European Film Star Postcards

We've got mail again from Spain! This time, Didier Hanson sent us scans of interesting rare vintage postcards of the Russian Empire of Vera Karalli and , but also great Ross postcards of Polish Hollywood legend Pola Negri. My favourite is the French postcard of the classic Alraune/Mandrake (1928). Didier also sent us postcards of Leopoldine Konstantin, Jarmila Novotná and Siegfried Arno, stars of the Weimar cinema who had to emigrate from Germany when the Nazis rose to power. We'll do individual posts about these interesting, but little known actors in the next weeks.

Russian postcard, no. 521. Photo: K. Fisher. Publicity still for the stage production of Mefistofele. Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin sang the title role on the occasion of his first appearance outside Russia at La Scala, Milan in 1901 and also on his North American debut at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, in 1907. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Russian postcard, no. 527. Photo: K. Fisher. Publicity still for the stage production of Arrigo Boito's opera Mefistofele. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin (Russian: Фёдор Ива́нович Шаля́пин) (1873–1938) was a Russian opera singer. The possessor of a large, deep and expressive bass voice, he enjoyed an important international career at major opera houses and is often credited with establishing the tradition of naturalistic acting in his chosen art form. The only sound film which shows his acting style is Don Quixote (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933).

German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, no. 4310. Photo: Becker & Maass. Collection: Didier Hanson. The photo was a publicity still for Sumurûn (Max Reinhardt, 1910).

Leopoldine Konstantin (1886-1965) was a famous Austrian theatre and film character actress, who worked for years with director Max Reinhardt. She played Claude Rains' dominant mother in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Notorious (1946). It was her sole Hollywood role.

Russian postcard, 1916. Collection: Didier Hanson. Eunice and Petronius (1915) was a ballet by chroreographer Alexander Alexeyevich Gorsky, produced by the Russian Imperial Ballet.

Vera Karalli (1889-1972) was a Russian ballet dancer, choreographer and actress in the early 20th century.

French postcard by A. Bert, Paris, no. 16. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Pretty performer Jane Danjou is known for a few French silent films. She played small parts in the shorts L'auberge du tohu-bohu/The Inn of Tohu-Bohu (Georges Denola, 1912) and C'est pour les orphelins/For the Children (Louis Feuillade, 1916) with Musidora. She played the female lead in Midinettes/ (René Hervil, Louis Mercanton, 1917), and the tile role in Zon (Robert Boudrioz, 1920) opposite Jacques de Féraudy.

German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 114. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Leopoldine Konstantin (1886-1965) was a famous Austrian theatre and film character actress, who worked for years with director Max Reinhardt. She played Claude Rains' dominant mother in Alfred Hitchcock’s classic Notorious (1946). It was her sole Hollywood role.

French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine no. 38. Photo: G. Fontaine. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Georges Lannes (1895–1983) was a French film actor who appeared in more than a hundred films during his career (1920-1961). In 1920-1922 he acted in ten films by Charles Maudru, starting with Près des cimes (1920) and Le Droit de tuer (1920), and including the Zola adaptation L'Assommoir (1921), in which Lannes played Lantier, the young, lazy worker, who abandons his wife Gervaise (Louise Sforza) and their two children. His co-actors with Maudru were e.g. Gaston Jacquet and Suzanne Delvé.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 72/2. Photo: Parufamet / Paramount. Publicity still for Hotel Imperial (Mauritz Stiller, 1927). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Pola Negri and James Hall in Hotel Imperial (1927)

German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 72/3. Photo: Parufamet / Paramount. Publicity still for Hotel Imperial (Mauritz Stiller, 1927) with Pola Negri and James Hall. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Polish film actress Pola Negri (1894-1987) achieved notoriety as a femme fatale in silent films between 1910s and 1930s.

Paul Wegener and Brigitte Helm in Alraune (1928)

French postcard by CE, no. 613. Photo: publicity still for Alraune/Mandrake (Henrik Galeen, 1928). Collection: Didier Hanson.

German actor, writer and film director Paul Wegener (1874-1948) is one of the true fathers of the horror and fantasy genre, particularly remembered for his three silent films centred around the Jewish legend of the Golem. Wegener was one of the pioneers of the German cinema who realized the potential of the new medium and used the possibilities of cinematic trick photography as a method for presenting fantastic tales in a serious matter.

German actress Brigitte Helm (1908-1996) is still famous for her dual role as Maria and her double the evil Maria, the Maschinenmensch, in the silent SF classic Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). After Metropolis she made a string of over 30 films in which she almost always had the starring role. She easily made the transition to sound films, before she abruptly retired in 1935.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 24/1. Photo: Ufa / Ama-Film. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Siegfried - or Sig - Arno (1895-1975) was regularly being referred to as the ‘German Charlie Chaplin’. The German-Jewish character actor appeared in ninety silent and early sound films before he had to flee Nazi-Germany. From 1939 on, he appeared as a supporting actor in over 50 Hollywood films, often as the ‘funny European’. He may be best remembered from The Palm Beach Story (Preston Sturges, 1942) as Toto, the nonsense-talking mustachioed man who hopelessly pursues Mary Astor's ‘Princess Centimillia’.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8811/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Atlantis-Film. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Czech soprano Jarmila Novotná (1907-1994) was one of the world-renowned opera luminaries of the 20th Century. Her film appearances were unfortunately few and far between.

Thanks, Didier!

This is a post for Postcard Friendship Friday, hosted by Beth at the The Best Hearts are Crunchy. You can visit her by clicking on the button below.

French film actor Georges Flamant (1903-1990) started his career as a petty thief with an ignoble smile in Jean Renoir's La Chienne (1931) and the image of bad guy and womanizer stuck. During the late 1930s and early 1940s he peaked as the co-star of his beautiful wife, the film vamp Viviane Romance.

French postcard by Ed. Chantal, Rueil, no. 26. Photo: Sirius.

Banter and resourcefulness

Georges Flamant was born in 1903 in Tunis, while Tunisia was a French protectorate for over twenty years. As Pascal Donald writes at Ciné-Ressources, Flamant inherited the banter and the resourcefulness of the French in North Africa.

He stopped his studies at an early stage, and practised several odd jobs and attended the world of petty crime. Arriving in Paris in the roaring twenties, he met the underworld of Montmartre and the Grands Boulevards where his seductive power was a hit with women.

When in 1931 Jean Renoir was preparing his first talkie, La chienne/The Bitch, he was looking for a convincing actor for Lulu’s (Janie Marèze) pimp Dédé, a small-sized, petty criminal with an ignoble smile. When the filmmaker met Georges Flamant, he knew he had found the man for his character. Dédé ends unjustly convicted and executed after abusing the love of Lulu and the naivety of Mr. Legrand, played by Michel Simon, the real killer.

Subsequently, Georges Flamant was often type-cast in films as bad guy. Still this enabled him to act together with popular actresses such as Käthe von Nagy in À moi le jour, à toi la nuit/The Day for Me and the Night for You (Ludwig Berger, Claude Heymann, 1932), Vera Korène in La voix sans visage/The Voice without a face (Leo Mittler, 1933), Suzanne Dehelly in La reine des resquilleuses/The Queen of Resquilleuses (Marco de Gastyne, 1934), andGaby Morlay in La peur/The Fear (Victor Tourjansky, 1936).

In 1937 Flamant appeared with Raimu and Viviane Romance in L’étrange Monsieur Victor/Strange M. Victor (Jean Grémillon, 1937). He already had met Viviane in 1931 in Renoir’s La chienne, where she was an extra. They met again in Prison de femmes/Marked Girls (Roger Richebé, 1938) with Renée Saint-Cyr, and Le puritain/The Puritan (Jeff Musso, 1938) withJean-Louis Barrault. Henceforth, Georges shared his life with the famous vamp of the French cinema.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 130. Photo: Star. NB. Flamant's name is misspelled as Flament.

French postcard by S.E.R.P., Paris, no. 10. Photo: Studio Harcourt.

Blatantly lacking charisma

During the following five years, Viviane Romance imposed her man in the headlines of seven productions with her: Gibraltar (Fédor Ozep, 1938) also with Erich von Stroheim, La tradition de minuit/The Midnight Tradition (Roger Richebé, 1939) also with Marcel Dalio, Angelica (Jean Choux, 1939) which was shot at the Roman Scalera studio and released in both a French and an Italian version, Vénus aveugle/Blind Venus (Abel Gance, 1940) also with Henri Guisol, Cartacalha (Léon Mathot, 1940) also with Roger Duchesne, Une femme dans la nuit/A Woman in the Night (Edmond T. Gréville, 1941) withClaude Dauphin, and Feu sacré/Sacred Fire (Maurice Cloche, 1942) also with Franck Villard.

These films attracted huge audiences because of the sulfurous presence of Viviane, but Georges Flamant proved to be a rather poor actor, blatantly lacking charisma. After their separation in 1942, Georges's career suddenly stopped. Losing his credibility and without the protection of Viviane, no one hired him anymore. He lived on his notoriety in the company of pretty women and drowned himself in alcohol.

In 1948 Georges Flamant returned in a small role in an Italian film, Undici uomini e un pallone/
11 Men and a Ball (Giorgio Simonelli, 1948), and appeared in three French productions during the 1950s. In 1959, for his last film role, he played the rich and indulgent father of Patrick Auffray alias René, friend of Antoine Doinel played by Jean-Pierre Léaud, in Les 400 coups/The 400 Blows, the first feature by François Truffaut.

As Pascal Donald writes, this was an unusual trajectory for a "part-time criminal" who wanted to be an actor, starting under the direction of Renoir and ending under that of Truffaut, and whose career was punctuated by a passionate and tumultuous relationship with one of the most beautiful movie stars.

After nearly two decades of neglect, Georges Flamant made a final appearance on television in the episode Maigret et Mr. Charles (Jean-Paul Sassy, 1977), with Jean Richard as commissaire Maigret. After this part he returned to anonymity for good. Hospitalised in Villiers-le-Bel, Georges Flamant died in 1990, at the age of eighty-six.

French postcard by Massilia. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French postcard by Ed. Greff, Paris, no. 83. Photo: Studio Harcourt. NB Flamant's name is again misspelled as Flament.

Sources: CineArtistes.com, Wikipedia (French) and IMDb.

Emlyn Williams (1905-1987) was a Welsh dramatist and actor. He became an overnight star with his thriller Night Must Fall (1935), in which he also played the lead role of a psychopathic murderer. Another hit play was The Corn Is Green (1938). Both were filmed successfully.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 817a. Photo: Pathe. Publicity still for Night Alone (Thomas Bentley, 1938).

Exploring a killer's complex psychological state

George Emlyn Williams was born into a Welsh-speaking, working class family in Glan-yr-afon in northeast Wales, in 1905. Aged 11 he won a scholarship to Holywell Grammar School. There teacher Sarah Grace Cooke recognised his literary talent, encouraged him and helped him win a scholarship to Oxford, where he attended the college of Christ Church. She is immortalised in the character of Miss Moffat in his play, The Corn is Green.

Education enabled him to escape the life at hard labour that was the lot of his people. In Oxford he joined the Oxford University Dramatic Society. His first full-length play, Full Moon, was premiered at the original Oxford Playhouse in 1927. He joined a repertory company and began his stage career.

Williams made his West End debut in And So To Bed, a comedy based on the diaries of Samuel Pepys. He eventually became an accomplished stage and screen actor, but it was as a playwright that he had his greatest success. In the following years, he wrote such works as A Murder Has Been Arranged and The Late Christopher Bean.

He became an overnight star with his thriller Night Must Fall (1935), in which he also played the lead role of a psychopathic murderer. The play was noted for its exploration of the killer's complex psychological state, a step forward for its genre. It was made into a film, Night Must Fall (Richard Thorpe, 1937) with Robert Montgomery, and again thirty years later again as Night Must Fall (Karel Reisz, 1964) now with Albert Finney. It has been frequently revived, including on Broadway in 1999 with Matthew Broderick and most recently in the West End with Jason Donovan.

His other great play was very different. The Corn Is Green (1938) is partly based on his own childhood in Wales. He starred as a Welsh schoolboy in the play's London premiere. The play came to Broadway in 1940 with Ethel Barrymore as the schoolteacher Miss Moffat, was turned into a film, The Corn Is Green (Irving Rapper, 1945) starring Bette Davis, and again into a TV-film, The Corn is Green (1979) starring Katharine Hepburn, under the direction of Williams' close friend George Cukor. A 1985 London revival of the play at the Old Vic with Deborah Kerr was successful.

Emlyn Williams’s autobiographical light comedy, The Druid's Rest was first performed at the St Martin's Theatre, London, in 1944. It saw the stage debut of Richard Burton whom Williams had spotted at an audition in Cardiff. In addition to his stage plays, Williams wrote a number of film screenplays, working with Alfred Hitchcock on The Man Who Knew Too Much, and with Carol Reed and other directors.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 817. Photo: British Lion. Publicity still for The Frightened Lady (T. Hayes Hunter, 1932).

The Epic That Never Was

In 1932, Emlyn Williams made his film debut in the thriller The Frightened Lady (T. Hayes Hunter, 1932). In this adaptation of the Edgar Wallace play The Case of the Frightened Lady, he starred opposite Cathleen Nesbitt. It was a huge success. That year, he also featured in the drama Men of Tomorrow (Zoltan Korda, Leontine Sagan, 1932), which also marked Robert Donat's film debut.

In the following years, Williams appeared in such British films as the operetta My Song for You (Maurice Elvey, 1934) starring Jan Kiepura, the musical Evensong (Victor Saville, 1934) starring Evelyn Laye, and the historical drama The Dictator (Victor Saville, 1935) starring Clive Brook. In Broken Blossoms (John Brahm, 1936), Williams was a Chinese missionary who works in the London slums and helps a young girl (Dolly Haas) being ill-treated by her abusive father.

Then he played the mad Roman emperor Caligula opposite Charles Laughton in the uncompleted I, Claudius (Josef von Sternberg, 1937), based on Robert Graves' novel. A car accident involving co-star Merle Oberon caused filming to be ended before completion. Footage was incorporated into the documentary The Epic That Never Was (1965).

Williams starred as ex-son 'Shorty' in the crime thriller They Drive by Night (Arthur B. Woods, 1938), with Ernest Thesiger. The film was made by Warner Brothers as a quota film under the Cinematograph Films Act 1927. On release in the UK, it was well received critically and author Graham Greene cited how close the thriller came to French cinema with its realism and lack of romanticism.

Emlyn Williams acted in and contributed dialogue to various films based on the novels of A. J. Cronin, including The Citadel (King Vidor, 1938), The Stars Look Down (Carol Reed, 1940), Hatter's Castle (Lance Comfort, 1942) and Beyond This Place/Web of Evidence (Jack Cardiff, 1959). He had a role in Hitchcock's adaptation of Daphne du Maurier's Jamaica Inn (Alfred Hitchcock, 1939), starring Charles Laughton.

In 1941 Williams starred in You Will Remember (Jack Raymond, 1941), based on the life of the popular late Victorian songwriter Leslie Stuart, played here by Robert Morley, with Williams as Stuart's best friend. Also in 1941, he had a principal supporting part as Snobby Price in the G.B. Shaw adaptation Major Barbara (Gabriel Pascal, 1941), with Wendy Hiller and Rex Harrison.

Williams’s only film as a director, The Last Days of Dolwyn (1949), which he also wrote and starred in, marked the screen debut of fellow Welshman, Richard Burton. Williams played a kindly veterinarian who accidentally causes the death of a murderess (Bette Davis) in the suspense drama Another Man's Poison (Irving Rapper, 1952). That year, he also appeared as the fool Wamba in Ivanhoe (Richard Thorpe, 1952) with Robert Taylor and Elizabeth Taylor.

Other screen credits include, his portrayal of Emile Zola in I Accuse! (José Ferrer, 1958), The Wreck of the Mary Deare (Michael Anderson, 1959), and the drama The L-Shaped Room (Bryan Forbes, 1962), with Leslie Caron. On TV, he could be seen in an adaptation of Charles Dickens'David Copperfield, with an all-star cast including Laurence Olivier, Michael Redgrave, Ralph Richardson and Edith Evans.

British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1423. Photo: Grand National Pictures. Publicity still for The Stars Look Down (Carol Reed, 1940).

Frankly of his homosexual experiences

Emlyn Williams often appeared in his own plays, and was famous for his one-man-shows, with which he toured the world, playing Charles Dickens in an evening of excerpts from Dickens' novels. This ‘one man show’ was the start of a whole new theatrical genre. He followed up his Dickens performance with one man shows based on the works of Dylan Thomas, and H.H. Munro better known under his pseudonym Saki.

His post-war acting credits on stage included The Winslow Boy by Terence Rattigan and The Deputy aka The Representative by Rolf Hochhuth on Broadway. He also was the ‘voice’ of Lloyd-George in the documentary The Great War (1964).

Among Williams' books was the best seller Beyond Belief: A Chronicle of Murder and its Detection (1968), a semi-fictionalised account of the Moors murderers, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. His 1980 novel Headlong, the fictional story of the unexpected death of the entire British royal family in a freak accident in 1930, and the ascension of a most unlikely heir to the British throne as a result, was the loose basis of the film King Ralph (David S. Ward, 1991) which stars John Goodman and Peter O'Toole. This comedic treatment of Headlong was set in the contemporary United Kingdom.

Williams' autobiography, in the volumes George (1961) and Emlyn (1973), was also highly successful. In both books, he wrote frankly of his homosexual experiences; indeed, he was publicly ‘out’ as a bisexual before other better-known gay literary celebrities, such as his close friend and contemporary Christopher Isherwood.

Williams was married in 1935 to actress Mary Marjorie O'Shann (Molly Shan), who died in 1970. They had two sons, Alan, a writer, and Brook, an actor. Brook Williams became a close friend of Richard Burton's, working as Burton's personal assistant and appearing in many of Burton's films, sometimes even dubbing Burton's voice.

But both during his marriage and following his wife's death, Williams was actively bisexual throughout his adult life. He maintained a relationship from 1981 to 1986 with American theatre journalist Albert N. Williams (no relation), whom Emlyn Williams met while appearing at the Northlight Theatre in the Chicago area with his one-man Charles Dickens show. Emlyn Williams was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1962. In 1987, he died at his London flat, aged 81, from complications from cancer.

Trailer Night Must Fall (1937). Source: Tony Baretta (YouTube).

Trailer Another Man's Poison (1952). Source: Cohen Film Collection (YouTube).

Sources: Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Corpulent, balding Oskar Sima (1896-1969) was the king of the supporting roles of the Austrian and German cinema. From the 1920s to the late 1960s, the Austrian actor played character roles in over 250 comedies, film operettas and a few dramas.

German cigarette card in the series Unsere Bunten Filmbilder by Ross Verlag for Cigarettenfabrik Josetti, Berlin, no. 198. Photo: Ufa.

Singular comic talent

Oskar Michael Sima was born in Hohenau an der March, Lower Austria, in 1896. He was the son of a baker. Sima attended high school in Vienna, followed by a trade school and then studied acting at the Vienna Conservatory.

In 1919, after his military service during World War I, he received an engagement at the Deutsches Theater in Prague, then at the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna. In 1927 he went to Berlin where he worked under Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator. Reinhardt recognised his singular comic talent and had him cast in satirical or comedic roles.

Sima’s film career started in 1921. Notable among his silent films are the Austrian Pat and Patachoncomedy Schwiegersöhne/Sons in Law (Hans Steinhoff, 1926), and Leontines Ehemänner/Leontine's Husbands (Robert Wiene, 1928), with Claire Rommer and Georg Alexander.

Sima was frequently cast as the comic villain whose machinations get everyone into trouble, although many a times his villainous stature was used to more chilling effect. An example was the German silent crime film Kolonne X/Column X (Reinhold Schünzel, 1929), starring Reinhold Schünzel, Ernst Stahl-Nachbaur and Grete Reinwald. The film attempted to imitate the style of American crime films, switched to a German setting.

Interesting was also the German silent drama Die Frau, nach der man sich sehnt/The Woman One Longs For (Kurt aka Curtis Bernhardt, 1929) starring Marlene Dietrich, Fritz Kortner and Frida Richard. In 1929, Sima married actress Lina Woiwode. The couple remained married until Sima's death.

One of his first sound films was the drama Skandal um Eva/Scandalous Eva (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1930 in which he co-starred with Henny Porten. But in the following years, he only played supporting parts, such as in the German comedy drama Die Gräfin von Monte-Christo/The Countess of Monte-Christo (Karl Hartl, 1932) starring Brigitte Helm, the Austrian-German romantic comedy So ein Mädel vergißt man nicht/You Don't Forget Such a Girl (Fritz Kortner, 1932) starring Willi Forst and Dolly Haas, and the comedy Der Glückszylinder/The Magic Top Hat (Rudolf Bernauer, 1932) with Charlotte Ander and Felix Bressart. Many of these directors and actors soon fled the country, including Fritz Kortner, Dolly Haas and Felix Bressart.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1724/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Majestic-Film. Publicity still for 5 Millionen suchen einen Erben/Five Millions Seek an Heir (Carl Boese, 1938).

German postcard by Margarinewerk Eidelstedt Gebr. Fauser G.m.b.H., Holstein, Serie 1, no. Bild 34. Photo: Marcus.

An active supporter of the Nazi Party?

During the national socialist era, Oskar Sima was identified as being an active supporter of the Nazi Party. In 1938, he applauded Austria's 'Anschluss' with Germany, and his career thrived during the 1930s. In Hungary he played in the German comedy Skandal in Budapest/Scandal in Budapest (Steve Sekely, Géza von Bolváry, 1933), starring Franziska Gaal. It was made by the German subsidiary of Universal Pictures, and a separate Hungarian-language version was also made. The film was remade in Hollywood as Top Hat (Mark Sandrich, 1935), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.

Sima appeared at the side of Heinz Rühmann in the German comedy Heinz im Mond/Heinz in the Moon (Robert A. Stemmle, 1934), but also with Willy Fritsch and Lilian Harvey in the German romantic comedy Glückskinder/Lucky Kids (Paul Martin, 1936). I.S. Mowis at IMDb: “His stock-in-trade character was the surly curmudgeon: sometimes villainous, cigar-chewing and choleric, sometimes shifty and scheming, all the while deceptively amiable. At other times, he provided effective, often scene-stealing comedy relief, as pompous, easily deflatable editors, industrialists or burgomasters.”

Sima regularly returned to Austria for films, e.g. the operetta Zauber der Boheme/The Charm of La Bohème (Géza von Bolváry, 1937), starring Jan Kiepura and Mártha Eggerth.

After Austria had been incorporated into Greater Germany following the 1938 Anschluss, Sima often played in productions by Wien-Film, a Vienna-based company set up by the Nazis. He co-starred with Hertha Feiler and Attila Hörbiger in the drama Frau im Strom/Woman in the River (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1939), and appeared with Marte Harell in the musical comedy Wiener G'schichten/Vienna Tales (Géza von Bolváry, 1940).

For the Ufa, he appeared in the propaganda film Über alles in der Welt/Above All Else in the World (Karl Ritter, 1941), made to promote Nazi Germany's war aims in the Second World War. However, Oskar Sima was a curiously ambivalent man. I.S. Mowis at IMDb: “He went as far as to join the NSDAP, ostensibly, in order to continue performing. On the other hand, Sima appears also to have been associated with at least one resistance cell during the 1940's.”

Oskar Sima and Grete Weise in Die Verschleierte Maja (1951)

German collectors card. Photo: Pontus / Allianz / Michaelis. Publicity still for Die Verschleierte Maja/The Veiled Lady (Géza von Cziffra, 1951) with Grethe Weise.

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 2.205, 1964.

1950s remakes of major hits during the Weimar and Nazi eras

After World War II, Oskar Sima returned in the cinema in the West German musical crime film Die Dritte von rechts/Third from the Right (Géza von Cziffra, 1950), starring Vera Molnar. During the 1950s, Sima was frequently asked as a character actor, causing his biographer to write, "... there was hardly a film in which Oskar Sima didn't act."

His films ranged from the Heimatfilm Grün ist die Heide/The Heath Is Green (Hans Deppe, 1951) starring Sonja Ziemann and Rudolf Prack to the Austrian historical drama Kaiserwalzer/The Emperor Waltz (Franz Antel, 1953), starring Maria Holst as Empress Elisabeth of Austria.

One of his best films of this era was the British musical Oh... Rosalinda! (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1955), based on the operetta Die Fledermaus (The Bat) by Johann Strauss, but updated to take place in post-war Vienna as occupied by the four Allied powers: the United States, the United Kingdom, France and the USSR. Wikipedia: “Oh... Rosalinda!! is a light-hearted Technicolor romp that makes full use of the new CinemaScope process, and is not just a film of a staged production but a filmic operetta.”

Sima appeared in several 1950s remakes of major hits during the Weimar and Nazi eras, such as Der Kongreß tanzt/The Congress Dances (Franz Antel, 1955), Die Drei von der Tankstelle/The Three from the Filling Station (Hans Wolff, 1955), and Kirschen in Nachbars Garten/Fruit in the Neighbour's Garden (Erich Engels, 1956), in which Sima played the leading role.

Later he appeared in a new, Austrian version of Die Fledermaus/The Bat (Géza von Cziffra, 1962) starring Peter Alexander, Marianne Koch and Marika Rökk. His film career finished with the sex-comedy Susanne, die Wirtin von der Lahn/The Sweet Sins of Sexy Susan (Franz Antel, 1967). The commercial success of the film triggered the Frau Wirtin series of five films on later adventures of Susanne Delberg, all of them featuring Teri Tordai in the title role.

Oskar Sima suffered a heart attack in 1968 and he retreated to his horse ranch near Vienna. He languished for nearly a year before succumbing to his illness. In 1969, he died in his home town Langenzersdorf, Austria, at the age of 72. Shortly before his death he received the Filmband in Gold, the film award for many years of outstanding achievements in the German cinema.

DVD Trailer for Glückskinder/Lucky Kids (1936). Source: Murnau Stiftung (YouTube).

German trailer Besuch aus heiterem Himmel/Visit out of the blue (1959). Source: Dörfler Film (YouTube).

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

Every year in early autumn, the Dutch film industry and public gather at the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) to see, assess, discuss and celebrate the Dutch cinema. From 21 till 30 September 2016, Utrecht is the capital of film, and at EFSP, Dutch cinema is also placed centre stage. We start with the brightest star of the silent cinema of the Netherlands, Annie Bos aka Anny Bos (1886-1975). Between 1912 and 1920, she was the queen of the Hollandia film factory. Bos was entitled 'the Dutch Asta Nielsen' and the first Dutch film diva.

A rare Dutch postcard for Annie Bos, written here as Anny Bos. Photo: Hollandia-films, Haarlem. For us, this postcard was a holy grail. We're proud and glad to have found it.

Hollandia

Annie Bos was born in Amsterdam in 1886 as Johanna Bos, daughter of painter Gerard Jan Bos and his wife Aletta Maria Gertruda Halberstadt. Her father enabled her to follow the drama school in Antwerp, where she made her theatre debut. However, she soon returned to the Netherlands where she first appeared on stage in 1909. For three years she played small roles at the Van Lier brothers company and later joined that of Prot, but she had just a few opportunities to flourish as stage actress here.

In November 1912 director Maurits Binger offered her the lead role in the film De levende ladder/The Living Ladder (Maurits Binger 1913). Binger had founded the production company Filmfabriek (film factory) Hollandia in 1912 and saw Bos as the ideal muse for the female leads in his films.

Bos quickly belonged to the core group of the Hollandia players, such as Willem van der Veer, Fred Vogeding, Jan van Dommelen, Coen Hissink, Paula de Waart, Christine Chrispijn-van Meeteren and actor/director Louis Chrispijn,. Over the years, she received more and more recognition.

Her popularity grew also internationally, as Binger distributed her films over the borders as well, right from the start of De levende ladder. The audience preferred Bos over other Dutch actresses because of her natural style of play. The press compared her to the Franco-Russian actress Stacia Napierkowska.

After the thrill film Liefde waakt/An Artist’s Model (Louis Chrispijn, 1914) was released, Bos was nicknamed "the Dutch Asta Nielsen", turning her into the first Dutch film diva. Bos herself, though, hated that nickname, and rather preferred the Italian diva Francesca Bertini. Across the country young female fans imitated her hair style.

She was seen mainly in society dramas, thrill films and film adaptations of plays and books. Her big breakthrough came in 1916 when she played the lead in Majoor Frans/Major Frans (Maurits Binger, 1916), with Bos in a man-like role, as her character was raised as a boy because of an allowance by an aunt. The young Frans as a child was played by Lily Bouwmeester, who would become a Dutch film star in the 1930s. Although Bos received praise from critics, she was convinced that the transfer of her interpretation of the main character in Majoor Frans had failed.

From then on Bos became the most wanted film actress, but she nevertheless continued to do her own stunts. For a famous scene from Het geheim van Delft/The Secret of Delft (Maurits Binger, 1917), she let herself strapped to a mill’s wing going up to forty meters, and doing several rounds (filmed by the cameraman who did the same). As a reward, director and producer Binger gave her a bottle of champagne.

Adelqui Migliar and Annie Bos. Publicity still. Source: Immagine. Nuova Serie N. 16, 1990-1991.

Adelqui Migliar and Annie Bos. Publicity still for Een Carmen van het Noorden/Carmen of the North (Maurits H. Binger, Hans Nesna, 1919). Source: Immagine. Nuova Serie N. 16, 1990-1991.

Anna Bosilova

In her next film, Madame Pinkette & Co. (Maurits Binger, 1917), Annie Bos first played with the Chilean actor Adelqui Migliar. They would be paired in a long string of films, including De kroon der schande/The Coronet of Shame (Maurits Binger, 1918), the three-part film Oorlog en vrede 1914/1916/1918/War and Peace 1914/1916/1918 (Maurits Binger, 1918) and Toen’t licht verdween/When the Light Vanished (Maurits Binger, 1918).

Over the years, Bos got more chances to prove herself as an actress, as she started demanding more versatility in her characters. She played a demure young lady in the fishermen’s drama Op hoop van zegen/The Good Hope (Maurits Binger 1918), a comedian in American Girls (Maurits Binger, Louis Davids, 1919), and a daring femme fatale in Een Carmen van het Noorden/A Carmen of the North (Maurits Binger, Hans Nesna, 1919). In 1920 she was awarded a medal for her acting career.

After the end of World War I, filmmaking became more expensive. In 1919 Hollandia was about to go bankrupt and teamed up with a British studio to avoid collapse. Hollandia became Anglo-Hollandia. Bos still had the female lead in Het verborgen leven/The Hidden Life (Maurits Binger, B.E. Doxat-Pratt, 1920) and Zonnetje/Joy (Maurits Binger, B.E. Doxatt-Pratt, 1920), while Binger gave her the lead in a last project of his own: Rechten der Jeugd/Youth’s Rights (Maurits Binger, 1921).

Bos had to accept that female leads at Anglo-Hollandia went more and more to British actresses such as Mary Odette, e.g. in De vrouw van den minister/John Herriott’s Wife (Maurits Binger, B.E. Doxatt-Pratt, 1920). She was herself internationally named Anna Bosilova.

When Anglo-Hollandia reorganised at the end of 1920, the studio bosses decided Bos had to leave because they thought her too old. Meanwhile, Bos appeared in the US to be a popular actress because of A Carmen of the North, so an American version was planned and Bos was offered a contract which guaranteed her as star in the remake. She moved to New York in April 1921, but once arrived, she discovered the studio didn’t exist anymore. Bos did several auditions with other film studios, but to no avail. She only had a small role alongside American actress Pearl White in the Fox production Without Fear (Kenneth S. Webb, 1922) and was named in the credits as Anna Boas.

Dutch postcard by E & B. Photo by HAP Film / Bens Film, Den Haag. Jan van Dommelen in the film Schakels (Maurits Binger, 1920), based on a play by Herman Heijermans.

Mary Odette. British postcard in the Pictures Portrait Gallery, no. 49, by Pictures Ltd., London. Photo: Claude Harris.

When the Light Disappeared

Unable to get anymore film parts in the US, Annie Bos returned to Europe for health reasons in November 1922. Film lights had damaged her eyes. After a successful eye operation in Berlin, she tried to find her luck in Germany but this failed as well. In 1924 she eventually returned to the Netherlands.

There, Hollandia had gone bankrupt in 1922 and only two shaky Dutch film studios remained. Alex Benno, a director whom she knew from her days at Hollandia, insisted she would do the title role in Mooi Juultje van Volendam/Beautiful July of Volendam (Alex Benno, 1924), a folklorist film.

Although her comeback was accompanied by media attention, the film flopped and was removed from cinemas after just one week. In November 1924 Bos returned to the stage and was featured in the hit play Madame Dubarry. However, in 1925 she decided to quit acting for good. She married in 1926 with notary Cornelis Loeff and became a housewife, soon forgotten by the public.

Her death at Leiden, on 3 August 1975, was mentioned in only one newspaper, Het Vrije Volk. Shortly before her death she told her life story to Dutch film historian Geoffrey Donaldson, who made an extensive article, published in 1978 in the film magazine Skrien. In 1997 Donaldson dedicated his book Of Joy and Sorrow: A Filmography of Dutch Silent Fiction to her.

In 2006, film actress Willeke van Ammelrooy brought Bos under the footlight in a stage monologue called Toen ‘t licht verdween (When the Light Disappeared), entitled after one of the Bos’s films.

Several films with Annie Bos have shown up either in Dutch or foreign archives, such as De levende ladder, Twee Zeeuwse meisjes in Zandvoort/Two Zealand Girls in Zandvoort (Louis Chrispijn, 1913), De wraak van het vissersmeisje/The Fishergirl’s Vengeance (Jan van Dommelen 1913), Majoor Frans, Het geheim van Delft/The Secret of Delft, Zonnetje/Joy, John Herriot’s Wife, and, most recently, in 2011, De Bertha/The “Bertha’ (Louis Chrispijn, 1914). From her other titles only fragments remain, while most of her films are still lost.

Trailer for the film program dedicated to Annie Bos. The program ran in the Filmmuseum in the winter of 2006. Source: Filmmuseum Amsterdam (YouTube).

Twee Zeeuwse meisjes in Zandvoort/Two Zealand Girls in Zandvoort (Louis Chrispijn, 1913). Source: Eye (YouTube).

Sources: Geoffrey Donaldson (Of Joy and Sorrow: A Filmography of Dutch Silent Fiction, 1997), Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.

From 21 till 30 September 2016, during the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF), and traditionally EFSP organises its own little festival, the UNFPF (Unofficial Netherlands Film Postcard Festival). Today a film special on the comedy De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (Jaap Speyer, 1935). Critics at the time described it as the worst film of the Dutch film industry...

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Productie. Publicity still for De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (1935). Caption: The baby in My Wife's Family.

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Productie. Sylvain Poons in De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (1935).

Johan Kaart in De familie van mijn vrouw

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Productie. Johan Kaart Jr. in the Dutch comedy De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (1935).

Jaap Speyer

The Dutch comedy De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (1935) was directed by veteran director Jaap Speyer (1891–1952). He studied art history in Amsterdam and before the First World War he came in contact with theatre.

Speyer left the Netherlands for Hamburg, Germany, where actors introduced him to the film industry. In 1917 he moved to Berlin to study film. At 26, he made his first film Wenn Frauen lieben und hassen/When Women Love and Hate (1917). The drama starred Ernst Hoffmann, the script writer, Marta Orlanda, Ludwig Hartau, Werner Krauss and Mia Pankau. Pankau became Speyer's wife and she was the star of many of his German films.

Between 1917 and 1933, Jaap Speyer made 50 silent films in Germany. These included 'traffick films', dramas about white slave trade and prostitution, like Liebeshandel/Love Trade (1927) with Anita Dorris, and Tänzerinnen für Süd-America gesucht/Girls for Sale (1931) with Dita Parlo. He also made other films about provocative subjects, such as Bigamie/Bigamy (1927) with Heinrich George and Italian diva Maria Jacobini.

In 1933, during the change of power in Germany and the rise of Nazism, Jaap Speyer returned to the Netherlands. He was offered to direct the musical De Jantjes/The Tars (1934). It became an unprecedented box office hit with more than 100,000 visitors in The Netherlands. Next he made the comedies Malle gevallen/Silly Situations (1934) and De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (1935).

Mary Smithuizen, De familie van mijn vrouw

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Sent by mail in 1936. Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Productie. Mary Smithuysen in De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (1935).

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Productie. Loesje Bouwmeester in De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (1935).

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Productie. Cissy van Bennekom in De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (1935).

Comedy of errors

De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family was based on a boulevard play by Alfred Duprez and A. Milo Bennet.

It is a comedy of errors centred around the Goedhart family, a piano and the baby of a servant girl (Cissy van Bennekom) whose existence is unknown to all.

Gusta Chrispijn-Mulder plays the nagging mother, is constantly checking her put-upon husband (Sylvain Poons) and their two daughters and imposing them her will.

One of the daughters (Loesje Bouwmeester) has ambitions to become a film star and the other (Mary Smithuysen) is happily married to a writer who loathes his mother-in-law. Another part was played by music hall star Johan Kaart.

Speyer's third Dutch feature film was greeted less enthusiastically than his earlier efforts. Critics described it as the worst film of the Dutch film industry ever.

Loesje Bouwmeester in De familie van mijn vrouw

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Productie. Loesje Bouwmeester, Gusta Chrispijn-Mulder, Sylvain Poons and Tilly Perin-Bouwmeester in De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (1935).

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

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Productie. Mary Smithuysen, Gusta Chrispijn-Mulder and Sylvain Poons in De familie van mijn vrouw/My Wife's Family (1935).

Sources: Eye (Dutch), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.

Every year in early autumn, the Dutch film industry and public gather at the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) to see, assess, discuss and celebrate the Dutch cinema. From 21 till 30 September 2016, Utrecht is the capital of film, and at EFSP, Dutch cinema is also placed centre stage. Today, Dutch actor Louis Borel (1905-1973), who appeared in films in the Netherlands, in Great Britain and in Hollywood. He also adapted, translated, directed and starred in many stage plays. At the end of his career he became a popular star on Dutch television.

Louis Borel and Jopie Koopman in Malle gevallen

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam), no. 5. Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Film. Still for Malle gevallen/Silly Situations (Jaap Speyer, 1934) with Jopie Koopman.

Roland Varno, Annie van Duyn, Johan Kaart, Enny Meunier, Louis Borel, Jopie Koopman, Malle gevallen

Dutch postcard by Loet C. Barnstijn Film, no. 2. Photo: still for Malle Gevallen/Silly Situations (1934). Collectie: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Silly Situations

Louis Borel was born as Lodewijk Borel in Den Haag (The Hague), Netherlands in 1905. He was the son of author and journalist Henri Jean François Borel and his second wife Helena Maria de Hartog. He had two half-sisters and a half-brother. His father had destined Louis to become a banker but the boy chose otherwise.

In 1924, Louis started his stage career as Lodewijk Makkay at the company of legendary Dutch actor Cor van der Lugt Melsert. Next he worked at the Nederlands-Indisch Toneel (Dutch-Indonesian Theatre), led by Cor Ruys, which performed alternately in the Netherlands and the Dutch East Indies. In 1928 he worked with a theatre group which was led by Theo Frenkel jr.

In 1934 he made his film debut in the comedy Malle gevallen/Silly Situations (Jaap Speyer, 1934) based on a novel by Hans Martin. Louis played Hans, one of three students (the others were Johan Kaart and Roland Varno) who date three nice girls (Annie van Duyn, Enny Meunier and Jopie Koopman).

In a row he made three more films. De Kribbebijter/The Cross-Patch (Hermann Kosterlitz aka Henry Koster, Ernst Winar, 1935) was a comedy starring Cor Ruys and Frits van Dongen (aka Philip Dorn). In the comedy De Suikerfreule/The Sugar Lady (Haro van Peski, 1935) starred Johan Elsensohn and Annie van Duyn. Fientje Peters - Poste restante/Fientje Peters: General Delivery (Victor Janson, 1935) with Dolly Bouwmeester was an alternate language version of the German production Hilde Petersen postlagernd (Victor Janson, 1936).

At the end of 1934 Borel moved to England, where he worked on stage and in the cinema till 1939. He was successful in the play Return to yesterday and was praised for his charm by the British critics. He also acted in the play Heart's Content, at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London, with Diana Wynyard, and Anthony Bushellin the cast. Raymond Massey was director.

British film productions in which he played leading roles were House Broken (Michael Hankinson, 1936), the crime film The Avenging Hand (Victor Hanbury, Frank Richardson, 1937) with Noah Beery, the musical Head Over Heels (Sonnie Hale, 1937) opposite Jessie Matthews, and the Alexander Korda produced comedy Over the Moon (Thornton Freeland, 1939) with Rex Harrison and Merle Oberon.

Borel returned shortly to the Netherlands, where he starred in De Spooktrein/The Ghosttrain (Karel Lamac aka Carl Lamac, 1939) with Jan Musch and Fien de la Mar. Then he left for the United States.

Roland Varno, Louis Borel & Johan Kaart in Malle gevallen

Dutch postcard by M.B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam), no. 4. Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Film. Still for Malle gevallen/Silly Situations (1934) with Roland Varno and Johan Kaart.

Dutch postcard by M.B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam), no. 6. Photo: Loet C. Barnstijn Film. Still for Malle gevallen/Silly Situations (1934).

Roland Varno, Johan Kaart, Annie van Duyn, Louis Borel, Jopie Koopman, Enny Meunier, Malle gevallen

Dutch postcard by Loet C. Barnstijn Film, no. 11. Photo: still for Malle Gevallen/Silly Situations (1934). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Hollywood

Louis Borel stayed in the US for ten years. First he appeared in small roles in Hollywood productions like Foreign correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1940) and the anti-Nazi film Paris After Dark (Léonide Moguy, 1943).

Billed as Louis Borell, he had bigger roles in B-films like London Blackout Murders (George Sherman, 1943) and A Night of Adventure (Gordon Douglas, 1944). He also played several stage roles, including in Candle in the Wind and Made in Heaven.

In 1949 Louis Borel returned to the Netherlands, but regularly appeared in American TV shows like Passport to Danger, Crusader, Topper, and Those Whiting girls. He also played bit parts in the films Desirée (Henry Koster, 1954) with Marlon Brando, and The Purple Mask (H. Bruce Humerstone, 1955) starring Tony Curtis.

In The Netherlands he often worked as a stage director, and in 1955 he had his own company De Blijspelers. He also translated and adapted many plays. He appeared in the Dutch crime films 10.32/Murder in Amsterdam (Arthur Dreifuss, 1966) starring Linda Christian, and Because of the Cats (Fons Rademakers, 1973) with Bryan Marshall and Sylvia Kristel.

At the end of his career he became a popular TV star in the Netherlands for his role as the mayor in the legendary Dutch TV series Swiebertje (1970-1972) starring Joop Doderer as the tramp Swiebertje. Other TV series in which he appeared were Een Koekoek op het nest/The Cuckoo’s Nest (1965-1966), De Klop op de Deur/The Knock on the Door (1970-1971), and the children’s series De Vloek van Woestewolf/The Curse of Woestewolf (1973-1974).

Louis Borel died in 1973 in Amsterdam. In his last years he had suffered from Parkinson's and he was unable to control his mouth muscles. His last role had been in the TV play Hier stierf Anna Tholen/Here Died Anna Tholen, which was broadcasted posthumously. Borel was married to Jantje Stanneveld and they had a daughter, Fernanda Borel.

Dutch postcard. Photo: Joop Doderer, Rien van Nunen (who replaced Borel after his death as the mayor) and Lou Geels in Swiebertje.

Scene from Head Over Heels (1937) with Jessie Matthews. Source: guggle 86 (YouTube).

Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch), My Heritage, Swiebertje.tv (Dutch) and IMDb.

Today is the birthday of the queen of the Nouvelle Vague, film actress, singer and director Anna Karina (1940). French, but Danish-born Karina was the muse of director Jean-Luc Godard and starred in eight of his films.

French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 471. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 209.

Anna Karina and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Pierrot le fou (1965)

French postcard by La Cinémathèque française, no. CF 5006, 1998. Photo: UGC Da International. Publicity still for Pierrot le fou (Jean-Luc Godard, 1965).

French postcard by E.D.U.G., Paris, no. 181, 1969. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Fashion Model

Anna Karina was born Hanne Karen Blarke Bayer in Solbjerg, Denmark, in 1940. Her mother was a dress shop owner and her father a ship's captain. Before she turned one, her father had left her mother.

First she was raised by her maternal grandparents, where she stayed until the age of four. Then she spent time in and out of foster homes, before returning to live with her mother from the age of eight.
She has described her childhood as 'terribly wanting to be loved' and as a child, she made numerous attempts to run away from home.

She began her career in Denmark, where she sang in cabarets and worked as a model playing in commercials. At age 14, she appeared in the Danish short film Pigen og skoene/Girls and Shoes (Ib Schedes, 1954), which won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. She studied dance and painting in Denmark and for a while made a living selling her paintings.

In 1958, after a row with her mother, she hitchhiked to Paris. She had a break when, sitting briefly at the cafe Les Deux Magots, she was approached by a woman from an advertisement agency who asked her to do some photos. Hanne became a rising fashion model, and met Coco Chanel and Pierre Cardin. Chanel advised her to use as a professional name Anna Karina.

She made a series of Palmolive ads in a bath covered in soapsuds, and was noticed by Jean-Luc Godard, then a film critic for Cahiers du cinéma. Godard was casting his debut feature film, À bout de souffle/Breathless (1960) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. He offered her a small role, but she refused when he mentioned that there would be a nude scene.

However, she eventually accepted his offer to play a major role in his second film, Le Petit Soldat/The Little Soldier (1960) with Michel Subor. Karina, who was still under 21 had to persuade her estranged mother to sign the contract for her.

Dutch postcard by Hafbo film, no. 162. Photo: publicity still for Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (Jean-Luc Godard, 1961).

Anna Karina in Le soleil dans l'oeil (1962)

Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 853. Photo: Hafbo-film. Publicity still for Le soleil dans l'oeil/Sun in Your Eyes (Jacques Bourdon, 1962).

French postcard by Edition Librairie de la Fontaine, Paris, no. 5 (Tirage limité à 250 exemplaires). Photo: Claude Schwartz / Spadem, Paris. Caption: Anna Karina, 1963.

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. FK 110. Photo: Ufa.

Nouvelle Vague

Anna Karina and Jean-Luc Godard married during the shooting of their next film, Une femme est une femme/A Woman Is a Woman (1961) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Jean-Claude Brialy. It is a tribute to American musical comedy and the first film Godard shot in color and Cinemascope.

Judd Blaise at AllMovie: "Rather than the sometimes alienating, dense intellectualism of later Godard works, Une femme est une femme offers aesthetic pleasure through luxurious visuals and a charming musical score by Michel Legrand. Against this bright backdrop, Karina proves particularly fetching, capturing the film's frolicsome mood in an unforced manner. While not one of Godard's most groundbreaking or influential films, Une femme est une femme is one of his most appealing and pleasurable efforts."

J. Hoberman at Criterion: "Mainly, A Woman Is a Woman is a valentine to Karina, who became pregnant during the course of the movie’s production; she and Godard were married in March 1961, an event that made the cover of Paris Match." At the Berlin Film Festival in 1961, Anna Karina was awarded as Best Actress for Une femme est une femme.

In the following years, the couple made Vivre sa Vie/My Life to Live (1962), Bande à part/Band of Outsiders (1964), Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution/Alphaville, a Strange Adventure of Lemmy Caution (1965) with Eddie Constantine, Pierrot le fou/Pierrot Goes Wild (1965) with Jean-Paul Belmondo, Made in U.S.A. (1966) with Jean-Pierre Léaud and the anthology film Le plus vieux métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (1967).

Though their cinematic collaboration seemed harmonious, behind the scenes, their relationship was tumultuous and bitter, made all the more difficult by the fact that it was under constant public scrutiny. Their three-year marriage ended in 1964, though they continued to work together until 1966. In 1967, Godard and Karina divorced.

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V, Rotterdam, no. 6099. Photo: Combi Press, Amsterdam.

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden-Westf., no. 1872.

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 133.

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 265. Photo: publicity still for La Religieuse/The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966).

Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 330. Photo: publicity still for La Religieuse/The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966).

Hollywood

Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "From all reports, Karina and Godard's relationship was symbiotic; it is certainly no coincidence that both actress and director went into a temporary artistic eclipse after their 1967 breakup."

Anna Karina's acting career was not, however, limited to Godard's films, and she had a successful collaboration with other well-known directors. Some consider as her best performance her role in La Religieuse/The Nun (Jacques Rivette, 1966) in which she plays an intelligent, freedom-loving woman who is forced into a convent against her will.

She also acted in the Italian productions Le Soldatesse/The Camp Followers (Valerio Zurlini, 1965) and the Albert Camus adaptation Lo Straniero/The Stranger (Luchino Visconti, 1967) starring Marcello Mastroianni.

Karina also maintained a singing career and scored hits with Sous le soleil exactement and Roller Girl. Both songs were taken from the TV musical Anna (Pierre Koralnik, 1967), which Serge Gainsbourg had especially written for her.

After her divorce in 1967 she went to Hollywood. She acted in Justine (George Cukor, 1969) and returned to Paris. Her later films included Laughter in the Dark (Tony Richardson, 1969), Rendez-vous à Bray/Appointment in Bray (André Delvaux, 1971) with Mathieu Carrière, Pane e cioccolata/Bread and Chocolate (Franco Brusati, 1973) starring Nino Manfredi, Chinesisches Roulette/Chinese Roulette (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1976), and Olyan mint otthon/Just Like Home (Márta Mészáros, 1978) with Jan Nowicki.

Anna Karina and Gérard Barray in Sheherazade (1963)

Small Romanian collector's card. Photo: publicity still for Sheherazade (Pierre-Gaspard-Huit, 1963) with Gérard Barray.

East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 177/69, 1969. Retail price: 0,20 M. Photo: Unifrance Film.

Small Romanian collectors card by Cooperativa Fotografia, no. 10.

Big East-German card by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 6/71. Photo: Unifrance Film.

Chansons de films

Anna Karina acted in but also wrote, produced and directed Vivre ensemble/Living Together (1973). She has also written three novels and made several appearances on television. She appeared on stage in Jacques Rivette's adaptation of La Religieuse/The Nun, Pour Lucrece, Toi et Tes Nuages, Francoise Sagan's Il Fait Beau Jour et Nuit and Ingmar Bergman's Apres La Répétition/After the Repetition.

In 2005 she released Chansons de films, a collection of songs sung in films. Incidentally she played in films like L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss (André Delvaux, 1988) with Gian Maria Volonté, Haut bas fragile/Up, Down, Fragile (Jacques Rivette, 1995) and the romantic thriller The Truth About Charlie (Jonathan Demme, 2002) starring Mark Wahlberg.

James Travers at Le Film Site on L'oeuvre au noir/The Abyss : "This sombre adaptation of Marguerite Yourcenar’s acclaimed literary work was directed by the acclaimed Belgian film-maker André Delvaux. Visually, the film is impressive and it boasts an excellent cast, but for all its excellent production values it is a heavy and somewhat laboured affair."

Karina's most recent film as a director was Victoria (2008) in which she also starred. Mark Deming at AllMovie: "Thirty-five years after directing her first feature film, iconic actress Anna Karina once again steps behind the camera for this charming comedy-drama shot in Canada. Jimmy (Emmanuel Reichenbach) and Stanislas (Jean-Francois Moran) are a pair of nightclub performers who play second-rate gay nightclubs as part of a drag act called 'Les Lolitas'."

After Godard, Anna Karina was married three times more: to scriptwriter-actor Pierre Fabre (1968–1973), actor-director Daniel Duval (1978–1981) and director Dennis Berry (1982–1994). Since 2009 she is married to Maurice Cooks.

Scenes from Vivre sa vie (1962). Source: Paulo A (YouTube).

Anna Karina sings Jamais je ne t'ai dit que je t'aimerai toujours in Pierrot le Fou (1965) with Jean-Paul Belmondo. Source: Tobe Auster (YouTube).

Trailer Made in U.S.A. (1966). Source: Danios 12345 (YouTube).

Japanese trailer Anna (1967). Source: Night of the Trailers (YouTube).

Sources: Judd Blaise (AllMovie), J. Hoberman (Criterion), James Travers (Le Film Guide), Mark Deming (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Fuck yeah! Anna Karina, IMDb and Wikipedia.

Every year in early autumn, the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) takes place. For ten days, the city of Utrecht is the cinema capital of the Netherlands, and we join the fun with our own Unofficial Dutch Film Star Postcards Festival (UDFSPF). Today's star is the 'Dutch Louise Brooks', Truus van Aalten (1910-1999). In the 1920s and early 1930s, she made 28 films in Germany and Austria, but only one in the Netherlands. The Germans lovingly called her die kleine holländische Käse (the little Dutch cheese).

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4549/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Alex Binder, Berlin.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1720/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa.

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

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3618, 1928-1929. Photo: Ufa. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3823/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Hegewald Film. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

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

Film Metropolis Berlin

Geertruida Everdina Wilhelmina van Aalten was born in the city of Arnhem, in 1910. She was the daughter of high-street chemist Fransciscus (Frans) van Aalten and his wife Geertruida van den Anker.

Film crazy Truus was only sixteen when she won a competition by the Ufa in Dutch film magazine De Rolprent (The Moving Picture) in the summer of 1926. Soon she went to the film metropolis of Europe at the time: Berlin. By 1926, Universum Film A.G. (Ufa), was the main German film studio. From its Berlin studios at Neubabelsberg, Ufa had produced monumental films like Fritz Lang’s Die Nibelungen in 1923 and the Sci-Fi masterpiece Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1926).

Truus' film was called Die sieben Töchter der Frau Gyurkovics/A Sister of Six (Ragnar Hyltén-Cavallius, 1927) and starred handsome idol Willy Fritsch. Her role was just a small, uncredited part. None of the other five unknown 'daughters' from Frau Gyurkovics would survive in the film industry, but the Ufa would soon realise that Truus was a gifted comedienne.

Truus returned to the Netherlands after the shooting of the film had finished. Only two days after she had returned home, a telegram arrived from the Ufa: IMMEDIATELY TO BERLIN - 3 YEAR CONTRACT. Truus had had no acting education at all, but she was sparkly and funny and the camera liked her. The Ufa put Truus into her next film - and she had a much bigger part now. Die Selige Exzellenz/His Holy Lordship (Adolf E. Licho, Wilhelm Thiele, 1927) was a comedy starring Willy Fritsch and Olga Tschechova.

Soon more small parts in other silent films followed, like in the romantic comedy Der moderne Casanova/A Modern Casanova (Max Obal, Rudolf Walther-Fein, 1928) with Harry Liedtke. Truus was often lent out to other film companies, and appeared in many cinema commercials and magazine promotions. Because of her informal acting and her humour, Truus' nickname in Germany became die kleine holländische Käse (the little Dutch cheese).

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3115/1, 1928-1928. Photo: Hanni Schwarz, Berlin.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4029/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Gerstenberg, Berlin.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4184/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5773/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Photo-Atelier May, Frankfurt a.M.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6584/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.

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

Backfish

Young and irreverent, Truus van Aalten became affectionately known in Germany as a Backfisch (literally meaning fish to fry). The new, 1920s girl was boyish yet feminine - short hair, gawky limbs, a young flapper on the edge of sexuality. Truus posed for photos and gave interviews for film magazines all over Europe. Truus even ended up in American movie magazines advertising Lux soap.

In 1929, Dutch director Jaap Speyer, took Truus back to the Netherlands to shoot scenes for Jenny's Bummel durch die Männer/Jenny's Stroll Through The Men (Jaap Speyer, 1929). News cameras caught up with the unit filming one sunny day on Scheveningen pier, and Dutch cinema audiences saw it all in their newsreels a few days later. Her next film, Der Sonderling/The Oddball (Walter Jerven, 1929) gave Truus the chance to work with the great comedian Karl Valentin as his cute and naughty counterpart.

The transition to the sound film turned out well for van Aalten despite her Dutch origin. Truus entered talking pictures by courtesy of experienced director Max Mack, who was about to shoot a new film starring Daisy d'Ora, Nur am Rhein.../Only On The Rhein... (Max Mack, 1930), and he wanted Truus to play Daisy's pal Lore. Mack signed her without requiring a microphone test - news of which spread around the film community like wildfire.

The public didn’t hold her Dutch accent against her. Truus was becoming really well known now - film magazines like Filmwoche and Filmwelt featured articles about das Mädchen aus Holland (that girl from Holland), Ross Verlag and other main publishers were issuing postcards of her. For the first time, she got top billing in the popular comedy Susanne macht Ordnung/Susanne Cleans Up (Eugen Thiele, 1930) in which she played a schoolgirl in search of her missing father.

Next she performed in such early sound films as Liebling der Götter/Darling of the Gods (Hanns Schwarz, 1930) with Emil Jannings, Pension Schöller (Georg Jacoby, 1930), and Kasernenzauber/Magic of the Barracks (Carl Boese, 1931) with Igo Sym.

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

Fritz Schulz and Truus van Aalten in Kopfüber ins Glück (1931)

Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 6538. Photo: Lux Film Verl. Publicity still for Der Bettelstudent/The Beggar Student (Victor Janson, 1931) with Fritz Schulz.

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

Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 6533. Photo: Lux Film.

Dutch postcard by Jospe, no. 442. Photo by Godfried de Groot, Amsterdam.

Dutch Postcard by JosPe, Arnhem, no. 462. Photo: Godfried de Groot, Amsterdam.

Souvenirs

By 1932, Truus van Aalten had outgrown her backfish image. She was a mature woman now, an experienced actress, but she was always typecast as a light comedy player. When the Nazis came to power, foreigners were subject to a quota system restricting how much they could work. Truus had not become a party member, and when the Nazis tried to use her in propaganda films, she refused.

Tired of the struggle to find work, she took the train and returned to Amsterdam. There, German director Georg Jacoby offered her a part in the Viennese operetta G'schichten aus dem Wienerwald/Tales From The Vienna Woods (Georg Jacoby, 1934), about an ordinary girl who swaps places with an American millionaire's daughter. In Austria, Magda Schneider was on board as the lead, and Truus played the rich girl. The successful film showed her new, mature look and her bleeched blonde hair.

Next van Aalten starred in the Dutch army comedy Het meisje met den blauwen hoed/The Girl with the Blue Hat (Rudolf Meinert, 1934) opposite Roland Varno. Although the film was a success in the Netherlands, it was not distributed abroad. Therefore Truus decided not to continue working in the young Dutch film industry.

After a long break, she got a role in Ein ganzer Kerl/A Regular Fellow (Fritz Peter Buch, 1939), a typical film of the Nazi era. Heidemarie Hatheyer played the lead as Jule, a strong, self willed woman who refuses to be ruled by the men in her life. By the end of the film she has realised her wrong-headedness, swapped her riding pants for a pretty dress and become the housewife she was destined to be. Truus played a character called Anni, a widow, and brought vivacity and humour to the part. Ein ganzer Kerl had its premiere in Berlin in January 1940. It would be Truus' last film.

After the war she tried to gain a foothold in Hollywood and in the British film business, but the there unknown actress finally failed because of her lack of knowledge of the English language. In the 1950s she became a businesswoman with a wholesale business importing and exporting Dutch souvenirs and promotional items, and in 1964 she married her employee Henk Godwaldt. Her last years were marred by mental illness.

Truus van Aalten died in the city of Warmond, the Netherlands, in 1999. Her archive has been donated to the Dutch Film Museum (now Eye Institute) in Amsterdam.

Dutch postcard especially printed for N.V. De Faam, P.A. de Bont's chocolate and sweets factory, Breda. Photo: Ufa.

Truus van Aalten, Roland Varno in Het meisje met de blauwe hoed

Roland Varno, Truus van Aalten, Dries Krijn en Lou Bandy in Het meisje met de blauwe hoed

Dutch postcard by M. B.& Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Filma. Publicity still for Het Meisje met de Blauwe Hoed/The girl with the blue Hat (Rudolf Meinert, 1934) with Roland Varno, Dries Krijn and Lou Bandy.

Truus van Aalten, Het meisje met den blauwen hoed

Dutch postcard by M. B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Filma. Publicity still for Het meisje met den blauwen hoed/The girl with the blue Hat (Rudolf Meinert, 1934). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

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

Dutch postcard by M. B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Filma. Publicity still for Het Meisje met de Blauwe Hoed/The girl with the blue Hat (Rudolf Meinert, 1934) with Lau Ezerman, Gusta Chrispijn-Mulder, Tony van den Berg, Adriënne Solser and Roland Varno.

Truus van Aalten in Het meisje met de blauwe hoed

Dutch postcard by M. B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Filma. Publicity still for Het Meisje met de Blauwe Hoed/The girl with the blue Hat (Rudolf Meinert, 1934).

Sources: Roger Mitchell (Truus van Aalten), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.

Every year in early autumn, the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) takes place. For ten days, the city of Utrecht is the cinema capital of the Netherlands, and we join the fun with our own Unofficial Dutch Film Star Postcards Festival (UDFSPF). Today we feature a Duch non-actor and strongman who became a film star by accident. 10th-dan judoka Anton Geesink (1934–2010) destroyed the myth of Japanese invincibility in judo by becoming the first non-Japanese judoka to win a world title in 1961. He was a three-time World Judo Champion (1961, 1964 and 1965), Olympic Gold Medalist (1964) and won 21 European championships. With his 1,98 m and 130 kilo he was also an imposing figure in a few Dutch and Italian action films.

Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. AX 4883. Caption: Anton Geesink World Champion Judo Paris 2-12-1961.

Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. 6040. Photo: J.J. Herschel jr.

Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. 6049.

Samson

Antonius Johannes Geesink was born in Utrecht, The Netherlands in 1934. He first participated in the European Championships in 1951, and placed second in his category. The following year, he won his first European title. Through to 1967, twenty more European titles followed.

At the 1956 World Championships, Geesink was eliminated in the semi-finals against Yoshihiko Yoshimatsu. At the 1961 World Championships, Geesink became World Champion in the open class, defeating the Japanese champion Koji Sone. Japanese judokas had won all the World Championship titles contested up to that point.

Judo debuted as an official sport at the 1964 Summer Olympics, which were held in the sport's home country, Japan. Anton Geesink provided one of the surprises of the Games by winning the open class through defeat of Akio Kaminaga. Although Japan had won all other judo events, the loss of the blue riband open class saddened the hosts.

His reputation as a strongman won Geesink roles in a few European action films. He played a supporting part as a detective in the Dutch crime film Rififi in Amsterdam (Giovanni Korporaal, 1962) based on a novel by W.H. van Eemlandt. The film was a Dutch example of the Rififi films, a popular subgenre of the French cinema in the 1950s. These were fast moving crime films, full of familiar faces, fancy camera-work and a couple of laughs. ‘Rififi’ was French slang for 'trouble in the underworld'. At IMDb, Chip Douglas reviews the film: “The result is as much fun as a Roger Corman film from the same period, perhaps even a bit classier.”

Geesink then starred in an early Spaghetti Western, Oklahoma John (Jaime Jesús Balcázar, Roberto Bianchi Montero, 1965) with Sabine Bethmann. Geesinks’s best known film is probably the Italian peplum I Grandi Condottieri/Great Leaders of the Bible (Marcello Baldi, Francisco Pérez-Dolz, 1965) with Fernando Rey, in which Geesink starred as the biblical super hero Samson.

Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. AX 4884. Caption: Anton Geesink World Champion Judo Paris 2-12-1961. Tension during the match Anton Geesink - Koji Sone at the World Judo Championships in Paris.

Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. AX 4886. Caption: Anton Geesink World Champion Judo Paris 2-12-1961.
This headlock during the match against Koji Sone made Anton Geesink Judo world champion during the world championships in Paris.

Anton Geesink and Princess Beatrix at the Olympic Games of 1964

Dutch collectors card by Brio, no. 434, 1964. Caption: Princess Beatrix visited on the first day of her stay in Tokyo during the Games the Dutch department of the Olympic village and had a long and animated conversation with judo giant Anton Geesink.

Part-time Wrestler

After winning the 1965 World Championships and a last European title in 1967, Anton Geesink quit competitive judo. In October 1973, All Japan Pro Wrestling owner Giant Baba recruited Anton Geesink to join AJPW. Baba sent him to Amarillo, where TX, Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk trained him for a month. He worked for All Japan from 1973 to 1978, as a popular part-time wrestler.

Years after his short-lived film career, he re-appeared as an actor in some Dutch TV shows, such as the children’s series Pipo en de Noorderzon/Pipo and the Northern Sun (Wim Meuldijk, 1978) and the comedy series Zoals u wenst, mevrouw/As You Wish, Milady (Frans Boelen, 1984) with popular comedienne Carry Tefsen.

In 1986, Geesink was the first European judoka to receive the 9th-dan grade. A year later, he became a member of the board of the Dutch National Olympic Committee, and a member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). In 1999, he was among the IOC members suspected of accepting bribes during the scandal surrounding the election of Salt Lake City as the host of the 2002 Winter Olympics. Geesink's name was cleared by the IOC which nevertheless issued him a warning for the appearance of a conflict of interest which could have damaged the reputation of the IOC.

His reputation as a sportsman was never damaged, and in 1997 he received the 10th-dan. This made him one of the highest graded judokas in the world. Only 18 people got ever a 10th-dan, and Geesink was one of the only three non-Japanese judokas who had this qualification. The International Judo Federation (IJF) placed him in their Hall of Fame in 2004.

At the age of 76, Anton Geesink died in 2010 in a hospital in his hometown Utrecht, where he lived above his own sports school in a street named after him, the Anton Geesinkstraat.

Anton Geesink at the 1961 World Championships. Source: beeld en geluid (YouTube).

With Anton Geesink 1962. Source: Tony Baretta (YouTube).

Scene from I Grandi Condottieri/Great Leaders of the Bible (1965). Source: Joe36Xcel (YouTube).

Sources: Sports-reference.com, Wikipedia (Dutch and English), and IMDb.

Every year in early autumn, the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) takes place. For ten days, the city of Utrecht is the cinema capital of the Netherlands, and we join the fun with our own Unofficial Dutch Film Star Postcards Festival (UDFSPF). Dutch born actor, singer, and entertainer Johannes Heesters (1903-2011) was active both on stage, television and in film. The Dutch tenor was specialized in the Viennese operetta. His 91-year career began in Amsterdam in 1920 and in 1935 Heesters moved to Germany. There he enjoyed many successes and reportedly became 'Adolf Hitler’s favourite actor', which would colour his further career.

Czech postcard, no. 2071-B. Photo: UFA.

German postcard by Verlag und Druckerei Erwin Preuss, Dresden-Freital. Photo: Charlott Serda.

German collectors card by Lux.

Vintage promotion card.

From Amsterdam to Vienna

Johan Marius Nicolaas Heesters was born in 1903 in Amersfoort, Netherlands. 'Jopie' made his stage debut in 1921 as a 17-year-old.

In 1923 he had his first singing role in a Dutch stage production of August Strindbergs Ett Drőmspel (A Dream Play). Many roles in operettas like Walzertraum, Dreimäderlhaus and König der Vagabunden followed.

A year later he made his film debut in the Dutch silent film Cirque hollandais/Dutch Circus (Theo Frenkel, 1924) starring the legendary stage actor Louis Bouwmeester.

When sound film was introduced, Johan Heesters played and sang in the Dutch film comedies Bleeke Bet (Alex Benno, Richard Oswald, 1934) and De vier Mullers/The Four Mullers (Rudolf Meinert, 1935). The latter was filmed in Vienna and was also shot there in a German spoken version as Alles für die Firma/Everything for the Firm (Rudolf Meinert, 1935).

In 1934 Heesters had made his Viennese stage debut at the Volksoper in Karl Millöcker's Der Bettelstudent/The Beggar Student. It was a huge success and many more operettas followed. Over the decades, Da geh' ich ins Maxim, Count Danilo Danilovitch's entrance song from Franz Lehár's Die Lustige Witwe/The Merry Widow would become Heesters's signature tune. He played Danilo with white silk scarf and top hat for 32 years 1600 times on stage, from 1938 to 1970.

Dutch postcard by M. B. & Z. (M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam). Photo: Monopole Film, Rotterdam / Maarseveen, Den Haag. Publicity still for Bleeke Bet (1934).

Photo: Monopole Film, Rotterdam / Maarseveen, Den Haag. Publicity still for Bleeke Bet (1934). Johan Heesters as the bridegroom at the far right.

Johannes Heesters in De vier Mullers (1935)

Dutch postcard by Habé Film. Sent by mail in 1935. Photo: publicity still for De Vier Mullers/The Four Mullers (Rudolf Meinert, 1935).

Johan Kaart en Johan Heesters in De Vier Mullers

Dutch postcard by Habé Film. Photo: publicity still for De Vier Mullers/The Four Mullers (Rudolf Meinert, 1935) with Johan Kaart.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 143, 1941-1944. Photo: Berlin-Film / Wesel.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3479/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / UFA.

Dream Couple

From 1936 on, Johannes Heesters played in various Ufa films. Many of his stage successes were also made into musical films, such as the Der Bettelstudent/The Beggar Student (Georg Jacoby, 1936) with Carola Höhn.

In Gasparone (1937, Georg Jacoby) and the musical Hallo Janine!/Hello, Janine! (1939, Carl Boese), he starred with Marika Rökk. They were called the Dream Couple of the German Musical film.

Other popular films with Heesters were Das Hofkonzert/The Court Concert (Detlev Sierck aka Douglas Sirk, 1936) with Márta Eggerth; and Illusion (Viktor Tourjansky, 1941) with Brigitte Horney.

In the spring of 1939 he performed in the operetta Gräfin Mariza/Countess Maritza in Amsterdam and The Hague with an ensemble of emigrated Jewish performers. The Nazis later criticized him for this cooperation, but till almost the end of WW II Heesters worked extensively for the Nazi-controlled UFA.

His last wartime film was Die Fledermaus/The Bat (Géza von Bolváry, 1946, produced in 1945) with Marte Harell. After the war he was never accused of being a Nazi propagandist, and the Allies allowed him to continue performing in post-war Germany and Austria.

He played both on the stage and in films. Die Czardasfürstin/The Csardas Princess (Georg Jacoby, 1951) reunited him with Marika Rökk. Memorable was his lead in the film Bel Ami (Louis Daquin, 1955). Little known is his part in the German version of Otto Preminger's The Moon is Blue, entitled Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach/The Girl on the Roof (Otto Preminger, 1953).

After the Schlagerfilm Junge Leute brauchen Liebe/Young People Need Love (Géza von Cziffra, 1961) with Conny Froboess and Peter Weck, he stopped making films and concentrated on stage and television appearances and on producing records.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3713/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Berlin-Film / Wesel.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3713/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Manninger / Berlin-Film.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3713/3, 1941-1944. Photo: Binz / UFA.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 109, ca. 1941-1944. Photo: Binz / Bavaria Filmkunst.

German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3570/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Binz / Bavaria Filmkunst.

Booed Off the Stage

Johannes Heesters had moved to Germany in 1935. There he performed for Adolf Hitler (according to IMDb he was the Führer’s favourite actor) and he visited the Dachau concentration camp. After the war, many Dutch people could not forgive him this visit. In the early 1960s he was booed off the stage in Amsterdam when he tried to make a comeback in the Netherlands with The Sound of Music.

Since then he performed notably in Germany and Austria. Heesters has two daughters by his first wife, the Belgian actress Louise ‘Wiesje’ Ghijs, whom he married in 1930 and who was his co-star in De vier Mullers (Rudolf Meinert, 1935).

After her death in 1985, Heesters remarried in 1991 with German actress Simone Rethel. His younger daughter Nicole Heesters and his granddaughter Saskia Fischer are well-known actresses in the German-speaking countries.

In 2008 he apologised for his cooperation with the Nazi regime. In February of that year Johannes Heesters performed in his birthplace Amersfoort. This was the first stage appearance in four decades in his home country. Despite protests against his Nazi associations the performance became a triumph for the old star.

In 2008 he also played a scene in another film, 1 1/2 Ritter - Auf der Suche nach der hinreißenden Herzelinde/1½ Knights - In Search of the Ravishing Princess Herzelinde (Til Schweiger, 2008). His final film was the short Ten (Stefan Hering, 2011) in which he played St. Peter. At the gates of heaven, a man (Christof Arnold) has only one chance to come back to his little ill daughter: to win a bet against St. Peter. He has to break all ten commandments within 30 minutes in Munich's most notorious bar!

Heesters could not attend the premiere, while at 29 November 2011 he was admitted to a hospital because of a fever. He thus also missed the Bambi award show, where he was offered his 10th Bambi statue. And on 25 December 2011, the 108 year old 'Jopie' passed away for good in a hospital in Starnberg.

Vintage postcard.

Marika Rökk and Johannes Heesters in Die geschiedene Frau (1953)

German collectors card. Photo: Cine-Allianz / Gloria / Film Ewald. Publicity still for Die geschiedene Frau/The Divorcée (George Jacoby, 1953) with Marika Rökk.

Johannes Heesters and Johanna von Koczian in Viktor und Viktoria (1957)

German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-60. Photo: Arthur Grimm / Central Europa Film / Prisma. Publicity still for Viktor und Viktoria/Viktor and Viktoria (Karl Anton, 1957) with Johanna von Koczian.

German postacrd by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 125. Photo: Junge Film Union / Foto Wesel.

Johan (Johannes) Heesters sings De ode aan de Westertoren in Bleeke Bet (1934). The tower (the Westertoren in Amsterdam) is the same one as Anne Frank describes in her diary. The lovely girl in the clip is Bleeke Bet herself, played by Jopie Koopman. Source: brassens66 (YouTube).

Johannes Heesters and Edith Schollwer sing Ich werde jede nacht von Ihnen traumen in a clip from Gasparone (1937). Source: Ein Lied Geht Um Die Welt (YouTube).

Johannes Heesters in Amersfoort in 2008. He sings Nou tabé dan. Source: Mokum tv (YouTube)

Sources: Wikipedia, Eric Kelsey (Reuters), johannes-heesters.de (German), Filmportal.de and IMDb.

Every year in early autumn, the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) takes place. For ten days, the city of Utrecht is the cinema capital of the Netherlands, and we join the fun with our own Unofficial Dutch Film Star Postcards Festival (UDFSPF). Dutch stage and film actor Louis Bouwmeester (1842-1925) is often seen as ‘the greatest actor of the Netherlands’ ever. He was born in a dynasty of traveling actors and some of his 12 children would become well known actors too. His career span 65 years, and included several silent films.

Dutch postcard by N.J. Boon, Amsterdam. Photo: Louis Bouwmeester as Shylock in the play The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare.

Dutch postcard from 1910 showing Louis Bouwmeester as Shylock.

Passionate

Louis Frederik Johannes Bouwmeester was born in Middelharnis in 1842. His parents were the traveling actors Louis Rosenfeldt and Louisa Bouwmeester. He had three siblings and his youngest sister became the famous actress Theo Mann-Bouwmeester.

Louis started his stage career as a young boy and he would continue to play till he was 82. He made his start in popular melodramas, but in 1880 he was engaged by the prestigious theatre company Het Nederlandsch Tooneel (The Dutch Stage). There he became famous for his passionate and fiery roles in classic tragedies and comedies by William Shakespeare, Molière, Sophocles and Joost van den Vondel.

Bouwmeester caused a sensation in 1880 with his Shylock in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice. Recordedly, his Shylock was a rendering of remarkable originality and great tragic force. In the following forty years he would play this part over two thousand times.

The role established his fame throughout Europe. He played Shylock at the Comédie Francaise in Paris, in the Royal Theatre Berlin (1911), the Burgtheater in Vienna (1921) and in the Duke of York’s Theatre in London (1920).

The Times wrote in 1920 that Bouwmeester “speaking his native language, roused his English auditors to the highest pitch of excitement and enthusiasm.”

Dutch postcard by Uitg. N.J. Boon, Amsterdam. Sent by mail in 1901. Photo: publicity still for the stage play Gier-Wally (Die Geier-Wally/The Vulture Maiden, 1885) by Wilhelmina von Hillern.

Dutch postcard by Ed. N.J. Boon, Amsterdam. The card seems dated as 14 December 1901. Louis Bouwmeester as Herod. It was on 19 December 1901 that Bouwmeester first performed Herod, a part created in 1900 by Herbert Beerbohm Tree on basis of a text by Stephan Phillips. Bouwmeester did so at his regular stage company Nederlandsch Tooneel, during a special night to remember the 40 years of his stage career.

Car Accident

Strikingly Louis Bouwmeester was the first major Dutch actor who worked for the cinema. In 1909 he made his film debut in De Greep/The Grip (Leon Boedels, 1909) based on La griffe by Jean Sartène, produced by Filmfabriek F.A. Nöggerath.

Between 1909 and 1924 he acted in several more silent films, including the Dutch-French coproduction Het vervloekte Geld/L'or qui brule/Arson at Sea (Alfred Machin, 1911-1912), Koning Oedipus/Oedipus (Leon Boedels, 1912), Fatum (Theo Frenkel, 1915) with Henriëtte Davids, De duivel in Amsterdam/The Devil in Amsterdam (Theo Frenkel, 1918) with Eduard Verkade, and Pro Domo (Theo Frenkel, 1918).

In Pro Domo, his sister Theo Mann-Bouwmeester appeared as his wife and their grand-niece Lily Bouwmeester played their daughter.

His last film part was as a circus director in Cirque Hollandais/Circus Hollandais (Theo Frenkel, 1924) with a young Johan Heesters in a supporting part. Bouwmeester was already more than 80 years old, when he played this role.

Sadly only fragments of his feature films have survived. He often performed live in cinemas before the screenings.

Bouwmeester died in Amsterdam in 1925 after a car accident. In 1955 the Louis d’Or, the award for the best male stage performance in The Netherlands was named after him. Among his many children of his six marriages and several extra-marital relationships are the actresses Tilly Perin-Bouwmeester and Wiesje Bouwmeester. Actor Henri de Vries was his nephew and the film actresses Dolly Bouwmeester and Lily Bouwmeester were grand-nieces.

Modern Dutch postcard. Louis Bouwmeester as Jacques Frochard in the stage play De Twee Weezen (Les Deux Orphelines/The Two Orphans) by Adolph D'Ennery and Eugene Cormon, 1875. Photo: Albert Greiner.

Modern Dutch postcard by Witcard, Amsterdam. Photo: collection Nederlands Theater Instituut, Amsterdam. Publicity still for the stage tragedy Narciss (Narziss/Narcisse, 1875) by Albert Emil Brachvogel.

Dutch postcard in the series Hollandsche Kunstenaars (Dutch Artists) by Nederlandsche Uitgevers-Mij, Den Haag, 1920, Series I. Photo: Frits Geveke.

Sources: Simon Koster (De Bouwmeesters - Dutch), H.H.J. de Leeuwe (Historici.nl - Dutch), Film in NL (Eye - Dutch), Een leven lang theater (Dutch), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.

French collectors card by Massilia.

A remarkable debut

Dolly Mollinger was born Margot Frédérique Amélie Eugénie Mollinger in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1911. She was the daughter of Theodore Godefroi Mollinger and Petronella Theodora Maters. Theodore Godefroi was a chemist and later deputy director of a dairy.

Dolly made her film debut opposite Cor Ruys and Frits van Dongen (a.k.a. Philip Dorn) in the comedy De Kribbebijter/The Cross-Patch (1935), which was directed by German director Hermann Kosterlitz and Ernst Winar.

It was remarkable that Mollinger got this leading role. She was working as a secretary at film distributor Universal at the time and did not have any experience as an actress. Director Hermann Kosterlitz preferred the beautiful secretary above Mary Dresselhuys and Lily Bouwmeester, two actresses who were well known.

Kosterlitz was probably right because the film was a success both among the critics and the public. A year later Kosterlitz moved to Hollywood, where he directed under the name Henry Koster many box office hits, starting with Deanna Durbin’s first film Three Smart Girls (1936).

After Dolly Mollinger’s success in De Kribbebijter followed supporting roles in the Dutch films Het leven is niet zo kwaad/Life is not so bad (Haro van Peski, 1935), starring Lou Bandy, and the tempestuous tropical romance Rubber (Johan de Meester, Gerard Rutten, 1936), filmed on Sumatra, now part of Indonesia.

Then, Mollinger played the female lead in the Dutch-French coproduction De man zonder hart/The Man without a heart (Léo Joannon, Louis de Bree, 1937), filmed in Paris.

Dolly Mollinger and Frits van Dongen in De kribbebijter

Dutch postcard by M. B . & Z. Photo: Holfi Film / Petrus Verheijen. Publicity still for De Kribbebijter/The Cross-Patch (Hermann Kosterlitz aka Henry Koster, 1935) with Frits van Dongen.

A beautiful narcissus

Dolly Mollinger continued her career abroad. In Great Britain, she appeared with Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester in Vessel of Wrath/The Beachcomber (Bartlett Cormack, Erich Pommer, 1938). Dutch newspapers reported that Mollinger was offered a Hollywood contract for five years by film producer and talent agent Myron Selznick.

However, in the following years, she starred in two French films, Altitude 3,200 (Jean Benoît-Lévy, Marie Epstein, 1938) with Jean-Louis Barrault, and her final film, Place de la Concorde (Carl Lamac, 1939) with Albert Préjean. Then the war broke off her film career.

Little is known about what happened with Dolly Mollinger during the war and later. Below, I made a compilation of the snippets of information I found in Dutch newspaper articles and other sources.

When the war started Dolly fled from Paris to Brittany.
In 1939 she married German screenwriter Walter Schlee.
In 1940 she was back in the Netherlands and announced she would appear in a Dutch variety show. If she really appeared on the Dutch stages is unclear.
In 1943 the ANP correspondent in Berlin reported that after her work in France she had got a Ufa contract. However, there are no German films with her known.
In 1943 she was writing a script, the ANP correspondent added. IMDb does indeed confirm that she wrote the scenario for the German film Komm zu mir zurück/Come back to me (Heinz Paul, 1944). This is her last film credit in the database.
According to Wikipedia, Mollinger moved to the United States, but she had no luck in Hollywood. She worked in the U.S. as a school teacher.
In 1952 Mollinger remarried with Gerhard Kimpel, an American citizen.

In the Netherlands, ‘Europe’s most beautiful secretary’ remained a sweet memory for some men. In 1958 J.W.A. Lefeber registrated a beautiful narcissus in white and yellow, named ‘Dolly Mollinger’. Nowadays, this narcissus is better known than the former actress.

The IMDb contains no information about her death. But according to Wikipedia, Dolly Mollinger died in Port Orchard, U.S.A., in 2004, a few months before her 93rd birthday.

Dutch film poster for De kribbebijter (1935). Design: Frans Mettes.

Sources: Delpher (Dutch), AllMovie, Daffseek.org, Wikipedia (Dutch and French) and IMDb.

Every year in early autumn, the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) takes place. For ten days, the city of Utrecht is the cinema capital of the Netherlands, and we join the fun with our own Unofficial Dutch Film Star Postcards Festival (UDFSPF). Today a film special about De Big van het regiment/The Darling of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935), a First World War farce about the mobilisation of the Dutch Army.

Hansje Andriesen in De Big van het regiment (1935)

Dutch postcard by Monopole Film N.V. Photo: Dick van Maarseveen. Still for De Big van het Regiment/The Darling of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935) with Hansje Andriesen. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Hansje Andriesen and Jopie Koopman in De Big van het regiment (1935)

Dutch postcard by Monopole Film N.V., Rotterdam. Photo: Dick van Maarseveen. Publicity still for De Big van het regiment/The Darling of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935) with Hansje Andriesen and Jopie Koopman.

Matthieu van Eysden, De big van het regiment

Dutch postcard by Monopole Film N.V.. Photo: Dick van Maarseveen. Publicity still for De Big van het regiment/The Darling of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935) withMatthieu van Eysden. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

The confidence of the critics was restored

De Big van het regiment (1935) is a Dutch film directed by German film director, actor and screenwriter Max Nosseck (1902-1972). Nosseck was born in Nakel - then in Prussia, but now in Poland. Nosseck established himself as a director in the German film industry of the 1920s. Due to his Jewish background he was forced to emigrate following the Nazi takeover in 1933. He directed films in Spain, the Netherlands and United States. After the Second World War, he returned to work in the German and Austrian film industries.

The scenario of De Big van het regiment was written by Herman Bouber, author of the box office hit De Jantjes/The Tars (Jaap Speyer, 1934), and German refugee writer Arnold Lipp. Their script was based on the novel Spionage in het veldleger (Espionage in the field army, 1933) by Mr. Anton Roothaert. In 1915 many Belgian citizens flee to the Netherlands because of the First World War. Reserve lieutenant Berkhage (Frits van Dongen) is sent to the Dutch-Belgian border to keep order in the flow of refugees. He then gets a refugee child (Hansje Andriesen) pushed into his arms. Named 'Big' by the company, he is soon the regimental darling.

Star of the film was the Dutch matinee idol Frits van Dongen (1901-1975). He was born Hein van der Niet and from 1940 on, he was billed in Hollywood as Philip Dorn. Van Dongen made his stage debut at age 14 and by the mid-1930s, he was a popular film actor in the Netherlands. From 1937 on, he worked in Germany with the likes of Veit Harlan. When World War II broke out, he moved to Hollywood and acted in several films, starting with Enemy Agent (Lew Landers, 1940). He was usually cast as Continental lovers, anti-Nazi Germans or refugees. In the 1950s, he returned to Europe and acted in a few German films and in a Dutch stage play.

The cast of De Big van het regiment is a 'who is who' of the Dutch cinema of the 1930s. The main female roles are played by film and cabaret diva Fien(tje) de la Mar and by another pretty film and cabaret artist, Jopie Koopman. The regiment includes such well known stage and film stars as Adolphe Engers, Matthieu van Eysden, Sylvain Poons andJohan Kaart.

For the search for the child who could play the title role, an advertisement was placed in a newspaper. Producer N.V. Monopole Film received a tsunami of letters. The four-year old Hansje And(e)riesen from Amsterdam was chosen. On the set, the little boy was assisted by his mother. He did not have to memorise the scenario, but just before the shooting, he was told what to do.

The premiere of De Big van het regiment took place in the Tuschinski Theater, the wonderful, still existing Art Deco cinema in Amsterdam. Several of the players were present. The critics were very positive. Various media wrote about how confidence in the Dutch film - especially after the disaster of De familie van mijn vrouw/The family of my wife (Jaap Speyer, 1935) - was restored!

Fien de la Mar and Hansje And(e)riesen in De big van het regiment

Dutch postcard by N.V. Monopole Film. Photo: Dick van Maarseveen. Fien(tje) de la Mar and Hansje Andriesen in De Big van het regiment/The Darling of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935).

Frits van Dongen, Cruys Voorbergh, Hansje Andriesen, Piet te Nuyl, De Big van het Regiment

Dutch postcard by N.V. Monopole Film. Photo: Dick van Maarseveen. Still for De Big van het Regiment/The Darling of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935) with Piet te Nuyl, Cruys Voorbergh, Frits van Dongen and Hansje Andriesen. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Johan Kaart in De Big van het Regiment (1935)

Dutch postcard by N.V. Monopole Film. Photo: Dick van Maarseveen. Publicity still for De Big van het regiment/The Darling of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935) with Johan Kaart. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Frits van Dongen, Cruys Voorbergh, Matthieu van Eysden, Adolphe Engers, and Johan Kaart

Dutch postcard by N.V. Monopole Film. Photo: Dick van Maarseveen. Still for De Big van het Regiment/The Darling of the Regiment (Max Nosseck, 1935) with Cruys Voorbergh, Piet te Nuyl, Matthieu van Eysden, Hansje Andriesen, Frits van Dongen, Adolphe Engers, Johan Kaart, Jan C. de Vos jr. and Jan van Ees. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Johan Kaart, Sylvain Poons, Hansje Andriesen, Matthieu van Eysden, and Adolphe Engers in De Big van het regiment (1935)

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

Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch and English) and IMDb.

During the Netherlands Film Festival, EFSP presents the traditional Unofficial Dutch Film Star Postcards Festival. Today's post is about Lien Deyers (1910-1965?). She was discovered by famous director Fritz Lang who gave her a part in Spione/Spies (1928). During eight years, she acted in 32 late silent and early sound films. After 1935 her star faded rapidly and her life ended in tragedy.

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

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4714/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Universal.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5423/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Lola-Kreutzberg-Film.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5771/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Alex Binder.

German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 6922/2, 1931-1932. Photo: Atelier Binder. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6104/2, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Fritz Lang

Lien Deyers was born in Amsterdam as Nicolina Spanier. She was the daughter of Nathan Spanier, piano teacher, and Johanna Liefjes, seamstress. She had a half-brother, Andries Liefjes. After Spanier’s death mrs. Liefjes married the hotel-owner Egbert Dijjers and the family moved to The Hague. In 1931 Lien officially changed her name to Dijjers Spanier but would occasionally also use the name Dijjers Liefjes. At several times she stated her year of birth being 1910 or 1911, but some sources mention 1909 as the year of her birth.

She lived her childhood years in Amsterdam and later The Hague until her stepfather, owner of a big hotel in The Hague, married the Austrian actress Lotte Erol. Lien then traveled between The Hague, Vienna (where the family mostly lived) and Lausanne, where she went to a private school and became fluent in French. In August 1926 the Austrian weekly Mein Film staged a competition for new young screen talent and Lien submitted her photograph. Together with twenty other contestants she was chosen for a screen-test by director Hans Otto, which she won.

During an autograph session in the Mein Film offices in 1927, she was introduced to the Austrian director Fritz Lang. Reportedly, the Dutch teenager cheekily asked him: “Herr Lang, don’t you want to discover me?” The endeared director offered the self-assured little blonde girl a plum part in his next project, the thriller Spione/Spies (Fritz Lang, 1928) opposite Rudolf Klein-Rogge and Gerda Maurus. Lang had her travel to Berlin for a screentest and she was indeed given a secondary but racy role in Spione. She was billed as Lien Deyers because Dijjers was frequently misspelled or mispronounced in German speaking countries.

Lang had her sign a six-year contract and assigned her to the huge Ufa studios in Berlin. The contract soon turned out to be mere slavery, and Deyers sought a court decision to end it. In November 1928 the court ruled in her favour, a verdict welcomed by hundreds of Berlin-based actors with similar contracts. In turn Lang appealed and was granted a 10,000 Reichs-mark pay-off, to be fulfilled in monthly payments. Deyers and Lang had already grown to dislike each other during the shooting of Spione.

Her role as an alluring and seductive spy in Spione meant the start of a prolific film career in the German cinema for Lien. In the next two years she starred in films like Haus Nummer 17/Number 17 (Géza von Bolváry, 1928), Die Heilige und ihr Narr/The Saint and Her Fool (Wilhelm Dieterle, 1928) and the French adventure Le Capitaine Fracasse/Captain Fracasse (Alberto Cavalcanti, Henry Wulschleger, 1929) starring Pierre Blanchar.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 101/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Defina / DEFU. Publicity still for Die Heilige und ihr Narr/The Saint and her Fool (Wilhelm Dieterle, 1928) with Wilhelm Dieterle.

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

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

German postcards by Ross Verlag, no. 4890/1 and 4890/2, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Balázs, Berlin. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5693. Photo: Manassé, Wien. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 5694. Photo: Manassé.

Starring Parts

After eight silent films, Lien Deyers had also success with her early sound films. She enchanted the public with her appearances in films like Rosenmontag/Rose Monday (Hans Steinhoff, 1930), Die Männer um Lucie/The Men Around Lucie (Alexander Korda, 1931) starring Liane Haid, and the operetta Die Verliebte Firma/The Company's in Love (Max Ophüls, 1932) with Gustav Fröhlich.

She starred opposite Heinz Rühmann in the comedy hits Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht/Looking for His Murderer (Robert Siodmak, 1931) and Lachende Erben/Laughing Heirs (Max Ophüls, 1933).

Opposite the popular singer Richard Tauber, she appeared in Melodie der Liebe/Right to Happiness (Georg Jacoby, 1932), and opposite another singing star, Jan Kiepura in Ich liebe alle Frauen/I Love All Women (Carl Lamac, 1935).

In the interesting Sci-Fi film Gold (Karl Hartl, 1934) she played with Hans Albers and Brigitte Helm.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4770/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Schrecker, Berlin. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5274/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Binder. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

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

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

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5563/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still for Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht/Looking for His Murderer (Robert Siodmak, 1931) with Heinz Rühmann.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5950/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa.

Lien Deijers, Roland Varno, Dolly Bouwmeester

Dutch postcard for De sensatie der toekomst (Dimitri Buchowetzki, Jack Salvatori, 1931) with Roland Varnoand Dolly Bouwmeester.

The Sensation of the Future

Lien Deyers' only part in a Dutch film was in De sensatie der toekomst/Television (Dimitri Buchowetzki, Jack Salvatori, 1931) starring Dolly Bouwmeester and Roland Varno.

This early and little known Dutch sound film was shot at the Paramount studio's in Joinville in France. The subject was the new phenomenon television, 'the sensation of the future.

De sensatie der toekomst/Television was the Dutch version of the French film Magie moderne/Modern Magic (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1931). With different casts, there were also an Italian, a Czech, a Polish, a Romanian and a Swedish version produced in the same studio.

Deyers had given up her Dutch nationality when she married merican born German producer and director Alfred Zeisler. Zeisler had directed her in Sein Scheidungsgrund/His Grounds for Divorce (1931) and had produced Gold. Therefore Lien wasn't subject to the foreign-worker quota restrictions of the National Socialists.

Lien was terrified that her family tree would be investigated by the Nazis: her father, a hotel owner in the Hague, was half Jewish. Her husband was also Jewish. The couple decided to leave Germany.

Among Lien's last films were Ein ganzer Kerl/A Regular Fellow (Carl Boese, 1935) and Die Selige Exzellenz (Hans H. Zerlett, 1935). The pair left for England first.

Lien Deyers and Johannes Riemann in Sein Scheidungsgrund (1931)

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6105/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute. Publicity still for Sein Scheidungsgrund/His Grounds for Divorce (Alfred Zeisler, 1931) with Johannes Riemann.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6533/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Siegel-Monopolfilm. Still from Der Herzog von Reichstadt/The Duke of Reichstadt (Victor Tourjansky, 1931) with Walter Edthofer. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6922/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.

German postcard by Ross Verlag. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6552/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 608 (Luxus series). Photo: Atelier Binder. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Dutch postcard by J.S.A., no. 189. Photo: Lux Film.

Setback

Lien Deyers traveled between London and The Hague while her man worked in England. In 1937 she signed for a major role in the Dutch-Italian film De Drie Wensen/I Tre Desideri/Three Wishes. For unknown reasons she did not play the part and finally joined her husband in London in 1938. There was no need for her acting skills there.

By that time her marriage with Alfred Zeissler was faltering and a divorce was inevitable. In 1939 the couple moved to California where they soon went their different ways. Lien Deyers couldn't find work in the film business in Hollywood, and conducted a business for novelties. According to Wikipedia she had a reputation now of being 'mentally extremely unstable'.

She developed an alcohol addiction and relied financially on old contacts like the German actor and director William Dieterle and in particular the Austrian-American film producer Paul Kohner and his European Film Fund that he had founded to aid down-on-their-luck German actors in exile.

Over a brief period of time she married three more times: with kingpin actors' agent Frank Orsatti, one of the Orsatti Brothers (who evidently couldn't get her involved in films either), from 1940 until 1942, with furrier Victor Rubin (from 1944 until 1948) and with Lawrence Adlon, grandson of the Berlin hotel-magnate, in January 1951.

In the following decades her private life was marked with some setbacks. Lien became an alcoholic. The Dutch actor/comedian Wim Sonneveld met with her in 1957 during the shooting of Silk Stockings with Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, in which he played a supporting role. He was reportedly shocked by her faded beauty.

Then, she completely vanished from the public view. The last time she was heard from, was in September 1964, when she was in the Clark County Jail in Las Vegas because of loitering and disorderly conduct.

Thomas Staedeli at Cyranos: "The time of her death is not ascertainable, (...) but it seems that she died in 1965". Wikipedia mentions a greeting card congratulating German actor and former co-star Heinz Rühmann on his eightieth birthday in 1982. The postcard was signed L. Dyers-Wallburg, suggesting she had gotten married for a fifth time. IMDb has 1982 as the year of her death.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5771/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Alex Binder.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6536/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Atelier Binder. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Instituut.

Lien Deyers and Georg Alexander in Ist mein Mann nicht fabelhaft? (1933)

Dutch postcard by City Film, no. 277. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute. Publicity still for Ist mein Mann nicht fabelhaft?/Isn't My Husband Wonderful? (Georg Jacoby, 1933) with Georg Alexander.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7194/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7749/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8842/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Atelier Manassé, Wien. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Sources: Adrian Stahlecker (Nederlandse acteurs in de Weimarrepubliek en Nazi-Duitsland - Dutch), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.

Today is the final day of the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF), and also of EFSP's Unofficial Netherlands Film Postcard Festival (UNFPF). Today's star is John Kraaykamp, Sr. (1925–2011), one of The Netherlands' most popular comedians, praised for his perfect timing. For years, he formed a comedy team with Rijk de Gooyer as Johnny & Rijk. He also played in more serious plays and films, including the Academy Award winning WW II film drama De aanslag/The Assault (1986).

Dutch card.

Dutch card by Anova, Amsterdam.

Boy Soprano

Johnny Kraaykamp (also written as Kraaijkamp) was born as Jan Hendrik Kraaijkamp in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1925. He was one of four children of a greengrocer and a house cleaner. He grew up in the Kinkerbuurt in Amsterdam. After an accident, his father was declared unfit for work and Johnny had to find work at a young age.

At 14, he already performed as a boy soprano in the famous Amsterdam theatre Carré. He worked for a short while as an acrobat, but then moved on to become a singer in a show orchestra. He performed as an entertainer and bass player in local bars, where he was discovered in the 1950s by Rijk de Gooyer.

Together they recorded the song Twee jongens op een gitaar (Two guys on a guitar). It was the start of a long and successful partnership. Johnny and Rijk began to perform together on radio and television. In spring 1956, they joined the Weekendshow, a popular entertainment show on the Dutch radio. They also toured with the Snip & Snap Revue and performed in several comedy plays written for TV, together and apart.

In 1962, they got together again for Open het dorp (Open the village), an extremely well-watched TV benefit marathon presented by Mies Bouwman, in which they performed in their pyjamas. In the 1960s and 1970s they performed regularly together on Dutch TV. In 1964, they began with the Johnny & Rijk shows. In their shows, Rijk was the ‘feeder’ and John the comedian. The duo also recorded a couple of hit singles, including De Bostella (The Bostella), for which they received a golden record in 1968. They even had a show on German TV, Spass durch Zwei/Fun By Two (Bob Rooijens, 1970-1971).

Johnny also appeared in several Dutch films, including Daniël (Erik Terpstra, 1971), Geen paniek/No Panic (Ko Koedijk, 1973) with Rijk de Gooyer, De vijf van de vierdaagse/The Five Are Marching In (René van Nie, 1974), Heb medelij Jet/Happy Days Are Here Again (Frans Weisz, 1975), Zwaarmoedige verhalen voor bij de centrale verwarming/Melancholy Tales (Nouchka van Brakel a.o., 1975) and the anthology film Vroeger kon je lachen/One Could Laugh in Former Days (Bert Haanstra, 1983), with adaptations of ironic newspaper-columns by the Dutch author Simon Carmiggelt. In Germany Kraaykamp appeared in the sex comedy Die Stoßburg/The Sex Castle (Franz Marischka, 1974) and in Belgium in the drama Verbrande brug/Burned Bridges (Guido Henderickx, 1975) with Yves Beneyton.

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 1109. Photo: Artone.

Johnny Kraaykamp and Rijk de Gooijer. Dutch postcard by Editions Altona, Amsterdam / Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam. Photo: Telefunken.

Pig-headed Old Man

In 1973, John Kraaykamp made a couple of TV shows without Rijk de Gooyer, but with Tonny Huurdeman as his new feeder. De Gooyer had started a successful film career. Unfortunately, these shows were not very successful: the show only lasted three episodes. Later a series of Johnny Kraaykamp Shows was more successful. In 1985, he joined old partner De Gooyer in the TV series De Brekers/The Brekers (Rob Herzet, 1985-1988), which co-starred Adèle Bloemendaal.

Kraaykamp also played in a couple of prestigious films in the 1980s, including De Wisselwachter/The Pointsman (Jos Stelling, 1986) and Iris (Mady Saks, 1987), with Monique van de Ven. His most successful film was De aanslag/The Assault (Fons Rademakers, 1986), in which he played an old resistance fighter opposite Derek de Lint.

Kraaykamp also was a prolific stage actor. With theatre company Ensemble he played in The Taming of the Shrew from 1958 to 1959. From 1962 to 1964 he was a member of the Amsterdams Volkstoneel. He also starred in a couple of musicals, including Irma la Douce (1962–1964) and Man of La Mancha (1969–1970).

After a period of comic plays, he joined the Ro Theater in 1979 to play in a number of classic roles. The title role in William Shakespeare's King Lear that year is considered his big breakthrough as a serious actor. He also performed in A Midsummer Night's Dream. In 1984 he won the Louis d'Or, the most prestigious award in stage acting in The Netherlands, for his lead role in Denis Diderot's Jacques de fatalist en zijn meester (Jack, the fatalist and his master).

From 1988 on, he starred on TV in the prison sitcom Laat maar zitten/Leave Them in Jail (John van de Rest, 1988-1991), based on the British TV series Porridge. His most successful role in later years was the part of Piet Boverkerk in the comedy series Het zonnetje in huis/Sunshine at Home (Hans de Korte, 1993-2003). In the show, he played a pig-headed old man that comes to live with his son and daughter-in-law (played by his own son, John Kraaijkamp, Jr, and Martine Bijl) after his wife passed away. The show was a remake of the British sitcom Tom, Dick and Harriet, created by Cooke and Mortimer.

Kraaykamp's last film was the successful child drama Kruimeltje/Little Crumb (Maria Peters, 1999) featuring Ruud Feltkamp. John Kraaijkamp died in 2011 in Laren. He was 86. Kraaijkamp was married three times and had four children. With Riemada Elisabeth Panhuysen, he had two children, son John (1954) and daughter Ellissigne. With his second wife, Tilly van Duijkeren, he had a son, Michiel. With Mai Lun Lee he had a daughter, Sanne. John, Ellissigne and Sanne became actors. Throughout his life, Kraaykamp received several acting awards. Besides the Louis d'Or in 1984, he received the Golden Calf (the Dutch Oscar) in 1986 for his roles in the films De aanslag/The Assault and De Wisselwachter.

Johnny & Rijk sing De Bostella. Source: TopPop (YouTube).

American trailer for De aanslag/The Assault. Source: The Best Foreign Movies (YouTube).

Sources: Beeld en Geluid (Dutch), Wikipedia (Dutch) and IMDb.

Today is the opening of the exhibition Alma-Tadema, At Home in Antiquity at the Fries Museum in Leeuwarden, The Netherlands. The Dutch-born painter Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema (1836-1912) was the most successful and seductive storyteller of his day. He accomplished this by an innovative use of space in his work. Through his great knowledge of archaeology and classical antiquity he managed to bring the days of ancient Rome to life in paintings. His scenes were received so enthusiastically all over the world that our present image of classical antiquity was influenced by them. In the European cinema and in Hollywood too, Alma-Tadema’s interpretation caught on and became the basis for seminal films about this era, from the Italian epics of the 1910s to Ridley Scott's Gladiator (2000).Today 12 postcards about films, inspired by the work of this remarkable artist, who probably had been a filmmaker had he lived later.

German postcard by Rodera-Lichtspiele, Dresden, 1913. Publicity still for the Italian silent epic Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Eleuterio Rodolfi, 1913). From left to right: Antonio Grisanti as Arbaces, the Egyptian High Priest of Isis; Cesare Gani Carini as Apecides, a disciple of Arbaces and the brother of Jone; Eugenia Tettoni Fior as Jone; Ubaldo Stefani as Glaucus, Jone's lover; and Fernanda Negri Pouget as the blind slave Nidia. The film was produced by Società Anonima Ambrosio.

Italian postcard. Photo: publicity still for Spartaco (Enrico Vidali, 1913). Caption: Valeria si intrattiene con Mirza parlando di Spartaco (Valeria sits with Mirza, talking about Spartacus). Spartaco's sister Mirza (Cristina Ruspoli) has become the slave of Crassus' daughter Valeria (Maria Gandini). Valeria becomes interested in Spartacus because of what Mirza tells about him. In other versions Mirza is called Idamis, and Valeria Elena.

Italian postcard Photo: Cines. Publicity still for the early epic Quo vadis? (Enrico Guazzoni, 1913), adapted from Henryk Sienkiewicz's classic novel and the biggest film hit of 1913 worldwide. Caption: The death of the gladiator. This image cites Jean-Léon Gérôme's famous painting Pollice verso (Thumbs down, 1872) and was often used in the publicity for the film. In the back the emperor Nero (Carlo Cattaneo) makes the sign of thumbs down, sign for the conqueror to kill his adversary. Flanking Nero are left Tigellinus (Cesare Moltini) and right Petronius (Gustavo Serena). Left of the imperial box the Vestal Virgins are seated.

Spanish postcard for Amatller Marca Luna Chocolate, Series 8. Photo: Palatino Film. Elena Sangro as Fabiola and signora Poletti as her niece Agnese in Enrico Guazzoni's Fabiola (1918). When the persecutions of the Christians in Rome become too rough, Fabiola takes her niece Agnese to her villa in the countryside.

Italian postcard by Edizione L'Argentografica, Torino. Publicity still for the Italo-German epic Quo Vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1924), one of the many adaptations of the classic novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, with Lilian Hall-Davis as Licia.

German postcard by Ross-Verlag, Berlin, no. 699/6, 1919-1924. Photo: Filmhaus Brückmann. Publicity still for Quo Vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1924) with Rina De Liguoro.

Alma-Tadema defined our picture of Roman antiquity

Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema's painted scenes appeal to the imagination and are totally convincing. Even though we may not be aware of it, our picture of Roman antiquity has been largely defined by Alma-Tadema.

The exhibition explores how this came to be by very closely following Alma-Tadema’s personal life and artistic career.

No one could paint as convincingly as Alma-Tadema, so it is hardly surprising that Cinecittá and Hollywood were only too eager to convert his paintings into moving images for their Roman spectacles.

From the silent era on, film directors were after all looking for a visual language for the new mass medium of film and Alma-Tadema provided them with the blueprint for it. And this continues on to this day.

Director Ridley Scott studied Alma-Tadema when making his successful films Gladiator (2000) and Exodus (2014). Scott’s production designer, Arthur Max, sees Alma-Tadema as someone who shows us Rome as we want it to look like, not necessarily as it really was.

German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 53/2. Photo: Hisa. Publicity still for the Italian silent epic Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Carmine Gallone, Amleto Palermi, 1926). The film was based on the 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. On the photo, Glaucus (Victor Varconi) listens to beautiful and rich Greek Ione (Rina De Liguoro) playing the harp. The statue left was copied from an original Roman one.

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

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

Fredric March in The Sign of the Cross (1932)

British postcard in the series Film Shots by Film Weekly. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Sign of the Cross (Cecil B. De Mille, 1932) with Fredric March.

Italian postcard by A. Mondadori, Verona. Publicity still for Quo Vadis (Mervyn LeRoy, Anthony Mann, 1951). Caption: In Rome, Italy, Technicolor cameras film a scene for M.G.M.'s Quo Vadis. Roman soldiers parade before Nero's palace here.

Yul Brynner in The Ten Commandments (1956)

French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 831, 1956. Photo: Paramount Pictures Inc. Yul Brynner as Ramses in The Ten Commandments (Cecil B. DeMille, 1956).

Belgian postcard by SB (Uitgeverij Best), Antwerpen (Antwerp). Photo: still for Cleopatra (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1963) with Elizabeth Taylor.

Alma-Tadema in film. Source: Fries Museum (YouTube).

Sources: Fries Museum and Eye.

The 35th Pordenone Silent Film Festival, Le Giornate del Cinema Muto (1-8 October 2016) opens tonight with the screening of The Mysterious Lady (Fred Niblo, 1928) starring Greta Garbo. The silent film festival offers again rediscoveries of lost films and several interesting programmes. The new festival director Jay Weissberg compiled a programme on the Polish silent cinema which demonstrates the cosmopolitan nature of the Polish film industry of the time, and highlights some of their great filmmakers. In a salute to Pordenone which we sadly can't visit this year, EFSP presents 12 great and cosmopolitan Polish silent film stars.

Polish postcard. Photo: publicity still for the play Sumurun. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.

Polish film actress Pola Negri(1894-1987) achieved notoriety as a femme fatale in silent films between 1910s and 1930s.

Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 328. Photo: Fontana.

Polish actress Soava Gallone (1880-1957) was one of the divas of the Italian silent cinema.

Zbyszko Sawan and Aleksander Zelwerowicz in Huragan (1928)

Polish postcard, no. 83. Photo: publicity still for Huragan/Hurricane (Joseph Lejtes, 1928) with Zbyszko Sawan and Aleksander Zelwerowicz. Collection: Joanna.

Aleksander Zelwerowicz (1877-1955) was a Polish actor, director, theatre president and a teacher. He received the Order of Polonia Restituta, one of Poland's highest Orders. He is also one of the Polish Righteous among the Nations, recognised by Yad Vashem as non-Jews who saved Jews from extermination during the Holocaust.

Italian postcard, no. 30. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Polish singer and actress Helena Makowska (1893-1964) was a beautiful diva of the Italian silent cinema in the 1910s. During the 1920s she moved to Berlin and also became a star of the German cinema.

Polish postcard by BHK, no. 7. Photo: Sfinks. Publicity still for Tredowata/The Leper (Boleslaw Mierzejewski, Edward Puchalski, 1927). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Jadwiga Smosarska (1898-1971) was the biggest star of the Polish cinema of the pre-WW II era. From 1919 on, the Polish actress made more than 25 silent and sound films. She also was very successful on stage. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, she fled to the US. In 1970, she returned to Poland.

Polish postcard by Polonia, Krakow, no. 559. Photo: Van Dyck. Signature from 1928. Collection: Joanne.

Polish postcard by Polonia, Krakow, no. 907. Photo: Van Dyck.

Polish actor Zbigniew (or Zbyszko) Sawan (1904–1984) starred both in silent and sound films, and was also a respected stage actor in his country. He also worked as a theatre director and manager.

Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano. Distr. S.A.G. Leoni, No. 133. Diana Karenne as Maria, Duchess de Lardi in French-German coproduction Casanova (Alexander Volkoff, 1927), partly shot on location in Venice.

Polish-born actress Diana Karenne (1888-1940) was one of the divas of Italian silent cinema.

Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 625. Photo: Sascha.

Handsome and athletic Austrian-Polish actor Igo Sym (1896-1941) played classy gentlemen, aristocrats and army officers in Polish, Austrian and German films of the 1920s. After the German Invasion of Poland he decided to co-operate with the Nazis and in 1941 he was killed by members of the Polish resistance movement.

Marja Malicka and Zbyszko Sawan in Dzikuska (1928)

Polish postcard by Edition Victoria. Photo: Lux. Publicity still for Dzikuska/Savage (Henryk Szaro, 1928) with Marja Malicka and Zbyszko Sawan. Collection: Joanna.

Polish actress Maria or Marja Malicka (1900-1992) appeared both in silent and sound films. She was married to Zbigniew Sawan.

Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, Wien, no. 720-1. Photo: Paul M. Vajda, Budapest.

Polish actor and singer Jan Kiepura (1902-1966) was one of the grand tenors of the 20th century and with his handsome smile he also became a popular film star. He made his film debut in the silent Polish film O czym sie nie mysli (Edward Puchalski, 1926). Solo and together with Marta Eggerth he starred in many popular film operettas of the 1930s.

Polish postcard by Polonia, Krakow, no. 923. Collection: Joanna.

Polish actor Harry Cort (1905-?) came from a royal dynasty and had a short film career with starring roles in three silent films, 9:25. Przygoda jednej nocy (1929), Halka (1930) and Karuzela zycia (1930).

Source: Le Giornate del Cinema Muto.

Beautiful German actress Susanne Cramer (1936-1969) was known for her film career in German, French and American films, but also for her tumultuous private life.

German postcard by Ufa (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft) Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-114. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Arthur Grimm.

German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 109. Retail price: 10 Pfg. Photo: Joe Niczky.

German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 229. Photo: Bavaria / Schorcht / Ringpress / Vogelmann.

German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 467. Photo: Zeyn / Union / Arrthur Grimm. Publicity still for Der lachende Vagabund/The Laughing Vagabond (Thomas Engel, 1958).

German postcard by Ufa (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft) Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-84. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Ufa.

Suicide Efforts

Susanne Cramer, also known as Susan Cramer and Suzanne Cramer, was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1936. At 20 she married actor Hermann Nehlsen, who was 17 years her senior. He stimulated her film ambitions.

She started her career with two supporting roles in Waldwinter/Winter in the Woods (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1956) with Claus Holm and the Heimatfilm Rot ist die Liebe/Love is Red (Karl Hartl, 1956) starring Cornell Borchers before she played the leading lady opposite Heinz Erhardt in the comedy Die gestohlene Hose/The Stolen Trousers (Géza von Cziffra, 1956), and opposite Claus Biederstaedt in another comedy, Kleines Zelt und große Liebe/Two in a Sleeping Bag (Rainer Geis, 1956).

That year she also appeared in the French drama Les assassins du dimanche/Every Second Counts (Alex Joffé, 1956). Her marriage quickly went sour, and she had an affair with Claus Biederstaedt which ended in two suicide efforts.

In 1957 she played in seven films, including Wie ein Sturmwind/The Night of the Storm (Falk Harnack, 1957) with Lilli Palmerand Ivan Desny, the comedy Witwer mit 5 Töchtern/Widower with 5 Daughters (Erich Engels, 1957) again opposite Heinz Erhardt, and Vacanze a Ischia/ Holiday Island (Mario Camerini, 1957) with Vittorio de Sica.

In 1958 Susanne married colleague actor Helmuth Lohner, but a divorce followed already after only five months. They married a second time and a daughter was born, Konstanze Lohner, but after a short time a second divorce followed.

Other films in which she appeared were the crime film Der Greifer/The Copper (Eugen York, 1958) with Hans Albers, Nick Knattertons Abenteuer - Der Raub der Gloria Nylon/The Kidnapping of Miss Nylon (Hans Quest, 1959), and another comedy with Heinz Erhardt, Drei Mann in einem Boot/Three men in a Boat (Helmut Weiss, 1961).

German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK-3573. Photo: Eberhard Schmidt / Ufa.

German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK-3714. Photo: Rhombus / Herzog-Film / Dittner.

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 3570/958. Photo: Eberhard Schmidt / UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof).

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 3305. Photo: Arthur Grimm / CCC-NF-Film. Publicity still for Wie ein Sturmwind/Tempestuous Love (Falk Harnack, 1957) with Ivan Desny. Spanjersberg was the Dutch licency holder for Ufa/Film-Foto (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof).

Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 3712. Photo: Rhombus / Herzog-Film / Dittner / Ufa.

Shocking Experience

Susanne Cramer moved to Hollywood and there she appeared in episodes of several popular TV-series like Perry Mason (1964-1965), Get Smart (1965), Bonanza (1965), Hogan's Heroes (1966) and Ironside (1967).

She also played small parts in films like the comedy Bedtime Story (Ralph Levy, 1964) starring Marlon Brandoand David Niven, and Dear Brigitte (Henry Koster, 1965) starring James Stewart. She married the American actor Kevin Hagen, and they stayed together for the rest of her life.

In 1966, when she wanted to visit her colleague Renate Ewert in München (Munich), she found her friend dead. According to some sources Renate was already dead for six days; other sources say even for three weeks. This shocking experience bothered Susanne deeply.

There were also rumours about her own death in 1969 by pneumonia in a private clinic in Hollywood. A medical malpractice reportedly would have really caused her death. Susanne Cramer was only 32 years old.

German postcard by Ufa (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft) Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-63. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Gérard Décaux / Ufa.

German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F 77. Photo: Klaus Collignon.

German postcard by Ufa (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft) Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-59. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Gérard Décaux / Ufa.

German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F-30. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / Bavaria.

German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. C D 15.

Sources: Peter Hoffmann (Biografie.de), Wikipedia (German), and IMDb.

Beautiful Marianna Vertinskaya (1943) is a Russian stage actress, who starred in several good Soviet films of the 1960s and 1970s. She is the sister of film star Anastasiya Vertinskaya.

Russian postcard, no. 71-2185. This postcard was printed in an edition of 200.000 cards.

Russian postcard, no. A 06184, 1968. This postcard was printed in an edition of 300.000 cards.

Emotional trauma

Marianna Aleksandrovna Vertinskaya was in 1943, on a train going to Shanghai, China, which was home to a large Russian colony at the time. Her father, Aleksandr Vertinskiy was a legendary White Russian émigré, who was a popular actor, singer and songwriter. Her mother, Lidiya Vertinskaya (née Lidia Vladimirovna Tsirgvava), was also a Russian emigre who was born into a Georgian-Russian family in Kharbin.

Her mother gave her the in Russia unusual name Marianna after the beloved of Robin Hood. Lidiya simply loved the American film The Adventures of Robin Hood (Michael Curtiz, 1938), with Errol Flynn as the legendary robber.

In order to support his family in Shanghai, Aleksandr Vertinskiy had to give two concerts a day during the first years. They decided to return to Moscow, where a second daughter, Anastasiya Vertinskaya, was born in 1944. Marianna and Anastasiya had a happy childhood in Russia. They were brought up in a multi-lingual family where they enjoyed an intellectually stimulating environment, and a highly cultural atmosphere of their parents circle.

Marianna was fond of her father, who invested much of his talent and energy in his daughter's education. Her famous father died when Marianna was 15, and she suffered from an emotional trauma. From 1962 till 1966 she studied acting under Aleksandr Borisov at the Shchukin Theatre School in Moscow.

Since 1966 she has been a member of the Vakhtangov Theatre in Moscow. Marianna Vertinskaya shone in the title role in the legendary 1963 re-creation of Vakhtangov's production of Carlo Gozzi's comedy Princess Turandot. She also made memorable appearances in Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Idiot (The Idiot), in Moliere's Meshchanin vo dvoryansyve (Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme), and in other plays at the Vakhtangov Theatre.

Russian postcard, no. A 03053, 1967. This postcard was printed in an edition of 50.000 cards.

Russian postcard, no. A 309. This postcard was printed in an edition of 300.000 cards.

The Russian answer to the Nouvelle Vague

Marianna Vertinskaya made her film debut with a small part in the crime drama Visokosnyy god/ Leap Year (Anatoli Efros, 1962). She played a supporting part in the coming of age drama Mne dvadtsat let/I Am Twenty (Marlen Khutsiev, 1965). The film is now seen as the Russian answer to the Nouvelle Vague in France.

At the time, the film invoked Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev's sharp criticism. At the censor's insistence the film was re-cut. Mne dvadtsat let follows Sergei (Valentin Popov), his two best friends, Nikolai and Slava, and his eventual love interest, Anya (Vertinskaya), and juxtaposes their aspirations against the harsh realities of everyday life in the Soviet Union in 1960.

The following year, Marianna played the female leads in two films. She starred opposite Nikita Mikhalkov and Oleg Strizhenov in the drama Pereklichka/Roll-Call (Daniil Khrabrovitsky, 1966). The second film was the family adventure Gorod masterov/The City of Masters (Vladimir Bychkov, 1966).

Elaine Freeland at IMDb: “Although far removed from Tamara Gabbe's original theater play of the same name, Gorod Masterov is an excellent work in its own right. A good example of the so-called po motivam Soviet adaptation policy which allowed filmmakers unlimited freedom when it came to changing the plot, characters and even the idea of the original story, Gorod Masterov used that freedom only to emphasize the main points of Gabbe's tale. That turned a meticulously researched, beautifully worded historical play inspired by the events of the famous Marseille rebellion into a never-never-landish children's fantasy movie.”

Vertinskaya also co-starred with Oleg Strizhenov in the Sci-Fi comedy Ego zvali Robert/We Called Him Robert (Ilya Olshvanger, 1967), and was one of the brides in the comedy Sem nevest efreytora Zbrueva/The Seven Brides of Lance-Corporal Zbruyev (Vitaliy Melnikov, 1971). She had the leading role in Nave zem buras/Nave under sail (Ada Neretniece, 1976).

Her later films include Dialog s prodolzheniyem/A continued dialogue (Gennadi Karyuk, Aleksandr Lapshin, 1980), Zhenshchina v more/The Woman in the Sea (Vyacheslav Krishtofovich, 1992) and her most recent film, Vlyublyonnye 2/Lovers 2 (Elyer Ishmukhamedov, 2004).

Vertinskaya was designated Honourable Actress of Russia. She has been married three times: to architect Ilya Bylinkin (1967-1973), to actor Boris Khmelnitskiy (1976-1980) and to businessman Zoran Kazimirovic (1983-1996). She has two daughters: presenter Aleksandra Bylinkina (1970) with Ilya Bylinkin, and designer Darya Khmelnitskaya (1978) with Boris Khmelnitskiy. Marianna Vertinskaya lives and works in Moscow, Russia.

Trailer for Ego zvali Robert/We Called Him Robert (1967). Source: Slava Batareykin (YouTube).

Sources: Steve Shelokhonov (IMDb), Elaine Freeland (IMDb), ivi.ru (Russian), AllMovie and IMDb.

Banter and resourcefulness

Blatantly lacking charisma

Exploring a killer's complex psychological state

The Epic That Never Was

Frankly of his homosexual experiences

Singular comic talent

An active supporter of the Nazi Party?

1950s remakes of major hits during the Weimar and Nazi eras

Hollandia

Anna Bosilova

When the Light Disappeared

Jaap Speyer

Comedy of errors

Silly Situations

Hollywood

Fashion Model

Nouvelle Vague

Hollywood

Chansons de films

Film Metropolis Berlin

Backfish

Souvenirs

Samson

Part-time Wrestler

From Amsterdam to Vienna

Dream Couple

Passionate

Car Accident

A remarkable debut

A beautiful narcissus

The confidence of the critics was restored

Fritz Lang

Starring Parts

The Sensation of the Future

Setback

Boy Soprano

Pig-headed Old Man

Alma-Tadema defined our picture of Roman antiquity

Suicide Efforts

Shocking Experience

Emotional trauma

The Russian answer to the Nouvelle Vague

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