father was a machinist on the Santa Fe Railroad. His younger brother, Wayne Mallory, would later become a Western actor too.

As a young man Robert worked as a telephone lineman, but entered the Coast Guard at the beginning of the Second World War. While on liberty one weekend in Hollywood in 1944, he reportedly attended a Lux Radio Theatre broadcast and was spotted in the audience by Helen Ainsworth, an assistant to Henry Willson.

Willson was the talent agent for producer David O. Selznick at the time. Selznick wanted an unknown sailor to play a small but prominent part in the Home Front morale-booster Since You Went Away (John Cromwell, 1944), and promptly signed Robert Moseley to a contract. Selznick and Willson saw major heartthrob material in the blond, boyishly handsome sailor. They concocted the screen name Guy Madison (the 'guy' girls would like to meet, and Madison from a passing Dolly Madison cake wagon). Later, Willson would do the same for such other handsome film hunks as Rock Hudson (born Roy Scherer), Tab Hunter (Arthur Kelm), and Troy Donahue (Merle Johnson).

Madison filmed his three-minute bowling-alley sequence with Jennifer Jones and Robert Walker in Since You Went Away on a weekend pass and returned to duty. The film's release brought an avalanche of fan letters (43,000 pieces) for Madison's lonely, strikingly handsome young sailor, and at war's end he returned to find himself a star-in-the-making.

Madison was signed by RKO Pictures in 1946 and began appearing in romantic comedies and such dramas as Till the End of Time (Edward Dmytryk, 1946), starring Dorothy McGuire as a war widow, uncertain whether she should or could make a second start with Madison. Despite an initial woodenness to his acting, Madison grew as a performer, studying and working in theatre. However, his career seemed to evaporate by the end of the 1940s.

Italian postcard by Picturegoer, London, no. W. 233. Photo: R.K.O. Radio. Publicity still for Till the End of Time (Edward Dmytryk, 1946).

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 815. Photo: R.K.O. Radio.

Numerous beefcake photographs

Guy Madison was the subject of numerous beefcake photographs while building a film persona.

He played leads in a series of programmers, such as the American Civil War film Drums in the Deep South (William Cameron Menzies, 1951), before being cast as legendary U.S. Marshal Wild Bill Hickok in Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, with Andy Devine as the trusty and funny sidekick Jingles.

The show ran on television from 1951 to 1958 and on radio from 1951 to 1956. Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok made Guy Madison a household name and earned him a new crop of fans, especially among children. Soon, Madison's visage began appearing on cereal boxes, toys, and other promotional items. Sixteen feature films were released by Monogram Pictures between 1952 and 1955 that consisted of combined episodes of the series.

His popularity as Hickok led to a starring role in the 3-D film The Charge at Feather River (Gordon Douglas, 1953), whose success gave him a new lease on life in Hollywood. He was cast as a tight-lipped action hero in Westerns like The Command (David Butler, 1954) and The Last Frontier (Anthony Mann, 1955) with Victor Mature.

Madison was also the executive producer of the Western Reprisal! (George Sherman, 1956) in which he played a half Indian who poses as white.

German postcard by ISV, no. A 46. Photo: 20th Century Fox.

Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 684. Photo: Warner Bros.

Karl May

After the Hickok series ended, Guy Madison found work scarce in the USA and travelled to Europe. There he made around 90 films.
He first found work in Rome in Peplums like La Schiava di Roma/Slave of Rome (Sergio Grieco, Franco Prosperi, 1961) with Rosanna Podestà, and Rosmunda e Alboino (Carlo Campogalliani, 1961) opposite Jack Palance.

He became a popular star of the European cinema after successes as the Karl May Western Old Shatterhand/Apaches' Last Battle (Hugo Fregonese, 1964) opposite Lex Barker, and made a surprising number of popular Spaghetti Westerns in the mid to late 1960s. These included 7 winchester per un massacre/Payment in Blood (Enzo G. Castellari, 1967) with Edd Byrnes, and I lunghi giorni dell'odio/This Man Can't Die (Gianfranco Baldanello, 1968), with Rik Battaglia.

He left Italy in 1970 and temporarily settled in Texas, later returning to Los Angeles. In Hollywood, he appeared mainly in cameo roles, such as in Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (Michael Winner, 1976). His last film appearance was in Red River (Richard Michaels, 1988) with James Arness and Ty Hardin. But this TV movie didn't compare with the 1948 classic by Howard Hawks on which it was based.

Later that year, Madison was in a serious auto accident that damaged his lungs. A variety of health problems limited his work in later years, and he died from emphysema in 1996. He was 74.

Guy Madison married his first wife, beautiful and haunted actress Gail Russell, in 1949. Russell's alcoholism helped bring an end to the marriage in 1954. From 1954 till 1964, he was married to model and actress Sheila Connolly, with whom he had four children, Bridget, Dolly, Erin and Robert. His best friend was actor Rory Calhoun who was later named 'godfather' to Madison's eldest daughter Bridget.

Lisa Gastoni and Guy Madison in Il vendicatore mascherato (1964)

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, no. 258/69. Photo: publicity still for Il vendicatore mascherato/Gentlemen of the Night (Pino Mercanti, 1964).

Guy Madison in Since You Went Away (1944). Source: DoddiGS (YouTube).

Trailer Old Shatterhand/Apaches' Last Battle (1964). Source: cronosmantas (YouTube).

Sources: David Shipman (The Independent), William Grimes (The New York Times), Bridget Madison (Guy Madison Offical Site), Jim Beaver (IMDb), Brian J. Walker (Brian's Drive-in Theater), Terry (Gay Influence), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Beautiful Italian actress Gabriella Giorgelli (1941) appeared in more than 70 films since 1960. She is known for her supporting roles in masterpieces like Mario Monicelli’s I compagni (1963), and Federico Fellini’s La città delle donne (1980), but she also appeared in Spaghetti Westerns, Giallos and Sexploitation films.

Italian collectors card by La Rotografica Romana. Edito dalla Nat Nuova Alta Tensione.

"She was only a whore!"

Gabriella Giorgelli was born in 1941 in Carrara, Tuscany, Italy. She worked as a secretary and typist, but she had other aspirations. In 1960, she made her film debut with a bit part in Tutti a casa/Everybody Go Home (Luigi Comencini, 1960), an international success.

She was attractive and had the willpower and ambition for an acting career and tried to grab the attention of film makers. In 1961 she was among the finalists for Miss Italia, a springboard for many Italian starlets.

The following year, she impressed as the prostitute Teresa in Damiano Damiani's L' Isola di Arturo/Arturo's Island (1962). In the same year she played a prostitute in in the first feature film directed by 21 years-old Bernardo Bertolucci, La commare secca (1962). It is a Rashomon like exploration of the murder of a prostitute, based on a story by Pier Paolo Pasolini.

Tom Wiener at AllMovie: “For a 21-year-old filmmaker, this is a remarkably pessimistic work; the film's opening image, of a sheaf of paper tossed from a car on highway overpass and eventually floating down to the corpse of the prostitute on the grass, to the murderer's cries as he's arrested -- "She was only a whore!" -- we get a sense that life, at least in some quarters of society, is easily disposable.”

The following year, she acted in I Compagni/The Organizer (Mario Monicelli, 1963) with Marcello Mastroianni as a labour activist who becomes involved with a group of textile factory workers in Turin at the end of the 19th century who go on strike. The script was nominated for Best Original Screenplay at the 37th Academy Awards.

Giorgelli also appeared in the comedy Frenesia dell’estate/Shivers in Summer (Luigi Zampa, 1963) starring Vittorio Gassman. She also appeared in a typical film genre of the era, the anthology film. An example was the French-Dutch-Italian-Japanese coproduction Les plus belles escroqueries du monde/The World's Most Beautiful Swindlers (1964), composed of five segments, each of which was created with a different set of writers, directors, and actors. The directors were Claude Chabrol, Jean-Luc Godard, Ugo Gregoretti, Hiromichi Horikawa and Roman Polanski. Giorgelli played a Neapolitan prostitute (again) in the Italian segment, directed by Gregoretti.

When film roles were few and far between, Gabriella Giorgelli also appeared in early versions of the fotoromanzi (the Italian fotonovelas in comic-book format, with photographs instead of illustrations, combined with small dialogue bubbles), such as in Sadistik.

Trailer La Commare Secca (1963). Source FilmGorillas.Com (Daily Motion).

Trailer I Compagni/The Organizer (1963). Source: The Criterion Collection (YouTube).

When Women Had Tails

Gabriella Giorgelli continued her career with roles in Spaghetti Westerns and erotic comedies. She played a saloon dancer in the Western Uno straniero a Sacramento/Stranger in Sacramento (Sergio Bergonzelli, 1965) starring bodybuilder Mickey Hargitay. In I lunghi giorni della vendetta/Long Days of Vengeance (Florestano Vancini, 1967), she played the female lead opposite Giuliano Gemma and Francisco Rabal. The film is a spaghetti western version of Alexandre Dumas' novel The Count of Monte Cristo.

Also based on a novel by Dumas was the historical drama Le calde notti di Lady Hamilton/Emma Hamilton (Christian-Jaque, 1968) which depicts the love affair between Emma Hamilton (Michèle Mercier) and Horatio Nelson (Richard Johnson). In these films she generally played supporting parts.

A commercial success was the Italian comedy Quando le Donne Avevano la Coda/When Women Had Tails (Pasquale Festa Campanile, 1970) starring Giuliano Gemma and Senta Berger. It was set in pre-historic times when ‘women had tails’ and were hunted by cavemen.

In France, she appeared in Le voyou/The Crook (Claude Lelouch, 1970) with Jean-Louis Trintignant as an incurable thief. Another box office success was the Western comedy La vita a volte è molto dura, vero Provvidenza?/Life Is Tough, Eh Providence? (Giulio Petroni, 1972) with Tomas Milian. Interesting is also the Giallo Sette orchidee macchiate di rosso/Seven Blood-Stained Orchids (Umberto Lenzi, 1972) with Rossella Falk and Uschi Glas. It was a coproduction with Germany, where it was presented 38th (and final) Edgar Wallace film from the post-war era.

Giorgelli played once more a prostitute in a Italian-French coproduction, the Giallo-Poliziottesco La polizia è al servizio del cittadino?/The Police Serve the Citizens? (Romolo Guerrieri, 1973) with Enrico Maria Salerno and John Steiner.

Probably the best of her later films was La città delle donne/City of Women (Federico Fellini, 1980). Amid Fellini's characteristic combination of dreamlike, outrageous, and artistic imagery, Marcello Mastroianni plays Snàporaz, a man who voyages through male and female spaces toward a confrontation with his own attitudes toward women and his wife. Giorgelli played the Fishwoman of San Leo.

She then again played with Tomas Milianin the poliziottesco-comedy Delitto sull'autostrada/Crime on the Highway (Bruno Corbucci, 1982). It is the ninth chapter in the Nico Giraldi film series starring Tomas Milian. She also had a part in the cult favourite Hercules (Luigi Cozzi, 1983) featuring Lou Ferrigno. It was followed by I Cinque del Condor - Squadra selvaggia (Umberto Lenzi, 1985) in which she played a psychic medium.

Excellent was Storia d'amore/A Tale of Love (Franco Maselli, 1986) in which she played the mother of Blas Roca-Rey’s character. In addition to her film work, she also appeared on television in films and mini-series. One of her later films was the horror film M.D.C. - Maschera di cera/Wax Mask (1997), produced and written by Dario Argento. Previously appointed to be directed by Lucio Fulci, it marked the directorial debut of the special effect artist Sergio Stivaletti.

Gabriella Giorgelli is still active. She can be seen in recent documentaries about actor Amedeo Nazzari and about the comic book Sadistik.

Gabriella Giorgelli in La belva (Mario Costa, 1970) with Klaus Kinski. Source: facciadangela (YouTube).

Trailer La città delle donne/City of Women (1980). Source: Eurekaentertainment (YouTube).

Sources: Tom Wiener (AllMovie), Wikipedia (German, Italian and English) and IMDb.

French child actor Pascal Lamorisse (1950) is known by film lovers all over the world because of his parts in the short films Crin blanc: Le cheval sauvage (1953) and Le ballon rouge (1956), both directed by his father, Albert Lamorisse.

Pascal Lamorisse in Le ballon rouge (1956)

Italian postcard in the series Piccoli uomini nel cinema by Ed. Villaggio del Fanciullo, Bologna. Photo: Cino del Duca. Publicity still for Le ballon rouge/The red balloon (Albert Lamorisse, 1956).

Crin blanc

Pascal Lamorisse was born in 1950. He is the son of film director Albert Lamorisse, who began his career as a photographer, but turned to directing short films in the late 1940s. His first film was Bim (1951) about an Arab boy and his donkey. Remarkable is the poetic quality of this film and his later work always involving the fantasy world of children.

When Pascal was only three he made his film debut in his father’s second film Crin blanc: Le cheval sauvage/Wild Stallion (1953). He played the little brother of the lead figure, the fisher boy Folco (Alain Emery).

The story is situated in the Camargue, in the south of France where the river Rhone meets the Mediterranean Sea. Herds of wild horses roam the tidal marshes. Ranchers seek to capture a white stallion with along mane called Crin Blanc (White Mane), which is the leader of a group of wild horses. But Crin Blanc escapes capture time after time.

Folco witnesses the horse's furious fight for its freedom makes friends with the horse after the ranchers supposedly give him up to whomever can capture him. They change their minds when they see the boy has tamed Crin Blanc and take off after the horse again, with the boy on his back. Both boy and horse, fed up with the continual fight for freedom and peace, and the duplicity of men, head out to sea as the men plead with the boy to turn back.

The short 40-minute film was the winner of the Grand Prix for best short film at the Cannes Film Festival of 1953 and was nominated for the Best Documentary BAFTA Award in 1954.

Howard Schumann at IMDb calls it ‘A truly gorgeous film’: “The ending is dark, perhaps too dark for many children, demanding of them a complexity that they perhaps are incapable of at a tender age. Yet the film does not patronize, introducing the viewer to the notion that standing up for what is right regardless of the outcome is one of the most important things in life and does not depend on age or strength. The poetic narration, delivered by Jean-Pierre Grenier and co-written by the acclaimed author and film critic James Agee, adds an extra dimension of sensitivity to the film that the viewer, whether child or adult, can immediately respond to.“

French postcard by F. Hazan Editeur, Paris, no. 1. Photo: Albert Lamorisse, 1956. Publicity still for Le ballon rouge/The red balloon (Albert Lamorisse, 1956). Caption: "Decouverte de ballon". (Discovery of the balloon).

Le ballon rouge

Pascal and Albert Lamorisse are best known for their next film, the beloved urban fairy tale Le ballon rouge/The Red Balloon (1956). Pascal plays a little boy who is followed around the streets of Paris by large red balloon, which seems to have a will of its own. The balloon colours the boy’s otherwise dreary, grey days. It follows him to school, to the bus, and to church. Boy and balloon play together in the streets of Paris and try to elude a gang of boys that wants to destroy the balloon.

Renaldo Matlin at IMDb: “The vivid colors and the wonderful use of Paris scenery is only part of the experience, another large part is the touching performance by the director's six year old son Pascal in the lead (how lucky he didn't fall and break his neck in that opening scene where he finds the balloon!). The look on his face in the final scene is every bit as heartbreaking as that of Jackie Coogan in Chaplin's legendary The Kid.”

Pascal’s sister, Sabine, portrays a little girl. Le Ballon Rouge is a short film of only 34 minutes, without dialogue. It is filmed for the most part in the Belleville area of Paris. It is now a colourful record of Belleville while the area had fallen into decay by the 1960s, prompting the Parisian government to demolish the area as a slum-clearance effort.

Albert Lamorisse took home another Grand Prix from the Cannes Film Festival but this time he also won an Academy Award for writing the best original screenplay in 1956. Throughout the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s Le Ballon Rouge was popular in elementary classrooms all over the world, but not in France.

db du monteil at IMDb: “Since its success in the festival de Cannes 1956, Albert Lamorisse's short film was relegated to purgatory. Often dismissed by French critics as bland, mushy and arty, it sank slowly but inexorably into oblivion. The other countries have always had a warm spot for it. And they are right. If you were a young student in the late fifties/early sixties, Le ballon rouge was one of your initiation books. After 1968, the story almost completely disappeared from textbooks. Actually it was new wave ‘avant l'heure’! Filmed in the streets of Paris - as Varda, Truffaut and countless others would do afterwards - its form was innovative.”

Japanese cinema ticket for Crin blanc: Le cheval sauvage/Wild Stallion (1953) and Le ballon rouge/The Red Balloon (1956). Source: ak.i. (Flickr).

Le voyage en ballon

Next, Pascal Lamorisse played a lead role in his father’s first feature film Le voyage en ballon/Stowaway in the Sky (1960). In this sequel to Le ballon rouge, Albert Lamorisse floats his public across the French country sides and town church steeples, brilliantly and colourfully photographed.

Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “Stowaway in the Sky is a disarmingly simple French-made children's story. The plot is implicit in the title: A small child, fascinated by a lighter-than-air balloon, clambers aboard. The balloon takes flight, lifting the child upward to an amazing adventure. The land-bound adults have conniptions as the balloon wafts by; the child has nothing more than a great time.”

The film was not a commercial success and it was Pascal Lamorisse’s last film. Albert Lamorisse retreated to documentary shorts. He was also the creator of the board game Risk. Originally, published in France in 1957, it was called La Conquête du monde. It was eventually picked up by Parker Brothers, and sold in the United States under the name Risk.

In 1970, the 48 years-old Albert Lamorisse was killed in a helicopter crash in Iran while shooting a documentary near Teheran. Pascal Lamorisse and his mother later edited the film from Albert’s production notes. The resulting film, Le vent des amoureux/The Lovers' Wind (1978) is a visually stunning helicopter tour of Iran. It was nominated for an Oscar as best feature documentary for the Academy Award ceremonies of 1979.

From then on Pascal Lamorisse seems to have disappeared in anonymity. In 2007, Hou Hsiao-Hsien directed Flight of the Red Balloon, a direct homage to Le ballon rouge and to father and son Lamorisse.

Crin blanc: Le cheval sauvage/Wild Stallion (1953). Source: Emiliano Jelicié (YouTube).

Rerelease trailer for Le ballon rouge/The Red Balloon (1956). Source: MOVIECLIPS Classic Trailers (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), James Travers (Films de France), db du monteil (IMDb), Renaldo Matlin (IMDb), Howard Schumann (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964) is the quintessential episode in the James Bond series, filled with thrills, girls and danger. It was the third episode and the third to star suave and ultra-cool Sean Connery as agent 007. Everything seemed to be right, the stunts, the sets, the score, the gadgets, and a wonderful cast. The film co-stars Honor Blackman as Pussy Galore, Gert Fröbe as Auric Goldfinger, and Shirley Eaton as the iconic Bond girl Jill Masterson.

Gert Fröbe and Sean Connery in Goldfinger (1964)

Dutch postcard. Sent by mail in 1966. Publicity still for Goldfinger (1964) with Sean Connery and Gert Fröbe. "Do you expect me to talk, Goldfinger?" Bond asks as the laser beam slowly makes its way towards his groin. "No, Mr. Bond, I expect you to die!" Goldfinger answers.

Dutch card, no. AX 6263. Publicity still for Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964).

Not inside Fort Knox

Goldfinger was based again on a novel by Ian Fleming. There isn't much of a plot, really. James Bond is investigating gold smuggling by gold magnate Auric Goldfinger and eventually uncovering Goldfinger's plans to contaminate the Fort Knox gold reserve.

Producers were Albert R. Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. Goldfinger had what was then considered a large budget of $3 million (US$22,812,232 in 2015 dollars), the equivalent of the budgets of Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962) and From Russia with Love (Terence Young, 1963) combined, and was the first James Bond film classified as a box-office blockbuster.

Goldfinger saw the return of two crew members who were not involved with From Russia With Love: stunt coordinator Bob Simmons and production designer Ken Adam. Both played crucial roles in the development of Goldfinger. Simmons choreographed the fight sequence between Bond and Oddjob (Harold Sakata) in the vault of Fort Knox, one of the best Bond fights.

For security reasons, the filmmakers were not allowed to film inside Fort Knox, although exterior photography was permitted. All sets for the interiors were designed and built from scratch at Pinewood Studios. The filmmakers had no clue as to what the interior of the depository looked like, so Ken Adam's imagination provided the idea of gold stacked upon gold behind iron bars. Harry Saltzman disliked the design's resemblance to a prison, but Guy Hamilton liked it enough that it was built. The comptroller of Fort Knox later sent a letter to Adam and the production team, complimenting them on their imaginative depiction of the vault.

Principal photography took place from January to July 1964 in the United Kingdom, Switzerland and the U.S. states of Kentucky and Florida. The opening credit sequence was designed by graphic artist Robert Brownjohn, featuring clips of all James Bond films thus far projected on actress Margaret Nolan's body. Its design was inspired by seeing light projecting on people's bodies as they got up and left a cinema. Brownjohn was also responsible for the posters for the advertising campaign, which also used Nolan.

Sean Connery, Honor Blackman, Goldfinger

German postcard. Photo: P.A. Reuter. Publicity still for Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964) with Sean Connery and Honor Blackman.

Honor Blackman and Sean Connery in Goldfinger (1964)

Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor, no. 355. Photo: publicity still for Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964) with Sean Connery and Honor Blackman.

Pussy Galore

Honor Blackman played Pussy Galore, Goldfinger's personal pilot and leader of an all-female team of pilots known as Pussy Galore's Flying Circus. Blackman was selected for the role of Pussy Galore because of her role as Cathy Gale in the classic British TV series The Avengers (1962-1964) and the script was rewritten to show Blackman's judo abilities. The character's name follows in the tradition of other Bond girls names that are double entendres. During promotion, Blackman took delight in embarrassing interviewers by repeatedly mentioning the character's name.

Gert Fröbe was excellent as Bond villain Auric Goldfinger, the 'international cheat, international menace' obsessed with gold. Orson Welles was considered as Goldfinger, but his financial demands were too high. Fröbe was cast because the producers saw his performance as a child molester in the German film Es geschah am hellichten Tag/It Happened in Broad Daylight (Ladislao Vajda, 1958). Fröbe, who spoke little English, said his lines phonetically.

British actress Shirley Eaton played Jill Masterson, Bond Girl and Goldfinger's aide-de-camp. Bond catches her helping the villain cheat at a game of cards. He seduces her, but for her betrayal, she is completely painted in gold paint and dies from "skin suffocation". Although only a small part in the film, the image of her painted gold was renowned and Eaton graced the cover of Life magazine of 6 November 1964.

And Goldfinger was also the first of the Bond films to feature Q (Desmond Llewelyn). In From Russia with Love (Terence Young, 1963) Llewelyn had played the role of Major Boothroyd. Q became the beloved comic relief figure of the series and Llewellyn appeared in 17 James Bond films until his death in 1999. He was absent in Live and Let Die (Guy Hamilton, 1973), because producers felt too much attention was being paid on the gadgetry so they downplayed it by cutting his role. However, audiences enjoyed Q so much that Llewelyn was brought back indefinitely.

German postcard by ISV, no. H 119. Publicity still for Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964).

German postcard by ISV, no. H 123. Publicity still for Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964).

Goldfinger began to up the ante

Shirley Bassey sang the theme song Goldfinger, and she would go on to sing the theme songs for two other Bond films, Diamonds are Forever (Guy Hamilton, 1971) and Moonraker (Lewis Gilbert, 1979). The song was composed by John Barry, with lyrics by Anthony Newley and Leslie Bricusse.

Goldfinger was the first of the series to feature the famous line, "Bond, James Bond," as a 007 catchphrase. It also featured the most famous James Bond car, the 1964 silver birch Aston Martin DB5, was introduced in Goldfinger. To promote the film, the two Aston Martin DB5s were showcased at the 1964 New York World's Fair. It was dubbed 'the most famous car in the world', and sales of the car rose.

Corgi Toys began a decades-long relationship with the Bond franchise, producing a toy of the car, which became the biggest selling toy of 1964. The film's success also led to licensed tie-in clothing, dress shoes, action figures, board games, jigsaw puzzles, lunch boxes, toys, record albums, slot cars, and postcards.

Lucia Bozzola at AllMovie: "Goldfinger set the gold standard (naturally) for future James Bond adventures. With the films' signature elements firmly entrenched - including globe-trotting story, salacious credits sequence, Q's exasperation, and 007's phenomenal abilities with women and antagonists - Goldfinger began to up the ante. Bond's well-equipped Aston-Martin and Goldfinger's elaborate Fort Knox model presaged future technical extravagance, while Bond's near castration via a giant laser was one more sign of the series' humorous self-awareness."

Goldfinger became the first Bond film to win an Academy Award. At the 1965 Academy Awards, Norman Wanstall won the Academy Award for Best Sound Effects Editing for his work. Ken Adam was nominated for the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) for Best British Art Direction (Colour). The film opened to largely favourable critical reception and was a financial success. Goldfinger‍ 's $3 million budget was recouped in two weeks, and it broke box office records in multiple countries around the world.

Official trailer Goldfinger (1964). Source: MoviesHistory (YouTube).

The title sequence by Robert Brownjohn. Source: juanmurs (YouTube).

Sources: Lucia Bozzola (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Albert Paulig (1873-1933) was a popular comedian in the German silent cinema of the 1910s and 1920s.

German postcard by Verl. Herm. Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 1746.

German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1319. Photo: Willinger.

His Own Comedy Series

Born in Stollberg, Germany in 1873, Albert Paulig was trained to become a teacher. He also did a musical training at the Konservatorium Dresden (conservatory of Dresden), but initially he became a salesman.

In 1896 he had his stage debut at the Stadttheater in Zwickau. Other locations he performed were Łódź, Hannover and Dresden. In 1901 he first performed in Berlin at the Deutsch-Amerikanischen Theater, after which he did several guest performances in other Berlin stages.

In 1913, when he was already 40, Albert Paulig was discovered as a film comedian. Because of his success he got his own series in the 1910s, the Albert-Paulig series, with titles just as simple as Paulig als Asta Nielsen/Paulig as Asta Nielsen (Albert Paulig, 1915) or Albert hat Prokura/Albert has the power of attorney (Uwe Jenss Kraft, 1919).

Starting with Alberts Hose/Albert’s Pants (1915), Paulig directed his own comedy series. But in between he also acted in films by other directors.

Paulig for example played opposite Ernst Lubitsch in both the popular success Die Firma heiratet/The Firm Weds (Carl Wilhelm, 1914) and its unofficial sequel Der Stolz der Firma/The Pride of the Firm (Carl Wilhelm, 1914). He also co-starred with Hanni Weisse in Meine Braut, seine Frau/My bride, his wife (Danny Kaden, 1916).

German postcard by G.L., no. 3172/3. Photo: Elite, Berlin. Albert Paulig, Alfred Walters and Fritzi Arco in the operetta Die Dollarprinzessin (The dollar princess). This operetta by Leo Fall was first performed in Vienna in 1907, this card is for the Berlin version of 1908.

German postcard, no. 9434. Photo: Atelier Rembrandt.

Strong Popularity

After he stopped his Albert-Paulig series in 1919, Paulig’s popularity remained strong among audiences. During the 1920s, he acted in over 100 films. While Albert Paulig mostly performed in supporting parts, he sometimes had major parts as the protagonist or the main antagonist.

Albert Paulig co-starred with Mia Mayand Georg Alexander in the comedy Die platonische Ehe/The platonic marriage (Paul Leni, 1919), and acted with Hans Albers and Ria Jende in Der Schuss aus dem Fenster/The shot out the window (director unknown, 1920).

He did several small parts in the Ossi Oswalda comedies of the late 1910s and early 1920s such as Das Mädchen aus dem wilden Westen/The girl from the Wild West (Erich Schönfelder, 1921). The most famous example is the classic Die Austernprinzessin/The Oyster Princess (Ernst Lubisch, 1919).

Paulig was reunited with Hanni Weisse in the comedy Weil Du es bist/Because it's you (Hans Werckmeister, 1925). He had the lead as Archduke Albert Paul in G’schichten aus dem Wienerwald/Tales from the Vienna Woods (Jaap Speyer, 1928), co-starring Eric Barclay, Magnus Stifter and Fritz Schulz.

In the later 1920s, he was often seen in supporting parts in the sensational Harry Piel adventure films, such as Der Mann ohne Nerven/The Man Without Nerves (Harry Piel, 1924), Zigano, der Brigant vom Monte Diavolo/Zigano (Harry Piel, 1925), Sein grösster Bluff/His Greatest Bluff (Harry Piel, 1927), Panik/Panic (Harry Piel, 1928), and Männer ohne Beruf/Men without Profession (Harry Piel, 1929).

German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 1332. Berlin. Photo: Willinger.

German postcard by Verl. Herm. Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 6053. Berlin. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.

Army Officers

When sound film set in, Paulig managed to continue his career, often portraying aristocrats and industrials, but in particular army officers. An example of the latter is Schön is die Manöverzeit/Manoeuver Time Is Fine (Erich Schönfelder, Margarete Schön, 1931) with Ida Wüst.

He also acted the musical Es war einmal ein Walzer/Once There Was a Waltz (Victor Janson, 1932) written by Billy Wilder, Der Prinz von Arkadien/The Prince from Arcadien (Karl Hartl, 1932) with Willi Forst, Das Testament des Cornelius Gulden/The Testament of Cornelius Gulden (E.W. Emo, 1932), starring Magda Schneider and Georg Alexander, and Manolescu, der Fürst der Diebe/Manolescu (George C. Klaren, Willi Wolff, 1933), starring Iván Petrovich.

The crime film K1 greift ein/K1 intervenes (Edmund Heuberger, 1933) was his last film. He couldn’t attend the premiere of the film, as he died himself in Berlin on 19 March 1933, because of a heart failure, two days after the film had passed censorship. According to Filmportal.de, which lists his most extended filmography, Albert Paulig acted in 183 films.

German postcard in the Film-Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 122/2. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin. Ca. 1916-1918.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3024/1, 1928-1929.

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

French actor Robert Le Vigan (1900-1972) appeared in more than 60 films between 1931 and 1943, almost exclusively in supporting or small roles. The extravagant actor specialized in louche, menacing or diabolical characters, and was seen in several classics of the poetic realism. During the occupation, he was a collaborator with the Nazis and he openly expressed his fascist attitudes. After the liberation his career was finished.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 177. Photo: Star.

Infused with poetic realism

Robert Le Vigan was born Robert-Charles-Alexandre Coquillaud in Paris, in 1900. His father was a veterinary. Robert was interested very early in the dramatic art and entered the Conservatoire de Paris (Academy of Paris). He won the second prize for comedy in his first year, but left the academy, when he learned that he would never obtain the first prize because of his military engagement.

He decided to find employment in variety and played minor parts to pay for acting lessons. In 1920, he becomes Robert Le Vigan, but during his career he was also credited as R. Le Vigan, Robert Levigan, and Le Vigan, and he was called ‘Vigue’ by his friend, the author Louis-Ferdinand Celine.

He interpreted Molière and Jean-François Regnard in Belgium, and later played Molière and George Bernard Shaw in the stage companies of Gaston Baty and Louis Jouvet. In 1927, he appeared with Arletty in sketches.

Director Julien Duvivier spotted him on stage and engaged him for his film Les Cinq Gentlemen maudits/The Five Accursed Gentlemen (Julien Duvivier, 1931) starring Harry Baur and René Lefèvre. In the following decade, Le Vigan would often work again with Duvivier, such as at the drama La Bandera/Escape from Yesterday (Julien Duvivier, 1935) with Annabella and Jean Gabin, and La charrette fantôme/The Phantom Wagon (Julien Duvivier, 1939) with Pierre Fresnay and Louis Jouvet. Like Duvivier's other works of the period, these films are infused with poetic realism.

In 1933, Le Vigan co-starred in the French-German science fiction film Le tunnel/The Tunnel (Kurt Bernhardt, 1933) with Jean Gabin and Madeleine Renaud. It told the story of a construction of a vast tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean connecting Europe and America. It was the French language version of the German film Der Tunnel, with a different cast and some changes to the plot. Such Multiple-language versions were common in the 1930s following the introduction of sound, and before the practice of dubbing had come to dominate international releases. Germany and France made a significant number of films together during the decade.

The next year, he appeared in the historical drama Madame Bovary (Jean Renoir, 1934), adapted from Gustave Flaubert's 1857 novel Madame Bovary. The film starred Valentine Tessier and Pierre Renoir, son of painter Claude Renoir and the older brother of the director.

French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ.

Jesus Christ

A highlight in Robert Le Vigan's career was his role as Jesus Christ in Golgotha (Julien Duvivier, 1935), a French film about the death of Jesus Christ, released in English-speaking countries as Behold the Man. The film co-stars Harry Baur as Herod, and Jean Gabin as Pontius Pilate.

Le Vigan's performance marks the first direct portrayal of Christ in a sound film. For the most part, Jesus is shown from a respectful distance as was later also the case in Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951), The Robe (Henry Koster, 1953) and Ben-Hur (William Wyler, 1959), but there are also a few closer shots and even close-ups. The British Board of Film Censors did not allow British eyes to see the film, but the film did play throughout Europe and in the US. The American National Board of Review named the film the sixth best foreign film of 1937. This role earned him many praises and established Le Vigan as a sought-after character player.

The next year, he played an alcoholic actor in the drama Les Bas-fonds/The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir, 1936), based on a play of the same title by Maxim Gorky. A glimpse into the lives of several people living at the bottom of the social heap, focuses on a petty criminal (Jean Gabin), the woman he loves (Suzy Prim), and a bankrupt newcomer (Louis Jouvet) to the slum where the story is set. The film, a highlight of the poetic realism in the French cinema, received the first Louis Delluc Prize in 1937.

Le Vigan also worked with director Marcel L’Herbier at the drama La citadelle du silence/The Citadel of Silence (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937) starring Annabella, and with Marcel Pagnol at the drama Regain/Harvest (Marcel Pagnol, 1937), starring Fernandel.

Le Vigan also played a supporting character in another classic of poetic realism, Le Quai des brumes/Port of Shadows (Marcel Carné, 1938) with Jean Gabin, Michel Simon and Michèle Morgan. The film was the 1939 winner of France's top cinematic prize, the Prix Louis-Delluc. He also acted with Fernand Gravey, Michel Simon and Corinne Luchaire in the drama Le Dernier tournant/The Last Turning (Pierre Chenal, 1939), based on novel The Postman Always Rings Twice by James M. Cain, and the French musical Louise (Abel Gance, 1939) with Grace Moore.

French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ. The verso of this card promotes the screening of this film at the Omnia Pathé in Paris between 18 and 24 October 1935.

French postcard. Photo: publicity still for Golgotha (1935) with Robert Le Vigan as Jesus Christ.

Collaborator with the Nazis

In the Encyclopedia of European Cinema, Ginette Vincendeau calls Robert Le Vigan "a brilliant, extravagant actor, (...) specialised in louche, menacing or diabolical characters". During the occupation of France, the actor himself was a collaborator with the Nazis and made anti-Semitic propaganda on Radio Paris. He became a member of the Parti Populiste Français (French Populist Party), a right-wing pro-fascist party, and claimed his anti-Semitism and advocated total collaboration with the German authorities.

Le Vigan played a supporting part in the first film produced by Continental Films, the drama L'Assassinat du père Noël/Who Killed Santa Claus? (Roger Chapatte, Christian-Jaque, 1941) with Harry Baur. Continental was a German-controlled film production company, which stood as the sole authorized film production organization in Nazi-occupied France. Established in October 1940, it was entirely bankrolled by the German government, with its finances, production and distribution tightly integrated with the German film industry. Continental released 30 features before ending production four years later.

He also appeared in the Charles Trenet musical Romance de Paris (Jean Boyer, 1941) and Goupi Mains Rouges/It Happened at the Inn (Jacques Becker, 1943) starring Fernand Ledoux. He played the role of informer-thief Jéricho in Les Enfants du Paradis/Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné, 1945). The film’s production was delayed again after the Allies landed in Normandy and Sicily. Carné and Prévert had hidden some of the key reels of film from the occupying forces, hoping that the liberation of Paris would have occurred when the film was ready for release.

When Paris was liberated in August 1944, Le Vigan was sentenced to death by the Resistance for collaborating with the Nazis, and had to flee, along with his friend, the fascist author Céline, to Sigmaringen in Germany. He was replaced in Les Enfants du Paradis/Children of Paradise by Pierre Renoir, and most of the scenes had to be redone.

One scene featuring Le Vigan survives in the middle of the second part, when Jericho snitches to Nathalie. Les Enfants du Paradis was the third most popular film at the French box office in 1945 and was voted ‘Best Film Ever’ in a poll of 600 French critics and professionals in 1995.

In 1946, Le Vigan was tried and convicted as a Nazi collaborator. He was sentenced to forced labour for ten years but after three years he was released under condition and went in exile, first to Spain, and then Argentina. In Argentina, he made his last films, including Rio turbio (Alejandro Wehner, 1952). Later he lived in misery and sold cakes in the streets of Buenos Aires. At the end of the 1960s, François Truffaut contacted him to rehabilitate him as an actor, but the shaken Le Vigan did not dare to withdraw from his retirement.

In 1972 Robert Le Vigan died in Argentina, in the city of Tandil. He was 72.

Crucifixion scene from Golgotha (1935). Source: lolo pelle (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.

French trailer for Quai des Brumes (1938). Source: Chaîne de MADEINFRENCH (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.

Opening scene from L'Assassinat du père Noël/Who Killed Santa Claus? (1941). Source: Luc Edouard (YouTube). Sorry, no subtitles.

Sources: Ginette Vincendeau (Encyclopedia of European Cinema), Christophe Greseque (IMDb), Donatienne (L’encinémathèque – French), Wikipedia (English and French), and IMDb.

Charismatic, mysterious Mila Parély (1917-2012) was a French actress of Polish ancestry. She was best known for the roles as Geneviève in Renoir's La Règle du jeu (1939) and as Belle's sister in Cocteau's La Belle et la Bête (1946).

French postcard by Edition P.I., Paris, no. 6. Photo: Star.

One of the greatest films in the history of cinema

Mila Parély was born as Olga Colette Peszynsky in Paris in 1917. She was of Polish ancestry.

In 1932 Parély started her career in the short film Vive le sport/The Freshman, now considered as lost. In the following years she played several small roles, like a typist in the fantasy Liliom (Fritz Lang, 1934), ‘Marceline’ in Mister Flow (Robert Siodmak, 1936), a dancing girl in Le drame de Shanghaï/The Shanghai Drama (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1938), and a servant in Remontons les Champs-Élysées (Sacha Guitry, 1938). During this period, she also worked as a singer and made an American tour with the orchestra of Rudy Vallee.

She had her breakthrough in the cinema as Geneviève, the mistress of married Robert (Marcel Dalio) in La Règle du jeu/The Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939). Renoir’s masterpiece is a comedy of manners that depicts members of upper-class French society and their servants just before the beginning of World War II, showing their moral callousness on the eve of impending destruction.

La Règle du jeu was the most expensive French film up to that time, with its original budget of 2.5 million francs increased to five million, but it proved to be a critical and financial disaster. Although the original negative was destroyed in World War II, La Règle du jeu was restored under Renoir's supervision to its original length (minus one short scene) in the late 1950s, debuting to great acclaim at the 1959 Venice Film Festival. Since then La Règle du jeu has often been called one of the greatest films in the history of cinema.

Another interesting film was Les anges du péché/Angels of Sin (1943), the first feature film directed by Robert Bresson. Parély also appeared in the drama Le Lit à colonnes/The Four-poster (Roland Tual, 1942), starring Fernand Ledoux and Jean Marais.

She married the handsome Marais that year but they divorced in 1944. Jean Marais was homosexual and the long-term lover of French poet and filmmaker Jean Cocteau. Cocteau blessed their marriage, because he wanted Marais to be happy. After their divorce Parély and Marais co-starred in Cocteau’s romantic fantasy La Belle et la Bête/Beauty And The Beast (Jean Cocteau, 1946). Parély played the sister of Belle (Josette Day).

Mark Pittillo at AllMovie: “[Jean Cocteau] gives the film a shimmering, romantic look, and the brilliant costume and set design. The Beast's makeup, in particular, works beautifully; it's just realistic enough to be convincing, while allowing Marais to emote through his eyes and subtle facial tics. The unforgettable sets, which include human-arm candelabras and moving statues, are a marvel of impressionistic romanticism, filled with symbolism that hints at the story's darker implications. Forget Disney -- this is the closest anyone's come to capturing the essence of a fairy tale on film.”

French postcard by A. Noyer (A.N.), Paris, no. 1233. Photo: R. (Raymond) Voinquel.

French postcard by E. C., Paris, no. 105. Photo: Pathé.

A small-town whorehouse

In 1947, Mila Parély married Scottish racing driver Tomas ‘Taso’ Mathieson. Between 1930 and 1955, he entered more than 30 races, including multiple times the 24 Hours of Le Mans. The couple would stay together till his death in 1991.

Parély continued to play supporting parts in French and British films like Dernier refuge/Last Refuge (Marc Maurette, 1947), based on Le Locataire by Georges Simenon, the British thriller Snowbound (David MacDonald, 1948) starring Dennis Price, and the drama Mission à Tanger/Mission in Tangier (André Hunebelle, 1949) starring Raymond Rouleau.

Her best film of the 1950s is the anthology Le Plaisir/House of Pleasure (1952) directed by Max Ophüls and based on three stories by Guy de Maupassant. In the episode La Maison Tellier, Parély played one of the employees of a small-town whorehouse, who go out on for a day to the country to visit the communion of the niece of the Madame. She also played the female lead in the British crime film Blood Orange/Three Stops to Murder (Terence Fisher, 1953) opposite Tom Conway.

After that she only worked for television and played in the thriller Jet Storm (Cy Endfield, 1958), but her footage ended on the floor of the editing room. In the late 1950s, Parély retired in order to take care of her husband Taso Mathieson, who had been seriously injured in a near-death accident.

After living in England and Portugal, they moved to Vichy, France, where Parély organized several cultural and artistic events. Mathieson concentrated on his writing and his collection of photographs, together with Parély. He wrote various authoritative books, including Grand Prix Racing 1906-1914.

In the late 1980s, Parély returned to acting briefly. She played a countess in the film Comédie d'été/Summer Interlude (Daniel Vigne, 1989) with Maruschka Detmers, and also appeared in a TV film. In 1997 followed her final role in a short film, just like how her career had started.

Mila Parély died in 2012, aged 94, in Vichy.

French postcard by Editions E.C., Paris, no. 50. Photo: U.F.P.C.

French postcard by Edition d'Art BelFrance, no. 905. Photo: Sirius-Gaumont. Publicity still for Le cavalier noir/The black knight (Gilles Grangier, 1945).

Sources: Mark Pittillo (AllMovie), Yvan Foucart (Les Gens du Cinéma - French), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.

American actress Jane Fonda (1937) is a two-time Academy Award winner for the crime thriller Klute (1971) and the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Roger Vadim's psychedelic Science Fiction spoof Barbarella (1968) made her one of the icons of the European cinema of the 1960s.

German postcard by ISV, Sort. 19/6. Publicity still for La Ronde/Circle of Love (Roger Vadim, 1964).

Yugoslavian postcard by Cik Razgledinica. Photo: publicity still for Barbarella (Roger Vadim, 1968).

British postcard by Pyramid, Leicester, no. PC 8095. Photo: publicity still for Barbarella (Roger Vadim, 1968).

Lady Jayne

Jane Fonda was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda in New York in 1937. She was the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and the Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Brokaw, née Seymour. She has a brother, actor Peter Fonda, and a maternal half-sister, Frances.

Her mother committed suicide when Jane was 12. The suicide was kept from her as a teenager, and she was told that her mother had died of heart failure. Fonda learned the truth months later while leafing through a movie magazine in art class at Vassar.

Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was prompted by director Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of The Country Girl.

Before starting her acting career, Fonda was a fashion model, gracing the cover of Vogue twice. In 1958, she met Lee Strasberg and she went to study acting in earnest at the Actors Studio. In 1960, she made her Broadway debut in the play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received the first of two Tony Award nominations.

Later the same year, she made her screen debut in the romantic comedy Tall Story (Joshua Logan, 1960), in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball star, played by Anthony Perkins. In Walk on the Wild Side (Edward Dmytryk, 1962), she played a prostitute, and earned a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer.

She rose to fame in such films as Period of Adjustment (George Roy Hill, 1962), Sunday in New York (Peter Tewksbury, 1963), Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) opposite Lee Marvin, and Barefoot in the Park (Gene Saks, 1967), co-starring Robert Redford.

Fonda also worked in France. She appeared opposite Alain Delon in the delightful sexy thriller Les félins/Joy house (René Clément, 1964) and that same year, she was among the all-star cast of the anthology film La Ronde/Circle of Love (Roger Vadim, 1964), based on the classic Austrian novel Der Reigen by Arthur Schnitzler. Fonda astonished everyone (none as much as her father) by becoming one of the first major American actresses to appear nude in a foreign film.

Director Roger Vadim became her first husband in 1965. He featured her as a sex goddess in his next films, La curée/Tears of Rapture (Roger Vadim, 1966) with Michel Piccoli, and a segment of the anthology film Histoires extraordinaires/Spirits of the Dead (Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim, 1968), an adaptation of three horror stories by Edgar Allan Poe. In Vadim's segment, Metzgernstein, Fonda played a decadent contessa who falls in love with her pure cousin (played by her brother Peter Fonda).

In 1968, Jane played the title role in Vadim's psychedelic SF spoof Barbarella, which established her status as a sex symbol. Despite the striptease-in-vacuum beginning and the kinky costumes, Barbarella is now a rather innocent and campy film. Brian J. Dillard at AllMovie: "Although it often pops up on 'Worst Movies Ever' lists, it's actually something of a treat if one approaches it with the right attitude. From the eye-popping plasticity of the production design to the gentle grooviness of the Bob Crewe Generation's campy lounge soundtrack, Barbarella is a defiantly trivial film. But Fonda's studied vacuity, Anita Pallenberg's kinky glamour, and John Phillip Law's bronzed pecs and hippie truisms keep things sexy, sweet, and funny. Fonda has spent more than three decades trying to live down the zero-gee peep show that opens the film, but besides a few bare breasts and countless double entendres, nothing here crosses the line between erotic comedy and pornography."

A turning point in her career was the American social drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They (Sydney Pollack, 1969). She played one of the contenders in a desperate dance marathon in 1932, during the Great Depression. Fonda herself considers They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as one of her best films. She went on to win the Best Actress Oscar for the crime thriller Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971). In France, Fonda next starred as a reporter alongside Yves Montand in Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972). A year later, she divorced from Vadim.

Spanish postcard by Ediciones Tarje Fher, no. 305. Deposito legal BI 1100-63. Photo: MGM.

Jane Fonda and Efrem Zimbalist in The Chapman Report (1962)

Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor, no. 367. Photo: publicity still for The Chapman Report (George Cukor, 1962) with Efrem Zimbalist.

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, no. 16/71. Photo: Steffen.

French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 461. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French postcard by Editions P.I., offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 1135. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Workout

Jane Fonda is a seven-time Academy Award nominee. She won her second Best Actress Oscar for the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for her portrayal of the playwright Lillian Hellman in Julia (Fred Zinnemann, 1977), The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979) opposite Michael Douglas, On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981) with Katherine Hepburn and her father Henry Fonda, and The Morning After (Sidney Lumet, 1986) with Jeff Bridges.

In 1982, Jane Fonda released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling video of the time. It would be the first of 22 workout videos released by her over the next 13 years which would collectively sell over 17 million copies.

Divorced from her second husband, the politician Tom Hayden in 1990, she married media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting. Divorced from Turner in 2001, she returned to acting with her first film in 15 years with the comedy Monster in Law (Robert Luketic, 2005) opposite Jennifer Lopez.

Subsequent films have included Georgia Rule (Garry Marshall, 2007) with Lindsay Lohan, the French drama Et si on vivait tous ensemble?/All Together (Stéphane Robelin, 2011), The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013) as First Lady Nancy Reagan, and This Is Where I Leave You (Shawn Levy, 2014).

In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 45 year absence, in the play 33 Variations, which earned her a Tony Award nomination, while her recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012-2014), has earned her two Emmy Award nominations. She also released another five exercise videos between 2010 and 2012.

Jane Fonda has been an activist for many political causes. Her counterculture era opposition to the Vietnam War included her being photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, which was very controversial. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women, and describes herself as a feminist. In 2005, she, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda currently serves on the board of the organization.

Jane Fonda published the autobiography My Life So Far in 2005. In 2011, she published a second memoir, Prime Time. She has two children, daughter Vanessa Vadim (1968) with Roger Vadim, and Troy O'Donovan Hayden (aka Troy Garity) (1973) with Tom Hayden.

At the moment of writing, Jane Fonda is expected to appear in several new films and series. I am curious about the film Youth (2015), directed by Paolo Sorrentino. The film stars Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel as two old friends, a retired composer and conductor and a still working film director, who are on vacation in an elegant hotel at the foot of the Alps. Someone wants at all costs to hear the retired conductor conduct again. Last May, the film premiered in Italy.

German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/353. Photo: Sam Levin.

German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/244.

Italian postcard in the Artisti di Sempre series by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 344.

French postcard by EDUG, no. 377. Photo: Sam Levin.

American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, Ca., no. Personality #61, 1981. Photo: Annie Leibovitz.

Sources: Brian J. Dillard (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Laurence Dang (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Acclaimed Russian actor Oleg Yankovsky (1944-2009) excelled in psychologically sophisticated roles of modern intellectuals. He is best known in the west for his parts in two of Andrei Tarkovsky's most haunting and poetic films: Zerkalo/The Mirror (1975) and Nostalghia (1983). In 1991, he became the last person to be named a People's Artist of the USSR.

Russian postcard.

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.

Aristocratic Bearing and Handsome Features

Oleg Ivanovich Yankovsky or Yankovskiy (Russian: Олег Иванович Янковский) was born in the village Jezkazgan, Kazakh SSR, USSR (now Jezkazgan, Kazakhstan) in 1944. He was born into a noble family of Polish origin. His father, a former tsarist army officer who joined the Red Army, was exiled and later died in a Gulag labour camp during Josef Stalin's crackdown on Trotskyites in the military.

After Stalin's death in 1953, the family settled in Saratov, in southern Russia. In 1957 Oleg's older brother Rostislav, an actor, went to Minsk. Back in Saratov, Oleg intended to become a dentist but a casual visit to the Slonov Theater Academy, the local drama school where his brother had studied changed his mind.

After marrying fellow student Ludmilla Zorina, he graduated in 1965 with an appearance in The Three Sisters before joining the Saratov Drama Theatre. A year later, aged 22, he appeared in his first film, O lyubvi/A Ballad of Love (Mikhail Bogin, 1966), and immediately impressed with his aristocratic bearing and handsome features.

His film career was launched, when he was cast in two films about World War II, Shchit i mech/The Shield and the Sword (Vladimir Basov, 1968) in which he played an arrogant German officer, and Sluzhili dva tovarishcha/Two Comrades Were Serving (Yevgeni Karelov, 1968).

About Sluzhili dva tovarishcha, Ronald Bergan wrote in his obituary of Yankovskiy in The Guardian: “Yankovsky played a student who joins the Red Army during the civil war, fighting for the revolution not only with his gun, but with his camera. The performance demonstrated Yankovsky's skill in playing heroic roles with a certain irony, without resorting to the larger-than-life mannerisms in Soviet cinema of the 1950’s. However, despite the ‘Thaw’ period following Khrushchev's famous speech in 1956 attacking Stalin's ‘cult of personality’, a new era of repression had set in by the time Yankovsky made his screen debut.”

Oleg Jankovskiy and Stanislav Lyubshin in Shchit i Mech (1968)

Russian postcard, no. 2129783, 1980. Photo: publicity still for Shchit i Mech/The Shield and the Sword (Vladimir Basov, 1968).

Russian postcard.

Oleg Yankovskiy and Galina Yatskina in Slovo dlya zashchity (1977)

Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 109/77, 1977. (This postcard was printed in an edition of 200.000 cards. The price was 5 kop.). Publicity still for Slovo dlya zashchity/A Word for the Defense (Vadim Abdrashitov, 1977).

Intensely Personal, Dreamlike and Somewhat Hermetic

In the west we have only little idea of how much Oleg Yankovsky was revered in his own country, in both Soviet and post-Soviet times, equally on stage and in films. In 1973, he joined Mark Zakharov's Lenin Komsomol Theatre in Moscow, and became one of its leading actors.

He starred in the TV versions of such Lenkom productions as Obyknovennoye chudo/An Ordinary Miracle (Mark Zakharov, 1978) and Tot Samyy Myunkhgauzen/The Very Same Munchhausen (Mark Zakharov, 1979). Despite the mediocrity of the majority of the films he appeared in during the stagnant Brezhnev years, he managed to humanise historical figures by expressing certain deep emotions, lifting his portrayals of Communist Party leaders above the popular film stereotypes. In 1974, he played a Communist Party official in Premiya/The Bonus (Sergei Mikaelyan, 1974), a film that generated international attention for its frank examination of mismanagement and fraud in the Soviet construction industry.

In the west we know Oleg Yankovsky only from a handful of films. He was cast to play the father in Tarkovsky's intensely personal, dreamlike and somewhat hermetic Zerkalo/The Mirror (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1975). Philip Riley in his obituary of Yankovsky in The Independent: “a multi-layered oneiric autobiography, Yankovsky played a loose depiction of the hero's father, the poet Arseny Tarkovsky, whose verses are heard on the soundtrack. The complex layering included casting various members of Tarkovsky's family and, as one of the children, Yankovsky's son Philip.”

Zerkalo was the first of his films to be shown widely in the west. But he had to wait another eight years, for the main role in Tarkovsky's Nostalghia/Nostalgia (Andrei Tarkovsky, 1983), before he was internationally recognised again. Ronald Bergan: “Thankfully, This time he played the lead role – a Russian poet and musicologist doing research at a spa in the Tuscan hills. As an obscure act of faith, Yankovsky crosses an ancient sulphur pool from one side to the other carrying a lighted candle. With his lean, ascetic face and dark eyes, he was ideal as a man in extremis, through whom Tarkovsky, in his first film made outside the Soviet Union, expressed his melancholy and homesickness”.

Other of his internationally known films are Moy laskovyy i nezhnyy zver/The Shooting Party (Emil Loteanu, 1978), based on the Anton Chekhov story, where he was superb as Kamyshev, an intellectual crushed by the pettiness and false morality of a small provincial town; Polyoty vo sne i nayavu/Flights in Dreams and Reality (Roman Balayan, 1982), electrifying as a complacent adulterer painfully forced to reassess his life; Vlyublyon po sobstvennomu zhelaniyu/Love at His Own Choice (Sergei Mikaelyan, 1983), as a former champion bicyclist who is rescued from his drunken ways by a plain-looking librarian; Kreytserova sonata/The Kreutzer Sonata (Sofiya Milkina, Mikhail Shvejtser, 1987), adapted from Leo Tolstoy, where his portrayal of jealousy erupting into hate is a tour de force; and Pasport/The Passport (Georgi Daneliya, 1991), about a case of mistaken identity which leaves a Russian man stranded in Israel.

Russian postcard.

Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 106/72, 1972. Photo: Ter-Ovanesova. (This postcard was printed in an edition of 260.000 cards. The price was 6 kop.).

People's Artist of the Soviet Union

Oleg Yankovsky’s few western films are reportedly not among his best. In Tsareubiytsa/Assassin of the Tsar (Karen Shakhnazaro, 1991) he played a psychiatrist who is a look-alike of Tsar Nicholas II treating a man (Malcolm McDowell), who thinks himself the regicide. Mute Witness (Anthony Waller, 1994) is a British thriller set in a Russian film studio. While Sally Potter's transatlantic gypsy melodrama The Man Who Cried (2000) divided critics, Yankovsky impressed as Christina Ricci's Jewish father, who emigrates to the US from Russia.

In 1991, Yankovsky was the last actor to be awarded the title of People's Artist of the Soviet Union. He continued to receive awards for his work with several Nika Awards from the Russian Film Academy for his directorial debut Prikhodi na Menya Posmotret/Come Look At Me (Oleg Yankovskiy, 2001) and for his role in Lyubovnik/The Lover (Valery Todorovsky, 2002).

Starting in 1993, Yankovsky ran the Kinotavr Film Festival in Sotchi. He appeared as Count Pahlen in the drama Bednyy, bednyy Pavel/Poor, Poor Pavel (Vitali Melnikov, 2004) and as Komarovsky in a TV adaptation of Doktor Zhivago/Doctor Zhivago (Aleksandr Proshkin, 2006). His penultimate role was as Karenin in a television adaptation of Anna Karenina (Sergei Solovyov, 2009).

The last film Yankovsky appeared in was Tsar (Pavel Lungin, 2009) which was presented in the Un Certain Regard section at the Cannes Film Festival, just three days before his death. He was being highly praised for his dignified and spiritual performance of the Metropolitanate Philipp, childhood friend and adviser of Ivan the Terrible (Pyotr Mamonov), and his only adversary.

In 2009 Oleg Yankovsky died of pancreatic cancer in Moscow, aged 65. He is survived by his son, the actor and film director Filipp Yankovsky, who appeared as a young child in The Mirror, and his wife, the Lenkom actor Lyudmila Zorina.

Original trailer for Zerkalo/The Mirror (1975). Source: Whimpysinger (YouTube).

English DVD-trailer of Nostalghia (1983). Source: Peaseporridge (YouTube).

Trailer of Assassin of the tsar (1993). Source: PeterShop.com - Russian Movie (YouTube).

Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), John Riley (The Independent), Bloomberg News (The New York Times), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Blond French actress Geneviève Grad (1944) is best known as the daughter of Louis de Funès in the first three films of the Gendarme of Saint-Tropez series of the 1960s. In the late 1960s she made some erotic films.

French postcard by E.D.U.G, no. 325, presented by Corvisart, Epinal. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Spanish postcard by Torro de Bronce, no. 196. Photo: Unifrance Film / Sam Lévin.

The Gendarme's beautiful daughter

Geneviève Gabrielle Grad was born in 1944 in Paris. Her father was a typographer for the newspaper France-Soir. She trained in dance, but at 15 she was spotted for the film.

She made her film debut as an extra in Les dragueurs/The Dredgers (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1959) starring Jacques Charrier and Charles Aznavour. She changed her career plans and took acting classes from Beatrice Dussanne.

Geneviève played the teenage daughter of Martine Carol in in the crime drama Un Soir sur le plage/One Night at the Beach (Michel Boisrond, 1961). That same year, she played the female lead in the French swashbuckler Le Capitaine Fracasse/Captain Fracasse (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1961), featuring Jean Marais and Philippe Noiret.

In Italy, she starred in the Peplum Il conquistatore di Corinto/The Centurion (Mario Costa, 1961) set in 146 BC in Greece. In this French/Italian historical drama, set against the back-drop of the Battle of Corinth, she played Hebe, the daughter of a local governor with anti-Roman sentiments, who falls in love with a Roman centurion named Caius Vinicius (Jacques Sernas). She stayed in Italy for I normanni/Attack of the Normans (Giuseppe Vari, 1962), set in England in the early 9th century. Viking incursions play a central role in this film starring Cameron Mitchell.

Grad also participated in another European genre of the 1960s, the Eurospy film. She co-starred in the French thriller Gibraltar (Pierre Gaspard-Huit, 1964) with Hildegard Knefand Gérard Barray, who played a secret agent going undercover to infiltrate smugglers between Tangiers and Gibraltar.

Then she played her best known role Nicole Cruchot, the beautiful daughter of Marshal Ludovic Cruchot (Louis de Funès) in the comedy Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez/The Troops of St. Tropez (Jean Girault, 1964). It is was the first film in The gendarme series, comedies situated in Saint-Tropez, a fashionable resort on the French Riviera.

Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez was a huge box office hit and spawned five sequels. Grad only appeared in the first three films. The other two were: Le gendarme à New York/Gendarme in New York (Jean Girault, 1965) and Le gendarme se marie/The Gendarme Gets Married (Jean Girault, 1968). She also recorded the songs Douliou Douliou Saint-Tropez (1964) and Les Garçons, les filles et l'amour (The boys, the girls and love) (1966).

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 130.

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 294. Retail price: 1,50 Lei. Photo: publicity shot for Le gendarme se marie/The Gendarme Gets Married (Jean Girault, 1968) with Louis de Funès and Geneviève Grad.

The era of sexual liberation

Geneviève Grad had a nervous breakdown and retired for a while. She departed from her image as the beautiful daughter of De Funès with her next films.

In the era of sexual liberation and social revolution, she played a lead role in the French film Flash Love, with Paul Guers as her partner. The film was first limited released in 1968, got a wider release in 1972 and was re-released in 1977 as Libertés sexuelles/Love-Making: Hot Style (Max Kalifa, 1977).

She also played the lead role in the Brazilian-French drama O Palácio dos Anjos/Palais des anges érotiques et des plaisirs secrets/The Palace of Angels (Walter Hugo Khouri, 1970) with Luc Merenda. The film, about a French girl living in São Paulo, who decides with two friends to transform a little apartment into a luxury bordello, was entered into the 1970 Cannes Film Festival.

Apart from these films, she appeared on stage and in several made for TV films and TV series during the 1960s, 1970s and early 1980s. Grad - not yet 40 - made her final film in 1983. She played a supporting part in the Darry Cowl comedy Ça va pas être triste/It's going to be sad (Pierre Sisser, 1983).

Later, she worked as a production assistant for TV 1, as an antiques dealer and for the city of Vendôme. Geneviève Grad has a son, Dimitri Bogdanoff (1976), with former boyfriend, Igor Bogdanoff, a controversial scientist and television-show host.

Since 1993, Geneviève Grad is married to architect Jean Guillaume. They live in Vendôme in France.

Spanish postcard by Editorial Filasol in the series Sexy vintage girls.

Trailer for Sandokan, la tigre di Mompracem/Sandokan the Great (Umberto Lenzi, 1963) with Steve Reeves. Source: Sleaze-O-Rama (YouTube).

Geneviève Grad sings Douliou Douliou Saint-Tropez in Le gendarme de Saint-Tropez (1964). Source: SuperCanopus (YouTube).

Sources: Biosstars (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and IMDb.

Today, we read that British film and stage actress Nova Pilbeam died at 17 July. She was a forgotten star with an odd name. As a teenager, she played in two Alfred Hitchcock classics, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and Young and Innocent (1937). In 1948 she vanished from the British cinema. Nova Pilbeam was 95.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 877. Photo: Gaumont-British.

British postcard, no. B-32. Photo: Gaumont-British.

British postcard, no. 162 A. Photo: Gaumont-British.

Hitchcock's First True International Hit

Nova Margery Pilbeam was born in Wimbledon, London in 1919. Her parents were actor and theatrical manager Arnold Pilbeam, and his wife Margery Stopher Pilbeam. Nova made her stage debut at the age of five in a charity performance produced by her father.

As soon as the law allowed, she made her professional debut. At 12, she played Marigold in Toad of Toad Hall at the Savoy theatre in 1931. This led to more stage work in her teen years and to an audition for Robert Stevenson at Gaumont British in 1934.

She got a leading role in the British drama Little Friend (Berthold Viertel, 1934). She played a young girl who becomes an unwilling witness to the divorce of her parents (Matheson Lang and Lydia Sherwood). At Wicked Lady, Carole writes: “When the film was released, Pilbeam was a sensation. Kinematograph Weekly praised the ‘brilliant performance by the newly discovered English protégée’. Gaumont-British executives were impressed and signed her to a seven year contract”.

Pilbeam first got a small but important role in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) featuring Peter Lorre. Pilbeam played a sophisticated teenager who is kidnapped. The Man Who Knew Too Much became one of the most successful and critically acclaimed thrillers of Hitchcock's British period.

Brendon Hanley at AllMovie: ”Though Alfred Hitchcock would remake the movie himself in 1956 with a bigger budget, the original 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much is arguably a more historically significant and aesthetically interesting film. It was Hitchcock's first true international hit. Though he wouldn't have a major success in America until The Lady Vanishes, Man and the subsequent The 39 Steps helped establish the director's distinctive style and lay the groundwork for his popularity. Along with Hitchcock's trademark blend of suspense and humour and blurring of the normal and abnormal, the film also features his characteristically grand showpieces, most memorably the recreation of the true-life ‘Sidney Street Siege’ and the famous Albert Hall scene.”

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. 995a. Photo: Gaumont British.

British postcard by Real Photograph, no. 162. Photo: Gaumont-British Pictures.

Extremely Touching

Nova Pilbeam then played a lead role as the 16-years old Lady Jane Grey in Tudor Rose (Robert Stevenson, 1935), a dramatization of Grey's short life, from her forced marriage to Henry VIII to her brief reign as queen of England and finally to her beheading. Carole at WickedLady: “Pilbeam looked glorious in the sumptuous Tudor costumes and was extremely touching in the role. She subsequently won the Film Weekly medal for the best performance by a performer in a British Film.”

Still only seventeen, Pilbeam then had a starring role opposite Derrick de Marney in Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1937), for which she is now best known.

Hal Erickson reviews at AllMovie: “Alfred Hitchcock was beginning to repeat himself, but audiences didn't mind so long as they were thoroughly entertaining-which they were, without fail. Derrick De Marney finds himself in a 39 Steps situation when he is wrongly accused of murder. While a fugitive from the law, De Marney is helped by heroine Nova Pilbeam, who three years earlier had played the adolescent kidnap victim in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much. The obligatory 'fish out of water' scene, in which the principals are briefly slowed down by a banal every day event, occurs during a child's birthday party. The actual villain, whose identity is never in doubt (Hitchcock made thrillers, not mysteries) is played by George Curzon, who suffers from a twitching eye. Curzon's revelation during an elaborate nightclub sequence is a Hitchcockian tour de force, the sort of virtuoso sequence taken for granted in these days of flexible cameras and computer enhancement, but which in 1937 took a great deal of time, patience and talent to pull off.” A

fter this, Pilbeam's film career may have stalled somewhat. She was considered for Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938), but lost the role to Margaret Lockwood. In 1939 she appeared on the early British television drama Prison Without Bars (1939) with Jill Esmond, and in the Ealing comedy Cheer Boys Cheer (Walter Forde, 1939) depicting the rivalry between two firms of brewers.

In 1939 Nova Pilbeam married Penrose ‘Pen’ Tennyson, a great-grandson of the poet Alfred, Lord Tennyson. They had met at the set of Young and Innocent, where he was an assistant director to Alfred Hitchcock. Tennyson became a film director himself the year they were married.

British postcard by De Reszke Cigarettes, no. 39. Photo: Gaumont-British.

British postcard in the Colourgraph Series, no. C 332. Photo: Cannons.

British postcard by Real Photograph in the Art Photo Postcard series, no. 81. Photo: Gaumont-British.

Tragic Plane Crash

Unlike other British film stars of the 1930s, Nova Pilbeam never made a film in Hollywood. Producer David O. Selznick wanted her for the lead as Mrs De Winter in Rebecca (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) and thought she could be an international film star. However, her agent was worried about the length of a five-year contract and Hitchcock thought she was too immature for the role.

It must have been a blow to Pilbeam that Hitchcock gave the role to Joan Fontaine and that her studio, Gaumont British, had collapsed in 1937 due to overexpansion and the inability to penetrate the American market. In 1941 her husband Pen Tennyson suddenly died in a tragic plane crash. He had been called up to film some instructional shorts for the war effort.

Despite all this, Pilbeam carried on. Throughout the 1940s, she appeared in British war and crime films along with many stage roles. In 1940 she played with Wilfrid Lawson in Pastor Hall (Roy Boulting, 1940), based on the true story of Pastor Martin Neimuller, who was sent to Dachau concentration camp for criticising the Nazi party. Another wartime propaganda film was The Next of Kin (Thorold Dickinson, 1942) about the danger of Nazi espionage. It became a great box office hit.

On stage, Pilbeam gave vibrant performances as the title role of Peter Pan, Viola in Twelfth Night and Rosalind in As You Like It. One of her last films was The Three Weird Sisters (1948). It was a Gothic tale of a dying Welsh mining town and the three old and afflicted ladies who oversee it. The screenplay is credited to five writers, including Dylan Thomas.

After the release, she retired from the screen. She was 29 at the time. In 1950, Pilbeam married BBC Radio journalist Alexander Whyte and their daughter Sarah Jane was born in 1952. The couple stayed together until his death in 1972. Nova Pilbeam died of natural causes in London. She was 95.

Opening of Little Friend (1934). Source: D Cairns (YouTube).

Trailer for the Blue-ray of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Source: Network Distributing (YouTube).

Scene from Young and Innocent (1937). Source: hitchcockmoments (YouTube).

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Brendon Hanley (AllMovie), Carole (Wicked Lady), BritMovie, Lenin Imports, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Today's film special is about the two-part film Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (1913). This early silent adaptation of Alexandre Dumas père's' famous novel was directed by Henri Pouctal for Le Film d'Art. The film starred Émile Dehelly as D'Artagnan and Nelly Cormon as Milady. The cards were unnumbered and the film is lost, so we tried to follow the order of the novel, but we have some hesitations about the cards on Milady's past.

Émile Dehelly as D'Artagnan.

Caption: At the inn of Meung-sur-Loire the outfit of the Chevalier d'Artagnan raised the sarcasm of Count Rochefort whom Richelieu sent to Milady de Winter, who is charged by Buckingham with a secret message for the Queen.

Caption: Charlotte Backson, who has taken refuge in an inn, notices the Count de la Fère, a rich gentleman who lives in the neighbourhood. She decided to conquer him and to hide her past.

Caption: When he discovers the past of his wife, the Count de la Fère avenges his honour by chastening the miserable woman who abused him.

Caption: D'Artagnan helps Athos, Porthos and Aramis to take their revenge on the Cardinal's guards.

Caption: In the presence of D'Artagnan, Mr De Treville, the Captain of the King's Musketeers saddles Athos, Porthos and Aramis with reproaches because they have been beaten by the Cardinal's guards.

Caption: the Musketeers and D'Artagnan appreciate the stratagem by Planchet, who to enable his master to fittingly receive his friends, draws liquid and solid from Mrs. Bonacieux' table.

Caption: D'Artagnan saves Mrs Bonacieux and he takes charge to bring the Queen's letter to Buckingham reclaiming from the Duke the twelve studs. On advice of the Cardinal, the king has demanded her to appear with these studs at the upcoming ball at the Hotel-de-Ville.

Extreme length

The very first cinematic adaptation of Dumas'Les trois mousquetaires was a French short made by Georges Méliès in 1903, Les trois mousquetaires et le collier de la reine/The three Musketeers and the Queen's Necklace.

The next adaptation, Les trois mousquetaires/The Three Musketeers (1913) by Henri Pouctal was the first feature-length film version of the classic novel. In the early 1910s, feature-length films were just starting, but Pouctal's Les trois mousquetaires had already the extreme length of 4000 metres.

The film was released in two parts, La Haine de Richelieu (Richelieu's Hate) and Le Triomphe d'Artagnan (D'Artagnan's Triumph). While several sources list the film as being made in 1912, actually, it was released in Paris and elsewhere in Europe in the fall of 1913 and in the US in 1914.

Henri Pouctal wrote the script too, while cinematography was by Louis Chaix. Sets were by Emile Bertin. The leading actors were Émile Dehelly as D'Artagnan and Nelly Cormon as Milady.

In addition, the film featured Marcel Vibert (Athos), Adolphe Candé (Porthos), Stellio (Aramis), Philippe Garnier (Cardinal Richelieu), Jean Peyrière (Count Buckingham), Guizelle (Constance Bonacieux), Henri Legrand (Planchet), Marcel Marquet (Louis XIII), Aimée Raynal (Queen Anne), Edouard Hardoux (Bonacieux), Jacques Volnys (Count De Rochefort). Bit parts were for Jean Duval, Rolla Norman, Édouard de Max, and Marsa Renhardt.

Caption: Thanks to the passport taken from the Count De Rochefort, D'Artagnan can embark for Dover.

Caption: Called back to Britain, the Duke of Buckingham has brought to London twelve diamond studs as a remembrance of their pure love, offered by the Queen of France, and which she had gotten from the King.

Caption: Buckingham returns the twelve diamond studs to D'Artagnan. They are reclaimed by the Queen to satisfy the King's demands.

Caption: Back from London. D'Artagnan has just returned to the Queen the twelve diamonds reclaimed from Buckingham.

Caption: Adorned with the diamond studs, the Queen appears at the Aldermen's Ball, to the great discomfiture of the Cardinal who was already convinced of his triumph.

Caption: Charged to win over D'Artagnan to Richelieu's side, Milady de Winter entertains him at her place, confiding that her charms will conquer the resistance of the ardent knight.

Caption: The stigma.

Caption: Milady de Winter realizes with terror that D'Artagnan has discovered her shameful secret and swears revenge.

The highlight of the season

In his thorough study on 1910s, French silent film, The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914 (1994), Richard Abel wrote that the film was distributed by AGC, the biggest distributor after Pathé and Gaumont around 1913.

From April to October 1913, AGC led a huge campaign to promote Les trois mousquetaires as the highlight of the season. As part of a new distribution strategy, it was pre-screened in the Fall of 1913 at the Paris' cinema Majestic.

Abel states that Pouctal was the sole director of the film, while the Cinémathèque française, IMDb and Wikipedia also list André Calmettes as a co-director.

According to Abel, Les trois mousquetaires is still a lost film, but these postcards give a nice impression.

After the version of Pouctal, many later versions would follow, such as the 1921 and 1933 version by Henri Diamant-Berger. Check out our post on the 1921 version.

Caption: Having become the spy of the Cardinal and the lady-in-waiting of the Queen, Milady de Winter copies Buckingham's message to communicate it to the Cardinal.

Caption: The Cardinal de Richelieu meets Milady de Winter at the Inn of the Red Dove in La Rochelle.

Caption: At the Inn of the Red Dove, Athos recognizes the voice of his wife whom he thought dead. He hears her pleading to Cardinal Richelieu to sentence D'Artagnan to death.

Caption: Unmasked, Milady de Winter leaves the Inn of the Red Dove, swearing revenge.

Caption: As D'Artagnan has escaped her, Milady de Winter decides to hit the one he loves. She pours poison in the glass of Madame Bonacieux, whom the young man has just joined in the Monastery of Bethune.

Caption: D'Artagnan and the Musketeers swear to avenge the death of Madame Bonacieux.

Caption: Milady de Winter is captured by the Musketeers and D'Artagnan in the hovel where she had taken refuge after her murder, and is delivered to the henchman.

Caption: JUSTICE!

Sources: Richard Abel (The Ciné Goes to Town: French Cinema 1896-1914), Ciné-Ressources (French), Wikipedia (French), and IMDb.

Austrian actress Luise Ullrich (1910-1985) starred in many German films of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. No German star played self-sacrificing womanhood better than the blond actress and her film Annelie (1941), became the main morale-booster of World War II Germany.

Dutch postcard by Isa-Film, no. 4636. Photo: Zander & Labisch.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8361, 1933-1934. Photo: Yva, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3594/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Quick / Ufa.

Tomboy

Luise Eliza Aloysia Ullrich was born in Wien (Vienna), Austria-Hungary (now Austria), in 1911. She was the daughter of a major in the Austro-Hungarian Army and a concert violinist.

Already at age 14, she received training as an actress at the Vienna Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. While still a teenager, she was contracted for two years by the Wiener Volkstheater where she made her stage debut in Herbert Sudermann's Heimat in 1926.

In 1931 she moved to Berlin for the Lessing Theater. Her first major triumph was next to Werner Krauss in Richard Billinger's drama Rauhnacht (1932). Later, she switched to the Berliner Staatstheater (Berlin State Theater) and the Deutsche Theater

After a few short films, Ullrich played alongside the ’king of the mountains’, Luis Trenker, in the melodrama Der Rebell/The Rebel (Kurt Bernhardt, Edwin H. Knopf, 1932). Actor and film-maker Trenker had spotted her during one of her performances in Rauhnacht, and cast her in the leading role of Erika.

Although she was upstaged by both Trenker and the Alps, according to Hans Wolstein at AllMovie, Ullrich gave a thoughtful performance and was equally praised for her performance in Max Ophüls screen adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler’s play Liebelei/Flirtation (1933), which some thought she stole outright from its star, Magda Schneider.

This was followed by Vorstadtvarieté/Suburban Variety (Werner Hochbaum, 1934). With her big eyes and an idiosyncratic voice with a slightly ironic undertone, she often embodied a tomboy in her early films. I.S. Mowis at IMDb: "the ideal 'girl next door' type, tomboyish, spirited, charming and witty."

Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 6651. Photo: Verleih Muschak & Co / Deutsche Universal Film. Publicity still for Der Rebell/The Rebel (1932) with Luis Trenker.

German postcard by Das Programm von Heute, Zeitschrift für Film und Theater G.m.b.H., Berlin. Photo: Ufa / Quick.

Dutch postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8875/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Fanal / Europa. Publicity still for Regine (Erich Waschneck, 1935).

Luise Ullrich and Adolf Wohlbrück in Regine (1935)

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8937/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Fanal-Europa. Publicity still for Regine (Erich Waschneck, 1935) with Adolf Wohlbrück.

Morale-booster

Luise Ullrich played her first leading role as a maid in Regine (Erich Waschneck, 1934). Other prestigious films were Viktoria (Carl Hoffmann, 1935), a romance based on a novel by Knut Hamsun, and Schatten der Vergangenheit/Shadows of the Past (Werner Hochbaum, 1936) in which she played two sisters opposite Gustav Diessl.

Ich liebe dich/I Love You (Herbert Selpin, 1938) even became a blockbuster. Her co-star Viktor de Kowa was also in real life her partner for seven years.

Another big hit was Annelie (Josef von Báky, 1941), about a young woman who always comes too late. At the Venice Film Festival, Luise won the Coppa Volpi (Volpi Cup) for Best Actress. Annelie became the main morale-booster of World War II for Germany. The Ufa production grossed an impressive six and a half million Reichsmark.

Next she appeared in Der Fall Rainer/The Rainer Case (Paul Verhoeven, 1942) with Paul Hubschmid. She played the title figure in Nora (Harald Braun, 1944), a butchered version of Henrik Ibsen’s play A Doll's House that came complete with an uplifting ending and none too subtle touches of anti-Semitism.

In 1938, Luise Ullrich had turned down an offer from MGM boss Louis B. Mayer and she had gone instead to South America. There she had met Count Wulf Diether Graf zu Castell-Rüdenhausen, director of Munich-Riem airport. In 1942 the two married. They would have two daughters, Gabriela and Michaela.

German postcard by Ross Verlag. Photo: Atelier Binder.

German postcard by Ross Verlag. Photo: Minerva / Europa.

Belgian card. Photo: G. Mauquoy, Anvers (Antwerp).

Fassbinder

After the war Luise Ullrich appeared mainly on the Munich stage. In the cinema, she moved from delicate fresh girl parts to more mature roles in films like Nachtwache/Night Watch (Harald Braun, 1949), Um Thron und Liebe/Sarajevo (Fritz Kortner, 1955), and Ein Student ging vorbei/A Student Walked Past (Werner Klingler, 1960).

In Rainer Werner Fassbinder's TV Mini-Series Acht Stunden sind kein Tag/Eight Hours Are Not a Day (1972) she played a strong-minded grandmother opposite Hanna Schygulla and Gottfried John.

On TV she was also seen in the classic TV Krimi series Der Kommissar/The Chief Inspector (1970). In addition to her acting roles Luise Ullrich wrote several minor novels and the autobiography Komm auf die Schaukel, Luise (Come on the swing, Louise) (1973).

In 1973, the actress was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Germany’s Cross of Merit) and in 1979 the Filmband in Gold for her life's work, her last major award.

Luise Ullrich spent most of her remaining years writing and painting. One of her last works was an Australian travel memoir, published in 1985. That same year she died of cancer in München (Munich), Germany. Ullrich was 74. A street in the city centre of Munich is named after her.

German postcard by Gloria Palast, Berlin. Photo: publicity still for Eine Frau von Heute/A woman of today (Paul Verhoeven, 1954).

Final scene of Liebelei/Flirtation (1933). Source: BD130 (YouTube).

Luise Ullrich sings Waiting (I´m waiting) in Schatten der Vergangenheit/Shadows of the Past (1936). Source: Alparfan (YouTube).

Sources: Hans J. Wollstein (New York Times / Rovi), Stephanie D´heil (Steffi-line)(German), I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia (German), and IMDb.

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The Goddess of the Odeons

Philosophically minded tramps on a park bench

The five last minutes

Buffalo Bill's Wild West

Adorable old-fashioned

Getting stuck in the sand

The Woman in black

A free-spirited prostitute

Minister for Culture

A Castle with 22 Rooms

Imprisoned For Homosexual Acts

A Cheerful Trip in the Past

Major heartthrob material

Numerous beefcake photographs

Karl May

"She was only a whore!"

When Women Had Tails

Crin blanc

Le ballon rouge

Le voyage en ballon

Not inside Fort Knox

Pussy Galore

Goldfinger began to up the ante

His Own Comedy Series

Strong Popularity

Army Officers

Infused with poetic realism

Jesus Christ

Collaborator with the Nazis

One of the greatest films in the history of cinema

A small-town whorehouse

Lady Jayne

Workout

Aristocratic Bearing and Handsome Features

Intensely Personal, Dreamlike and Somewhat Hermetic

People's Artist of the Soviet Union

The Gendarme's beautiful daughter

The era of sexual liberation

Hitchcock's First True International Hit

Extremely Touching

Tragic Plane Crash

Extreme length

The highlight of the season

Tomboy

Morale-booster

Fassbinder

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