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(showing articles 1 to 25 of 25)
- 04/30/18--22:00: _Enrico Viarisio
- 05/01/18--22:00: _Othello (1922)
- 05/02/18--22:00: _Else Elster
- 05/03/18--22:00: _Ed. Ballerini & Fra...
- 05/04/18--22:00: _André Nox
- 05/05/18--22:00: _Karin Hardt
- 05/06/18--22:00: _Gabrielle Réjane
- 05/07/18--22:00: _Sally Gray
- 05/08/18--22:00: _Shorts by Pathé Frè...
- 05/09/18--22:00: _Marion Michael
- 05/10/18--22:00: _Ed. A Traldi
- 05/12/18--22:00: _Armin Mueller-Stahl
- 05/12/18--22:00: _Rare vintage postca...
- 05/13/18--22:00: _Petula Clark
- 05/14/18--22:00: _Hans Adalbert Schle...
- 05/15/18--22:00: _Giuditta e Oloferne...
- 05/16/18--22:00: _Gustav Fröhlich
- 05/17/18--22:00: _Unione Cinematograf...
- 05/18/18--22:00: _Barbara Rütting
- 05/19/18--22:00: _Giorgia Moll
- 05/20/18--22:00: _Nina & Frederik
- 05/21/18--22:00: _Károly Huszár (Char...
- 05/22/18--22:00: _Anna-Maria Ferrero ...
- 05/23/18--22:00: _Wo die Lerche singt...
- 05/24/18--22:00: _Editions O.P.
(showing articles 1 to 25 of 25)
Channel Description:
Vintage postcards, stars and stories.
Enrico Viarisio (1897-1967) was an Italian stage and screen actor, and cabaretier. In the sentimental comedies and white-telephone cinema of the 1930s, Viarisio was a constant figure, with his moustache and his black, shining hair combed to the back.
Italian postcard by Vettori, Bologna, no. 66.
Italian postcard by Ed. Vettori, Bologna, no. 131.
Enrico Viarisio, born in Turin in 1897. Equipped with a fine and elegant humour, the 19-years-old Viarisio was discovered by actress and stage company director Paola Pezzaglia, who offered him his first theatrical engagement as in December 1916.
He debuted in an adventurous way: as the leading actor had missed the company’s rehearsals, Viarisio had to play all the important male parts. He then specialised in light entertainment and music-hall.
From the 1930s he has also worked in cinema, establishing himself as one of the most famous comical actors of sound cinema even if he was almost always relegated to secondary roles or antagonists.
Viarisio thus played opposite Elsa de Giorgi in L’impiegata di papà (Alessandro Blasetti, 1933), opposite Elsa Merlini and Vittorio De Sica in Paprika (Carl Boese, 1933) and Non ti conosco più/I Don't Know You Anymore (Nunzio Malasomma 1936), and again opposite Vittorio De Sica in Tempo massimo/Full Speed (Mario Mattoli, 1934) and L’uomo che sorride/The Man Who Smiles (Mario Mattoli, 1936).
Viarisio would act in many comedies by Mario Mattoli. By the later 1930s Viarisio had the male leads in comedies such as Musica in piazza/Music on the square (Mario Mattoli, 1937) with Milly and Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeo/The last days of Pompeo (Mario Mattoli 1937). Wikipedia: "Often he remained in the limits of the genre, but in some cases showed admirable creativity in his performances, keeping them fresh and memorable."
He also appeared in Il destino in tasca/Destiny in your pocket (Gennaro Righelli, 1938) with Vanna Vanni, Due milioni per un sorriso (Mario Soldati, Carlo Borghesio, 1939) with Elsa de Giorgi, L’eredità in corsa/The heritage on the run (Oreste Biancoli, 1939) with Antonio Gandusio, and L'amore si fa cosí/Love goes this way (Carlo Ludovico Bragalia 1939) with Colette Darfeuil.
In the early 1940s he played in Le sorprese del vagone letto (Gian Paolo Rosmino, 1940) with Clara Calamai, and Finalmente soli/Alone at last (Giacomo Gentilomo, 1942) – a kind of Italian variation on René Clair’s Un chapeau de paille d’Italie/The Ialian Straw Hat (1928), with a likewise frenetic protagonist.
Viarisio less frequently acted in dramatic films such as Cavalleria/Cavalry (Goffredo Alessandrini 1936), starring Amedeo Nazzari and Elisa Cegani. In Alessandro Blasetti’s proto-neorealist film Quatro passi fra le nuvole/Four Steps in the Clouds (1942) Viarisio is a streetwise travelling salesman like the protagonist Gino Cervi. In these dramas he didn’t have the lead, but was more often a comical sidekick.
Italian postcard by ASER (A. Scaramaglia Edizioni, Roma), no. 144. Tirrenia, Photo: Gneme. 1940s. Famous were Viarisio's words in Prima comunione/First Communion (Alessandro Balsetti, 1950). When he, the man from the trolleybus was told: Aren't you ashamed to travel with that bowler hat?, he responded: And you, aren't you ashamed to travel with that face?!
Italian postcard by ASER (A. Scaramaglia Edizioni, Roma), no. 267. Photo: Vaselli.
Enrico Viarisio was an elegant and slim character, recognizable by his perpetually pomaded hair and well-groomed mustache. He often played characters of noble decadence or the invading and sometimes annoying bon-vivant, even if basically an honest man. He was often mistaken for his colleague Giuseppe Porelli.
Until the end of the war Viarisio acted in some 44 Italian sound films. After the war his production slowed down, but in 1950 he played in four films, including the bitter-sweet comedy Prima comunione by Alessandro Blasetti and starring Aldo Fabrizi.
The 1950s were as fruitful for Viarisio as the 1930s. He continued his career onstage in revue shows, supporting such artists as Wanda Osiris, Olga Villi and Isa Barzizza. During the 1950s he also played in dozens of genre films, as well as some auteur films including I vitelloni (1953) by Federico Fellini with Viarisio as Moraldo's father, Stazione Termini/Terminal Station(1953) by Vittorio De Sica, Carosello napoletano/Neapolitan Carousel (Ettore Giannini 1954), and La ragazza del palio/The Love Specialist (Luigi Zampa 1957) with Diana Dors.
Afterwards Viarisio participated in numerous Musicarelli (Italian teen musicals) alongside famous pop stars (or singers who later became famous), like Mina, Bobby Solo, Gianni Morandiand Rita Pavone.
His most famous characterization of that period was that of the commercials shot for Alemagna sweets with Lia Zoppelli and Alberto Lionello, aired between 1957 till 1965 in Carosello, which always ended with the slogan "Ullallà, è una cuccagna!" (Oh-la-la, it’s a goody!).
Viarisio's last film part was as a general in Lina Wertmuller's Non stuzzicate la zanzara/Don't Sting the Mosquito (1966), with Rita Pavoneand a young Giancarlo Giannini.
Enrico Viarisio died in 1967 in Rome. He was 69. He was married to Giuditta Marchetti.
Italian postcard. Istituto Romano di Arti Grafiche Tumminelli & Co., Roma. Enrico Viarisio, Elsa Merlini and Vittorio De Sica in the Italian comedy Non ti conosco più (Nunzio Malasomma, 1936). The film was promoted as a return for Elsa Merlini, "gay, sentimental and malicious".
Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 379.
Carosella Allemagna. Source: Video Babele (YouTube).
Source: Wikipedia (Italian and English) and IMDb.
Italian postcard by Vettori, Bologna, no. 66.
Italian postcard by Ed. Vettori, Bologna, no. 131.
Adventurous debut
Enrico Viarisio, born in Turin in 1897. Equipped with a fine and elegant humour, the 19-years-old Viarisio was discovered by actress and stage company director Paola Pezzaglia, who offered him his first theatrical engagement as in December 1916.
He debuted in an adventurous way: as the leading actor had missed the company’s rehearsals, Viarisio had to play all the important male parts. He then specialised in light entertainment and music-hall.
From the 1930s he has also worked in cinema, establishing himself as one of the most famous comical actors of sound cinema even if he was almost always relegated to secondary roles or antagonists.
Viarisio thus played opposite Elsa de Giorgi in L’impiegata di papà (Alessandro Blasetti, 1933), opposite Elsa Merlini and Vittorio De Sica in Paprika (Carl Boese, 1933) and Non ti conosco più/I Don't Know You Anymore (Nunzio Malasomma 1936), and again opposite Vittorio De Sica in Tempo massimo/Full Speed (Mario Mattoli, 1934) and L’uomo che sorride/The Man Who Smiles (Mario Mattoli, 1936).
Viarisio would act in many comedies by Mario Mattoli. By the later 1930s Viarisio had the male leads in comedies such as Musica in piazza/Music on the square (Mario Mattoli, 1937) with Milly and Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeo/The last days of Pompeo (Mario Mattoli 1937). Wikipedia: "Often he remained in the limits of the genre, but in some cases showed admirable creativity in his performances, keeping them fresh and memorable."
He also appeared in Il destino in tasca/Destiny in your pocket (Gennaro Righelli, 1938) with Vanna Vanni, Due milioni per un sorriso (Mario Soldati, Carlo Borghesio, 1939) with Elsa de Giorgi, L’eredità in corsa/The heritage on the run (Oreste Biancoli, 1939) with Antonio Gandusio, and L'amore si fa cosí/Love goes this way (Carlo Ludovico Bragalia 1939) with Colette Darfeuil.
In the early 1940s he played in Le sorprese del vagone letto (Gian Paolo Rosmino, 1940) with Clara Calamai, and Finalmente soli/Alone at last (Giacomo Gentilomo, 1942) – a kind of Italian variation on René Clair’s Un chapeau de paille d’Italie/The Ialian Straw Hat (1928), with a likewise frenetic protagonist.
Viarisio less frequently acted in dramatic films such as Cavalleria/Cavalry (Goffredo Alessandrini 1936), starring Amedeo Nazzari and Elisa Cegani. In Alessandro Blasetti’s proto-neorealist film Quatro passi fra le nuvole/Four Steps in the Clouds (1942) Viarisio is a streetwise travelling salesman like the protagonist Gino Cervi. In these dramas he didn’t have the lead, but was more often a comical sidekick.
Italian postcard by ASER (A. Scaramaglia Edizioni, Roma), no. 144. Tirrenia, Photo: Gneme. 1940s. Famous were Viarisio's words in Prima comunione/First Communion (Alessandro Balsetti, 1950). When he, the man from the trolleybus was told: Aren't you ashamed to travel with that bowler hat?, he responded: And you, aren't you ashamed to travel with that face?!
Italian postcard by ASER (A. Scaramaglia Edizioni, Roma), no. 267. Photo: Vaselli.
Oh-la-la, it’s a goody!
Enrico Viarisio was an elegant and slim character, recognizable by his perpetually pomaded hair and well-groomed mustache. He often played characters of noble decadence or the invading and sometimes annoying bon-vivant, even if basically an honest man. He was often mistaken for his colleague Giuseppe Porelli.
Until the end of the war Viarisio acted in some 44 Italian sound films. After the war his production slowed down, but in 1950 he played in four films, including the bitter-sweet comedy Prima comunione by Alessandro Blasetti and starring Aldo Fabrizi.
The 1950s were as fruitful for Viarisio as the 1930s. He continued his career onstage in revue shows, supporting such artists as Wanda Osiris, Olga Villi and Isa Barzizza. During the 1950s he also played in dozens of genre films, as well as some auteur films including I vitelloni (1953) by Federico Fellini with Viarisio as Moraldo's father, Stazione Termini/Terminal Station(1953) by Vittorio De Sica, Carosello napoletano/Neapolitan Carousel (Ettore Giannini 1954), and La ragazza del palio/The Love Specialist (Luigi Zampa 1957) with Diana Dors.
Afterwards Viarisio participated in numerous Musicarelli (Italian teen musicals) alongside famous pop stars (or singers who later became famous), like Mina, Bobby Solo, Gianni Morandiand Rita Pavone.
His most famous characterization of that period was that of the commercials shot for Alemagna sweets with Lia Zoppelli and Alberto Lionello, aired between 1957 till 1965 in Carosello, which always ended with the slogan "Ullallà, è una cuccagna!" (Oh-la-la, it’s a goody!).
Viarisio's last film part was as a general in Lina Wertmuller's Non stuzzicate la zanzara/Don't Sting the Mosquito (1966), with Rita Pavoneand a young Giancarlo Giannini.
Enrico Viarisio died in 1967 in Rome. He was 69. He was married to Giuditta Marchetti.
Italian postcard. Istituto Romano di Arti Grafiche Tumminelli & Co., Roma. Enrico Viarisio, Elsa Merlini and Vittorio De Sica in the Italian comedy Non ti conosco più (Nunzio Malasomma, 1936). The film was promoted as a return for Elsa Merlini, "gay, sentimental and malicious".
Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 379.
Carosella Allemagna. Source: Video Babele (YouTube).
Source: Wikipedia (Italian and English) and IMDb.
The German silent film Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) is based on William Shakespeare's classic stage play of jealousy and deceit. Werner Krauss plays the treacherous Iago, who plans to ruin the life of Othello (Emil Jannings) by provoking him to jealousy.
French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie-Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) with Emil Jannings and Werner Krauss.
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922).
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922).
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) with Theodor Loos and Ica von Lenkeffy.
As Venice welcomes their victorious general, Othello the Moor (Emil Jannings ), back to the city, some of them are waiting for Othello to choose his new lieutenant, while others are busy courting the popular Desdemona (Ica von Lenkeffy), the daughter of a Senator.
Othello chooses the loyal Cassio (Theodor Loos) as his lieutenant, arousing bitter jealousy in Iago (Werner Krauss), another soldier, who vows to scheme against his general. That same night, Othello elopes with Desdemona. Othello is soon sent to Cyprus to repel a Turkish invasion, and he arranges for Iago and his wife to bring Desdemona with them to Cyprus.
When Iago's wife learns of a treasured handkerchief that Othello gave to Desdemona, this provides Iago with an idea that he hopes will destroy Othello by provoking him to jealousy.
How can a filmmaker possibly retain the beauty of Shakespeare's prose without congesting the film with endless title cards? A non-dialogue Shakespeare film seems like a contradiction in terms, so very few silent adaptations of his plays have stood the test of time.
This German production of Othello (1922) has fared better than most, due largely to the combined talents of the actors Emil Jannings and Werner Krauss, and Russian-born director Dimitri Buchowetzki.
Wes Connors at IMDb: "The production is nicely staged, with everyone finding their marks. Its costumes and sets are very well designed. The adaptation is faithful enough to Shakespeare's envious storyline. But, watching two overly grand old actors is the film's main calling card, presently."
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922).
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922).
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) with Emil Jannings and Ica von Lenkeffy.
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922).
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) with Emil Jannings and Ica von Lenkeffy.
Sources: Wes Connors (IMDb), TCM and IMDb.
French postcard by Edition de la Cinématographie-Française, Paris. Photo: G.P.C. Publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) with Emil Jannings and Werner Krauss.
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922).
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922).
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) with Theodor Loos and Ica von Lenkeffy.
Bitter jealousy
As Venice welcomes their victorious general, Othello the Moor (Emil Jannings ), back to the city, some of them are waiting for Othello to choose his new lieutenant, while others are busy courting the popular Desdemona (Ica von Lenkeffy), the daughter of a Senator.
Othello chooses the loyal Cassio (Theodor Loos) as his lieutenant, arousing bitter jealousy in Iago (Werner Krauss), another soldier, who vows to scheme against his general. That same night, Othello elopes with Desdemona. Othello is soon sent to Cyprus to repel a Turkish invasion, and he arranges for Iago and his wife to bring Desdemona with them to Cyprus.
When Iago's wife learns of a treasured handkerchief that Othello gave to Desdemona, this provides Iago with an idea that he hopes will destroy Othello by provoking him to jealousy.
How can a filmmaker possibly retain the beauty of Shakespeare's prose without congesting the film with endless title cards? A non-dialogue Shakespeare film seems like a contradiction in terms, so very few silent adaptations of his plays have stood the test of time.
This German production of Othello (1922) has fared better than most, due largely to the combined talents of the actors Emil Jannings and Werner Krauss, and Russian-born director Dimitri Buchowetzki.
Wes Connors at IMDb: "The production is nicely staged, with everyone finding their marks. Its costumes and sets are very well designed. The adaptation is faithful enough to Shakespeare's envious storyline. But, watching two overly grand old actors is the film's main calling card, presently."
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922).
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922).
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) with Emil Jannings and Ica von Lenkeffy.
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922).
French postcard by Edition de la Cinematographie Française. Photo: Grandes Productions Cinématographiques (G.P.C.). Photo: publicity still for Othello (Dimitri Buchowetzki, 1922) with Emil Jannings and Ica von Lenkeffy.
Sources: Wes Connors (IMDb), TCM and IMDb.
German actress and singer Else Elster (1910-1998) appeared in over forty films during the Weimar and Nazi eras.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6755/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6742/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still for Der Frechdachs/The Cheeky Devil (Carl Boese, Heinz Hille, 1932) with Willy Fritsch.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 6690. Photo: Renaissance Film / Verleih: Hugo Engel. Publicity still for Flucht nach Nizza/Escape to Nice (James Bauer, 1933).
Else Elster was born in 1910 (some sources say 1912) in Danzig, Germany (now Gdansk, Poland).
She was trained by actress Ilka Grüning in Berlin and attended the Musikhochschule (music academy) in Vienna. Already before her exams she made her film debut in the musical Die blonde Nachtigall/The Blonde Nightingale (Johannes Meyer, 1930) as the daughter of Gustav Schubert (Ernst Behmer).
Despite starring in her film debut, she was primarily used as a second lead and supporting player in her next films like the hilarious comedy Der Herr auf Bestellung/Gentleman for Hire (Géza von Bolváry, 1930), the operetta Viktoria und ihr Husar /Victoria and Her Hussar (Richard Oswald, 1931) and the musical comedy Wochenend im Paradies/Weekend in Paradise (Robert Land, 1931) with Otto Wallburg and Claire Rommer.
The year 1932 was a very busy one for Else Elster. She took part in eight films, including Geheimnis des blauen Zimmers/The Secret of the Blue Room (Erich Engels, 1932), the comedy Der Frechdachs/The Cheeky Devil (Carl Boese, Heinz Hille, 1932) starring Willy Fritsch, and the thriller Tod über Shanghai/Death Over Shanghai (Rolf Randolf, 1932) starring Gerda Maurus.
The Chinese Ministry of Education requested that the German government have Tod über Shanghai/Death Over Shanghai (Rolf Randolf, 1932) destroyed because they had received reports that it "ridiculed China and the Chinese people".
That year, Elster also made her theatre debut and in the following years she impersonated many roles on stage. Like many other young actresses in the Third Reich, she was one of the celebrities with whom Adolf Hitler liked to show himself. She was one of the first TV announcers of the television station Paul Nipkow.
Her later films included the comedy Muß man sich gleich scheiden lassen/Must We Get Divorced? (Hans Behrendt, 1933) with Aribert Mog and Iván Petrovich, the romantic comedy Krach im Hinterhaus/Trouble Backstairs (Veit Harlan, 1935) starring Henny Porten, and the historical romance Drei Mäderl um Schubert/Three Girls for Schubert (E.W. Emo, 1936) with Paul Hörbiger as composer Franz Schubert.
German cigarette card in the series Unsere Bunten Filmbilder by Ross Verlag for Cigarettenfabrik Josetti, Berlin, no. 153. Photo: Alex Binder.
German collectors card in the Bunte Filmbilder series by Caid Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 323. Photo: Schulz and Wuellner / Ross-Verlag.
During the Second World War, Else Elster entered into a relationship with the Berlin police chief Wolf Heinrich Graf von Helldorf, who had joined the Stauffenberg group. Personal family records show that Elster marked the date of her lover's execution (15 August 1944) with a cross in her diary.
The farewell letter of Count Helldorf is still owned by the family and can be seen as a copy in the House of Resistance in Berlin. Already weeks before the execution she had to appear again and again for nightly Gestapo interrogations. In fact, she did not know anything about Count Helldorf's resistance plans.
Elster was pregnant by Helldorf and their daughter later was named Christa. After the war, Else Elster's filmmaking was practically over because of her close association with the Nazi regime and especially with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and also because her role in the notorious Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß (Veit Harlan, 1940) as the mistress of the title figure.
She only appeared in one more film, Nichts als Zufälle/Nothing but Coincidences (E.W. Emo, 1949) starring Theo Lingen. Nevertheless, she continued to work as a stage actress, cabaret artist and singer, but without her former success.
Later she married the gynecologist dr. Erhard Schlaegel and moved with him in his villa in Günzburg. Her husband brought two children into the marriage and in 1950, Else Schlaegel gave birth to her son Wolf Wilhelm Schlaegel. Together with her husband, she worked for the next few years in the gynaecological clinic.
In 1996, Erhard Schlaegel died shortly after the birth of his grandchild. Else Schlaegel lived for another two years in an apartment in Günzburg, before she died in 1998. Both spouses are buried in the family grave of the family Schlaegel in the Günzburger cemetery. Her son Wolf Wilhelm Schlaegel became a specialist in rehabilitation and now lives with his family in his parents' home in Günzburg. He granted the museum House of Resistance in Berlin an insight into his mother's personal files.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5705/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Schneider.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9119/1, 1935-1936. Photo: UFA.
Big German card by Ross Verlag. Photo: Tobis / Sandau.
Sources: Stephanie D'heil (Steffi-Line.de – German), Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6755/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6742/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still for Der Frechdachs/The Cheeky Devil (Carl Boese, Heinz Hille, 1932) with Willy Fritsch.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 6690. Photo: Renaissance Film / Verleih: Hugo Engel. Publicity still for Flucht nach Nizza/Escape to Nice (James Bauer, 1933).
Ridiculing China and the Chinese People
Else Elster was born in 1910 (some sources say 1912) in Danzig, Germany (now Gdansk, Poland).
She was trained by actress Ilka Grüning in Berlin and attended the Musikhochschule (music academy) in Vienna. Already before her exams she made her film debut in the musical Die blonde Nachtigall/The Blonde Nightingale (Johannes Meyer, 1930) as the daughter of Gustav Schubert (Ernst Behmer).
Despite starring in her film debut, she was primarily used as a second lead and supporting player in her next films like the hilarious comedy Der Herr auf Bestellung/Gentleman for Hire (Géza von Bolváry, 1930), the operetta Viktoria und ihr Husar /Victoria and Her Hussar (Richard Oswald, 1931) and the musical comedy Wochenend im Paradies/Weekend in Paradise (Robert Land, 1931) with Otto Wallburg and Claire Rommer.
The year 1932 was a very busy one for Else Elster. She took part in eight films, including Geheimnis des blauen Zimmers/The Secret of the Blue Room (Erich Engels, 1932), the comedy Der Frechdachs/The Cheeky Devil (Carl Boese, Heinz Hille, 1932) starring Willy Fritsch, and the thriller Tod über Shanghai/Death Over Shanghai (Rolf Randolf, 1932) starring Gerda Maurus.
The Chinese Ministry of Education requested that the German government have Tod über Shanghai/Death Over Shanghai (Rolf Randolf, 1932) destroyed because they had received reports that it "ridiculed China and the Chinese people".
That year, Elster also made her theatre debut and in the following years she impersonated many roles on stage. Like many other young actresses in the Third Reich, she was one of the celebrities with whom Adolf Hitler liked to show himself. She was one of the first TV announcers of the television station Paul Nipkow.
Her later films included the comedy Muß man sich gleich scheiden lassen/Must We Get Divorced? (Hans Behrendt, 1933) with Aribert Mog and Iván Petrovich, the romantic comedy Krach im Hinterhaus/Trouble Backstairs (Veit Harlan, 1935) starring Henny Porten, and the historical romance Drei Mäderl um Schubert/Three Girls for Schubert (E.W. Emo, 1936) with Paul Hörbiger as composer Franz Schubert.
German cigarette card in the series Unsere Bunten Filmbilder by Ross Verlag for Cigarettenfabrik Josetti, Berlin, no. 153. Photo: Alex Binder.
German collectors card in the Bunte Filmbilder series by Caid Zigaretten, Series no. 2, no. 323. Photo: Schulz and Wuellner / Ross-Verlag.
Her lover's execution
During the Second World War, Else Elster entered into a relationship with the Berlin police chief Wolf Heinrich Graf von Helldorf, who had joined the Stauffenberg group. Personal family records show that Elster marked the date of her lover's execution (15 August 1944) with a cross in her diary.
The farewell letter of Count Helldorf is still owned by the family and can be seen as a copy in the House of Resistance in Berlin. Already weeks before the execution she had to appear again and again for nightly Gestapo interrogations. In fact, she did not know anything about Count Helldorf's resistance plans.
Elster was pregnant by Helldorf and their daughter later was named Christa. After the war, Else Elster's filmmaking was practically over because of her close association with the Nazi regime and especially with Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels and also because her role in the notorious Nazi propaganda film Jud Süß (Veit Harlan, 1940) as the mistress of the title figure.
She only appeared in one more film, Nichts als Zufälle/Nothing but Coincidences (E.W. Emo, 1949) starring Theo Lingen. Nevertheless, she continued to work as a stage actress, cabaret artist and singer, but without her former success.
Later she married the gynecologist dr. Erhard Schlaegel and moved with him in his villa in Günzburg. Her husband brought two children into the marriage and in 1950, Else Schlaegel gave birth to her son Wolf Wilhelm Schlaegel. Together with her husband, she worked for the next few years in the gynaecological clinic.
In 1996, Erhard Schlaegel died shortly after the birth of his grandchild. Else Schlaegel lived for another two years in an apartment in Günzburg, before she died in 1998. Both spouses are buried in the family grave of the family Schlaegel in the Günzburger cemetery. Her son Wolf Wilhelm Schlaegel became a specialist in rehabilitation and now lives with his family in his parents' home in Günzburg. He granted the museum House of Resistance in Berlin an insight into his mother's personal files.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5705/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Schneider.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9119/1, 1935-1936. Photo: UFA.
Big German card by Ross Verlag. Photo: Tobis / Sandau.
Sources: Stephanie D'heil (Steffi-Line.de – German), Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.
One of the most renowned Italian postcard publishers was B.F.F. edit. Full name was Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini and the second F in the abbreviation came from Firenze, Florence in English, where the firm was located. Ballerini & Fratini started to publish film and film star postcards in the early 1920s when the Italian cinema was still booming. In the later 1920s, after the Italian film industry had collapsed, B.F.F. focused on international stars. Later they distributed in Italy star postcards from the French publisher Europe and the German Ross Verlag. In the 1930s, Italian film stars were popular again and till the end of the 1950s, B.F.F. issued thousands of star postcards. If the numbering on the postcards is chronological, we dare to question. However, Ballerini & Fratini still exists today and is still located in Florence.
Italian postcard by Ed. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still of Pola Negri in Good and Naughty (Malcolm St. Clair, 1926).
Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 204. Photo Scoffone. Italia Almirante Manzini as Violante in the film L'Arzigogolo (Mario Almirante 1924), adaptation of the play by Sem Benelli.
Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 270. Photo: Alba Film. Publicity still for Il fornaretto di Venezia (Mario Almirante, 1923). Caption: The arrest in the laguna.
Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (Florence), no. 458. Photo: SAI Filmo Paramount, Roma. Publicity still of Greta Nissen and William Collier in The Wanderer (Raoul Walsh, 1925). Collection: Didier Hanson.
Oreste Bilancia. Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 536. Photo Scoffone.
Italian postcard by Ed. Ballerini & Fratini, no. 764. Photo: SAI Filmo Paramount, Roma. Publicity still ofGloria Swanson in Zazà (Allan Dwan, 1923).
French postcard by Europe, no. 388, distributed in Italy by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze. Photo: James Manatt / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in A Woman of Affairs (Clarence Brown, 1928).
Ivan Mozzhukhin. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5253/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Universal. Publicity still for Der weiße Teufel/The White Devil (Alexandre Volkoff, 1930). On the back of the card: Vendita esclusiva Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (125).
Doris Duranti. Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit, no. 2092. Photo: Venturini, Roma.
Lilia Silvi. Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 2112. Photo: Bragaglia.
Antonella Lualdi. Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 2800. Photo: Dear Film / C.I.F.
Vittorio Gassman. Italian postcard by Casa Editr. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (BFF), no. 2962. Photo: Columbia / CEIAD.
Sandra Milo. Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 3353. Photo: Cines.
Alida Valli. Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F. Edit.), no. 4240. Photo: I.C.I. / Vaselli.
Massimo Serato. Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 4242-A. Photo: Bragaglia.
Clara Calamai. Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 4273. Photo: Bragaglia.
Fosco Giachetti. Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 4423. Photo: Scalera Film / Pesce.
Sources: Garbo Forever and Virgilio (Italian).
Italian postcard by Ed. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still of Pola Negri in Good and Naughty (Malcolm St. Clair, 1926).
Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 204. Photo Scoffone. Italia Almirante Manzini as Violante in the film L'Arzigogolo (Mario Almirante 1924), adaptation of the play by Sem Benelli.
Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 270. Photo: Alba Film. Publicity still for Il fornaretto di Venezia (Mario Almirante, 1923). Caption: The arrest in the laguna.
Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (Florence), no. 458. Photo: SAI Filmo Paramount, Roma. Publicity still of Greta Nissen and William Collier in The Wanderer (Raoul Walsh, 1925). Collection: Didier Hanson.
Oreste Bilancia. Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 536. Photo Scoffone.
Italian postcard by Ed. Ballerini & Fratini, no. 764. Photo: SAI Filmo Paramount, Roma. Publicity still ofGloria Swanson in Zazà (Allan Dwan, 1923).
French postcard by Europe, no. 388, distributed in Italy by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze. Photo: James Manatt / Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still of Greta Garbo and John Gilbert in A Woman of Affairs (Clarence Brown, 1928).
Ivan Mozzhukhin. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5253/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Universal. Publicity still for Der weiße Teufel/The White Devil (Alexandre Volkoff, 1930). On the back of the card: Vendita esclusiva Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (125).
Doris Duranti. Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit, no. 2092. Photo: Venturini, Roma.
Lilia Silvi. Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 2112. Photo: Bragaglia.
Antonella Lualdi. Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 2800. Photo: Dear Film / C.I.F.
Vittorio Gassman. Italian postcard by Casa Editr. Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (BFF), no. 2962. Photo: Columbia / CEIAD.
Sandra Milo. Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 3353. Photo: Cines.
Alida Valli. Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze (B.F.F. Edit.), no. 4240. Photo: I.C.I. / Vaselli.
Massimo Serato. Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 4242-A. Photo: Bragaglia.
Clara Calamai. Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze, no. 4273. Photo: Bragaglia.
Fosco Giachetti. Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 4423. Photo: Scalera Film / Pesce.
Sources: Garbo Forever and Virgilio (Italian).
André Nox (1869-1946) was a French actor who worked in the cinema from 1916 till 1940. During the silent era he starred in French and German films. After the sound film was introduced he mainly played supporting parts.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 20.
French postcard. Photo: V. Henry.
André Nox was born as Abraham André Nonnes-Lopes in 1869 in Paris, France. He was sometimes credited as André Nonnez. He came from a family of Jewish notables, and was the nephew of dramaturge and author Georges de Porto-Riche.
After his studies, he worked in finance before joining the army at the very beginning of the First World War. Demobilised in 1916, when he was about fifty, he abandoned his business to try a career in cinema which was booming at the time.
He made his cinema debut for Les Films Succès in the short silent film Sous les phares/Under the lights (1916), directed by André Hugon. He next starred in the silent Western Les chacals/The Jackals (André Hugon, 1917), also starring Louis Paglieri and Musidora.
For Huron, he also appeared in Vertige/Vertigo (André Hugon, 1917) starring Régine Marco, the crime film Requins/Sharks (André Hugon, 1917) starring Charles Krauss, Johannes, fils de Johannes/Johannes, Son of Johannes (André Huron, Louis Paglieri, 1918) with Musidora, and La Fugitive/The Fugitive (André Hugon, 1920) starring Marie-Louise Derval.
He signed a contract with Gaumont and acted in Léon Poirier's Âme de Orient/Soul of the Orient (1919), filmed in Nice with Madeleine Sève, Charles Dullin and the very young Josette Day. Then he played in Poirier’s Le Penseur/The Thinker (Leon Poirier, 1920), a philosophical drama based on an idea of Edmond Fleg, with Marguerite Madys and Armand Tallier.
Pascal Donald at CinéArtistes calls it “certainly his best role (…) With his pepper and salt hair often shaggy, his face with powerful features and his dark eyes, he is the perfect interpreter of poignant dramas.”
For Germaine Dulac, Nox appeared in her La mort du soleil/The Death of the Sun (1922). He played a musician in Le quinzième prélude de Chopin/The fifteenth prelude of Chopin (Victor Tourjanski, 1922).
In 1925, he appeared opposite Conrad Veidt in the French silent historical film Le comte Kostia/Count Kostia (Jacques Rober, 1925), set in Tsarist Russia. He had a supporting part in the drama La femme nue/The Nude Woman (Léonce Perret, 1926) starring Iván Petrovich, Louise Lagrange and Nita Naldi, and based on a play by Henry Bataille.
In Germany, he appeared with Carmen Boni, Werner Krauss and S.Z. Szakall in the silent film Der fidele Bauer/The Merry Farmer (Franz Seitz, 1927), based on the 1907 operetta of the same title, and in Die Hölle der Jungfrauen/The Hell of Virgins (Robert Dinesen, 1928) with Werner Krauss and Elizza La Porta.
Back in France, he appeared with Betty Balfour and Jaque Catelain in the drama Le diable au Coeur/Little Devil May Care (Marcel L'Herbier, 1928). One of his best films is Verdun, visions d'histoire/Verdun, Historical Visions (Léon Poirier, 1928), a dramatic re-enactment of the battle of Verdun during World War I, as seen by both French and German sides. In Germany he also made the silent drama S.O.S. Schiff in Not/Ship in Distress (Carmine Gallone, 1929) starring Liane Haid, Alphons Frylandand Gina Manès.
French postcard. Photo: Gaumont.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 551. Photo: André Nox as L'aumonier (The chaplain) in Léon Poirier's silent film Verdun, visions d'histoire/Verdun, historical visions (1928).
André Nox could make the step to sound films. He played Hedy Lamarr’s father in Extase/Ecstasy (Gustav Machatý, 1933), which became a sensation because of a daring sex scene.
In 1933 he had a part in the French-German Science Fiction film Le tunnel/The Tunnel (Kurt (Curtis) Bernhardt, 1933), starring Jean Gabin, Madeleine Renaud and Robert Le Vigan. It was the French language version of the German film Der Tunnel, with a different cast and some changes to the plot. Both were followed in 1935 by an English version.
Such Multiple-language versions were common in the years immediately following the introduction of sound, before the practice of dubbing had come to dominate international releases. Germany and France made a significant number of films together at this time.
The film is an adaptation of Bernhard Kellermann's 1913 novel Der Tunnel about the construction of a vast tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean connecting Europe and America. The film's Jewish director Kurt Bernhardt had fled Germany following the Nazi takeover, but returned briefly to shoot exterior scenes after being granted special permission by the German government.
Nox also appeared in the drama L'Appel du Silence/The Call of Silence (Léon Poirier, 1936), with Jean Yonnel as the Catholic missionary Charles de Foucauld, who traveled the Sahara and was killed by local bandits.
A success was Un grand amour de Beethoven/The Life and Loves of Beethoven (Abel Gance, 1936) a lyrical biography of the classical composer played by Harry Baur. Nox reunited with director-writer Marcel L’Herbier for the dramas Nuits de feu/Nights of Fire (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937), starring Gaby Morlay and La citadelle du silence/The Citadel of Silence (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937), starring Annabella.
He also had a supporting part in the war film J'accuse!/I Accuse (Abel Gance, 1938) starring Victor Francen. It is a remake of the 1919 film of the same name, which was also directed by Abel Gance.
Nox also appeared with Dita Parlo and Erich von Stroheim in the French historical drama Ultimatum (Robert Wiene, Robert Siodmak, 1938). With his friend Léon Poirier, André Nox made in Equatorial Africa what turned out to be his final film, Brazza ou l'épopée du Congo/Brazza or the epic of Congo (Léon Poirier, 1940).
On his return from Africa, France was at war. The defeat in June 1940 and the rise of anti-Semitism forced Nox to withdraw to Brittany.
André Nox died on 25 February 1946, a few months after the liberation. He did not get the time to return to the cinema. Nox was 76. His son was the actor Pierre Nonnez-Lopès (1898-1978), known as Pierre Nay.
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 445. Photo: R. Tomatis. Publicity still for La Possession/Ownership (Léonce Perret, 1929).
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 195. Photo: Francesca Bertini and André Nox in La Possession (Léonce Perret 1929).
Sources: Pascal Donald (CinéArtistes – French), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 20.
French postcard. Photo: V. Henry.
The perfect interpreter of poignant dramas
André Nox was born as Abraham André Nonnes-Lopes in 1869 in Paris, France. He was sometimes credited as André Nonnez. He came from a family of Jewish notables, and was the nephew of dramaturge and author Georges de Porto-Riche.
After his studies, he worked in finance before joining the army at the very beginning of the First World War. Demobilised in 1916, when he was about fifty, he abandoned his business to try a career in cinema which was booming at the time.
He made his cinema debut for Les Films Succès in the short silent film Sous les phares/Under the lights (1916), directed by André Hugon. He next starred in the silent Western Les chacals/The Jackals (André Hugon, 1917), also starring Louis Paglieri and Musidora.
For Huron, he also appeared in Vertige/Vertigo (André Hugon, 1917) starring Régine Marco, the crime film Requins/Sharks (André Hugon, 1917) starring Charles Krauss, Johannes, fils de Johannes/Johannes, Son of Johannes (André Huron, Louis Paglieri, 1918) with Musidora, and La Fugitive/The Fugitive (André Hugon, 1920) starring Marie-Louise Derval.
He signed a contract with Gaumont and acted in Léon Poirier's Âme de Orient/Soul of the Orient (1919), filmed in Nice with Madeleine Sève, Charles Dullin and the very young Josette Day. Then he played in Poirier’s Le Penseur/The Thinker (Leon Poirier, 1920), a philosophical drama based on an idea of Edmond Fleg, with Marguerite Madys and Armand Tallier.
Pascal Donald at CinéArtistes calls it “certainly his best role (…) With his pepper and salt hair often shaggy, his face with powerful features and his dark eyes, he is the perfect interpreter of poignant dramas.”
For Germaine Dulac, Nox appeared in her La mort du soleil/The Death of the Sun (1922). He played a musician in Le quinzième prélude de Chopin/The fifteenth prelude of Chopin (Victor Tourjanski, 1922).
In 1925, he appeared opposite Conrad Veidt in the French silent historical film Le comte Kostia/Count Kostia (Jacques Rober, 1925), set in Tsarist Russia. He had a supporting part in the drama La femme nue/The Nude Woman (Léonce Perret, 1926) starring Iván Petrovich, Louise Lagrange and Nita Naldi, and based on a play by Henry Bataille.
In Germany, he appeared with Carmen Boni, Werner Krauss and S.Z. Szakall in the silent film Der fidele Bauer/The Merry Farmer (Franz Seitz, 1927), based on the 1907 operetta of the same title, and in Die Hölle der Jungfrauen/The Hell of Virgins (Robert Dinesen, 1928) with Werner Krauss and Elizza La Porta.
Back in France, he appeared with Betty Balfour and Jaque Catelain in the drama Le diable au Coeur/Little Devil May Care (Marcel L'Herbier, 1928). One of his best films is Verdun, visions d'histoire/Verdun, Historical Visions (Léon Poirier, 1928), a dramatic re-enactment of the battle of Verdun during World War I, as seen by both French and German sides. In Germany he also made the silent drama S.O.S. Schiff in Not/Ship in Distress (Carmine Gallone, 1929) starring Liane Haid, Alphons Frylandand Gina Manès.
French postcard. Photo: Gaumont.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 551. Photo: André Nox as L'aumonier (The chaplain) in Léon Poirier's silent film Verdun, visions d'histoire/Verdun, historical visions (1928).
Hedy Lamarr's father in Extase
André Nox could make the step to sound films. He played Hedy Lamarr’s father in Extase/Ecstasy (Gustav Machatý, 1933), which became a sensation because of a daring sex scene.
In 1933 he had a part in the French-German Science Fiction film Le tunnel/The Tunnel (Kurt (Curtis) Bernhardt, 1933), starring Jean Gabin, Madeleine Renaud and Robert Le Vigan. It was the French language version of the German film Der Tunnel, with a different cast and some changes to the plot. Both were followed in 1935 by an English version.
Such Multiple-language versions were common in the years immediately following the introduction of sound, before the practice of dubbing had come to dominate international releases. Germany and France made a significant number of films together at this time.
The film is an adaptation of Bernhard Kellermann's 1913 novel Der Tunnel about the construction of a vast tunnel under the Atlantic Ocean connecting Europe and America. The film's Jewish director Kurt Bernhardt had fled Germany following the Nazi takeover, but returned briefly to shoot exterior scenes after being granted special permission by the German government.
Nox also appeared in the drama L'Appel du Silence/The Call of Silence (Léon Poirier, 1936), with Jean Yonnel as the Catholic missionary Charles de Foucauld, who traveled the Sahara and was killed by local bandits.
A success was Un grand amour de Beethoven/The Life and Loves of Beethoven (Abel Gance, 1936) a lyrical biography of the classical composer played by Harry Baur. Nox reunited with director-writer Marcel L’Herbier for the dramas Nuits de feu/Nights of Fire (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937), starring Gaby Morlay and La citadelle du silence/The Citadel of Silence (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937), starring Annabella.
He also had a supporting part in the war film J'accuse!/I Accuse (Abel Gance, 1938) starring Victor Francen. It is a remake of the 1919 film of the same name, which was also directed by Abel Gance.
Nox also appeared with Dita Parlo and Erich von Stroheim in the French historical drama Ultimatum (Robert Wiene, Robert Siodmak, 1938). With his friend Léon Poirier, André Nox made in Equatorial Africa what turned out to be his final film, Brazza ou l'épopée du Congo/Brazza or the epic of Congo (Léon Poirier, 1940).
On his return from Africa, France was at war. The defeat in June 1940 and the rise of anti-Semitism forced Nox to withdraw to Brittany.
André Nox died on 25 February 1946, a few months after the liberation. He did not get the time to return to the cinema. Nox was 76. His son was the actor Pierre Nonnez-Lopès (1898-1978), known as Pierre Nay.
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 445. Photo: R. Tomatis. Publicity still for La Possession/Ownership (Léonce Perret, 1929).
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 195. Photo: Francesca Bertini and André Nox in La Possession (Léonce Perret 1929).
Sources: Pascal Donald (CinéArtistes – French), Wikipedia (French and English) and IMDb.
German actress Karin Hardt (1910-1992) made her cinema debut as a pure and disarmingly natural backfisch, looking for happiness. Her impressive career with many film, theatre and television appearances lasted for six decades.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1133/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Alex Binder.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7438/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Jacobi, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7340/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8377/2, 1934-1935. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9457/2, 1935-1936. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.
Karin Therese Meta Hardt was born in Altona (now Hamburg), Germany in 1910. She was a daughter of a merchant.
She had private acting lessons with Alex Otto and soon had theatre engagements in Mönchengladbach, Rheydt and Altenburg.
In 1931 she made her film debut in Vater geht auf Reisen/father Goes To Travel (Carl Boese, 1931) with Lissi Arna.
She was then discovered by director Erich Waschneck, who cast her in Acht Mädels im Boot/Eight Girls in a Boat (Erich Waschneck, 1932), which became her breakthrough.
She was the pure and disarmingly natural backfisch, who in a girly way angled for happiness.
Dutch postcard by M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam, no. 146. Photo: Filma, Amsterdam. Still from Acht Mädels im Boot/Eight Girls in a Boat (1932).
Dutch postcard by JosPe, Arnhem. Publicity still for Acht Mädels im Boot/Eight Girls in a Boat (Erich Waschneck, 1932).
Dutch postcard by JosPe. Photo: still from Acht Mädels im Boot/Eight Girls in a Boat (1932).
German postcard by Ross Verlag. Published for Das Programm von Heute für Film und Theater G.m.b.H, Stuttgart. Photo: Terra-Film.
In the following years Karin Hardt became a beloved star.
Karin Hardt and Erich Waschneck married in 1933, and he would go on to direct her in some of their best films, including An heiligen Wassern/Sacred Waters (1932) and Abel mit der Mundharmonika/Abel with the Mouth Organ (1933).
Among her best known films in the following years belong Ein gewisser Herr Gran/A Certain Mr. Gran (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1933) next to Hans Albers,Die blonde Christel/Blonde Christel (Frans Seitz, 1933), and Barcarole (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1935).
In the second half of the 1930s followed Die Umwege des schönen Karl/The Diversions of Handsome Karl (Carl Froelich, 1938) with Heinz Rühmann, and Menschen vom Variete/Vaudeville People (Josef von Báky, 1939) as the naive, blonde competitor of La Jana.
During the war years her engagements became less, but Karin Hardt appeared for example in films like Kameraden/Comrades (Hans Schweikart, 1941) with Willy Birgel, Das Hochzeitshotel/The Marriage Hotel (Carl Boese, 1944), and Via Mala (Josef von Báky, 1944-1948) as the daughter of Carl Wery.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7047/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Fanal / Terra Produktion.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1285/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Hämmerer / UFA.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3311/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / UFA.
German postcard by Das Programm von Heute / Ross Verlag, Berlin. Photo: H.G. Film.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3491/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick / Terra.
After the war Karin Hardt was again regularly seen in the cinema. Erich Waschneck directed her in the comedy Danke es geht mir gut/Thanks, I’m alright (1948).
She appeared as the the queen in the fairytale film Dornröschen/Sleeping Beauty (Fritz Genschow, 1955), next to Horst Buchholz in Endstation Liebe/Last Stop Love (Georg Tressler, 1957), and with Kirk Douglasin Town Without Pity (Gottfried Reinhardt, 1961).
She mainly appeared in the theatre, in Berlin, Hamburg, Aachen and in Köln (Cologne). From the 1960s on she was also often seen on television, in TV-series like Bei uns zu Haus/At Our Home (1963), Der Forellenhof/The Trout Farm (1965) and Die Unternehmungen des Herrn Hans/The Enterprises of Mr. Hans (Charles Kerremans, 1976).
Hardt also appeared in the film Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo/Just a Gigolo (David Hemmings, 1979) with David Bowie. In 1983 she was awarded with the Filmband in Gold for her continuing attributions to the German cinema.
Then she had a great comeback in the popular serial Die Schwarzwaldklinik/The Black Forest Clinic (1985-1986).
Karin Hardt died of cerebral hemorrhage in 1992 in Berlin. She was married twice. First to Erich Waschneck from 1933 till his death in 1970, and then to Rolf von Goth.
Dutch postcard by Jospé, Arnhem, no. 349. Photo: Filma. Dutch censorship mark at the right.
Dutch postcard (with Dutch censorship mark on the right) by Jospé, Arnhem. Photo: Theodor Loos (Baumeister Engelhardt) and Karin Hardt (Christa) in Acht Mädels im Boot/Eight Girls in a Boat (Erich Waschneck 1932), presented here as 8 Mädchen im Boot. The film was remade in the Netherlands in 1958 as Jenny (Willy van Hemert, 1958).
Dutch postcard by City Film, no. 604. Photo: Karin Hardt in the film Schön ist es verliebt zu sein/It's Great to Be in Love (Walter Janssen, 1933-1934).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9683/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Randolf / Terra. Publicity still for Der Abenteurer von Paris/The Paris Adventure (Karl Heinz Martin, 1936).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9945/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Tobis Europa / Slavia. Publicity still for Port Arthur (Nicolas Farkas, 1936).
Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia (German), Schwarzwald-TV-Klinik (German), and IMDb.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1133/1, 1937-1938. Photo: Alex Binder.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7438/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Jacobi, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7340/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8377/2, 1934-1935. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9457/2, 1935-1936. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.
Disarmingly Natural
Karin Therese Meta Hardt was born in Altona (now Hamburg), Germany in 1910. She was a daughter of a merchant.
She had private acting lessons with Alex Otto and soon had theatre engagements in Mönchengladbach, Rheydt and Altenburg.
In 1931 she made her film debut in Vater geht auf Reisen/father Goes To Travel (Carl Boese, 1931) with Lissi Arna.
She was then discovered by director Erich Waschneck, who cast her in Acht Mädels im Boot/Eight Girls in a Boat (Erich Waschneck, 1932), which became her breakthrough.
She was the pure and disarmingly natural backfisch, who in a girly way angled for happiness.
Dutch postcard by M. Bonnist & Zonen, Amsterdam, no. 146. Photo: Filma, Amsterdam. Still from Acht Mädels im Boot/Eight Girls in a Boat (1932).
Dutch postcard by JosPe, Arnhem. Publicity still for Acht Mädels im Boot/Eight Girls in a Boat (Erich Waschneck, 1932).
Dutch postcard by JosPe. Photo: still from Acht Mädels im Boot/Eight Girls in a Boat (1932).
German postcard by Ross Verlag. Published for Das Programm von Heute für Film und Theater G.m.b.H, Stuttgart. Photo: Terra-Film.
Naive, Blonde Competitor
In the following years Karin Hardt became a beloved star.
Karin Hardt and Erich Waschneck married in 1933, and he would go on to direct her in some of their best films, including An heiligen Wassern/Sacred Waters (1932) and Abel mit der Mundharmonika/Abel with the Mouth Organ (1933).
Among her best known films in the following years belong Ein gewisser Herr Gran/A Certain Mr. Gran (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1933) next to Hans Albers,Die blonde Christel/Blonde Christel (Frans Seitz, 1933), and Barcarole (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1935).
In the second half of the 1930s followed Die Umwege des schönen Karl/The Diversions of Handsome Karl (Carl Froelich, 1938) with Heinz Rühmann, and Menschen vom Variete/Vaudeville People (Josef von Báky, 1939) as the naive, blonde competitor of La Jana.
During the war years her engagements became less, but Karin Hardt appeared for example in films like Kameraden/Comrades (Hans Schweikart, 1941) with Willy Birgel, Das Hochzeitshotel/The Marriage Hotel (Carl Boese, 1944), and Via Mala (Josef von Báky, 1944-1948) as the daughter of Carl Wery.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7047/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Fanal / Terra Produktion.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 1285/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Hämmerer / UFA.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3311/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / UFA.
German postcard by Das Programm von Heute / Ross Verlag, Berlin. Photo: H.G. Film.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3491/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick / Terra.
David Bowie
After the war Karin Hardt was again regularly seen in the cinema. Erich Waschneck directed her in the comedy Danke es geht mir gut/Thanks, I’m alright (1948).
She appeared as the the queen in the fairytale film Dornröschen/Sleeping Beauty (Fritz Genschow, 1955), next to Horst Buchholz in Endstation Liebe/Last Stop Love (Georg Tressler, 1957), and with Kirk Douglasin Town Without Pity (Gottfried Reinhardt, 1961).
She mainly appeared in the theatre, in Berlin, Hamburg, Aachen and in Köln (Cologne). From the 1960s on she was also often seen on television, in TV-series like Bei uns zu Haus/At Our Home (1963), Der Forellenhof/The Trout Farm (1965) and Die Unternehmungen des Herrn Hans/The Enterprises of Mr. Hans (Charles Kerremans, 1976).
Hardt also appeared in the film Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo/Just a Gigolo (David Hemmings, 1979) with David Bowie. In 1983 she was awarded with the Filmband in Gold for her continuing attributions to the German cinema.
Then she had a great comeback in the popular serial Die Schwarzwaldklinik/The Black Forest Clinic (1985-1986).
Karin Hardt died of cerebral hemorrhage in 1992 in Berlin. She was married twice. First to Erich Waschneck from 1933 till his death in 1970, and then to Rolf von Goth.
Dutch postcard by Jospé, Arnhem, no. 349. Photo: Filma. Dutch censorship mark at the right.
Dutch postcard (with Dutch censorship mark on the right) by Jospé, Arnhem. Photo: Theodor Loos (Baumeister Engelhardt) and Karin Hardt (Christa) in Acht Mädels im Boot/Eight Girls in a Boat (Erich Waschneck 1932), presented here as 8 Mädchen im Boot. The film was remade in the Netherlands in 1958 as Jenny (Willy van Hemert, 1958).
Dutch postcard by City Film, no. 604. Photo: Karin Hardt in the film Schön ist es verliebt zu sein/It's Great to Be in Love (Walter Janssen, 1933-1934).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9683/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Randolf / Terra. Publicity still for Der Abenteurer von Paris/The Paris Adventure (Karl Heinz Martin, 1936).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9945/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Tobis Europa / Slavia. Publicity still for Port Arthur (Nicolas Farkas, 1936).
Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia (German), Schwarzwald-TV-Klinik (German), and IMDb.
Gabrielle Réjane (1856-1920) was a successful French stage actress and early silent film actress. She is most famous for her role of Catherine, in Sardou's play Madame Sans-Gene (1893), which she filmed twice.
French postcard by S.I.P., 34e serie, no. 9. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard, no. 1342. Photo Reutlinger, Paris. Mailed in 1905.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 1874. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris. Mailed in 1911.
French postcard by S.I.P.. Photo Reutlinger, Paris. Caption: Vaudeville.
Gabrielle Réjane was born as Gabrielle-Charlotte Reju in 1856 in Paris. She was the daughter of an actor.
She became a pupil of Régnier at the Conservatoire, and took the second prize for comedy in 1874. Her debut was the next year, during which she played a number of light — especially soubrette — parts.
Her first great success was in Henri Meilhac's Ma camarade (1883), in which she expressed her emotional sympathy to gain great audience appeal. She soon became known as an emotional actress of rare gifts, notably in Décor, Germinie Lacerteux, Ma cousine, Amoureuse and Lysistrata.
In 1892 a pregnant Réjane married Paul Porel, the director of the Théâtre du Vaudeville, but the marriage dissolved in 1905. Their only child was a daughter Germaine.
In 1893 she appeared in Paris, and soon thereafter in London and New York, in her most famous role as Catherine in Victorien Sardou's Madame Sans-Gêne. Her performances in the play made her as well known in England and the United States as in Paris, and in later years she appeared in characteristic parts in both countries, being particularly successful in Zaza and La Passerelle.
French postcard by Raphael Tuck & Fils, Editeurs, Paris, Série 200. Photo: publicity still for the stage play Madame Sans-Gêne. Caption: Victorien Sardou, madame Réjane and Léon Porel signing the contract for Madame Sans-Gêne.
French postcard by Raphael Tuck & Fils, Editeurs, Paris, Série 200. Photo: publicity still for the stage play Madame Sans-Gêne.
French postcard by Raphael Tuck & Fils, Editeurs, Paris, Série 200. Photo: publicity still for the stage play Madame Sans-Gêne.
In 1906, Gabrielle Réjane opened the Théâtre Réjane, where she continued to act as well as manage the theatre.
Along with Sarah Bernhardt, she served as the model for the character of the actress Berma in Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time (A la Recherche du Temps Perdu).
The French vivacity and animated expression that was Réjane's trademark made her unrivalled in the parts which she had made her own.
She appeared in several short films during the early years of cinema, including an experimental 1908 sound film for Gaumont. She made two short and silent film adaptations of her greatest success, Madame Sans-Gêne (Clément Maurice, 1900) and Madame Sans-Gêne (André Calmettes, Henri Desfontaines 1911).
Her other films included Britannicus (André Calmettes, 1908) with Jean Mounet-Sully, the propaganda film Alsace (Henri Pouctal, 1916), and Miarka, la fille à l'ourse/Gypsy Passion (Louis Mercanton, 1920) starring Desdemona Mazza and Ivor Novello.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 2. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by S.I.P., 75th Series, no. 4. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by S.I.P., 85th Series, no. 7. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 118/19. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
In Alsace (Henri Pouctal, 1916), a film that luckily still survives, Gabrielle Réjane reprised the role Gaston Leroux had written for her as stage play, with which she had been very successful in early 1913 at her own theatre.
Two families, one, French, one German, rival each other in the contested province of the Alsace. The French son (Albert Dieudonné) falls in love with the daughter of the Germans, Marguerite (Francesca Flory), but his mother (Réjane) tries to prevent the marriage plans.
When he falls ill, she gives in. When war breaks out, he must choose between his German fiancee and his French mother. Both women are fanatics and plotters, the man instead is weak. He is beaten up by a German mob and dies in his mother's arms.
When the film premiered at the Paris Gaumont-Palace, it was a massive success, especially for the final image of Réjane posing as the Marseillaise on the tomb of her son.
The full film, a tinted version found and restored by the Dutch EYE Filmmuseum, and containing English intertitles, can be watched on European Film Gateway
Gabrielle Réjane was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour three months before her death. She died in Paris in 1920 and was buried there in the Cimetière de Passy.
French postcard. Photo Reutlinger, Paris, No. 86/19. S.I.P. Mailed in 1904.
French postcard by S.I.P. Photo Reutlinger, Paris. Mailed in 1906.
French postcard by S.I.P., for Vins Désiles. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by M.J.S. Caption: Vaudeville.
French [?] postcard, Series 129.
French postcard, no. 27. Caption: Hennequeville - La Villa de Madame Réjane. L.L.
Sources: Kit and Morgan Benson (Find A Grave), Wikipedia and IMDb.
French postcard by S.I.P., 34e serie, no. 9. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard, no. 1342. Photo Reutlinger, Paris. Mailed in 1905.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 1874. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris. Mailed in 1911.
French postcard by S.I.P.. Photo Reutlinger, Paris. Caption: Vaudeville.
An emotional actress of rare gifts
She became a pupil of Régnier at the Conservatoire, and took the second prize for comedy in 1874. Her debut was the next year, during which she played a number of light — especially soubrette — parts.
Her first great success was in Henri Meilhac's Ma camarade (1883), in which she expressed her emotional sympathy to gain great audience appeal. She soon became known as an emotional actress of rare gifts, notably in Décor, Germinie Lacerteux, Ma cousine, Amoureuse and Lysistrata.
In 1892 a pregnant Réjane married Paul Porel, the director of the Théâtre du Vaudeville, but the marriage dissolved in 1905. Their only child was a daughter Germaine.
In 1893 she appeared in Paris, and soon thereafter in London and New York, in her most famous role as Catherine in Victorien Sardou's Madame Sans-Gêne. Her performances in the play made her as well known in England and the United States as in Paris, and in later years she appeared in characteristic parts in both countries, being particularly successful in Zaza and La Passerelle.
French postcard by Raphael Tuck & Fils, Editeurs, Paris, Série 200. Photo: publicity still for the stage play Madame Sans-Gêne. Caption: Victorien Sardou, madame Réjane and Léon Porel signing the contract for Madame Sans-Gêne.
French postcard by Raphael Tuck & Fils, Editeurs, Paris, Série 200. Photo: publicity still for the stage play Madame Sans-Gêne.
French postcard by Raphael Tuck & Fils, Editeurs, Paris, Série 200. Photo: publicity still for the stage play Madame Sans-Gêne.
French vivacity and animated expression
In 1906, Gabrielle Réjane opened the Théâtre Réjane, where she continued to act as well as manage the theatre.
Along with Sarah Bernhardt, she served as the model for the character of the actress Berma in Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time (A la Recherche du Temps Perdu).
The French vivacity and animated expression that was Réjane's trademark made her unrivalled in the parts which she had made her own.
She appeared in several short films during the early years of cinema, including an experimental 1908 sound film for Gaumont. She made two short and silent film adaptations of her greatest success, Madame Sans-Gêne (Clément Maurice, 1900) and Madame Sans-Gêne (André Calmettes, Henri Desfontaines 1911).
Her other films included Britannicus (André Calmettes, 1908) with Jean Mounet-Sully, the propaganda film Alsace (Henri Pouctal, 1916), and Miarka, la fille à l'ourse/Gypsy Passion (Louis Mercanton, 1920) starring Desdemona Mazza and Ivor Novello.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 2. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by S.I.P., 75th Series, no. 4. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by S.I.P., 85th Series, no. 7. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by S.I.P., no. 118/19. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
The Marseillaise on the tomb of her son
In Alsace (Henri Pouctal, 1916), a film that luckily still survives, Gabrielle Réjane reprised the role Gaston Leroux had written for her as stage play, with which she had been very successful in early 1913 at her own theatre.
Two families, one, French, one German, rival each other in the contested province of the Alsace. The French son (Albert Dieudonné) falls in love with the daughter of the Germans, Marguerite (Francesca Flory), but his mother (Réjane) tries to prevent the marriage plans.
When he falls ill, she gives in. When war breaks out, he must choose between his German fiancee and his French mother. Both women are fanatics and plotters, the man instead is weak. He is beaten up by a German mob and dies in his mother's arms.
When the film premiered at the Paris Gaumont-Palace, it was a massive success, especially for the final image of Réjane posing as the Marseillaise on the tomb of her son.
The full film, a tinted version found and restored by the Dutch EYE Filmmuseum, and containing English intertitles, can be watched on European Film Gateway
Gabrielle Réjane was made a Knight of the Legion of Honour three months before her death. She died in Paris in 1920 and was buried there in the Cimetière de Passy.
French postcard. Photo Reutlinger, Paris, No. 86/19. S.I.P. Mailed in 1904.
French postcard by S.I.P. Photo Reutlinger, Paris. Mailed in 1906.
French postcard by S.I.P., for Vins Désiles. Photo: Reutlinger, Paris.
French postcard by M.J.S. Caption: Vaudeville.
French [?] postcard, Series 129.
French postcard, no. 27. Caption: Hennequeville - La Villa de Madame Réjane. L.L.
Sources: Kit and Morgan Benson (Find A Grave), Wikipedia and IMDb.
Glamorous English film actress Sally Gray (1915-2006) appeared in many musical comedies of the 1930s and 1940s. The hazel-eyed blonde Gray was seen as ‘a British rival to Ginger Rogers.’ After a break from performing, she emerged in the mid-1940s as a sultry beauty who starred in a series of moody dramas and suspenseful thrillers. Later she became Constance Vera Browne, Baroness Oranmore and Browne.
British autograph card. Photo: Eagle Lion.
Sally Gray was born Constance Vera Stevens in Holloway, London, in 1915. Gray was the daughter of Charles Stevens, who drove a motor cab, and his wife, Gertrude Grace. Her mother was a ballet dancer and her grandmother a "principal boy" in the 1870s. Her father died when Gray was young.
As a child, she trained at Fay Compton's School of Dramatic Art, and began acting on stage at the age of 10. Gray made her professional stage debut at the age of twelve in All God's Chillun at the Globe Theatre in London, playing an African boy. When she was 14, Gray appeared in a minstrel show at the Gate Theatre in London.
She made her film debut under the name of Constance Stevens with a bit part in the comedy School for Scandal (Thorold Dickinson, Maurice Elvey, 1930) starring Basil Gill and Madeleine Carroll. The now as lost considered film is the only feature-length film shot using the unsuccessful Raycol colour process.
Sally then went back to school for two years, training again at Fay Compton’s School of Dramatic Art, during which time she performed in cabarets. She appeared in The Gay Divorce (1933) on stage with Fred Astaire. Astaire gave her private dance lessons.
The agent John Gliddon, who had discovered Vivien Leigh, saw the 18 years-old Gray in the musical Jill Darling (1934) and signed her. Gray returned to films in 1935, with a small part in the historical drama The Dictator (Victor Saville, 1935), starring Clive Brook. She could also be seen in the comedy Cross Currents (Adrian Brunel, 1935), the musical Radio Pirates (Ivar Campbell, 1935), the comedy Lucky Days (Reginald Denham, 1935) with Chili Bouchier, and the crime film Checkmate (George Pearson, 1935).
She returned on stage and was spotted by multi-talented actor-producer Stanley Lupino, who fell in love with her. Lupino was part of a theatrical dynasty that went back to 1634, and he was the father of the actress Ida Lupino. Gray had the female lead in his comedy Cheer Up (Leo Mittler, 1936) starring Stanley Lupino.
She also had leads in the musical drama Calling the Tune (Reginald Denham, Thorold Dickinson, 1936), the thriller Cafe Colette (Paul L. Stein, 1937) with Paul Cavanagh, and the musical Saturday Night Revue (Norman Lee, 1937) with Billy Milton. In 1936 she was earning an impressive £150 a week.
Gray had support roles in the thriller Lightning Conductor (Maurice Elvey, 1937), the musical Over She Goes (Graham Cutts, 1937) with Lupino, The Edgar Wallace thriller Mr. Reeder in Room 13 (Norman Lee, 1937), and the musical Hold My Hand (Thornton Freeland, 1938) with Lupino. Gray was the female lead in the drama Sword of Honour (Maurice Elvey, 1938), the RKO production The Saint in London (John Paddy Carstairs, 1939) with George Sanders as Simon Templar, the musical comedy The Lambeth Walk (Albert de Courville, 1939) with Lupino Lane, Stanley Lupino’s nephew.
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 1261. Photo: Pinebrook LTD.
British autograph card.
During the war years, Sally Gray continued her career smoothly. She played a non-musical role in the thriller A Window in London (Herbert Mason, 1940), starring Michael Redgrave. According to Tom Vallance in The Independent, “she was convincing in her offbeat role as an illusionist's wife in a neatly constructed thriller”.
Then she played Miss America in the comedy Olympic Honeymoon (Alfred J. Goulding, 1940) with Claude Hulbert, and had the female lead in another British RKO production, The Saint's Vacation (Leslie Fenton, 1941), this time with Hugh Sinclair as Simon Templar.
She had a sensitive role in the romantic melodrama Dangerous Moonlight (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1941). Tom Vallance: “Particularly remembered for its theme music, Richard Addinsell's "The Warsaw Concerto", the story of a Polish pianist (Anton Walbrook) who joins an air squadron against the wishes of his girlfriend (Gray), loses his memory after being wounded in the Battle of Britain, but regains it (and is reunited with his sweetheart) when he starts playing the concerto, had great appeal for wartime audiences.”
The same year she appeared in Lady Behave, London's first major musical since the Second World War began. Stanley Lupino, who had cancer, had written the musical and co-starred. The show had to close after a month because of Lupino's illness. Gray returned to the stage to star in My Sister Eileen (1942) with Coral Browne.
Lupino died, leaving Gray £10,000. Gray had a nervous breakdown, resulting in her retirement for a number of years. Lupino had been not only her lover, but her mentor and friend.
She returned to the screen in 1946 and made her strongest bid for stardom in a series of melodramas. Tom Vallance again in The Independent: “Her husky voice was particularly attractive, and distinctively different from other stars of the time.”
She appeared in the hospital thriller Green for Danger (Sidney Gilliat, 1946) with Alastair Sim and Trevor Howard, the drama Carnival (Stanley Haynes 1946) with Michael Wilding and Stanley Holloway, the stylish, brutal Film Noir They Made Me a Fugitive (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1947) with Trevor Howard, and the drama The Mark of Cain (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1947), starring Eric Portman.
Gray then made the thriller Silent Dust (Lance Comfort, 1948) and the Film Noir Obsession (Edward Dmytryk 1949). Ronald Bergan in The Guardian: “Arguably Gray's best and meatiest role came in the McCarthyist exile Edward Dmytryk's Obsession (1949), as the cheating wife of psychiatrist Robert Newton, who plans a slow death for her latest lover.”
Her final film was the spy thriller Escape Route (Seymour Friedman, Peter Graham Scott, 1952) with ageing American tough guy George Raft as an FBI agent in England. RKO executives, impressed with Gray, authorised producer William Sistrom to offer her a long-term contract if she would move to the United States. However, she declined the offer and instead retired in 1952 after getting married.
In 1951, Gray had married The 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, an Anglo-Irish peer. They lived in a castle in County Mayo, Ireland. The couple kept the marriage secret until the 1953 coronation, at which she appeared with her husband. The final phase of Gray's life found her very much in the upper class, and she led a comfortable life, preferring not to talk about her acting career.
In the early 1960s the couple returned to England and settled in a flat in Eaton Place, Belgravia, London. Gray tended assiduously to her gardening in later years. After 51 years of marriage, her husband died in 2002 at the age of 100. The couple had no children. Sally Gray died in 2006 in London, England. She was 91.
British autograph card.
Dutch postcard. Photo: Eagle Lion.
Sources: Tom Vallance (The Independent), Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
British autograph card. Photo: Eagle Lion.
Private dance lessons by Fred Astaire
Sally Gray was born Constance Vera Stevens in Holloway, London, in 1915. Gray was the daughter of Charles Stevens, who drove a motor cab, and his wife, Gertrude Grace. Her mother was a ballet dancer and her grandmother a "principal boy" in the 1870s. Her father died when Gray was young.
As a child, she trained at Fay Compton's School of Dramatic Art, and began acting on stage at the age of 10. Gray made her professional stage debut at the age of twelve in All God's Chillun at the Globe Theatre in London, playing an African boy. When she was 14, Gray appeared in a minstrel show at the Gate Theatre in London.
She made her film debut under the name of Constance Stevens with a bit part in the comedy School for Scandal (Thorold Dickinson, Maurice Elvey, 1930) starring Basil Gill and Madeleine Carroll. The now as lost considered film is the only feature-length film shot using the unsuccessful Raycol colour process.
Sally then went back to school for two years, training again at Fay Compton’s School of Dramatic Art, during which time she performed in cabarets. She appeared in The Gay Divorce (1933) on stage with Fred Astaire. Astaire gave her private dance lessons.
The agent John Gliddon, who had discovered Vivien Leigh, saw the 18 years-old Gray in the musical Jill Darling (1934) and signed her. Gray returned to films in 1935, with a small part in the historical drama The Dictator (Victor Saville, 1935), starring Clive Brook. She could also be seen in the comedy Cross Currents (Adrian Brunel, 1935), the musical Radio Pirates (Ivar Campbell, 1935), the comedy Lucky Days (Reginald Denham, 1935) with Chili Bouchier, and the crime film Checkmate (George Pearson, 1935).
She returned on stage and was spotted by multi-talented actor-producer Stanley Lupino, who fell in love with her. Lupino was part of a theatrical dynasty that went back to 1634, and he was the father of the actress Ida Lupino. Gray had the female lead in his comedy Cheer Up (Leo Mittler, 1936) starring Stanley Lupino.
She also had leads in the musical drama Calling the Tune (Reginald Denham, Thorold Dickinson, 1936), the thriller Cafe Colette (Paul L. Stein, 1937) with Paul Cavanagh, and the musical Saturday Night Revue (Norman Lee, 1937) with Billy Milton. In 1936 she was earning an impressive £150 a week.
Gray had support roles in the thriller Lightning Conductor (Maurice Elvey, 1937), the musical Over She Goes (Graham Cutts, 1937) with Lupino, The Edgar Wallace thriller Mr. Reeder in Room 13 (Norman Lee, 1937), and the musical Hold My Hand (Thornton Freeland, 1938) with Lupino. Gray was the female lead in the drama Sword of Honour (Maurice Elvey, 1938), the RKO production The Saint in London (John Paddy Carstairs, 1939) with George Sanders as Simon Templar, the musical comedy The Lambeth Walk (Albert de Courville, 1939) with Lupino Lane, Stanley Lupino’s nephew.
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 1261. Photo: Pinebrook LTD.
British autograph card.
The death of her lover, mentor and friend
During the war years, Sally Gray continued her career smoothly. She played a non-musical role in the thriller A Window in London (Herbert Mason, 1940), starring Michael Redgrave. According to Tom Vallance in The Independent, “she was convincing in her offbeat role as an illusionist's wife in a neatly constructed thriller”.
Then she played Miss America in the comedy Olympic Honeymoon (Alfred J. Goulding, 1940) with Claude Hulbert, and had the female lead in another British RKO production, The Saint's Vacation (Leslie Fenton, 1941), this time with Hugh Sinclair as Simon Templar.
She had a sensitive role in the romantic melodrama Dangerous Moonlight (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1941). Tom Vallance: “Particularly remembered for its theme music, Richard Addinsell's "The Warsaw Concerto", the story of a Polish pianist (Anton Walbrook) who joins an air squadron against the wishes of his girlfriend (Gray), loses his memory after being wounded in the Battle of Britain, but regains it (and is reunited with his sweetheart) when he starts playing the concerto, had great appeal for wartime audiences.”
The same year she appeared in Lady Behave, London's first major musical since the Second World War began. Stanley Lupino, who had cancer, had written the musical and co-starred. The show had to close after a month because of Lupino's illness. Gray returned to the stage to star in My Sister Eileen (1942) with Coral Browne.
Lupino died, leaving Gray £10,000. Gray had a nervous breakdown, resulting in her retirement for a number of years. Lupino had been not only her lover, but her mentor and friend.
She returned to the screen in 1946 and made her strongest bid for stardom in a series of melodramas. Tom Vallance again in The Independent: “Her husky voice was particularly attractive, and distinctively different from other stars of the time.”
She appeared in the hospital thriller Green for Danger (Sidney Gilliat, 1946) with Alastair Sim and Trevor Howard, the drama Carnival (Stanley Haynes 1946) with Michael Wilding and Stanley Holloway, the stylish, brutal Film Noir They Made Me a Fugitive (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1947) with Trevor Howard, and the drama The Mark of Cain (Brian Desmond Hurst, 1947), starring Eric Portman.
Gray then made the thriller Silent Dust (Lance Comfort, 1948) and the Film Noir Obsession (Edward Dmytryk 1949). Ronald Bergan in The Guardian: “Arguably Gray's best and meatiest role came in the McCarthyist exile Edward Dmytryk's Obsession (1949), as the cheating wife of psychiatrist Robert Newton, who plans a slow death for her latest lover.”
Her final film was the spy thriller Escape Route (Seymour Friedman, Peter Graham Scott, 1952) with ageing American tough guy George Raft as an FBI agent in England. RKO executives, impressed with Gray, authorised producer William Sistrom to offer her a long-term contract if she would move to the United States. However, she declined the offer and instead retired in 1952 after getting married.
In 1951, Gray had married The 4th Baron Oranmore and Browne, an Anglo-Irish peer. They lived in a castle in County Mayo, Ireland. The couple kept the marriage secret until the 1953 coronation, at which she appeared with her husband. The final phase of Gray's life found her very much in the upper class, and she led a comfortable life, preferring not to talk about her acting career.
In the early 1960s the couple returned to England and settled in a flat in Eaton Place, Belgravia, London. Gray tended assiduously to her gardening in later years. After 51 years of marriage, her husband died in 2002 at the age of 100. The couple had no children. Sally Gray died in 2006 in London, England. She was 91.
British autograph card.
Dutch postcard. Photo: Eagle Lion.
Sources: Tom Vallance (The Independent), Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.
Two years ago, we did this post on postcards for short silent films made before World War I by the French studio Pathé Frères. We loved these very old French cards and recently we found some new ones. They were distributed by Pathé theatres in France, and the films were produced by the studio between 1905 and 1908.
French postcard by F. Testard, Paris, no. 4078. Photo: E.M.
Panorama of the Marne river with the Pathé film factories and the Polangis quarter, at Joinville-le-Pont near Paris. It is here that Pathé produced and developed its celluloid. In contrast to other film companies, Pathé produced its own raw film stock. In its early decades the film studios of Pathé were in Vincennes and Montreuil, but in the early 1920s it would open a studio in Joinville too.
French postcard by Eden Cinema Pathé, Nice. Photo: publicity still for Les petits vagabonds/Young Tramps (Pathé Frères, Lucien Nonguet, 1905).
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for L'inspection du capitaine/Captain's Inspection (Pathé Frères, 1905).
After inspection, the soldiers lie down for a well-earned nap. A drunkard enters the room and disturbs the soldiers who throw him out. He keeps coming back and they finally decide to throw water on him, but the captain gets the shower.
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Le fils du diable/The Devil's Son (Pathé Frères, Charles Lucien Lépine, 1906), with André Deed, and cinematography by Segundo De Chomón.
The Devil's son is down in the dumps, so Sganarelle suggests that a trip to Paris would be just the thing to perk him up. Mom and Dad wave bye-bye as he toddles off in his touring car with his native guide.
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for La course des sergents de ville/The Policemen's Race (Pathé Frères, Ferdinand Zecca, 1907), scripted by André Heuzé.
A policeman spots a dog stealing a piece of meat from a butcher's shop, and gives chase. Soon several more policemen have joined the pursuit. But the chase does not turn out as the policemen expect.
French postcard by Eden Cinema Pathé, Nice. Photo: publicity still for Les Forbans/The Pirates (Pathé Frères, 1907).
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Les chiens policiers de la ville de Paris/The Police Dogs of Paris (Pathé Frères, 1907).
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Monsieur et Madame font du tandem/Jollygoods Go Tandeming (Pathé Frères, 1908).
A couple decides, after having dined, to go out on their tandem bicycle. They start well, but in speeding over a bridge they upset two pedestrians, who make a high dive into the water. From this point they enter into a ride of destruction and catastrophe.
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Madame l'avocate/Lady Barrister (Pathé Frères, 1908).
A woman attorney is so taken up with her studies in law that she finds no time to bother with household duties. Her henpecked husband has to take care of the baby, clean the house, do the cooking. When things do not run very smoothly, she decides to take a hand in the domestic affairs herself. It all ends in chaos.
French postcard by Eden Cinema Pathé, Nice. Photo: publicity still for Excursion dans la lune/An Excursion to the Moon (Pathé Frères, Segundo de Chomón, 1908), sets by Vincent Lorant-Heilbronn.
Georges Méliès' best-known film, Le voyage dans la lune/A Trip to the Moon (1902), is inspired by Jules Verne's De la terre à la lune/From the Earth to the Moon and H.G. Wells'First Men on the Moon. In 1908, Segundo de Chomón made Excursion dans la lune/An Excursion to the Moon, an imitation of Méliès' work, which is preserved with the original Pathé Frères stencil color.
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Samson moderne/A Modern Samson (Pathé Frères, 1908).
On the fairground an unknown young man manages to conquer the wrestling champion. When after a series of adventures he is imprisoned he breaks down the walls like a modern Samson. Returned home his wife celebrates him with wine but is jealous of his force, so like a modern Delila she cuts his hair off in his sleep. Awakened, the man has lost his hair and his strength.
French postcard by Cinema Pathé Frères. Photo: publicity still for Concours de bébés/The Baby Show (Pathé Frères, 1908).
Having much pride in the beauty of her little charge, a fussy governess enters her mistress baby to compete in a baby show. But the baby's elder sister, being whipped by the governess, resolves to even matters, and when the fond nurse-girl lays the infant in the basket and leaves the scene for a moment the little girl takes the baby out and puts a dog in instead.
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Les démenageurs ont soif/Thirsty Moving Men (Pathé Frères, 1908).
Four thirsty movers empty the wine bottles they discover in a basket, after which chaos and destruction starts. The movers destroy and lose most luggage underway, so the owners can only give the drunken movers a good spanking and go and get new furniture.
Sources: Fondation Jerome Seydoux Pathé (French) and IMDb.
French postcard by F. Testard, Paris, no. 4078. Photo: E.M.
Panorama of the Marne river with the Pathé film factories and the Polangis quarter, at Joinville-le-Pont near Paris. It is here that Pathé produced and developed its celluloid. In contrast to other film companies, Pathé produced its own raw film stock. In its early decades the film studios of Pathé were in Vincennes and Montreuil, but in the early 1920s it would open a studio in Joinville too.
French postcard by Eden Cinema Pathé, Nice. Photo: publicity still for Les petits vagabonds/Young Tramps (Pathé Frères, Lucien Nonguet, 1905).
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for L'inspection du capitaine/Captain's Inspection (Pathé Frères, 1905).
After inspection, the soldiers lie down for a well-earned nap. A drunkard enters the room and disturbs the soldiers who throw him out. He keeps coming back and they finally decide to throw water on him, but the captain gets the shower.
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Le fils du diable/The Devil's Son (Pathé Frères, Charles Lucien Lépine, 1906), with André Deed, and cinematography by Segundo De Chomón.
The Devil's son is down in the dumps, so Sganarelle suggests that a trip to Paris would be just the thing to perk him up. Mom and Dad wave bye-bye as he toddles off in his touring car with his native guide.
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for La course des sergents de ville/The Policemen's Race (Pathé Frères, Ferdinand Zecca, 1907), scripted by André Heuzé.
A policeman spots a dog stealing a piece of meat from a butcher's shop, and gives chase. Soon several more policemen have joined the pursuit. But the chase does not turn out as the policemen expect.
French postcard by Eden Cinema Pathé, Nice. Photo: publicity still for Les Forbans/The Pirates (Pathé Frères, 1907).
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Les chiens policiers de la ville de Paris/The Police Dogs of Paris (Pathé Frères, 1907).
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Monsieur et Madame font du tandem/Jollygoods Go Tandeming (Pathé Frères, 1908).
A couple decides, after having dined, to go out on their tandem bicycle. They start well, but in speeding over a bridge they upset two pedestrians, who make a high dive into the water. From this point they enter into a ride of destruction and catastrophe.
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Madame l'avocate/Lady Barrister (Pathé Frères, 1908).
A woman attorney is so taken up with her studies in law that she finds no time to bother with household duties. Her henpecked husband has to take care of the baby, clean the house, do the cooking. When things do not run very smoothly, she decides to take a hand in the domestic affairs herself. It all ends in chaos.
French postcard by Eden Cinema Pathé, Nice. Photo: publicity still for Excursion dans la lune/An Excursion to the Moon (Pathé Frères, Segundo de Chomón, 1908), sets by Vincent Lorant-Heilbronn.
Georges Méliès' best-known film, Le voyage dans la lune/A Trip to the Moon (1902), is inspired by Jules Verne's De la terre à la lune/From the Earth to the Moon and H.G. Wells'First Men on the Moon. In 1908, Segundo de Chomón made Excursion dans la lune/An Excursion to the Moon, an imitation of Méliès' work, which is preserved with the original Pathé Frères stencil color.
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Samson moderne/A Modern Samson (Pathé Frères, 1908).
On the fairground an unknown young man manages to conquer the wrestling champion. When after a series of adventures he is imprisoned he breaks down the walls like a modern Samson. Returned home his wife celebrates him with wine but is jealous of his force, so like a modern Delila she cuts his hair off in his sleep. Awakened, the man has lost his hair and his strength.
French postcard by Cinema Pathé Frères. Photo: publicity still for Concours de bébés/The Baby Show (Pathé Frères, 1908).
Having much pride in the beauty of her little charge, a fussy governess enters her mistress baby to compete in a baby show. But the baby's elder sister, being whipped by the governess, resolves to even matters, and when the fond nurse-girl lays the infant in the basket and leaves the scene for a moment the little girl takes the baby out and puts a dog in instead.
French postcard by Théâtre Pathé Grolée, Lyon. Photo: publicity still for Les démenageurs ont soif/Thirsty Moving Men (Pathé Frères, 1908).
Four thirsty movers empty the wine bottles they discover in a basket, after which chaos and destruction starts. The movers destroy and lose most luggage underway, so the owners can only give the drunken movers a good spanking and go and get new furniture.
Sources: Fondation Jerome Seydoux Pathé (French) and IMDb.
German film actress and singer Marion Michael (1940-2007) was a one hit wonder as Liane, the jungle girl. As the female Tarzan, the blonde beauty became an icon of the German cinema. Her postcards were even more popular in Germany than Maria Schell's cards.
German postcard by UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof), no. CK-48. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Arca-Film.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/158. Photo: UFA.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam, no. 1009. Photo: UFA.
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-71. Photo: Stempha / Cinepress / Arca Film.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. C.D. 16.
Marion Michael was born as Marion Ilonka Michaela Delonge in Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1940. Her father was a doctor.
The last months of the war she spent together with her mother and her four-year older brother on Hiddensee, a small island in the Baltic Sea.
After the war, the family moved to Berlin and Marion attended the secondary school. Already as a ten-year-old, she made her stage debut in a small theatre and was taught classical dance in the ballet school of Tatjana Gsovsky.
When she was only 15, she was selected out of allegedly 12,000 entries for the lead in Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald/Liane, Jungle Goddess (Eduard von Borsody, 1956). This adventure film was largely shot on location in Africa.
The story is about a girl who is discovered in the African jungle by an expedition group which includes Hardy Krüger. A tribe adores her as a goddess. It turns out that she is Liane, the long lost granddaughter of a rich shipowner in Hamburg.
Her dark hair was dyed blonde and she was promoted as the 'German Brigitte Bardot'. Michael appeared topless during the first half of the film and this was part of the success of the film. However, she was acceptable for family audiences as the nature child with no obvious erotic suggestiveness.
The film was a huge box office hit, and producer Gero Wecker offered her a seven-year-contract.The press loved her and photographers paid much money to take her picture exclusively. Her postcards were even more popular in Germany thanMaria Schell's postcards. As a 18-years-old, she owned a sports car.
Unfortunately this success of her debut film would not be matched by any of her later films.
German promotion card. Photo: Arca Film / NF. Publicity still for Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald/Liane, Jungle Goddess (Eduard von Borsody, 1956).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf, no. 116.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2787.
German postcard, no. 542. Photo: Arca.
German postcard.
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3865. Retail price: 25 Pfg. Photo: Stempka-Cinepress / Arca.
Marion Michael played next in the comedy Der tolle Bomberg/The Mad Bomberg (Rolf Thiele, 1957) opposite Hans Albers. The film is an adaptation of the 1923 novel of the same title by Josef Winckler which was based on a real historical Westphalian aristocrat of the nineteenth century.
Then followed the sequel Liane, die weiße Sklavin/Jungle Girl and the Slaver (Hermann Leitner, 1957), now opposite Adrian Hoven. Set in North Africa, this story concerns Arab slave traders who abduct Liane and members of her tribe. Later, the two Liane films were edited together and re-marketed as Liane – die Tochter des Dschungels/Liane - The Daughter of the Jungle.
In order to break away from the Liane image, Marion Michael took dance and acting lessons and then played successfully opposite Christian Wolff in melodrama Es war die erste Liebe/First Love (Fritz Stapenhorst, 1958) in which a Catholic theology student falls in love with a country girl.
During the shooting of the crime film Bomben auf Monte Carlo/Bombs on Monte Carlo (Georg Jacoby, 1960) with Eddie Constantine, she had a car accident that left her face temporarily scarred.
She recovered and returned to acting in Schlußakkord/Festival (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1960), the Schlagerfilm Davon träumen alle Mädchen/That's What All The Girls Dream About (Thomas Engel, 1961), and Jack und Jenny/Jack and Jenny (Victor Vicas, 1963) with Senta Berger and Ivan Desny.
French postcard. Michael on promotion tour in Paris.
German autograph card.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. V 122. Photo: Dieter-Eberhard Schmidt, Berlin.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 3536/159. Sent by mail in 1959. Photo: Stempka Cinepress / Arca Film / UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof).
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 285. Offered by Honig, Gent, Belgium. Photo: Archiv Filmpress Zürich.
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA), no. FK 3762. Retail price: 25 Pfg. Photo: Haenchen / Arca-NF.
The following decade, Marion Michael mainly worked for theatre and TV. For six years she worked at the Städtischen Bühnen Köln. In 1970, she got a son, Benjamin, from an American director, lived in a commune and did some street theatre.
Michael suffered a severe depression after a short marriage to actor Marcel Werner ended, and retired from acting in 1976. For a while she worked as a saleswoman.
In 1979 she took the unusual step of moving from West to East Germany, where she worked as a synchronisation assistant for TV.
Only occasionally she acted in TV-films such as In Hassliebe Lola/In Hate love Lola (Lothar Lambert, 1995) and Blond bis aufs Blut/Blonde Till Blood (Lothar Lambert, 1997).
In 1996 her life became the topic of a TV musical, Liane (Horst Königstein, 1996). She played a small role in the production. The film was nominated for the Adolf Grimme award and the Prix Europa 1997.
In her later years, she remained a well known German film icon. With her second husband, Freimut Patzner, she lived in an old house in Oderbruch.
In 2007 Marion Michael died of heart failure in a hospital in Gartz an der Oder. It was four days before her 67th birthday.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam (licency holders for UFA postcards in the Netherlands), no. 4267. Photo: ARCA / Cinepress. Publcity still for Es war die erste Liebe/First Love (Fritz Stapenhorst, 1958) with Christian Wolff.
Dutch postcard. no. 85. Photo: publicity still for Es war die erste Liebe/It was first love (Fritz Stapenhorst, Veit Harlan, 1958).
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. V 111. Photo: Krippendorff, Berlin.
German postcard by UFA, Berlin, no. CK 72. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Stempka / Arca Film.
German postcard by UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof), no. CK-40. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Eberhardt Schmidt / UFA / Arca-Film.
Jungle Dance from Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald/Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956). Source: MollyWhippie (YouTube).
Sources: Christian Koehl (Variety), Filmportal.de (German), Stephanie D'Heil (Steffi-line.de - German), Wikipedia and IMDb.
German postcard by UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof), no. CK-48. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Arca-Film.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/158. Photo: UFA.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam, no. 1009. Photo: UFA.
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-71. Photo: Stempha / Cinepress / Arca Film.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. C.D. 16.
Topless Goddess
Marion Michael was born as Marion Ilonka Michaela Delonge in Königsberg, Germany (now Kaliningrad, Russia) in 1940. Her father was a doctor.
The last months of the war she spent together with her mother and her four-year older brother on Hiddensee, a small island in the Baltic Sea.
After the war, the family moved to Berlin and Marion attended the secondary school. Already as a ten-year-old, she made her stage debut in a small theatre and was taught classical dance in the ballet school of Tatjana Gsovsky.
When she was only 15, she was selected out of allegedly 12,000 entries for the lead in Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald/Liane, Jungle Goddess (Eduard von Borsody, 1956). This adventure film was largely shot on location in Africa.
The story is about a girl who is discovered in the African jungle by an expedition group which includes Hardy Krüger. A tribe adores her as a goddess. It turns out that she is Liane, the long lost granddaughter of a rich shipowner in Hamburg.
Her dark hair was dyed blonde and she was promoted as the 'German Brigitte Bardot'. Michael appeared topless during the first half of the film and this was part of the success of the film. However, she was acceptable for family audiences as the nature child with no obvious erotic suggestiveness.
The film was a huge box office hit, and producer Gero Wecker offered her a seven-year-contract.The press loved her and photographers paid much money to take her picture exclusively. Her postcards were even more popular in Germany thanMaria Schell's postcards. As a 18-years-old, she owned a sports car.
Unfortunately this success of her debut film would not be matched by any of her later films.
German promotion card. Photo: Arca Film / NF. Publicity still for Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald/Liane, Jungle Goddess (Eduard von Borsody, 1956).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf, no. 116.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2787.
German postcard, no. 542. Photo: Arca.
German postcard.
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3865. Retail price: 25 Pfg. Photo: Stempka-Cinepress / Arca.
Car Accident
Marion Michael played next in the comedy Der tolle Bomberg/The Mad Bomberg (Rolf Thiele, 1957) opposite Hans Albers. The film is an adaptation of the 1923 novel of the same title by Josef Winckler which was based on a real historical Westphalian aristocrat of the nineteenth century.
Then followed the sequel Liane, die weiße Sklavin/Jungle Girl and the Slaver (Hermann Leitner, 1957), now opposite Adrian Hoven. Set in North Africa, this story concerns Arab slave traders who abduct Liane and members of her tribe. Later, the two Liane films were edited together and re-marketed as Liane – die Tochter des Dschungels/Liane - The Daughter of the Jungle.
In order to break away from the Liane image, Marion Michael took dance and acting lessons and then played successfully opposite Christian Wolff in melodrama Es war die erste Liebe/First Love (Fritz Stapenhorst, 1958) in which a Catholic theology student falls in love with a country girl.
During the shooting of the crime film Bomben auf Monte Carlo/Bombs on Monte Carlo (Georg Jacoby, 1960) with Eddie Constantine, she had a car accident that left her face temporarily scarred.
She recovered and returned to acting in Schlußakkord/Festival (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1960), the Schlagerfilm Davon träumen alle Mädchen/That's What All The Girls Dream About (Thomas Engel, 1961), and Jack und Jenny/Jack and Jenny (Victor Vicas, 1963) with Senta Berger and Ivan Desny.
French postcard. Michael on promotion tour in Paris.
German autograph card.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. V 122. Photo: Dieter-Eberhard Schmidt, Berlin.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 3536/159. Sent by mail in 1959. Photo: Stempka Cinepress / Arca Film / UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof).
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 285. Offered by Honig, Gent, Belgium. Photo: Archiv Filmpress Zürich.
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA), no. FK 3762. Retail price: 25 Pfg. Photo: Haenchen / Arca-NF.
Unusual step
The following decade, Marion Michael mainly worked for theatre and TV. For six years she worked at the Städtischen Bühnen Köln. In 1970, she got a son, Benjamin, from an American director, lived in a commune and did some street theatre.
Michael suffered a severe depression after a short marriage to actor Marcel Werner ended, and retired from acting in 1976. For a while she worked as a saleswoman.
In 1979 she took the unusual step of moving from West to East Germany, where she worked as a synchronisation assistant for TV.
Only occasionally she acted in TV-films such as In Hassliebe Lola/In Hate love Lola (Lothar Lambert, 1995) and Blond bis aufs Blut/Blonde Till Blood (Lothar Lambert, 1997).
In 1996 her life became the topic of a TV musical, Liane (Horst Königstein, 1996). She played a small role in the production. The film was nominated for the Adolf Grimme award and the Prix Europa 1997.
In her later years, she remained a well known German film icon. With her second husband, Freimut Patzner, she lived in an old house in Oderbruch.
In 2007 Marion Michael died of heart failure in a hospital in Gartz an der Oder. It was four days before her 67th birthday.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam (licency holders for UFA postcards in the Netherlands), no. 4267. Photo: ARCA / Cinepress. Publcity still for Es war die erste Liebe/First Love (Fritz Stapenhorst, 1958) with Christian Wolff.
Dutch postcard. no. 85. Photo: publicity still for Es war die erste Liebe/It was first love (Fritz Stapenhorst, Veit Harlan, 1958).
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. V 111. Photo: Krippendorff, Berlin.
German postcard by UFA, Berlin, no. CK 72. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Stempka / Arca Film.
German postcard by UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof), no. CK-40. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Eberhardt Schmidt / UFA / Arca-Film.
Jungle Dance from Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald/Liane, Jungle Goddess (1956). Source: MollyWhippie (YouTube).
Sources: Christian Koehl (Variety), Filmportal.de (German), Stephanie D'Heil (Steffi-line.de - German), Wikipedia and IMDb.
Some of our most beautiful Italian postcards were published by Ed. A. Traldi. Traldi operated in Milan from 1902 on. The publisher concentrated on view cards of Europe and the Middle East. They are also known for a series published that focused on dogs. But we are most interested in the postcard portraits of European stage and film performers, and the cards with stills of silent films of the 1920s, often distributed by Pittaluga Films. After World War II, Ed. A. Traldi returned as Vetta Traldi with pin-up postcards and with the Divi del Cinema series.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 9. Photo: Pittaluga. Publicity still of Elena Sangro as Cinzia and René [Raoul] Mayllard as prince Otis [Ortis] in the Fert production Maciste imperatore/Emperor Maciste (Guido Brignone, 1924).
Maciste imperatore (1924) was part of the popular Maciste series of films starring Bartolomeo Pagano as the strongman Maciste. In the kingdom of Sindagna, the prince regent Stanos tries with all means to dispose of the legitime heir to the throne, prince Ortis. When Maciste and his companion Saetta happen to be in the chaotic empire, they set things straight for the poor, weak prince. Maciste is proclaimed emperor of Sindagna after getting rid of the regent and his puppet ruler, restores peace, and arranges that the prince can also be united with his beloved one. The plot line comes close Mussolini's take over of Italy, 'helping' the weak king Victor Emmanuel III and 'restoring order'.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 323. Photo: Fontana.
Considering her profile, it is not hard to imagine why critics and artists of the early 20th century compared stage and film diva Lyda Borelli (1887-1959) to the heroines of Aubrey Beardsley.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 409. Photo: Pinto, Roma.
Pina Menichelli(1890-1984) was one of the Italian divas of the silent era. After starting her film career at the Roman Cines company in 1913, she was catapulted into stardom by Giovanni Pastrone's Dannunzian film Il Fuoco (1915). Because of her femme fatale, men devouring type and her extreme and sudden gestures she was nicknamed Notre Dame des Spasmes. Menichelli did however know how to play also in restrained ways, as her masterpiece Tigre Reale (Pastrone 1916) showed.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 563.
Polish singer and actress Helena Makowska aka Elena 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.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 738. Photo: publicity still of Rina De Liguoro dying in the final scene of Messalina (Enrico Guazzoni, 1924).
For diva Rina De Liguoro, the epic Messalina (1924) was the start of a prolific career in Italian silent cinema in the 1920s, with films like Quo vadis? (1924) and Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii (1926). In the late 1920s she also performed in Germany and France, e.g. in Casanova (1927).
Italian postcard by Ed. Traldi, Milano, no. 795. Photo: Pittaluga Films, Torino.
Diomira Jacobini (1899-1959) was one of the stars of the Italian silent cinema. She was the younger sister of diva Maria Jacobini, in whose shadow she always stayed. Diomira appeared in some 55 films in Italy, Germany and Denmark.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano. Photo: Westi SAIC. Publicity still for La cavalcata ardente (Carmine Gallone, 1925) with Emilio Ghione as the Prince of Santafé.
The highly successful film La cavalcata ardente (1925) was a melodrama set against the background of the conquest of Naples by Garibaldi's volunteers. Soava Gallone plays an aristocratic forced into marriage with an old prince (Emilio Ghione) but secretly in love with a patriot (Gabriel de Gravone).
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano. Photo: Soc. A. Stefano Pittaluga, Torino. Publicity still for Maciste all'inferno/Maciste in Hell (Guido Brignone, 1926), with Franz Sala as the devil Barbariccia.
Franz Sala aka Francesco Sala (1886-1952) was a prolific actor of the Italian silent cinema, mostly playing the evil antagonist.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano. Photo: Pittaluga Films, Torino. Publicity still for Maciste all'inferno (Guido Brignone, 1926), starring Bartolomeo Pagano as Maciste. Caption: "The Inhabitants of the Underworld."
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 819. Photo: Pittaluga Films, Torino. Publicity still for Maciste nella gabbia dei leoni/Maciste in the Lions' Cage (Guido Brignone, 1926).
Maciste nella gabbia dei leoni is an Italian silent adventure film directed by Guido Brignone for the Cinès-Pittaluga studio. In the script, written by Brignone, Maciste is sent to Africa by a circus showman to capture some lions. Maciste nella gabbia dei leoni was the penultimate film of the silent series, followed by Il gigante delle Dolomiti/The Giant of the Dolomites (Guido Brignone, 1927).
Italian postcard in the series Divi del Cinema by Vetta Traldi, Milano, no. 7.
Lucia Bosé (1931) is an Italian actress, known for her films from the 1950s for directors Giuseppe De Santis and Michelangelo Antonioni.
Italian postcard in the series Divi del Cinema, no. 33, by Vetta Traldi, Milano.
Sultry, glamorous blonde Venetia Stevenson (1938) was a British-born Hollywood starlet of the late 1950s.
Anna Maria Ferrero. Italian postcard by Vetta Traldi, Milano in the Divi del Cinema series, no. 51. Sent by mail in 1955.
Anita Ekberg. Italian postcard by Vetta Traldi, Milano in the Divi del Cinema series, no. 139 bis.
Mamie Van Doren. Italian postcard in the series Divi del Cinema by Vetta Traldi, Milano, no 232.
Sources: The Cabinet Card Gallery and Wikipedia.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 9. Photo: Pittaluga. Publicity still of Elena Sangro as Cinzia and René [Raoul] Mayllard as prince Otis [Ortis] in the Fert production Maciste imperatore/Emperor Maciste (Guido Brignone, 1924).
Maciste imperatore (1924) was part of the popular Maciste series of films starring Bartolomeo Pagano as the strongman Maciste. In the kingdom of Sindagna, the prince regent Stanos tries with all means to dispose of the legitime heir to the throne, prince Ortis. When Maciste and his companion Saetta happen to be in the chaotic empire, they set things straight for the poor, weak prince. Maciste is proclaimed emperor of Sindagna after getting rid of the regent and his puppet ruler, restores peace, and arranges that the prince can also be united with his beloved one. The plot line comes close Mussolini's take over of Italy, 'helping' the weak king Victor Emmanuel III and 'restoring order'.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 323. Photo: Fontana.
Considering her profile, it is not hard to imagine why critics and artists of the early 20th century compared stage and film diva Lyda Borelli (1887-1959) to the heroines of Aubrey Beardsley.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 409. Photo: Pinto, Roma.
Pina Menichelli(1890-1984) was one of the Italian divas of the silent era. After starting her film career at the Roman Cines company in 1913, she was catapulted into stardom by Giovanni Pastrone's Dannunzian film Il Fuoco (1915). Because of her femme fatale, men devouring type and her extreme and sudden gestures she was nicknamed Notre Dame des Spasmes. Menichelli did however know how to play also in restrained ways, as her masterpiece Tigre Reale (Pastrone 1916) showed.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 563.
Polish singer and actress Helena Makowska aka Elena 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.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 738. Photo: publicity still of Rina De Liguoro dying in the final scene of Messalina (Enrico Guazzoni, 1924).
For diva Rina De Liguoro, the epic Messalina (1924) was the start of a prolific career in Italian silent cinema in the 1920s, with films like Quo vadis? (1924) and Gli ultimi giorni di Pompeii (1926). In the late 1920s she also performed in Germany and France, e.g. in Casanova (1927).
Italian postcard by Ed. Traldi, Milano, no. 795. Photo: Pittaluga Films, Torino.
Diomira Jacobini (1899-1959) was one of the stars of the Italian silent cinema. She was the younger sister of diva Maria Jacobini, in whose shadow she always stayed. Diomira appeared in some 55 films in Italy, Germany and Denmark.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano. Photo: Westi SAIC. Publicity still for La cavalcata ardente (Carmine Gallone, 1925) with Emilio Ghione as the Prince of Santafé.
The highly successful film La cavalcata ardente (1925) was a melodrama set against the background of the conquest of Naples by Garibaldi's volunteers. Soava Gallone plays an aristocratic forced into marriage with an old prince (Emilio Ghione) but secretly in love with a patriot (Gabriel de Gravone).
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano. Photo: Soc. A. Stefano Pittaluga, Torino. Publicity still for Maciste all'inferno/Maciste in Hell (Guido Brignone, 1926), with Franz Sala as the devil Barbariccia.
Franz Sala aka Francesco Sala (1886-1952) was a prolific actor of the Italian silent cinema, mostly playing the evil antagonist.
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano. Photo: Pittaluga Films, Torino. Publicity still for Maciste all'inferno (Guido Brignone, 1926), starring Bartolomeo Pagano as Maciste. Caption: "The Inhabitants of the Underworld."
Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 819. Photo: Pittaluga Films, Torino. Publicity still for Maciste nella gabbia dei leoni/Maciste in the Lions' Cage (Guido Brignone, 1926).
Maciste nella gabbia dei leoni is an Italian silent adventure film directed by Guido Brignone for the Cinès-Pittaluga studio. In the script, written by Brignone, Maciste is sent to Africa by a circus showman to capture some lions. Maciste nella gabbia dei leoni was the penultimate film of the silent series, followed by Il gigante delle Dolomiti/The Giant of the Dolomites (Guido Brignone, 1927).
Italian postcard in the series Divi del Cinema by Vetta Traldi, Milano, no. 7.
Lucia Bosé (1931) is an Italian actress, known for her films from the 1950s for directors Giuseppe De Santis and Michelangelo Antonioni.
Italian postcard in the series Divi del Cinema, no. 33, by Vetta Traldi, Milano.
Sultry, glamorous blonde Venetia Stevenson (1938) was a British-born Hollywood starlet of the late 1950s.
Anna Maria Ferrero. Italian postcard by Vetta Traldi, Milano in the Divi del Cinema series, no. 51. Sent by mail in 1955.
Anita Ekberg. Italian postcard by Vetta Traldi, Milano in the Divi del Cinema series, no. 139 bis.
Mamie Van Doren. Italian postcard in the series Divi del Cinema by Vetta Traldi, Milano, no 232.
Sources: The Cabinet Card Gallery and Wikipedia.
Armin Mueller-Stahl (1930) is a German film actor, painter, writer and musician. He started his career as a socialist matinee-idol in the GDR. He was ‘the man most East Germans would like to have a beer with.’ At 50, he had to emigrate to West-Germany where he found work with such major film directors as Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Later he had a successful career in Hollywood as well.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2254. Photo: Schirmer.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress-Filmverleih, Berlin. Starfoto no. 1426.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Verleih, Berlin, no. 9/76. Photo: DEFA / Blümel. Publicity still for Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970) with Gojko Mitic.
Armin Mueller-Stahl was born in Tilsit, Germany (now Sovetsk, Russia) in 1930. His father, Alfred Müller, was a bank teller who changed the family's surname to the more aristocratic-sounding Mueller-Stahl. His mother, Editha Maass, was from an upper class family, and she became a university professor at Leipzig. While his father fought on the Eastern Front in World War II, Editha moved her five children to Berlin. Armin’s elder brother is director and actor Hagen Mueller-Stahl and his sister Dietlind Mueller-Stahl is an actress. Alfred was to join the family in Berlin, but in 1945, only two days before the fighting ended, he was killed.
Armin studied at the Städtischen Konservatorium (municipal conservatory) and became a concert violinist, but he did not want to end as a music teacher. So in 1952, he enrolled in an acting school in East Berlin, but he was soon kicked out. However, he got an engagement at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and moved in 1954 to the Volksbühne, where he stayed till 1979.
In 1956, he made his film debut in the DEFA production Heimliche Ehen/Secret marriages (Gustav von Wangenheim, 1956) with Paul Heidemann. He became a successful stage actor in East Germany and also a matinee idol with such popular DEFA films as Fünf Patronenhülsen/Five Cartridges (Frank Beyer, 1960) with Ernst Busch and Manfred Krug, the anti-fascist love story Königskinder/And Your Love Too (Frank Beyer, 1962) with Annekathrin Bürger, and the war drama Nackt unter Wölfen/Naked Among Wolves (Frank Beyer, 1963). On East-German TV he became popular with the series Flucht aus der Hölle/Flight From Hell (1960) and later he had again success with Wolf unter Wölfen/Wolf Among Wolves (Hans-Joachim Kasprzik, 1965).
Armin Mueller-Stahl was chosen five times as the most popular actor of the GDR. At a certain time he owned a Volvo limousine, a villa in Köpenick and an annual salary of 300,000 East German marks ($70,000). In 1965 a newspaper poll selected him ‘the man most East Germans would like to have a beer with.’
He starred in such films as Der Dritte/The Third (Egon Günther, 1972) as a blind musician opposite Jutta Hoffmann, and the classic war comedy Jakob, der Lügner/Jacob, the Liar (Frank Beyer, 1975) featuring Vlastimil Brodský. On TV, he played the main character of the very popular spy thriller series Das unsichtbare Visier/The invisible visor (Peter Hagen, 1973-1979). The series was designed in co-operation with the Stasi, as an East Bloc counterpart to the James Bond films.
When the communist regime clamped down on protest singer Wolf Biermann in 1976, 26 members of the artistic community, including Mueller-Stahl, issued a protest. As a result the government blacklisted him from show business. He stayed in East Berlin and in the next two-and-a-half years he wrote the political thriller Verlorener Sonntag (Lost Sunday), that became a best-seller. In 1980 he and his family were permitted to emigrate to West Germany. They gave up their East German villa and moved into a small flat in West Berlin.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 1910, 1963, Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: DEFA-Pathenheimer.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 56/70. Photo: DEFA / Blümel Publicity still for Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 58/70. Photo: DEFA / Blümel Publicity still for Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970) with Hannjo Hasse.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 121/70. Photo: DEFA / Blümel Publicity still for Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970).
At 50, Armin Mueller-Stahl had to start his career over again, but he found ample work in the West German film industry. He appeared in such prestigious films as Fassbinder's political riff on post-war Germany Lola (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981) with Barbara Sukowa, Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss/Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982) featuring Rosel Zech, and Wajda's Eine Liebe in Deutschland/A Love in Germany (Andrzej Wajda, 1984) with Hanna Schygulla.
He appeared as Jean-Hugues Anglade’s father in the French homosexual drama L'homme blessé/The Wounded Man (Patrice Chéreau, 1983). Other interesting films were the war drama Bittere Ernte/Angry Harvest (Agnieszka Holland, 1985) and Oberst Redl/Colonel Redl (István Szabó, 1985), the latter about Alfred Redl (Karl Maria Brandauer), an ambitious young officer who proceeds up the ladder to become head of the Secret Police of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Both films were nominated for an Oscar, and several offers from Hollywood came his way.
Mueller-Stahl made his US film debut opposite Jessica Lange in Music Box (Constantin Costa-Gravas, 1989). He played Mike Laszlo, the Lange character’s father who - unknown to her - was a pro-Nazi war criminal during WW II who buried his sadistic past in Hungary under a lifetime of solid American deeds.
Next Mueller-Stahl had a leading role in Avalon (Barry Levinson, 1990), about a Polish-Jewish family which comes to the US at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. He subsequently took strong character roles in Kafka (Steven Soderbergh, 1991) with Alec Guinness and Jeremy Irons, and Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch, 1991) with Gena Rowlands.
In 1992 Mueller-Stahl won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival for the title role in Utz (George Sluizer, 1992). He received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the father of Australian pianist David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush) in Shine (Scott Hicks, 1996).
His first film as director was Conversation with the Beast (Armin Mueller-Stahl, 1996) about an old man who claims he is Adolf Hitler (played by Mueller-Stahl himself). Next he played in the thriller The Game (David Fincher, 1997) starring Michael Douglas, and a German scientist and syndicate member in the feature film The X-Files (Rob Bowman, 1998).
Trailer Lola (1981). Source: RialtoFilm (YouTube).
Trailer Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss/Veronika Voss (1982). Source: RialtoFilm (YouTube).
Armin Mueller-Stahl gained applause for his portrayal of author Thomas Mann in the epic German documentary/drama mini-series Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman/The Manns - Novel of a Century (Heinrich Breloer, 2001) with Sebastian Koch as his son, author Klaus Mann.
In 2004, Mueller-Stahl made another rare foray into American television, guest-starring in four episodes of the much acclaimed TV series The West Wing (2004) as the Prime Minister of Israel.
With Katja Riemannand Karin Dor, he appeared in the controversial drama Ich bin die Andere/I Am the Other Woman (Margaretha von Trotta, 2006).
The next year he won the Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg, 2007), starring Viggo Mortensen and British-Australian actress Naomi Watts. Watts also starred in the thriller The International (Tom Tykwer, 2007) which co-starred Clive Owen and Mueller-Stahl.
He starred in the Thomas Mann adaptation Buddenbrooks (2008) a TV series directed by Heinrich Breloer, who also created the acclaimed Die Manns. Then Mueller-Stahl played the role of Cardinal Strauss in the blockbuster film Angels and Demons (Ron Howard, 2009), based on the bestseller by Dan Brown and starring Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor.
Mueller-Stahl launched a career as an artist and presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2007, the Brockhaus encyclopedia with book covers and spines designed by him. He also started to sing again. With Günther Fischer, he performed songs in 2010 which they had performed 40 years earlier on DDR television. In 2011 he was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival. His most recent film is Knight of Cups (2015), an American experimental drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick.
Armin Mueller-Stahl was married twice. His first marriage was to actress Monika Gabriel. Since 1973, he is married to dermatologist Gabriele Scholz, and they have a son, Christian (1974). Christian appeared in Utz (1992) as the son of his father’s character. Armin Mueller-Stahl lives in Pacific Palisades, California, Dierksdorf (Germany) and Berlin. He has now both the German and the American nationality.
Trailer Music Box (1989). Source: sonysloba (YouTube).
Trailer Eastern Promises (2007). Sources: The CultBox (YouTube).
Sources: Mary H.J. Farrell & Franz Spelman (People), Scott Roxborough (The Hollywood Reporter), Ines Walk (Zeit.de - German), F.-B. Habel & Volker Wachter (Das große Lexikon der DDR-Stars -German), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2254. Photo: Schirmer.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress-Filmverleih, Berlin. Starfoto no. 1426.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Verleih, Berlin, no. 9/76. Photo: DEFA / Blümel. Publicity still for Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970) with Gojko Mitic.
Matinee Idol
Armin Mueller-Stahl was born in Tilsit, Germany (now Sovetsk, Russia) in 1930. His father, Alfred Müller, was a bank teller who changed the family's surname to the more aristocratic-sounding Mueller-Stahl. His mother, Editha Maass, was from an upper class family, and she became a university professor at Leipzig. While his father fought on the Eastern Front in World War II, Editha moved her five children to Berlin. Armin’s elder brother is director and actor Hagen Mueller-Stahl and his sister Dietlind Mueller-Stahl is an actress. Alfred was to join the family in Berlin, but in 1945, only two days before the fighting ended, he was killed.
Armin studied at the Städtischen Konservatorium (municipal conservatory) and became a concert violinist, but he did not want to end as a music teacher. So in 1952, he enrolled in an acting school in East Berlin, but he was soon kicked out. However, he got an engagement at the Theater am Schiffbauerdamm and moved in 1954 to the Volksbühne, where he stayed till 1979.
In 1956, he made his film debut in the DEFA production Heimliche Ehen/Secret marriages (Gustav von Wangenheim, 1956) with Paul Heidemann. He became a successful stage actor in East Germany and also a matinee idol with such popular DEFA films as Fünf Patronenhülsen/Five Cartridges (Frank Beyer, 1960) with Ernst Busch and Manfred Krug, the anti-fascist love story Königskinder/And Your Love Too (Frank Beyer, 1962) with Annekathrin Bürger, and the war drama Nackt unter Wölfen/Naked Among Wolves (Frank Beyer, 1963). On East-German TV he became popular with the series Flucht aus der Hölle/Flight From Hell (1960) and later he had again success with Wolf unter Wölfen/Wolf Among Wolves (Hans-Joachim Kasprzik, 1965).
Armin Mueller-Stahl was chosen five times as the most popular actor of the GDR. At a certain time he owned a Volvo limousine, a villa in Köpenick and an annual salary of 300,000 East German marks ($70,000). In 1965 a newspaper poll selected him ‘the man most East Germans would like to have a beer with.’
He starred in such films as Der Dritte/The Third (Egon Günther, 1972) as a blind musician opposite Jutta Hoffmann, and the classic war comedy Jakob, der Lügner/Jacob, the Liar (Frank Beyer, 1975) featuring Vlastimil Brodský. On TV, he played the main character of the very popular spy thriller series Das unsichtbare Visier/The invisible visor (Peter Hagen, 1973-1979). The series was designed in co-operation with the Stasi, as an East Bloc counterpart to the James Bond films.
When the communist regime clamped down on protest singer Wolf Biermann in 1976, 26 members of the artistic community, including Mueller-Stahl, issued a protest. As a result the government blacklisted him from show business. He stayed in East Berlin and in the next two-and-a-half years he wrote the political thriller Verlorener Sonntag (Lost Sunday), that became a best-seller. In 1980 he and his family were permitted to emigrate to West Germany. They gave up their East German villa and moved into a small flat in West Berlin.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 1910, 1963, Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: DEFA-Pathenheimer.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 56/70. Photo: DEFA / Blümel Publicity still for Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 58/70. Photo: DEFA / Blümel Publicity still for Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970) with Hannjo Hasse.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 121/70. Photo: DEFA / Blümel Publicity still for Tödlicher Irrtum/Fatal Error (Konrad Petzold, 1970).
Head of the Secret Police
At 50, Armin Mueller-Stahl had to start his career over again, but he found ample work in the West German film industry. He appeared in such prestigious films as Fassbinder's political riff on post-war Germany Lola (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1981) with Barbara Sukowa, Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss/Veronika Voss (Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982) featuring Rosel Zech, and Wajda's Eine Liebe in Deutschland/A Love in Germany (Andrzej Wajda, 1984) with Hanna Schygulla.
He appeared as Jean-Hugues Anglade’s father in the French homosexual drama L'homme blessé/The Wounded Man (Patrice Chéreau, 1983). Other interesting films were the war drama Bittere Ernte/Angry Harvest (Agnieszka Holland, 1985) and Oberst Redl/Colonel Redl (István Szabó, 1985), the latter about Alfred Redl (Karl Maria Brandauer), an ambitious young officer who proceeds up the ladder to become head of the Secret Police of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Both films were nominated for an Oscar, and several offers from Hollywood came his way.
Mueller-Stahl made his US film debut opposite Jessica Lange in Music Box (Constantin Costa-Gravas, 1989). He played Mike Laszlo, the Lange character’s father who - unknown to her - was a pro-Nazi war criminal during WW II who buried his sadistic past in Hungary under a lifetime of solid American deeds.
Next Mueller-Stahl had a leading role in Avalon (Barry Levinson, 1990), about a Polish-Jewish family which comes to the US at the beginning of the Twentieth Century. He subsequently took strong character roles in Kafka (Steven Soderbergh, 1991) with Alec Guinness and Jeremy Irons, and Night on Earth (Jim Jarmusch, 1991) with Gena Rowlands.
In 1992 Mueller-Stahl won the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the 42nd Berlin International Film Festival for the title role in Utz (George Sluizer, 1992). He received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as the father of Australian pianist David Helfgott (Geoffrey Rush) in Shine (Scott Hicks, 1996).
His first film as director was Conversation with the Beast (Armin Mueller-Stahl, 1996) about an old man who claims he is Adolf Hitler (played by Mueller-Stahl himself). Next he played in the thriller The Game (David Fincher, 1997) starring Michael Douglas, and a German scientist and syndicate member in the feature film The X-Files (Rob Bowman, 1998).
Trailer Lola (1981). Source: RialtoFilm (YouTube).
Trailer Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss/Veronika Voss (1982). Source: RialtoFilm (YouTube).
Thomas Mann
Armin Mueller-Stahl gained applause for his portrayal of author Thomas Mann in the epic German documentary/drama mini-series Die Manns - Ein Jahrhundertroman/The Manns - Novel of a Century (Heinrich Breloer, 2001) with Sebastian Koch as his son, author Klaus Mann.
In 2004, Mueller-Stahl made another rare foray into American television, guest-starring in four episodes of the much acclaimed TV series The West Wing (2004) as the Prime Minister of Israel.
With Katja Riemannand Karin Dor, he appeared in the controversial drama Ich bin die Andere/I Am the Other Woman (Margaretha von Trotta, 2006).
The next year he won the Genie Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role for Eastern Promises (David Cronenberg, 2007), starring Viggo Mortensen and British-Australian actress Naomi Watts. Watts also starred in the thriller The International (Tom Tykwer, 2007) which co-starred Clive Owen and Mueller-Stahl.
He starred in the Thomas Mann adaptation Buddenbrooks (2008) a TV series directed by Heinrich Breloer, who also created the acclaimed Die Manns. Then Mueller-Stahl played the role of Cardinal Strauss in the blockbuster film Angels and Demons (Ron Howard, 2009), based on the bestseller by Dan Brown and starring Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor.
Mueller-Stahl launched a career as an artist and presented at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2007, the Brockhaus encyclopedia with book covers and spines designed by him. He also started to sing again. With Günther Fischer, he performed songs in 2010 which they had performed 40 years earlier on DDR television. In 2011 he was awarded the Honorary Golden Bear at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival. His most recent film is Knight of Cups (2015), an American experimental drama film written and directed by Terrence Malick.
Armin Mueller-Stahl was married twice. His first marriage was to actress Monika Gabriel. Since 1973, he is married to dermatologist Gabriele Scholz, and they have a son, Christian (1974). Christian appeared in Utz (1992) as the son of his father’s character. Armin Mueller-Stahl lives in Pacific Palisades, California, Dierksdorf (Germany) and Berlin. He has now both the German and the American nationality.
Trailer Music Box (1989). Source: sonysloba (YouTube).
Trailer Eastern Promises (2007). Sources: The CultBox (YouTube).
Sources: Mary H.J. Farrell & Franz Spelman (People), Scott Roxborough (The Hollywood Reporter), Ines Walk (Zeit.de - German), F.-B. Habel & Volker Wachter (Das große Lexikon der DDR-Stars -German), Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
At our Flickr site Truus, Bob and Jan Too!, we have an album with rare vintage postcards from the collection of Didier Hanson. Once in a while Didier sends us scans of his postcards which we upload and add to this ever growing album. Just take a look and enjoy. Some of his cards are rare and amazing. Museum curators mail us with questions about them. Didier recently sent us again some unknown postcards from the burgeoning cinema of the Russian Empire, just before the October Revolution. We post them today with some other Russian cards of his collection. I guess nobody else has so much postcards of Vera Kholodnaya as Didier. 'But finding postcards of interest for me becomes almost "mission impossible"', Didier confessed in a recent mail. Didier, we'll keep hope, pray, and say: 'thanks, pal!'
Vera Kholodnaya. Russian postcard, no. 88. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Kholodnaya. Russian postcard, no. 131, 1914. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Kholodnaya. Russian postcard, no. 135. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Kholodnaya (1893-1919) was the first star of the Russian silent cinema. Only 26, the ‘Queen of Screen’ died of the Spanish flu during the pandemic of 1919. Although she worked only three years for the cinema, she must have made some forty short and feature films. The Soviet authorities ordered to destroy many of the Kholodnaya features in 1924, and only five of her films still exist.
Ossip Runitsch and Vera Kholodnaya in Na altar krasoty (1917). Russian postcard, no. 120. Photo: publicity still for Na altar krasoty/To the Altar of Beauty (Pyotr Chardynin, 1917). Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ivan Khudoleyev, Ossip Runitsch and Vera Kholodnaya in Posledneiye tango (1918). Russian postcard, no. 145. Photo: publicity still for Posledneiye tango/Last Tango (Vyacheslav Viskovsky, 1918). Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ossip Runitsch. Russian postcard, no. 100. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ossip Runitsch. Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Russian actor, producer and stage director Ossip Runitsch (1889-1947) was one of the biggest stars of the Russian silent film and one of the first iconic figures of the early Russian cinema. After the October revolution, he worked in Latvia, Italy, Germany, France and South-Africa.
Lidiya Ryndina, 1916. Russian Postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Karalli, 1917. Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Kholodnaya. Russian postcard, no. 77. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Kholodnaya. Russian postcard, no. 88. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Kholodnaya. Russian postcard, no. 131, 1914. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Kholodnaya. Russian postcard, no. 135. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Kholodnaya (1893-1919) was the first star of the Russian silent cinema. Only 26, the ‘Queen of Screen’ died of the Spanish flu during the pandemic of 1919. Although she worked only three years for the cinema, she must have made some forty short and feature films. The Soviet authorities ordered to destroy many of the Kholodnaya features in 1924, and only five of her films still exist.
Ossip Runitsch and Vera Kholodnaya in Na altar krasoty (1917). Russian postcard, no. 120. Photo: publicity still for Na altar krasoty/To the Altar of Beauty (Pyotr Chardynin, 1917). Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ivan Khudoleyev, Ossip Runitsch and Vera Kholodnaya in Posledneiye tango (1918). Russian postcard, no. 145. Photo: publicity still for Posledneiye tango/Last Tango (Vyacheslav Viskovsky, 1918). Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ossip Runitsch. Russian postcard, no. 100. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ossip Runitsch. Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Russian actor, producer and stage director Ossip Runitsch (1889-1947) was one of the biggest stars of the Russian silent film and one of the first iconic figures of the early Russian cinema. After the October revolution, he worked in Latvia, Italy, Germany, France and South-Africa.
Lidiya Ryndina, 1916. Russian Postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Karalli, 1917. Russian postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vera Kholodnaya. Russian postcard, no. 77. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Singer, actress and composer Petula Clark (1932) is the most successful British female solo recording artist. She began as as Britain's Shirley Temple, and appeared in over 30 films. During the 1960s she became internationally known for her upbeat hits, including the evergreen Downtown.
French postcard by Publistar, Marseille, no. 885. Photo: Nisak / Vogue.
French postcard by Publistar, Marseille, no. 886. Photo: Nisak / Vogue.
French postcard by Editions Starama, no. S-817. Photo: Disque Vogue.
German postcard by ISV, no. 136.
Petula Sally Olwen Clark was born in Epsom, Great-Britain in 1932, to an English father, Leslie Norman Clark, and a Welsh mother Doris Clark-Phillips, who were both nurses at Long Grove Hospital in Epsom.
As a child, Petulasang in the chapel choir. In 1942, she made her radio debut while attending a BBC broadcast with her father, hoping to send a message to an uncle stationed overseas. During an air raid, the producer requested that someone perform to settle the jittery audience.
Clark volunteered a rendition of Mighty Lak a Rose to an enthusiastic response in the theatre. She then repeated her performance for the broadcast audience, launching a series of some 500 appearances in programmes to entertain the troops.
In addition to this radio work, Clark frequently toured the UK with fellow child performer Julie Andrews. 'Britain's Shirley Temple' was considered a mascot by the RAF. In 1944, while performing at London's Royal Albert Hall, Clark was discovered by film director Maurice Elvey.
Elvey cast her as an orphaned waif in his weepy war drama Medal for the General (1944). In quick succession, she starred in Strawberry Roan (Maurice Elvey, 1945) and I Know Where I'm Going! (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1945) starring Wendy Hiller.
Then followed London Town (Wesley Ruggles, 1946), and Here Come the Huggetts (Ken Annakin, 1948), the first in a series of Huggett Family films based on a British radio series.
Although most of the other 24 films she made during the 1940s and 1950s were B-films, she did work with Anthony Newley in Vice Versa (Peter Ustinov, 1948) and Alec Guinness in The Card (Ronald Neame, 1952).
In 1946, she launched her television career with an appearance on a BBC variety show, Cabaret Cartoons, which led to her being signed to host her own afternoon series, titled simply Petula Clark. A second, Pet's Parlour, followed in 1949. In later years, she starred in This is Petula Clark (1966-1967) and The Sound of Petula (1972-1974).
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 385. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation.
British autograph card by Polygon. Photo: John Vickers.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 129. Photo: Rank Film. Publicity still for The Card (Ronald Neame, 1952).
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 776. Photo: J. Arthur Rank. Publicity still for Made in Heaven (John Paddy Carstairs, 1952).
Dutch postcard, sent by mail in 1965. Photo: Vogue.
In 1949, Petula Clark recorded her first songs Music, Music, Music and Put Your Shoes On, Lucy. Because neither EMI nor Decca, for whom she had recorded, were keen to sign her to a long-term contract, Clark's father teamed with Alan A. Freeman to form their own label, Polygon Records.
She scored a number of major hits in the UK during the 1950s, including The Little Shoemaker (1954), Majorca (1955), Suddenly There's a Valley (1955) and With All My Heart (1956).
It was around 1955 that Clark became romantically linked with Joe 'Mr Piano' Henderson. Their relationship lasted a couple of years, professionally culminating in a BBC Radio series in which they performed together.
Near the end of 1955, Polygon Records was sold to Pye Records, for whom she would record for the remainder of the 1950s, throughout the 1960s and early into the 1970s. In 1958, Clark was invited to appear at the Olympia in Paris where, despite her misgivings, she was received with acclaim.
At the office of Vogue Records she met publicist Claude Wolff, to whom she was attracted, and when told he would work with her if she signed with the label, she agreed. Her initial French recordings were huge successes. Gradually she moved further into the continent, recording in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and establishing herself as a multi-lingual performer.
In 1961, Clark married Wolff. Wanting to escape the strictures of child stardom imposed upon her by the British public, and anxious to escape the influence of her father, she relocated to France, where she and Wolff had two daughters, Barbara Michelle and Katherine Natalie. Their son Patrick was born in 1972.
While she focused on her new career in France, she continued to achieve hit records in the UK into the early 1960s, developing a parallel career on both sides of the Channel. Her 1961 recording of Sailor became her first #1 hit in the UK. In France, Ya Ya Twist (the only successful recording of a twist song by a female) and Chariot (the original version of I Will Follow Him) became smash hits in 1962.
Released in four different languages in late 1964, Downtown was a success in the UK, France, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Italy, and even in Rhodesia, Japan, and India, and it went to #1 on the US charts in January 1965.
It was the first of fifteen consecutive Top 40 hits Clark scored in the USA, including I Know a Place,, A Sign of the Times, I Couldn't Live Without Your Love, This Is My Song, and Don't Sleep in the Subway. She was honoured with Grammy Awardsfor Downtown in 1964 and for I Know a Place in 1965. In 2003, Downtown was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
French postcard by E.P.M.B., no. 767. Photo: Vogue.
French postcard by PSG, no 1129. Offered by Korès.
Italian postcard Photo: SAAR.
Belgian postcard by Uitg. Best (SB), Antwerpen.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/264. Photo: Neuvecelle.
In 1964, Petula Clark wrote the musical score for the French crime caper A Couteaux Tirés/Daggers Drawn (1964) and also played a cameo in it as herself. Although it was only a mild success, it added a new dimension — that of film composer — to her career.
In 1968, NBC invited Clark to host her own special in the US, and in doing so she inadvertently made television history. While singing a duet of On the Path of Glory, an anti-war song she had composed, with guest Harry Belafonte, she touched his arm, to the dismay of a representative from Chrysler, the show's sponsor, who feared the brief moment would offend Southern viewers at a time when racial conflict was still a major issue in the US.
When he insisted they substitute a different take, with Clark and Belafonte standing well away from each other, she and husband Wolff, producer of the show, refused, destroyed all other takes of the song, and delivered the finished program to NBC with the touch intact. It aired to high ratings and critical acclaim, and marked the first time a man and woman of different races exchanged physical contact on American television.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Clark toured in concert extensively throughout the States. She revived her film career, starring in two big musical films: Finian's Rainbow (Francis Ford Coppola, 1968) opposite Fred Astaire (for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe Award), and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Herbert Ross, 1969) with Peter O'Toole.
After this, her output of hits in the States diminished markedly, although she continued to record and make television appearances into the 1970s. By the mid-1970s, she scaled back her career to devote more time to her family. Her last film to date is the British production Never Never Land (Paul Annett, 1980).
In 1981, at the urging of her children, she returned to legitimate theatre, starring as Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music in London's West End. Opening to rave reviews and what was then the largest advance sale in British theatre history, Clark extended her initial six-month run to thirteen to accommodate the huge demand for tickets.
In 1983, she took on the title role in George Bernard Shaw's Candida. Later stage work included Someone Like You (1989-1990), for which she also composed the score; her Broadway debut Blood Brothers (1993), and Sunset Boulevard (1995-2000), appearing in both the West End and US touring productions.
In 1998, Clark was made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). With more than 68 million records sold worldwide, she is the most successful British female solo recording artist and is cited as such in the Guinness Book of World Records.
French postcard offered by Corvisart, Épinal, no. 1505.
Scene from the first Huggett film, Here Come The Huggetts (1948). Source: Little Shoemaker (YouTube).
Scene from Finian's Rainbow (1968). Source: M1ckeyJoe (YouTube).
Sources: Petula Clark.net, PetulaClark.co.uk, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
French postcard by Publistar, Marseille, no. 885. Photo: Nisak / Vogue.
French postcard by Publistar, Marseille, no. 886. Photo: Nisak / Vogue.
French postcard by Editions Starama, no. S-817. Photo: Disque Vogue.
German postcard by ISV, no. 136.
Britain's Shirley Temple
Petula Sally Olwen Clark was born in Epsom, Great-Britain in 1932, to an English father, Leslie Norman Clark, and a Welsh mother Doris Clark-Phillips, who were both nurses at Long Grove Hospital in Epsom.
As a child, Petulasang in the chapel choir. In 1942, she made her radio debut while attending a BBC broadcast with her father, hoping to send a message to an uncle stationed overseas. During an air raid, the producer requested that someone perform to settle the jittery audience.
Clark volunteered a rendition of Mighty Lak a Rose to an enthusiastic response in the theatre. She then repeated her performance for the broadcast audience, launching a series of some 500 appearances in programmes to entertain the troops.
In addition to this radio work, Clark frequently toured the UK with fellow child performer Julie Andrews. 'Britain's Shirley Temple' was considered a mascot by the RAF. In 1944, while performing at London's Royal Albert Hall, Clark was discovered by film director Maurice Elvey.
Elvey cast her as an orphaned waif in his weepy war drama Medal for the General (1944). In quick succession, she starred in Strawberry Roan (Maurice Elvey, 1945) and I Know Where I'm Going! (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1945) starring Wendy Hiller.
Then followed London Town (Wesley Ruggles, 1946), and Here Come the Huggetts (Ken Annakin, 1948), the first in a series of Huggett Family films based on a British radio series.
Although most of the other 24 films she made during the 1940s and 1950s were B-films, she did work with Anthony Newley in Vice Versa (Peter Ustinov, 1948) and Alec Guinness in The Card (Ronald Neame, 1952).
In 1946, she launched her television career with an appearance on a BBC variety show, Cabaret Cartoons, which led to her being signed to host her own afternoon series, titled simply Petula Clark. A second, Pet's Parlour, followed in 1949. In later years, she starred in This is Petula Clark (1966-1967) and The Sound of Petula (1972-1974).
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W 385. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation.
British autograph card by Polygon. Photo: John Vickers.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 129. Photo: Rank Film. Publicity still for The Card (Ronald Neame, 1952).
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 776. Photo: J. Arthur Rank. Publicity still for Made in Heaven (John Paddy Carstairs, 1952).
Dutch postcard, sent by mail in 1965. Photo: Vogue.
Mr. Piano
In 1949, Petula Clark recorded her first songs Music, Music, Music and Put Your Shoes On, Lucy. Because neither EMI nor Decca, for whom she had recorded, were keen to sign her to a long-term contract, Clark's father teamed with Alan A. Freeman to form their own label, Polygon Records.
She scored a number of major hits in the UK during the 1950s, including The Little Shoemaker (1954), Majorca (1955), Suddenly There's a Valley (1955) and With All My Heart (1956).
It was around 1955 that Clark became romantically linked with Joe 'Mr Piano' Henderson. Their relationship lasted a couple of years, professionally culminating in a BBC Radio series in which they performed together.
Near the end of 1955, Polygon Records was sold to Pye Records, for whom she would record for the remainder of the 1950s, throughout the 1960s and early into the 1970s. In 1958, Clark was invited to appear at the Olympia in Paris where, despite her misgivings, she was received with acclaim.
At the office of Vogue Records she met publicist Claude Wolff, to whom she was attracted, and when told he would work with her if she signed with the label, she agreed. Her initial French recordings were huge successes. Gradually she moved further into the continent, recording in German, French, Italian and Spanish, and establishing herself as a multi-lingual performer.
In 1961, Clark married Wolff. Wanting to escape the strictures of child stardom imposed upon her by the British public, and anxious to escape the influence of her father, she relocated to France, where she and Wolff had two daughters, Barbara Michelle and Katherine Natalie. Their son Patrick was born in 1972.
While she focused on her new career in France, she continued to achieve hit records in the UK into the early 1960s, developing a parallel career on both sides of the Channel. Her 1961 recording of Sailor became her first #1 hit in the UK. In France, Ya Ya Twist (the only successful recording of a twist song by a female) and Chariot (the original version of I Will Follow Him) became smash hits in 1962.
Released in four different languages in late 1964, Downtown was a success in the UK, France, Netherlands, Germany, Australia, Italy, and even in Rhodesia, Japan, and India, and it went to #1 on the US charts in January 1965.
It was the first of fifteen consecutive Top 40 hits Clark scored in the USA, including I Know a Place,
French postcard by E.P.M.B., no. 767. Photo: Vogue.
French postcard by PSG, no 1129. Offered by Korès.
Italian postcard Photo: SAAR.
Belgian postcard by Uitg. Best (SB), Antwerpen.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/264. Photo: Neuvecelle.
Maria von Trapp
In 1964, Petula Clark wrote the musical score for the French crime caper A Couteaux Tirés/Daggers Drawn (1964) and also played a cameo in it as herself. Although it was only a mild success, it added a new dimension — that of film composer — to her career.
In 1968, NBC invited Clark to host her own special in the US, and in doing so she inadvertently made television history. While singing a duet of On the Path of Glory, an anti-war song she had composed, with guest Harry Belafonte, she touched his arm, to the dismay of a representative from Chrysler, the show's sponsor, who feared the brief moment would offend Southern viewers at a time when racial conflict was still a major issue in the US.
When he insisted they substitute a different take, with Clark and Belafonte standing well away from each other, she and husband Wolff, producer of the show, refused, destroyed all other takes of the song, and delivered the finished program to NBC with the touch intact. It aired to high ratings and critical acclaim, and marked the first time a man and woman of different races exchanged physical contact on American television.
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Clark toured in concert extensively throughout the States. She revived her film career, starring in two big musical films: Finian's Rainbow (Francis Ford Coppola, 1968) opposite Fred Astaire (for which she was nominated for a Best Actress Golden Globe Award), and Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Herbert Ross, 1969) with Peter O'Toole.
After this, her output of hits in the States diminished markedly, although she continued to record and make television appearances into the 1970s. By the mid-1970s, she scaled back her career to devote more time to her family. Her last film to date is the British production Never Never Land (Paul Annett, 1980).
In 1981, at the urging of her children, she returned to legitimate theatre, starring as Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music in London's West End. Opening to rave reviews and what was then the largest advance sale in British theatre history, Clark extended her initial six-month run to thirteen to accommodate the huge demand for tickets.
In 1983, she took on the title role in George Bernard Shaw's Candida. Later stage work included Someone Like You (1989-1990), for which she also composed the score; her Broadway debut Blood Brothers (1993), and Sunset Boulevard (1995-2000), appearing in both the West End and US touring productions.
In 1998, Clark was made a CBE (Commander of the Order of the British Empire). With more than 68 million records sold worldwide, she is the most successful British female solo recording artist and is cited as such in the Guinness Book of World Records.
French postcard offered by Corvisart, Épinal, no. 1505.
Scene from the first Huggett film, Here Come The Huggetts (1948). Source: Little Shoemaker (YouTube).
Scene from Finian's Rainbow (1968). Source: M1ckeyJoe (YouTube).
Sources: Petula Clark.net, PetulaClark.co.uk, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
German actor Hans Adalbert Schlettow (1888–1945) appeared between 1917 and 1945 in about 150 films. He played sinister characters in some of the masterpieces of the German silent cinema, including Fritz Lang's Die Nibelungen (1924) and Joe May's Asphalt (1929). But in real life Schlettow proved to be a sinister character as well.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 672/5. Photo: Decla-Ufa-Film. Hans Adalbert Schlettow as Hagen (von) Tronje, in Fritz Lang's saga Die Nibelungen (1924).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 996/1, 1925-1926. Photo: Elite, Berlin W.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3227/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Defina / Defu.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3385/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Jacobi, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4647/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Dührkoop, Berlin.
Hans Adelbert Droescher von Schlettow was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1887 or 1888 (sources differ; his gravestone says the latter). He was the son of an officer and he himself also strived for a career in the army. He had to stop his military studies because of health problems.
Passionate about the arts, he then turned towards acting. Under his real name, he began his career as a trainee at the Schauspielhaus in Frankfurt in 1908. Then he went to Barmen, and from 1915 to 1919 he was committed to the Hoftheater Mannheim (Mannheim court theatre). In 1920 he joined the Phantastischen Theater in Berlin-Charlottenburg.
Under the stage name Hans Adalbert Schlettow, he made his film debut in three silent productions by director Urban Gad: Die Gespensterstunde/The Ghost Hour (Urban Gad, 1916), Der breite weg/The wide way (Urban Gad, 1916), and Klosterfriede/Monastery Peace (Urban Gad, 1917), all opposite Maria Widal and Olga Engl.
During his career, Schlettow kept changing his names, and was sometimes credited as Hans Adalbert von Schlettow, Adalbert or Adalberg von Schlettow, or Hans Schlettow. After his first film appearances he already worked with such famous stars as Pola Negri in Komtesse Doddy/Countess Doddy (Georg Jacoby, 1918), and Emil Jannings in the Sci-Fi film Algol (Hans Werckmeister, 1919), about an alien from the planet Algol who gives a man a device for superpowers.
Initially, Schlettow often played the lover, such as in the title role of Don Juan (Albert Heine, Robert Land, 1922) opposite Margarete Lanner. Gradually he specialised in sinister characters, such as Satan in Hiob/Job (Kurt Matull, 1918) with Eduard von Winterstein, a murderer in the Emile Zola adaptation Thérèse Raquin/Shadows of Fear (Jacques Feyder, 1928) with Gina Manès, and a criminal in Asphalt (Joe May, 1929).
Schlettow’s most famous films are two Fritz Lang classics, the two-part thriller Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler/Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (Fritz Lang, 1922) in which he played the chauffeur of bad genius Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), and the lushly produced UFA epic Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang, 1924), based on the German myth of the Nibelungen, in which he played the villainous Hagen Tronje who discovers the weak spot of the great German hero Siegfried (Paul Richter) and pierces it with a spear.
Schlettow worked also with another legendary director of the silent cinema, David Wark Griffith on Isn't Life Wonderful (D.W. Griffith, 1924). It was Griffith's last independent production, filmed in Berlin, before he was forced to sell his Mamaroneck studio to help pay off mounting debts. At IMDb, Thataw reviews: “Though little known today (...) this little film, in my opinion, is Griffith's last great film. It incorporates the best elements of intimate dramas like Broken Blossoms with a large scale backdrop like Hearts of the World. (...) This story of a poor family's trials and tribulations in inflation ravaged post World War I Germany is remarkably grim and is presented realistically. Griffith came under heavy criticism for presenting a sympathetic portrait of a family in Germany (they had to be changed from German to Polish although one character still tears up a picture of the Kaiser) and for shooting the film in Germany itself.”
Twice Schlettow appeared as Stenka Razin, the leader of the 17th-century uprising of peasants against the Tsarist Russian establishment. In 1928 he starred in Wolga Wolga/Volga Volga, a silent film directed by Russian emigré director Viktor Tourjansky and co-starring Lilian Hall-Davies and Rudolf Klein-Rogge. In 1936 followed a sound version, Stjenka Rasin/Wolga-Wolga (1936), directed by another anti-Soviet émigré Alexandre Volkoff and co-starring Wera Engels and Heinrich George. Razin died in 1671, during the reign of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich (father of Peter the Great).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 677/6. Photo: Decla-Ufa-Film. Publicity still for Die Nibelungen, II, Kriemhilds Rache/Kriemhild's Revenge (Fritz Lang, 1924). Das Bankett bei Etzel (The Banquet at Etzel's, King of the Huns). During the banquet the knights discover it is a trap. Hagen von Tronje (Hans Adalbert Schlettow) kills the child of Etzel (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) and Kriemhild (Margarete Schön), after which Etzel swears to kill all Burgunds. Several are killed in fights. Finally, the banqueting hall is set on fire, killing all but Hagen and king Gunther. Most sets of the film were done by Erich Kettelhut, in collaboration with Otto Hunte and Karl Vollbrecht.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 677/7. Photo: Decla-Ufa-Film. Hagen von Tronje (Hans Adalbert Schlettow) protects king Gunther (Theodoor Loos) in the burning palace of Etzel.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 81/3, 1925-1935. Photo: Parufamet. Publicity still for Der Letzte Walzer/The Last Waltz (Arthur Robison, 1927) with Suzy Vernon, Willy Fritsch, Hans Adalbert Schlettow and Liane Haid.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 81/4, 1925-1935. Photo: Parufamet. Publicity still for Der Letzte Walzer/The Last Waltz (Arthur Robison, 1927) with Willy Fritsch and Hans Adalbert Schlettow.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 88/4. Photo: Terra Film. Publicity still for Königin Luise, 1. Teil - Die Jugend der Königin Luise/Queen Louise (Karl Grune, 1927) with Mady Christians.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3859/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Böhm, Berlin. Publicity still for Wolga Wolga/Volga Volga (Viktor Tourjansky, 1928).
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 653. Photo: publicity still for Wolga Wolga/Volga Volga (Viktor Tourjansky, 1928).
In 1930, Hans Adalbert Schlettow played Harry the farmer in one of the first English sound films, the thriller A cottage in Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith, 1930) with Swedish actor Uno Henning as an escaped prisoner. The sound of this production, filmed in Sweden, has been lost and the film can now only be shown in a silent version.
After the arrival of sound, Schlettow first appeared in leading parts, such as in the comedy Der tolle Bomberg/The Mad Bomberg (Georg Asagaroff, 1932) with Vivian Gibson, and Der Jäger aus Kurpfalz/The hunter from the Palatinate (Carl Behr, 1932) with Fritz Kampers.
Later he mainly worked as a supporting actor. During the 1930s, he often appeared in Heimat-films, films with a regional background, such as An heiligen Wassern/Sacred Waters (Erich Waschneck, 1932) with Karin Hardt, Die Nacht im Forsthaus/The Roberts Case (Erich Engels, 1933) and Der Jäger von Fall/The Hunter of Fall (Hans Deppe, 1936).
In 1940, he played the role of Santer, the opponent of Winnetou, at the Karl-May-Spielen, a Karl May festival in Werder. Long before the coming to power of Adolph Hitler, Schlettow had been a sympathizer of the Nazis and their anti-Semitic theories. After 1933, Schlettow was regarded by colleagues as an informer.
During the war time he played in such productions as Die Rothschilds/The Rothschilds (Erich Waschneck, 1941), an anti-Semitic and anti-British propaganda film about the rise of the Jewish bankers (the Rothschild family) at the beginning of the 19th century, and Ohm Krüger/Uncle Krüger (Hans Steinhoff, 1941), the second-most expensive prestige and propaganda project of the Nazi period justifying the annihilation politics of the concentration camps, while claiming this to be a creation of the British in South Africa during the Boer war.
He also played in popular entertainment films as the circus spectacle Die grosse Nummer/The Big Number (Karl Anton, 1943), starring Leny Marenbach and Rudolf Prack. In August 1944 in the final phase of the Second World War, Joseph Goebbels placed him on the list of the ‘Gottbegnadeten-Liste der wichtigsten Filmschauspieler’ (the God gifted list of the main film actors), so he did not have to fight at the front.
Hans Adalbert Schlettow died anyway shortly before the end of the war in April 1945. In a burst of patriotism, he had joined the army and during the Battle of Berlin, when the Third Reich started its desperate final offensive, he became a war casualty. About his private life is known that he loved to travel often to sunny, fascist Italy with actor Eduard von Winterstein, with whom he also often worked together.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5263/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5263/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6643/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Deuton-Film. Publicity still for Der tolle Bomberg/The Mad Bomberg (Georg Asagaroff, 1932).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 167/6. Photo: publicity still for Marschall Vorwärts/Marshal Forward (Heinz Paul, 1932) with Paul Wegener and Friedrich Kayssler.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7504/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Engels & Schmidt Tonfilm.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3312/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Dillan.
Segment from Die Nibelungen (1924). Source: Dionysus Cinema (YouTube).
Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Philippe Pelletier (CinéArtistes - French), Steven P. Hill (IMDb), AllMovie, Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 672/5. Photo: Decla-Ufa-Film. Hans Adalbert Schlettow as Hagen (von) Tronje, in Fritz Lang's saga Die Nibelungen (1924).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 996/1, 1925-1926. Photo: Elite, Berlin W.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3227/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Defina / Defu.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3385/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Jacobi, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4647/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Dührkoop, Berlin.
Passionate About the Arts
Hans Adelbert Droescher von Schlettow was born in Frankfurt am Main, Germany in 1887 or 1888 (sources differ; his gravestone says the latter). He was the son of an officer and he himself also strived for a career in the army. He had to stop his military studies because of health problems.
Passionate about the arts, he then turned towards acting. Under his real name, he began his career as a trainee at the Schauspielhaus in Frankfurt in 1908. Then he went to Barmen, and from 1915 to 1919 he was committed to the Hoftheater Mannheim (Mannheim court theatre). In 1920 he joined the Phantastischen Theater in Berlin-Charlottenburg.
Under the stage name Hans Adalbert Schlettow, he made his film debut in three silent productions by director Urban Gad: Die Gespensterstunde/The Ghost Hour (Urban Gad, 1916), Der breite weg/The wide way (Urban Gad, 1916), and Klosterfriede/Monastery Peace (Urban Gad, 1917), all opposite Maria Widal and Olga Engl.
During his career, Schlettow kept changing his names, and was sometimes credited as Hans Adalbert von Schlettow, Adalbert or Adalberg von Schlettow, or Hans Schlettow. After his first film appearances he already worked with such famous stars as Pola Negri in Komtesse Doddy/Countess Doddy (Georg Jacoby, 1918), and Emil Jannings in the Sci-Fi film Algol (Hans Werckmeister, 1919), about an alien from the planet Algol who gives a man a device for superpowers.
Initially, Schlettow often played the lover, such as in the title role of Don Juan (Albert Heine, Robert Land, 1922) opposite Margarete Lanner. Gradually he specialised in sinister characters, such as Satan in Hiob/Job (Kurt Matull, 1918) with Eduard von Winterstein, a murderer in the Emile Zola adaptation Thérèse Raquin/Shadows of Fear (Jacques Feyder, 1928) with Gina Manès, and a criminal in Asphalt (Joe May, 1929).
Schlettow’s most famous films are two Fritz Lang classics, the two-part thriller Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler/Dr. Mabuse, The Gambler (Fritz Lang, 1922) in which he played the chauffeur of bad genius Dr. Mabuse (Rudolf Klein-Rogge), and the lushly produced UFA epic Die Nibelungen (Fritz Lang, 1924), based on the German myth of the Nibelungen, in which he played the villainous Hagen Tronje who discovers the weak spot of the great German hero Siegfried (Paul Richter) and pierces it with a spear.
Schlettow worked also with another legendary director of the silent cinema, David Wark Griffith on Isn't Life Wonderful (D.W. Griffith, 1924). It was Griffith's last independent production, filmed in Berlin, before he was forced to sell his Mamaroneck studio to help pay off mounting debts. At IMDb, Thataw reviews: “Though little known today (...) this little film, in my opinion, is Griffith's last great film. It incorporates the best elements of intimate dramas like Broken Blossoms with a large scale backdrop like Hearts of the World. (...) This story of a poor family's trials and tribulations in inflation ravaged post World War I Germany is remarkably grim and is presented realistically. Griffith came under heavy criticism for presenting a sympathetic portrait of a family in Germany (they had to be changed from German to Polish although one character still tears up a picture of the Kaiser) and for shooting the film in Germany itself.”
Twice Schlettow appeared as Stenka Razin, the leader of the 17th-century uprising of peasants against the Tsarist Russian establishment. In 1928 he starred in Wolga Wolga/Volga Volga, a silent film directed by Russian emigré director Viktor Tourjansky and co-starring Lilian Hall-Davies and Rudolf Klein-Rogge. In 1936 followed a sound version, Stjenka Rasin/Wolga-Wolga (1936), directed by another anti-Soviet émigré Alexandre Volkoff and co-starring Wera Engels and Heinrich George. Razin died in 1671, during the reign of Tsar Aleksei Mikhailovich (father of Peter the Great).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 677/6. Photo: Decla-Ufa-Film. Publicity still for Die Nibelungen, II, Kriemhilds Rache/Kriemhild's Revenge (Fritz Lang, 1924). Das Bankett bei Etzel (The Banquet at Etzel's, King of the Huns). During the banquet the knights discover it is a trap. Hagen von Tronje (Hans Adalbert Schlettow) kills the child of Etzel (Rudolf Klein-Rogge) and Kriemhild (Margarete Schön), after which Etzel swears to kill all Burgunds. Several are killed in fights. Finally, the banqueting hall is set on fire, killing all but Hagen and king Gunther. Most sets of the film were done by Erich Kettelhut, in collaboration with Otto Hunte and Karl Vollbrecht.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 677/7. Photo: Decla-Ufa-Film. Hagen von Tronje (Hans Adalbert Schlettow) protects king Gunther (Theodoor Loos) in the burning palace of Etzel.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 81/3, 1925-1935. Photo: Parufamet. Publicity still for Der Letzte Walzer/The Last Waltz (Arthur Robison, 1927) with Suzy Vernon, Willy Fritsch, Hans Adalbert Schlettow and Liane Haid.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 81/4, 1925-1935. Photo: Parufamet. Publicity still for Der Letzte Walzer/The Last Waltz (Arthur Robison, 1927) with Willy Fritsch and Hans Adalbert Schlettow.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 88/4. Photo: Terra Film. Publicity still for Königin Luise, 1. Teil - Die Jugend der Königin Luise/Queen Louise (Karl Grune, 1927) with Mady Christians.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3859/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Böhm, Berlin. Publicity still for Wolga Wolga/Volga Volga (Viktor Tourjansky, 1928).
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 653. Photo: publicity still for Wolga Wolga/Volga Volga (Viktor Tourjansky, 1928).
The Informer
In 1930, Hans Adalbert Schlettow played Harry the farmer in one of the first English sound films, the thriller A cottage in Dartmoor (Anthony Asquith, 1930) with Swedish actor Uno Henning as an escaped prisoner. The sound of this production, filmed in Sweden, has been lost and the film can now only be shown in a silent version.
After the arrival of sound, Schlettow first appeared in leading parts, such as in the comedy Der tolle Bomberg/The Mad Bomberg (Georg Asagaroff, 1932) with Vivian Gibson, and Der Jäger aus Kurpfalz/The hunter from the Palatinate (Carl Behr, 1932) with Fritz Kampers.
Later he mainly worked as a supporting actor. During the 1930s, he often appeared in Heimat-films, films with a regional background, such as An heiligen Wassern/Sacred Waters (Erich Waschneck, 1932) with Karin Hardt, Die Nacht im Forsthaus/The Roberts Case (Erich Engels, 1933) and Der Jäger von Fall/The Hunter of Fall (Hans Deppe, 1936).
In 1940, he played the role of Santer, the opponent of Winnetou, at the Karl-May-Spielen, a Karl May festival in Werder. Long before the coming to power of Adolph Hitler, Schlettow had been a sympathizer of the Nazis and their anti-Semitic theories. After 1933, Schlettow was regarded by colleagues as an informer.
During the war time he played in such productions as Die Rothschilds/The Rothschilds (Erich Waschneck, 1941), an anti-Semitic and anti-British propaganda film about the rise of the Jewish bankers (the Rothschild family) at the beginning of the 19th century, and Ohm Krüger/Uncle Krüger (Hans Steinhoff, 1941), the second-most expensive prestige and propaganda project of the Nazi period justifying the annihilation politics of the concentration camps, while claiming this to be a creation of the British in South Africa during the Boer war.
He also played in popular entertainment films as the circus spectacle Die grosse Nummer/The Big Number (Karl Anton, 1943), starring Leny Marenbach and Rudolf Prack. In August 1944 in the final phase of the Second World War, Joseph Goebbels placed him on the list of the ‘Gottbegnadeten-Liste der wichtigsten Filmschauspieler’ (the God gifted list of the main film actors), so he did not have to fight at the front.
Hans Adalbert Schlettow died anyway shortly before the end of the war in April 1945. In a burst of patriotism, he had joined the army and during the Battle of Berlin, when the Third Reich started its desperate final offensive, he became a war casualty. About his private life is known that he loved to travel often to sunny, fascist Italy with actor Eduard von Winterstein, with whom he also often worked together.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5263/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5263/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6643/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Deuton-Film. Publicity still for Der tolle Bomberg/The Mad Bomberg (Georg Asagaroff, 1932).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 167/6. Photo: publicity still for Marschall Vorwärts/Marshal Forward (Heinz Paul, 1932) with Paul Wegener and Friedrich Kayssler.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7504/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Engels & Schmidt Tonfilm.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3312/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Dillan.
Segment from Die Nibelungen (1924). Source: Dionysus Cinema (YouTube).
Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Philippe Pelletier (CinéArtistes - French), Steven P. Hill (IMDb), AllMovie, Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.
Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) is an Italian silent historical film starring Bartolomeo Pagano, Jia Ruskaja and Franz Sala. It was the final film of Pagano, who had been famous during the silent era for his portrayals of Maciste. For the Russian dancer Jia Ruskaja, it was her only screen appearance. The film is based on the Biblical story of Judith beheading Holofernes and mixes this with a modern story about an engineer who tries to save a mountain village from the shady affairs of speculating entrepreneurs lead by a beautiful woman. There were several film adaptations of Judith and Holofernes, including a Louis Feuillade version in 1909 and D.W. Griffith' famous 1914 version Judith of Bethulia.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 1. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 3. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Bartolomeo Pagano.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 5. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 6. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 7. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Bartolomeo Pagano and Jia Ruskaja.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 10. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 12. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 13. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Jia Ruskaja.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 14. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 17. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Jia Ruskaja.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 19. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Carlo Tedeschi.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 20. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Jia Ruskaja.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 23. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 24. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 25. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Bartolomeo Pagano.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 26. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Jia Ruskaja.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 27. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Il Cinema Muto Italiano - 1923-1931 - Italian) and Wikipedia.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 1. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 3. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Bartolomeo Pagano.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 5. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 6. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 7. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Bartolomeo Pagano and Jia Ruskaja.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 10. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 12. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 13. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Jia Ruskaja.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 14. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 17. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Jia Ruskaja.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 19. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Carlo Tedeschi.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 20. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Jia Ruskaja.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 23. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 24. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 25. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Bartolomeo Pagano.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 26. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929) with Jia Ruskaja.
Italian postcard by G.B. Falci, Milano (Milan), no. 27. Photo: Production Pittaluga Film, Torino (Turin). Publicity still for Giuditta e Oloferne/Judith and Holofernes (Baldassarre Negroni, 1929).
Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Il Cinema Muto Italiano - 1923-1931 - Italian) and Wikipedia.
Smart German actor Gustav Fröhlich (1902-1987) played Freder Fredersen, the young hero in Fritz Lang's silent classic Metropolis (1927). During the 1930s he became the fresh-faced gentleman in light comedies and musicals, and was one of the four most popular male stars of the German cinema during the Third Reich (with Willy Fritsch, Hans Albers and Heinz Rühmann). After the war he tried to escape from his standard roles as the charming gentleman playing a doomed painter in Die Sünderin (1951), but his effort went down in a scandal.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1584/2, 1927-1938. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3018/1, 1928-1929. Photo: M. v. Bucovich (Atelier K. Schenker).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3600/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4145/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4293/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Ufa.
Gustav Friedrich Fröhlich was born an illegitimate child in Hannover, Germany in 1902. His father, Gustav König, was a well-known engineer, and his mother Hedwig Therese Sophie Fröhlich, the daughter of a worker. Gustav was raised by foster parents. His foster family moved around western Germany a lot while he was growing up, living in cities like Wiesbaden and Wurzburg.
He studied at the Homuth Realgymnasium Friedenau in Berlin. During World War I the young Gustav volunteered for a duty in occupied Brussels as supervisioner of the press.
In 1919 he started his career as a trainee at a newspaper, but he spent his spare time as a emcee at local variety shows. He also wrote two issues of a dime novel, Heinz Brandt, der Fremdenlegionär/Heinz Brandt, the Foreign Legionnaire.
After some entrances at a vaudeville theater under the stage name Gustav Geef he took acting lessons in Heilbronn. In the next few years he appeared on different minor German stages. In Berlin he played from 1923 till 1925 at the Volksbühne am Bülowplatz under the direction of Erwin Piscator. Later he appeared as The Prince of Homburg at the Deutsche Theater under the direction of Max Reinhardt.
His film debut was a small role in a Dutch-German film produced in Germany, De bruut/Ein neues Leben/The Brute (Theo Frenkel, 1922) with Erna Morena and Adolphe Engers.
He then played a secondary role as composer Franz Liszt in Paganini (Heinz Goldberg, 1923) featuringConrad Veidt. The following years, he played in such films as Friesenblut (1925) oppositeJenny Jugo.
Then Fröhlich landed his breakthrough role as Freder Fredersen in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) by chance. He was only scheduled to play one of the workmen but four weeks after the beginning he was discovered on the set by Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang's wife. Lang immediately cast him in the lead because of his striking good looks. A new star was born.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 71/10. Photo: Ufa / Parufamet. Publicity still for Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). Collection: Didier Hanson.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4551/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4643/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Balázs, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5196/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5522/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Deutsche Universal Film. Publicity Still for Zwei Menschen/Two People (Erich Waschneck, 1930) with Charlotte Susa.
After Metropolis, Gustav Fröhlich was typecast as the fresh-faced, naive 'boy next door' in such silent films as Die elf Teufel/The Eleven Devils (Zoltan Korda, Carl Boese, 1927) with Evelyn Holt, Heimkehr/Homecoming (Joe May, 1928) oppositeLars Hanson, and Asphalt (Joe May, 1929), in which he played a honest policeman who is seduced by a crook (Betty Amann).
In 1930, Fröhlich was called to Hollywood by Warner Brothers to do German versions of American sound films, such as Die heilige Flamme/The Holy Flames (William Dieterle (as Wilhelm Dieterle), Berthold Viertel, 1931) and Kismet (William Dieterle, 1931), both with Dita Parlo.
Back in Germany, he soon was subscribed for Max Ophüls’ musical comedy Die verliebte Firma/The Company's in Love (1931) next to Lien Deyers, and for Robert Siodmak's crime drama Voruntersuchung/Inquest (1931) with Albert Bassermann.
He often worked with director Géza von Bolváry. Between 1931 and 1933 they made six films together. These include Ich will nicht wissen, wer du bist/I Do Not Want to Know Who You Are (Géza von Bolváry, 1932) with Liane Haid, and Was Frauen träumen/What Women Dream (Géza von Bolváry, 1933), which was co-written by Billy Wilder.
Fröhlich often played smart gentlemen in lighthearted musicals and romances. Because of his carefree attendance, Fröhlich was seldom allowed to play other characters. One of his greatest successes was his part of the helpful and likable policeman in Oberwachtmeister Schwenke (Carl Froelich, 1935).
He also directed films like Rakoczy-Marsch/Rakoczy march (Gustav Fröhlich, Steve Sekely, 1933), Abenteuer eines jungen Herrn in Polen/Love and Alarm (1934), and after the war Wege im Zwielicht/Paths in Twilight (1948), Der Bagnosträfling/The Prisoner (1949) with Paul Dahlke, and the crime drama Die Lüge/The Lie (1950) with Otto Gebühr.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6261/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Super-Film. Publicity still for Liebeskommando/Love's Command (Géza von Bolváry, 1931).
Dutch postcard by JosPe, Arnhem, no. 379. Photo: Remaco. Gitta Alpár and Gustav Fröhlich co-starred in Gitta entdeckt ihr Herz/Gitta Discovers Her Heart (Carl Froelich, 1932).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7926/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Niedecken, St. Moritz. With Gitta Alpár.
Dutch postcard by JosPe, Arnhem, no. 279. Photo: Filma. Publicity still for Unter falscher Flagge/Under False Flagg (Johannes Meyer, 1932) with Charlotte Susa.
Dutch postcard by JosPe, Arnhem, no. 384. Photo: City Film. Publicity still for Ich will nicht wissen, wer du bist/I Don't Want To Know Who You Are (Géza von Bolváry, 1932) with Liane Haid.
Between 1931 and 1935 Gustav Fröhlich was married with Hungarian Opera star and actress Gitta Alpár. When she was pregnant form their daughter Julika, he left her. According to Alpár, because she was Jewish and he did not want to hurt his career in Nazi Germany.
After the war, Fröhlich tried a reconciliation with Gitta Alpár but she never forgave him. Reportedly this gave him a tough time at old-age.
From 1936 till 1938 he lived together with actress Lída Baarová, his costar in Barcarole (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1935) and Leutnant Bobby, der Teufelskerl/A Devil of a Fellow (Georg Jacoby, 1935).
After losing Lída to Joseph Goebbels, Froelich had a quarrel with him. There is an urban legend that the quarrel culminated in a slap in the face of the powerful and feared Propaganda-Minister. Allegedly, Froehlich was banned from playing his trade for two years (1941-1943). Lída Baarová later denied this in her memoirs.
In 1937, he rented his house in Berchtesgaden to Adolph Hitler's architect, Albert Speer. In 1941 Fröhlich remarried with Maria Hajek. Since 1941 he had to serve for the Wehrmacht, interrupted by film engagements like Der Grosse König/The Great King (Veit Harlan, 1942) starring Otto Gebühr as Prussian king Friedrich the Second.
Dutch Postcard by City-Film, no. 362.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6481/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Emelka. Publicity still for Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1932).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7000/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Marion, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8772/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Willinger, Wien.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9021/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Ufa / Lindner. Publicity still for Barcarole (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1936) with Lída Baarová.
Gustav Fröhlich was seldom involved in Nazi Propaganda films, a fact that helped him to establish a new film career after World War II.
He tried to escape from standard roles of the charming gentleman by playing a doomed painter in Die Sünderin/The Sinner (Willi Forst, 1951). The effort went down in the chaos of a scandal because of the film's open treatment of several taboos such as suicide and euthanasia, plus a brief nude performance by Hildegard Knef.
He went on to play leads in light entertainment films including Haus des Lebens/House of Life (Karl Hartl, 1952) with Cornell Borchers, and Die kleine Stadt will schlafen gehen/The Little Town Will Go to Sleep (Hans H. König, 1954) with Jester Naefe.
He remained a busy actor after the war but his roles changed from leading men to supporting parts as he got older. From the 1960s on, he had only a few TV film entrances including a part in the comedy Laubenkolonie/Allotment area (Heribert Wenk, Bertold Sakmann, 1968) with Paul Dahlke.
He was more active in the theatre, a.o. for the Renaissance-Theater in Berlin and the Schauspielhaus in Zürich. In 1973 he was honoured with the Filmband in Gold, the German Film Award for Lifetime Achievements. Ten years later, he published his autobiography Waren das Zeiten - Mein Film-Heldenleben/Those Were Times - My Life as a Film Hero (1983). His last public appearance was in 1986, when Giorgio Moroder presented his revised version of Metropolis.
From 1956 on, Gustav Fröhlich lived in Lugano, Switzerland. There he died in 1987 of a complication after surgery, at age 85. His wife Maria Hajek had passed away earlier that same year.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8383/1, 1933-1934.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3537/1, 1941-1944. Photo: M P SS.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3608/1. Photo: Adler Film.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3703/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick / Ufa.
German collectors card by Lux.
Sources: Lara Goeke (The Gustav Fröhlich Fan Page), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia (English and German), and IMDb.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1584/2, 1927-1938. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3018/1, 1928-1929. Photo: M. v. Bucovich (Atelier K. Schenker).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3600/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4145/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4293/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Ufa.
Metropolis
Gustav Friedrich Fröhlich was born an illegitimate child in Hannover, Germany in 1902. His father, Gustav König, was a well-known engineer, and his mother Hedwig Therese Sophie Fröhlich, the daughter of a worker. Gustav was raised by foster parents. His foster family moved around western Germany a lot while he was growing up, living in cities like Wiesbaden and Wurzburg.
He studied at the Homuth Realgymnasium Friedenau in Berlin. During World War I the young Gustav volunteered for a duty in occupied Brussels as supervisioner of the press.
In 1919 he started his career as a trainee at a newspaper, but he spent his spare time as a emcee at local variety shows. He also wrote two issues of a dime novel, Heinz Brandt, der Fremdenlegionär/Heinz Brandt, the Foreign Legionnaire.
After some entrances at a vaudeville theater under the stage name Gustav Geef he took acting lessons in Heilbronn. In the next few years he appeared on different minor German stages. In Berlin he played from 1923 till 1925 at the Volksbühne am Bülowplatz under the direction of Erwin Piscator. Later he appeared as The Prince of Homburg at the Deutsche Theater under the direction of Max Reinhardt.
His film debut was a small role in a Dutch-German film produced in Germany, De bruut/Ein neues Leben/The Brute (Theo Frenkel, 1922) with Erna Morena and Adolphe Engers.
He then played a secondary role as composer Franz Liszt in Paganini (Heinz Goldberg, 1923) featuringConrad Veidt. The following years, he played in such films as Friesenblut (1925) oppositeJenny Jugo.
Then Fröhlich landed his breakthrough role as Freder Fredersen in Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927) by chance. He was only scheduled to play one of the workmen but four weeks after the beginning he was discovered on the set by Thea von Harbou, Fritz Lang's wife. Lang immediately cast him in the lead because of his striking good looks. A new star was born.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 71/10. Photo: Ufa / Parufamet. Publicity still for Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927). Collection: Didier Hanson.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4551/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Binder, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4643/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Balázs, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5196/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5522/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Deutsche Universal Film. Publicity Still for Zwei Menschen/Two People (Erich Waschneck, 1930) with Charlotte Susa.
Warner Brothers
After Metropolis, Gustav Fröhlich was typecast as the fresh-faced, naive 'boy next door' in such silent films as Die elf Teufel/The Eleven Devils (Zoltan Korda, Carl Boese, 1927) with Evelyn Holt, Heimkehr/Homecoming (Joe May, 1928) oppositeLars Hanson, and Asphalt (Joe May, 1929), in which he played a honest policeman who is seduced by a crook (Betty Amann).
In 1930, Fröhlich was called to Hollywood by Warner Brothers to do German versions of American sound films, such as Die heilige Flamme/The Holy Flames (William Dieterle (as Wilhelm Dieterle), Berthold Viertel, 1931) and Kismet (William Dieterle, 1931), both with Dita Parlo.
Back in Germany, he soon was subscribed for Max Ophüls’ musical comedy Die verliebte Firma/The Company's in Love (1931) next to Lien Deyers, and for Robert Siodmak's crime drama Voruntersuchung/Inquest (1931) with Albert Bassermann.
He often worked with director Géza von Bolváry. Between 1931 and 1933 they made six films together. These include Ich will nicht wissen, wer du bist/I Do Not Want to Know Who You Are (Géza von Bolváry, 1932) with Liane Haid, and Was Frauen träumen/What Women Dream (Géza von Bolváry, 1933), which was co-written by Billy Wilder.
Fröhlich often played smart gentlemen in lighthearted musicals and romances. Because of his carefree attendance, Fröhlich was seldom allowed to play other characters. One of his greatest successes was his part of the helpful and likable policeman in Oberwachtmeister Schwenke (Carl Froelich, 1935).
He also directed films like Rakoczy-Marsch/Rakoczy march (Gustav Fröhlich, Steve Sekely, 1933), Abenteuer eines jungen Herrn in Polen/Love and Alarm (1934), and after the war Wege im Zwielicht/Paths in Twilight (1948), Der Bagnosträfling/The Prisoner (1949) with Paul Dahlke, and the crime drama Die Lüge/The Lie (1950) with Otto Gebühr.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6261/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Super-Film. Publicity still for Liebeskommando/Love's Command (Géza von Bolváry, 1931).
Dutch postcard by JosPe, Arnhem, no. 379. Photo: Remaco. Gitta Alpár and Gustav Fröhlich co-starred in Gitta entdeckt ihr Herz/Gitta Discovers Her Heart (Carl Froelich, 1932).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7926/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Niedecken, St. Moritz. With Gitta Alpár.
Dutch postcard by JosPe, Arnhem, no. 279. Photo: Filma. Publicity still for Unter falscher Flagge/Under False Flagg (Johannes Meyer, 1932) with Charlotte Susa.
Dutch postcard by JosPe, Arnhem, no. 384. Photo: City Film. Publicity still for Ich will nicht wissen, wer du bist/I Don't Want To Know Who You Are (Géza von Bolváry, 1932) with Liane Haid.
Goebbels
Between 1931 and 1935 Gustav Fröhlich was married with Hungarian Opera star and actress Gitta Alpár. When she was pregnant form their daughter Julika, he left her. According to Alpár, because she was Jewish and he did not want to hurt his career in Nazi Germany.
After the war, Fröhlich tried a reconciliation with Gitta Alpár but she never forgave him. Reportedly this gave him a tough time at old-age.
From 1936 till 1938 he lived together with actress Lída Baarová, his costar in Barcarole (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1935) and Leutnant Bobby, der Teufelskerl/A Devil of a Fellow (Georg Jacoby, 1935).
After losing Lída to Joseph Goebbels, Froelich had a quarrel with him. There is an urban legend that the quarrel culminated in a slap in the face of the powerful and feared Propaganda-Minister. Allegedly, Froehlich was banned from playing his trade for two years (1941-1943). Lída Baarová later denied this in her memoirs.
In 1937, he rented his house in Berchtesgaden to Adolph Hitler's architect, Albert Speer. In 1941 Fröhlich remarried with Maria Hajek. Since 1941 he had to serve for the Wehrmacht, interrupted by film engagements like Der Grosse König/The Great King (Veit Harlan, 1942) starring Otto Gebühr as Prussian king Friedrich the Second.
Dutch Postcard by City-Film, no. 362.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6481/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Emelka. Publicity still for Gloria (Hans Behrendt, 1932).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7000/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Marion, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8772/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Willinger, Wien.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9021/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Ufa / Lindner. Publicity still for Barcarole (Gerhard Lamprecht, 1936) with Lída Baarová.
Scandal
Gustav Fröhlich was seldom involved in Nazi Propaganda films, a fact that helped him to establish a new film career after World War II.
He tried to escape from standard roles of the charming gentleman by playing a doomed painter in Die Sünderin/The Sinner (Willi Forst, 1951). The effort went down in the chaos of a scandal because of the film's open treatment of several taboos such as suicide and euthanasia, plus a brief nude performance by Hildegard Knef.
He went on to play leads in light entertainment films including Haus des Lebens/House of Life (Karl Hartl, 1952) with Cornell Borchers, and Die kleine Stadt will schlafen gehen/The Little Town Will Go to Sleep (Hans H. König, 1954) with Jester Naefe.
He remained a busy actor after the war but his roles changed from leading men to supporting parts as he got older. From the 1960s on, he had only a few TV film entrances including a part in the comedy Laubenkolonie/Allotment area (Heribert Wenk, Bertold Sakmann, 1968) with Paul Dahlke.
He was more active in the theatre, a.o. for the Renaissance-Theater in Berlin and the Schauspielhaus in Zürich. In 1973 he was honoured with the Filmband in Gold, the German Film Award for Lifetime Achievements. Ten years later, he published his autobiography Waren das Zeiten - Mein Film-Heldenleben/Those Were Times - My Life as a Film Hero (1983). His last public appearance was in 1986, when Giorgio Moroder presented his revised version of Metropolis.
From 1956 on, Gustav Fröhlich lived in Lugano, Switzerland. There he died in 1987 of a complication after surgery, at age 85. His wife Maria Hajek had passed away earlier that same year.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8383/1, 1933-1934.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3537/1, 1941-1944. Photo: M P SS.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3608/1. Photo: Adler Film.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3703/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick / Ufa.
German collectors card by Lux.
Sources: Lara Goeke (The Gustav Fröhlich Fan Page), Bruce Eder (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia (English and German), and IMDb.
The Unione Cinematografica Italiana or UCI published postcards of stars and scenes of its Italian silent films of the early 1920s. In 1919, a fusion of most of the existing Italian film companies had been realised by the producers Barattolo and Fassini of Caesar Film and Cines in order to secure the Italians a better international position. The main pre-war companies like Ambrosio, Itala and Gloria had merged in UCI. The initiative to counter the Americans and Germans failed by lack of funding, production facilities and artistic renewal. The bankruptcy of the Banca di Sconto, UCI's main financial backer, in 1921 didn't help too. UCI was mainly a distribution company, not a production company. In 1926 it went bankrupt and its malfortune and final demise marginalised Italian silent film production.
Lucy di San Germano. Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / Ed. G. Vettori, Bologna, no. 13, 1058.
Francesca Bertini. Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / La Rotofotografica, no. 44.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: publicity still for La nave/The Ship (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Mario Roncoroni, 1921), starring the Russian dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein. La nave was based on the homonymous play by Gabriele D'Annunzio.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Juana, Scalabrino's adopted daughter, performs a sweet pilgrimage to the Madonna to protect Rolando. The four-part serial Il ponte dei sospiri, starring Luciano Albertini,Antonietta Calderari, Garaveo Onorato and Carolina White, was set in Venice. The actress pictured is Magda Chirotti, who played Juana.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri (Domenico Gaido, 1921) with Luciano Albertini as Rolando. Caption: The young and very brave son of Doge Candiano, Rolando, is pushed into prison by halberds.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri(Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Altieri stops Dandolo for a duel. Luigi Stinchi as Altieri, one of the conspirators, and Bonaventura Ibanez as Dandolo, Leonora's father.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / G. Vettori, Bologna, no. 181. Photo: publicity still for I promessi sposi (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Emilia Vidali played the female lead of Lucia in Mario Bonnard's adaptation of Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi/The Betrothed (1922), opposite Domenico Serra as Renzo and Mario Parpagnoli as don Rodrigo.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / G. Vettori, Bologna. Emilia Vidali (Lucia) and Ida Carloni Talli (Agnese) in I promessi sposi (Mario Bonnard 1922).
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / G. Vettori, Bologna. Publicity still for I promessi sposi (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Renzo (Domenico Serra) at the lying and cheating lawyer Azzeccagarbugli. Caption: To the lawyer we need to set things straight, so that we can mess them up.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: publicity still for Quo Vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1925). This German-Italian epic was one of the many adaptations of the classic novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, and starring Emil Jannings as Nero, Elena Sangro as Poppea, Alphons Fryland as Vinicius and Lilian Hall-Davis as Licia. Here we see Nero menacing Licia, after having 'saved her from the clutches of Vinicius'.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 663. Elena Sangro as the Empress Poppea in Quo vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1925).
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 667. Photo: André Habay as Petronius in Quo Vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1925).
Lucy di San Germano. Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / Ed. G. Vettori, Bologna, no. 13, 1058.
Francesca Bertini. Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / La Rotofotografica, no. 44.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: publicity still for La nave/The Ship (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Mario Roncoroni, 1921), starring the Russian dancer and actress Ida Rubinstein. La nave was based on the homonymous play by Gabriele D'Annunzio.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri/The Bridge of Sighs (Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Juana, Scalabrino's adopted daughter, performs a sweet pilgrimage to the Madonna to protect Rolando. The four-part serial Il ponte dei sospiri, starring Luciano Albertini,Antonietta Calderari, Garaveo Onorato and Carolina White, was set in Venice. The actress pictured is Magda Chirotti, who played Juana.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri (Domenico Gaido, 1921) with Luciano Albertini as Rolando. Caption: The young and very brave son of Doge Candiano, Rolando, is pushed into prison by halberds.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: publicity still for Il ponte dei sospiri(Domenico Gaido, 1921). Caption: Altieri stops Dandolo for a duel. Luigi Stinchi as Altieri, one of the conspirators, and Bonaventura Ibanez as Dandolo, Leonora's father.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / G. Vettori, Bologna, no. 181. Photo: publicity still for I promessi sposi (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Emilia Vidali played the female lead of Lucia in Mario Bonnard's adaptation of Alessandro Manzoni's I promessi sposi/The Betrothed (1922), opposite Domenico Serra as Renzo and Mario Parpagnoli as don Rodrigo.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / G. Vettori, Bologna. Emilia Vidali (Lucia) and Ida Carloni Talli (Agnese) in I promessi sposi (Mario Bonnard 1922).
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / G. Vettori, Bologna. Publicity still for I promessi sposi (Mario Bonnard, 1922). Renzo (Domenico Serra) at the lying and cheating lawyer Azzeccagarbugli. Caption: To the lawyer we need to set things straight, so that we can mess them up.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Photo: publicity still for Quo Vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1925). This German-Italian epic was one of the many adaptations of the classic novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz, and starring Emil Jannings as Nero, Elena Sangro as Poppea, Alphons Fryland as Vinicius and Lilian Hall-Davis as Licia. Here we see Nero menacing Licia, after having 'saved her from the clutches of Vinicius'.
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 663. Elena Sangro as the Empress Poppea in Quo vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1925).
Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana / Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 667. Photo: André Habay as Petronius in Quo Vadis? (Gabriellino D'Annunzio, Georg Jacoby, 1925).
German film actress and author Barbara Rütting (1927) appeared in 45 films between 1952 and 1983. Later she became a well known human rights and animal welfare activist.
German postcard by UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-168. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Klaus Collignon / UFA.
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no F 16. Photo: Klaus Collignon.
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F 115. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / Bavaria.
Barbara Rütting was born as Waltraut Irmgard Goltz in Ludwigsfelde-Wietstock, Germany in 1927. She was one of the five children of Johanna and Richard Goltz, who were both teachers.
After her graduation in 1945, she fled to Denmark, where she worked first as a servant and later in a library and as a foreign correspondent. In 1946 she married Hans Rütting.
In 1952 she made her stage debut in the city of Krefeld in Die Tochter des Brunnenmachers (The Daughter of the Well Maker). Many stage roles in theatres all over Germany followed.
That year she also made her first film appearance as the female lead in the comedy Postlagernd Turteltaube/Poste restante turtledove (Gerhard T. Buchholz, 1952). Next she played a Russian soldier in Die Spur führt nach Berlin/International Counterfeiters (Frantisek Cáp, 1952). For this role she was awarded with the Bundesfilmpreis for Best Newcomer.
In the following decade, she played leading roles in such films as the war drama Die letzte Brücke/The Last Bridge (Helmut Käutner, 1954) with Maria Schell, the biographical drama Canaris (Alfred Weidenmann, 1954) opposite O.E. Hasse as the chief of the intelligence service of Nazi Germany, the Heimatfilm Die Geierwally (Frantisek Cáp, 1954) with Carl Möhner, and the crime film Herz ohne Gnade/Heart Without Pity (Viktor Tourjansky, 1958) with Hansjörg Felmy.
Rütting also appeared in foreign films, such as A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Douglas Sirk, 1958) based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque and starring John Gavin.
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1215. Photo: TRANS-RHEIN / Columbia / Vogelmann. Publicity still for Das Zweite Leben/A Double Life (Victor Vicas, 1954).
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 18H. Photo: Czerwonski / Neusser / Hope Film / Herzog Film. Publicity still for Spionage/Espionage (Franz Antel, 1955).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, no. P 24/480, 1957. Photo: Michaelis / Real-Film. Publicity still for Glücksritter/A Modern Story (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1957).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. P 76/479, 1958. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Real Film / Michaelis. Publicity still for Glücksritter/A Modern Story (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1957).
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. S 726. Photo: Michaelis / Real-Film / Europa. Publicity still for Glücksritter/A Modern Story (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1957).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf. Photo: Real Film. Publicity still for Glücksritter/A Modern Story (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1957).
Barbara Rütting played the female lead opposite Kirk Douglas in Town Without Pity (Gottfried Reinhardt, 1961), a hard hitting, depressing and brutal courtroom drama about the rape of a 16-year old girl (Christine Kaufmann).
At IMDb, Michael Elliott writes that there was a lot of controversy around the film at the time: “United Artists put a warning on the film and asked theater owners not to let anyone under 17 into the film. Several theater owners wouldn't even show the film due to its subject matter. I think all of this controversy hurt the film when it was released but I think it's about time film buffs and film historians go back and take a look at this film and include it with the greatest courtroom films out there. This film still manages to shock and be outrageous nearly forty-five years after being released.”
Rütting appeared with Martin Held in the romantic comedy Liebe will gelernt sein/Love wants to be learned (Kurt Hoffmann, 1963), based on a play by Erich Kästner.
She played in such Edgar Wallace krimis as Der Zinker/The Squeaker (Alfred Vohrer, 1963) with Heinz Drache, and Das Phantom von Soho/Murder by Proxy (Franz Josef Gottlieb, 1964) with Dieter Borsche.
Rütting also had a supporting part in the war drama Operation Crossbow (Michael Anderson, 1965) starring Sophia Loren.
When the German cinema got in a deep crisis, Rütting appeared more and more on TV. She guest starred in such popular krimi series as Der Kommissar/The Commissioner (1975), Der Alte/The Old Fox (1980) and Derrick (1981).
In the meanwhile she also was active as an author and since her debut novel Die maßlose Zärtlichkeit (1970, The immoderate tenderness), she wrote several successful children's and (vegetarian) cook books.
In 1983 she retired from acting and since then she became a well known human rights and animal welfare activist. She organised help projects and taught cooking in hospitals for victims of the Chernobyl disaster.
In 2003, she was elected into the Landtag (state parliament) of Bavaria for the Green Party. In 2008 she left both the Landtag and the Green party.
Barbara Rütting was married to Hans Rütting (1946-1951) and to count Heinrich von Einsiedel (1955-1964). Both marriages ended in a divorce. Between 1969 and 1988 her partner was Lutz Hochstraate.
German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf. Photo: Real-Film / NF / Gabriele.
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 308. Photo: Rapid / Union / Reiter.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. A 1544. Photo: Deutsche Cosmopol Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Ich war ihm hörig/I Was All His (Wolfgang Becker, 1958) with Carlos Thompson.
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2632. Photo: Rapid / Union / Haenchen.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 172/70, 1970. Photo: Progress. Publicity still for Neues vom Hexer/Again the Ringer (Alfred Vohrer, 1965).
German autograph card by Goldmann Verlag. Photo: Isolde Ohlbaum.
British trailer for Der Zinker/The Squeaker (1963). Source: Rialto Film (YouTube).
Trailer Neues vom Hexer (1965). Source: Rialto Film (YouTube).
Sources: BarbaraRuetting.de (German), Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.
German postcard by UFA (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-168. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Klaus Collignon / UFA.
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no F 16. Photo: Klaus Collignon.
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F 115. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / Bavaria.
Best Newcomer
Barbara Rütting was born as Waltraut Irmgard Goltz in Ludwigsfelde-Wietstock, Germany in 1927. She was one of the five children of Johanna and Richard Goltz, who were both teachers.
After her graduation in 1945, she fled to Denmark, where she worked first as a servant and later in a library and as a foreign correspondent. In 1946 she married Hans Rütting.
In 1952 she made her stage debut in the city of Krefeld in Die Tochter des Brunnenmachers (The Daughter of the Well Maker). Many stage roles in theatres all over Germany followed.
That year she also made her first film appearance as the female lead in the comedy Postlagernd Turteltaube/Poste restante turtledove (Gerhard T. Buchholz, 1952). Next she played a Russian soldier in Die Spur führt nach Berlin/International Counterfeiters (Frantisek Cáp, 1952). For this role she was awarded with the Bundesfilmpreis for Best Newcomer.
In the following decade, she played leading roles in such films as the war drama Die letzte Brücke/The Last Bridge (Helmut Käutner, 1954) with Maria Schell, the biographical drama Canaris (Alfred Weidenmann, 1954) opposite O.E. Hasse as the chief of the intelligence service of Nazi Germany, the Heimatfilm Die Geierwally (Frantisek Cáp, 1954) with Carl Möhner, and the crime film Herz ohne Gnade/Heart Without Pity (Viktor Tourjansky, 1958) with Hansjörg Felmy.
Rütting also appeared in foreign films, such as A Time to Love and a Time to Die (Douglas Sirk, 1958) based on the novel by Erich Maria Remarque and starring John Gavin.
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1215. Photo: TRANS-RHEIN / Columbia / Vogelmann. Publicity still for Das Zweite Leben/A Double Life (Victor Vicas, 1954).
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 18H. Photo: Czerwonski / Neusser / Hope Film / Herzog Film. Publicity still for Spionage/Espionage (Franz Antel, 1955).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, no. P 24/480, 1957. Photo: Michaelis / Real-Film. Publicity still for Glücksritter/A Modern Story (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1957).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. P 76/479, 1958. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Real Film / Michaelis. Publicity still for Glücksritter/A Modern Story (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1957).
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. S 726. Photo: Michaelis / Real-Film / Europa. Publicity still for Glücksritter/A Modern Story (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1957).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf. Photo: Real Film. Publicity still for Glücksritter/A Modern Story (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1957).
Edgar Wallace Krimis
Barbara Rütting played the female lead opposite Kirk Douglas in Town Without Pity (Gottfried Reinhardt, 1961), a hard hitting, depressing and brutal courtroom drama about the rape of a 16-year old girl (Christine Kaufmann).
At IMDb, Michael Elliott writes that there was a lot of controversy around the film at the time: “United Artists put a warning on the film and asked theater owners not to let anyone under 17 into the film. Several theater owners wouldn't even show the film due to its subject matter. I think all of this controversy hurt the film when it was released but I think it's about time film buffs and film historians go back and take a look at this film and include it with the greatest courtroom films out there. This film still manages to shock and be outrageous nearly forty-five years after being released.”
Rütting appeared with Martin Held in the romantic comedy Liebe will gelernt sein/Love wants to be learned (Kurt Hoffmann, 1963), based on a play by Erich Kästner.
She played in such Edgar Wallace krimis as Der Zinker/The Squeaker (Alfred Vohrer, 1963) with Heinz Drache, and Das Phantom von Soho/Murder by Proxy (Franz Josef Gottlieb, 1964) with Dieter Borsche.
Rütting also had a supporting part in the war drama Operation Crossbow (Michael Anderson, 1965) starring Sophia Loren.
When the German cinema got in a deep crisis, Rütting appeared more and more on TV. She guest starred in such popular krimi series as Der Kommissar/The Commissioner (1975), Der Alte/The Old Fox (1980) and Derrick (1981).
In the meanwhile she also was active as an author and since her debut novel Die maßlose Zärtlichkeit (1970, The immoderate tenderness), she wrote several successful children's and (vegetarian) cook books.
In 1983 she retired from acting and since then she became a well known human rights and animal welfare activist. She organised help projects and taught cooking in hospitals for victims of the Chernobyl disaster.
In 2003, she was elected into the Landtag (state parliament) of Bavaria for the Green Party. In 2008 she left both the Landtag and the Green party.
Barbara Rütting was married to Hans Rütting (1946-1951) and to count Heinrich von Einsiedel (1955-1964). Both marriages ended in a divorce. Between 1969 and 1988 her partner was Lutz Hochstraate.
German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf. Photo: Real-Film / NF / Gabriele.
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 308. Photo: Rapid / Union / Reiter.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. A 1544. Photo: Deutsche Cosmopol Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Ich war ihm hörig/I Was All His (Wolfgang Becker, 1958) with Carlos Thompson.
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2632. Photo: Rapid / Union / Haenchen.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 172/70, 1970. Photo: Progress. Publicity still for Neues vom Hexer/Again the Ringer (Alfred Vohrer, 1965).
German autograph card by Goldmann Verlag. Photo: Isolde Ohlbaum.
British trailer for Der Zinker/The Squeaker (1963). Source: Rialto Film (YouTube).
Trailer Neues vom Hexer (1965). Source: Rialto Film (YouTube).
Sources: BarbaraRuetting.de (German), Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.
During the 1950s and 1960s, beautiful Italian actress and singer Giorgia Moll (1938) could often be seen on television and in the cinema, especially in many Italian B-films. With her pretty face and dream measurements, she became also a popular cover and pin-up model.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/49.
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4954. Photo: Angelo Frontoni / Unitalia Film.
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 5171. Photo: Fried Agency / Ufa.
Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 174.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. N. 164.
Giorgia (also Georgia) Moll was born in Prata de Pordenone (some sources say Rome), Italy in 1938 to a German father and an Italian-German mother.
Still very young, she started as a model for advertisements of Carosello reclamizzante, an in Italy well-known toothpaste product. In 1955 she won the beauty contest Miss Cinema.
Producer Carlo Ponti suggested her to take a screentest. Only seventeen, she was hired for her first film, Non scherzare con le donne/Don't Trifle with Women (Giuseppe Bennati, 1955) with Rossana Podestà.
Moll figured in such Italian films as the comedy Lo svitato/Unscrew Him (Carlo Lizzani, 1955) starring Dario Fo, Mio figlio Nerone/My Son Nero (Steno, 1956) with Alberto Sordi and Gloria Swanson, and Mariti in città/Husbands in the City (Luigi Comencini, 1957) opposite Renato Salvatori.
At the time, she was reportedly a girlfriend of Joe Di Maggio, the legendary baseball player and former husband of Marilyn Monroe. Later she had a tempestuous affair with actor John Barrymore Jr., Drew Barrymore’s father.
Most of her films were undistinguished comedies and Peplums, but she did appear in a few well-known productions. Her biggest film was The Quiet American (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1958) based on Graham Greene's prophetic novel about U.S. foreign policy failure in pre-war Indochina, and starring American actor and war-hero Audie Murphy.
The film was shot in Cinécitta with some location shooting in Saigon. Moll played Phuong, Murphy's Vietnamese mistress. The part gave her a certain international notoriety. The Quiet American was critically well-received, but was not considered a box office success.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1616. Photo: Dear Film. Publicity still for The Quiet American (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1958).
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 4687. Photo: Hafbo. Publicity still for the Schlagerfilm Marina (Paul Martin, 1960), which was distributed in Holland as Teenagers Schlager Parade. Moll played the titel character and she poses here between Schlager star Rex Gildo and Rocco Granata, singer of the hit song Marina.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf., no. 1357. Photo: Grimm / CCC-film / Gloria. Publicity still for Marina (Paul Martin, 1960).
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 3062. Photo: Grimm / CCC-film / Gloria. Publicity still for Marina (Paul Martin, 1960).
German postcard by Filmvertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 637. Photo: CCC Gloria Film / Grimm. Publicity still for Marina (Paul Martin, 1960).
Giorgia Moll was critically apprecciated for her dramatic performance in Damiano Damiani's feature debut, the crime drama Il rossetto/Lipstick (1960) with Pierre Brice.
In 1963, she appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s classic film-about-film Le Mépris/The Contempt (1963), which starred Brigitte Bardot. Moll played Francesca Vanini, the secretary of the authoritarian film producer (Jack Palance), who works as a translator for the film’s protagonist, a script-writer played by Michel Piccoli.
Another classic in which she played a supporting part is the drama Incompresa/Misunderstood (Luigi Comencini, 1967). In this unforgettable tearjerker Anthony Quayle plays a widower who tragically misunderstands his eldest son’s brave front as being unaffected by his mother's death.
During the 1960’s, Georgia Moll also became known as a singer. She recorded some singles, of which Ballata per un amore perduto/Nato in settembre (Ballad for a Lost Love/Born in September, 1964) is best known. Author of the texts of both songs is Piero Ciampi, and the arranger and composer of Nato in settembre is Elvio Monti.
With her harmonious face, her perfect brown hair and her dream measurements, she was also a popular pin-up model in this period, for instance in the magazine Playmen in 1972. After 1970, her appearances became sporadic and she retired from the cinema in 1985.
Her last screen appearances were in the film Tutti dentro/Everybody in Jail (Alberto Sordi, 1984) with Alberto Sordi and Joe Pesci, and the TV film I due prigionieri/The Two Prisoners (Anton Giulio Majano, 1985) with Ray Lovelock and Alain Cuny.
Later, Giorgia Moll became a photographer.
Big Italian card by Bromofoto, Milano. Photo: Günther Wagner / Pelikan.
Italian postcard, no. 592.
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4971. Photo: Angelo Frontoni /Unitalia Film.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf., no. 1666.
Serbian postcard by Studio Sombor, no. 276.
Serbian postcard by Studio Sombor, no. 276. Sent by mail in Yugoslavia in 1965.
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengestellschaft (Ufa), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4860. Retail price: 25 Pfg. Photo: Horst Maack/Ufa.
Trailer for Le Mépris/The Contempt (1963). Source: The Cultbox (YouTube).
Sources: Guy Bellinger (IMDb), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia (English and Italian) and IMDb.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/49.
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4954. Photo: Angelo Frontoni / Unitalia Film.
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 5171. Photo: Fried Agency / Ufa.
Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 174.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. N. 164.
Tempestuous Affair
Giorgia (also Georgia) Moll was born in Prata de Pordenone (some sources say Rome), Italy in 1938 to a German father and an Italian-German mother.
Still very young, she started as a model for advertisements of Carosello reclamizzante, an in Italy well-known toothpaste product. In 1955 she won the beauty contest Miss Cinema.
Producer Carlo Ponti suggested her to take a screentest. Only seventeen, she was hired for her first film, Non scherzare con le donne/Don't Trifle with Women (Giuseppe Bennati, 1955) with Rossana Podestà.
Moll figured in such Italian films as the comedy Lo svitato/Unscrew Him (Carlo Lizzani, 1955) starring Dario Fo, Mio figlio Nerone/My Son Nero (Steno, 1956) with Alberto Sordi and Gloria Swanson, and Mariti in città/Husbands in the City (Luigi Comencini, 1957) opposite Renato Salvatori.
At the time, she was reportedly a girlfriend of Joe Di Maggio, the legendary baseball player and former husband of Marilyn Monroe. Later she had a tempestuous affair with actor John Barrymore Jr., Drew Barrymore’s father.
Most of her films were undistinguished comedies and Peplums, but she did appear in a few well-known productions. Her biggest film was The Quiet American (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1958) based on Graham Greene's prophetic novel about U.S. foreign policy failure in pre-war Indochina, and starring American actor and war-hero Audie Murphy.
The film was shot in Cinécitta with some location shooting in Saigon. Moll played Phuong, Murphy's Vietnamese mistress. The part gave her a certain international notoriety. The Quiet American was critically well-received, but was not considered a box office success.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1616. Photo: Dear Film. Publicity still for The Quiet American (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1958).
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 4687. Photo: Hafbo. Publicity still for the Schlagerfilm Marina (Paul Martin, 1960), which was distributed in Holland as Teenagers Schlager Parade. Moll played the titel character and she poses here between Schlager star Rex Gildo and Rocco Granata, singer of the hit song Marina.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf., no. 1357. Photo: Grimm / CCC-film / Gloria. Publicity still for Marina (Paul Martin, 1960).
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 3062. Photo: Grimm / CCC-film / Gloria. Publicity still for Marina (Paul Martin, 1960).
German postcard by Filmvertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 637. Photo: CCC Gloria Film / Grimm. Publicity still for Marina (Paul Martin, 1960).
Unforgettable Tearjerker
Giorgia Moll was critically apprecciated for her dramatic performance in Damiano Damiani's feature debut, the crime drama Il rossetto/Lipstick (1960) with Pierre Brice.
In 1963, she appeared in Jean-Luc Godard’s classic film-about-film Le Mépris/The Contempt (1963), which starred Brigitte Bardot. Moll played Francesca Vanini, the secretary of the authoritarian film producer (Jack Palance), who works as a translator for the film’s protagonist, a script-writer played by Michel Piccoli.
Another classic in which she played a supporting part is the drama Incompresa/Misunderstood (Luigi Comencini, 1967). In this unforgettable tearjerker Anthony Quayle plays a widower who tragically misunderstands his eldest son’s brave front as being unaffected by his mother's death.
During the 1960’s, Georgia Moll also became known as a singer. She recorded some singles, of which Ballata per un amore perduto/Nato in settembre (Ballad for a Lost Love/Born in September, 1964) is best known. Author of the texts of both songs is Piero Ciampi, and the arranger and composer of Nato in settembre is Elvio Monti.
With her harmonious face, her perfect brown hair and her dream measurements, she was also a popular pin-up model in this period, for instance in the magazine Playmen in 1972. After 1970, her appearances became sporadic and she retired from the cinema in 1985.
Her last screen appearances were in the film Tutti dentro/Everybody in Jail (Alberto Sordi, 1984) with Alberto Sordi and Joe Pesci, and the TV film I due prigionieri/The Two Prisoners (Anton Giulio Majano, 1985) with Ray Lovelock and Alain Cuny.
Later, Giorgia Moll became a photographer.
Big Italian card by Bromofoto, Milano. Photo: Günther Wagner / Pelikan.
Italian postcard, no. 592.
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4971. Photo: Angelo Frontoni /Unitalia Film.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf., no. 1666.
Serbian postcard by Studio Sombor, no. 276.
Serbian postcard by Studio Sombor, no. 276. Sent by mail in Yugoslavia in 1965.
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengestellschaft (Ufa), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4860. Retail price: 25 Pfg. Photo: Horst Maack/Ufa.
Trailer for Le Mépris/The Contempt (1963). Source: The Cultbox (YouTube).
Sources: Guy Bellinger (IMDb), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia (English and Italian) and IMDb.
The Danish couple Frederik (1932-1994) and Nina van Pallandt (1932) were as Nina & Frederik a famous singing duo in the late 1950s and the 1960s. They had many international hits and also acted in several films together. After the couple split up in 1969, Nina had a solo career as a singer and a Hollywood actress. Frederik joined a major Australian crime syndicate, for which he provided transportation for drug trafficking.
Dutch postcard by C.K.Z., Zeist. Photo: publicity still for the romantic musical Mandolinen und Monschein/Mandolins and Moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf, no. 829. Photo: Arca / Cinepress / Constantin. Publicity still for Mandolinen und Mondschein/Mandolins and moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959).
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 5655.
Frederik, Baron van Pallandt was born in 1932 in Copenhagen, Danmark. He was the son of the Dutch ambassador in Denmark at the time. He met Nina Magdalene Möller (born in 1932, in Hellerup, Danmark) already in 1938, while their families were friends.
Frederik studied agriculture at the University of Trinidad. When he met Nina again in 1957 in Copenhagen they started a duo singing easy listening songs in cabarets. Nina & Frederik performed with growing success in Scandinavia, Western Europe and America.
Nina was married at the time. In1955, she had married Hugo Wessel, the son of Denise Orme and Theodore W. 'Tito' Wessel, a Danish millionaire and one-time Danish chargé d'affaires in Chile.
In 1958 Nina & Frederik appeared together in a beer commercial, named on IMDbNina & Frederik Western (Erik Dibbern, 1958), and they made their feature debut in Verdens rigeste pige/The Richest Girl in the World (Lau Lauritzen, Alice O'Fredericks, 1958).
Soon, their first film was followed by Kærlighedens melodi/Formular to Love (Bent Christensen, 1959) and the German Schlager filmMandolinen und Mondschein/Mandolins and Moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959) starring Christine Görner and Claus Biederstaedt.
In 1959 Nina & Frederik issued their first record, and in 1960 they married. In those years they achieved worldwide popularity with songs like Listen to the Ocean, Mango buy me Mango, Sucu, Sucu, and Little Donkey. They moved effortlessly from folk to calypso to pop to protest songs like Bob Dylan’s Blowin' in the Wind.
They played in famous concert halls, like the London Palladium in 1966. But in 1969 Nina & Frederik separated and in 1975 they divorced.
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 3988. Photo: Corona. Publicity still for Verdens rigeste pige/The Richest Girl in the World (Lau Lauritzen, Alice O'Fredericks, 1958).
Dutch postcard by C.K.Z., Zeist, no. 232. Photo: publicity still for Mandolinen und Mondschein/Mandolins and Moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959).
Dutch postcard by Hercules, Haarlem, no. 245. Photo: Gofilex. Publicity still for Mandolinen und Mondschein/Mandolins and Moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959).
After their divorce, Nina van Pallandt kept working in show business. In 1969 she contributed the song Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown? to the James Bond-film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Peter R. Hunt, 1969) starring George Lazenby.
Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) is another 1969 song by Peter Sarstedt. It was a #1 hit in the UK-charts for six weeks in 1969. One theory is that Nina was the mysterious Marie-Claire in the song about a young jet-setter who moved in high circles but was from a lowly origin.
In 1972 Nina became famous in the US as the mistress of hoaxer Clifford Irving, who went to jail when his biography of Howard Hughes, allegedly written with Hughes' co-operation, proved to be a fake. Hughes himself came out of seclusion to repudiate the work. Van Pallandt helped expose Irving's fraud by revealing that he was vacationing with her in Mexico at the time he was allegedly interviewing Hughes.
She appeared, as herself, in Orson Welles' non-fiction film Vérités et mensonges/F For Fake (1974).
The height of Van Pallandt's film career was her appearance in four films directed by Robert Altman: The Long Goodbye (1973), A Wedding (1978), Quintet (1979), and O.C. and Stiggs (1985).
She also appeared in secondary parts in Cloud Dancer (Barry Brown, 1980) with David Carradine, Cutter's Way (Ivan Passer, 1981) with Jeff Bridges, and the fantasy adventure The Sword and the Sorcerer (Albert Pyun, 1982).
In Europe she played in the German exploitation film Euer Weg führt durch die Hölle/Jungle Warriors (Ernst R. von Theumer, 1984), the Spanish drama Así como habían sido/The Way They Were (Andrés Linares, 1987) with Antonio Banderas, and the Danish road movie Time Out (Jon Bang Carlsen, 1988) with Patricia Arquette.
On TV, she appeared as a guest on several episodes of The Morecambe & Wise Show for BBC television during 1969 and the early 1970s . In 1988, she acted in the Tales of the Unexpected episode A Time to Die (Paul Annett, 1988).
In American Gigolo (1980, Paul Schrader), she worked with Richard Gere, who would later play Clifford Irving in The Hoax (Lasse Hallström, 2006), about Irving's fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. In the film Nina is portrayed by Julie Delpy.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 5449.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 5655.
Dutch postcard by DRC, no. 1407. Photo: Dezo Hoffmann / Ufa.
A year after his divorce from Nina, Frederik van Pallandt married Maria-Jesus de Los Rios Coello de Portugal.
Frederik invested his chart profits in a number of ventures, farming for a while in Ibiza - where Nina was a close neighbour - and in 1984, he bought the copyrights of Burke's Peerage, a publication containing genealogical records of historical families. Burke’s Peerage was then bought by Joseph Goldberg, who reprinted the immediate previous edition.
In the 1990s, he settled in the Philippines. There he became involved with an Australian syndicate involved in the trafficking of cannabis, using his yacht the Tiaping to transport the shipments.
On 15 May 1994, both Frederik and his Filipina girlfriend Susannah were shot dead in a hut at Puerto Galera in the Philippines. Rumours say the murderer was another member of the syndicate.
Nina flew out to the Philippines to bring Frederik's body home to Europe. He was buried near his parents' grave in IJhorst in the Netherlands.
Frederik and Nina had three children: Floris Nicolas Ali, Baron van Pallandt (1961-2006), who worked as a scriptwriter and director for Dutch television, Kirsa Eleonore Clara, Baroness van Pallandt (1963), and Ana Maria Else, Baroness van Pallandt (1965).
Frederik had also a son with his second wife, Daniel Tilopa, Baron van Pallandt (1977).
In the 1970s, Nina van Pallandt married for a third time to Robert Kirby, a South African actor and satirist. The marriage was brief.
Several Nina & Frederik songs from Verdens rigeste pige/The Richest Girl in the World (1958). Source: id4mytube (YouTube).
Nina & Frederick sing Mango vendor in Mandolinen und Mondschein/Mandolins and Moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959). Source: Alte Film- und Fernsehschätze (YouTube).
Trailer of The Hoax (2006). Source: rocka1969 (YouTube).
Sources: Guy Lazarus (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Karl Dallas (The Independent), Wikipedia and IMDb.
Dutch postcard by C.K.Z., Zeist. Photo: publicity still for the romantic musical Mandolinen und Monschein/Mandolins and Moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf, no. 829. Photo: Arca / Cinepress / Constantin. Publicity still for Mandolinen und Mondschein/Mandolins and moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959).
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 5655.
Baron Frederik
Frederik, Baron van Pallandt was born in 1932 in Copenhagen, Danmark. He was the son of the Dutch ambassador in Denmark at the time. He met Nina Magdalene Möller (born in 1932, in Hellerup, Danmark) already in 1938, while their families were friends.
Frederik studied agriculture at the University of Trinidad. When he met Nina again in 1957 in Copenhagen they started a duo singing easy listening songs in cabarets. Nina & Frederik performed with growing success in Scandinavia, Western Europe and America.
Nina was married at the time. In1955, she had married Hugo Wessel, the son of Denise Orme and Theodore W. 'Tito' Wessel, a Danish millionaire and one-time Danish chargé d'affaires in Chile.
In 1958 Nina & Frederik appeared together in a beer commercial, named on IMDbNina & Frederik Western (Erik Dibbern, 1958), and they made their feature debut in Verdens rigeste pige/The Richest Girl in the World (Lau Lauritzen, Alice O'Fredericks, 1958).
Soon, their first film was followed by Kærlighedens melodi/Formular to Love (Bent Christensen, 1959) and the German Schlager film
In 1959 Nina & Frederik issued their first record, and in 1960 they married. In those years they achieved worldwide popularity with songs like Listen to the Ocean, Mango buy me Mango, Sucu, Sucu, and Little Donkey. They moved effortlessly from folk to calypso to pop to protest songs like Bob Dylan’s Blowin' in the Wind.
They played in famous concert halls, like the London Palladium in 1966. But in 1969 Nina & Frederik separated and in 1975 they divorced.
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 3988. Photo: Corona. Publicity still for Verdens rigeste pige/The Richest Girl in the World (Lau Lauritzen, Alice O'Fredericks, 1958).
Dutch postcard by C.K.Z., Zeist, no. 232. Photo: publicity still for Mandolinen und Mondschein/Mandolins and Moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959).
Dutch postcard by Hercules, Haarlem, no. 245. Photo: Gofilex. Publicity still for Mandolinen und Mondschein/Mandolins and Moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959).
Jet-setter Nina
After their divorce, Nina van Pallandt kept working in show business. In 1969 she contributed the song Do You Know How Christmas Trees Are Grown? to the James Bond-film On Her Majesty's Secret Service (Peter R. Hunt, 1969) starring George Lazenby.
Where Do You Go To (My Lovely) is another 1969 song by Peter Sarstedt. It was a #1 hit in the UK-charts for six weeks in 1969. One theory is that Nina was the mysterious Marie-Claire in the song about a young jet-setter who moved in high circles but was from a lowly origin.
In 1972 Nina became famous in the US as the mistress of hoaxer Clifford Irving, who went to jail when his biography of Howard Hughes, allegedly written with Hughes' co-operation, proved to be a fake. Hughes himself came out of seclusion to repudiate the work. Van Pallandt helped expose Irving's fraud by revealing that he was vacationing with her in Mexico at the time he was allegedly interviewing Hughes.
She appeared, as herself, in Orson Welles' non-fiction film Vérités et mensonges/F For Fake (1974).
The height of Van Pallandt's film career was her appearance in four films directed by Robert Altman: The Long Goodbye (1973), A Wedding (1978), Quintet (1979), and O.C. and Stiggs (1985).
She also appeared in secondary parts in Cloud Dancer (Barry Brown, 1980) with David Carradine, Cutter's Way (Ivan Passer, 1981) with Jeff Bridges, and the fantasy adventure The Sword and the Sorcerer (Albert Pyun, 1982).
In Europe she played in the German exploitation film Euer Weg führt durch die Hölle/Jungle Warriors (Ernst R. von Theumer, 1984), the Spanish drama Así como habían sido/The Way They Were (Andrés Linares, 1987) with Antonio Banderas, and the Danish road movie Time Out (Jon Bang Carlsen, 1988) with Patricia Arquette.
On TV, she appeared as a guest on several episodes of The Morecambe & Wise Show for BBC television during 1969 and the early 1970s . In 1988, she acted in the Tales of the Unexpected episode A Time to Die (Paul Annett, 1988).
In American Gigolo (1980, Paul Schrader), she worked with Richard Gere, who would later play Clifford Irving in The Hoax (Lasse Hallström, 2006), about Irving's fake autobiography of Howard Hughes. In the film Nina is portrayed by Julie Delpy.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 5449.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 5655.
Dutch postcard by DRC, no. 1407. Photo: Dezo Hoffmann / Ufa.
Drug-trafficking Frederik
A year after his divorce from Nina, Frederik van Pallandt married Maria-Jesus de Los Rios Coello de Portugal.
Frederik invested his chart profits in a number of ventures, farming for a while in Ibiza - where Nina was a close neighbour - and in 1984, he bought the copyrights of Burke's Peerage, a publication containing genealogical records of historical families. Burke’s Peerage was then bought by Joseph Goldberg, who reprinted the immediate previous edition.
In the 1990s, he settled in the Philippines. There he became involved with an Australian syndicate involved in the trafficking of cannabis, using his yacht the Tiaping to transport the shipments.
On 15 May 1994, both Frederik and his Filipina girlfriend Susannah were shot dead in a hut at Puerto Galera in the Philippines. Rumours say the murderer was another member of the syndicate.
Nina flew out to the Philippines to bring Frederik's body home to Europe. He was buried near his parents' grave in IJhorst in the Netherlands.
Frederik and Nina had three children: Floris Nicolas Ali, Baron van Pallandt (1961-2006), who worked as a scriptwriter and director for Dutch television, Kirsa Eleonore Clara, Baroness van Pallandt (1963), and Ana Maria Else, Baroness van Pallandt (1965).
Frederik had also a son with his second wife, Daniel Tilopa, Baron van Pallandt (1977).
In the 1970s, Nina van Pallandt married for a third time to Robert Kirby, a South African actor and satirist. The marriage was brief.
Several Nina & Frederik songs from Verdens rigeste pige/The Richest Girl in the World (1958). Source: id4mytube (YouTube).
Nina & Frederick sing Mango vendor in Mandolinen und Mondschein/Mandolins and Moonlight (Hans Deppe, 1959). Source: Alte Film- und Fernsehschätze (YouTube).
Trailer of The Hoax (2006). Source: rocka1969 (YouTube).
Sources: Guy Lazarus (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Karl Dallas (The Independent), Wikipedia and IMDb.
Fat Hungarian stage and film comedian Károly Huszár (1884–1942 or 1943) was the most popular slapstick star of the Hungarian silent era. He later worked in both Germany and Hollywood, also using the names Karl Huszár-Puffy and Charles Puffy. He played minor roles in feature films and was the star of a series of slapstick shorts for Universal. Besides his film work, he frequently appeared on stage, mostly as a comedian.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1207/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Roman Freulich / Unfilman (Universal).
Károly Huszár or Charles Puffy was born as Károly Hochstadt (according to some sources: Hochstein) in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) in 1884.
At 16, the still thin Hochstadt became the long distance swimming champion of Germany. He studied acting at the Országos Színészegyesület Színészképző Iskoláját (National Actor Association's Actor Training School).
Then he worked 16 years on stage in Budapest, where he became a star of the cabarets, and also wrote some comedies.
He started his film career as Károly Huszár in such silent shorts as Víg egyveleg, avagy Pufi és társai/Merry Pompi, or Pufi and his companions (Kornél Tábori, 1914) and Pufi cipöt vesz/Puffy buys shoes (Kornél Tábori, 1914).
In these films he played a character called 'Pufi'. It became his nickname and stage name. ‘Pufi’ means ‘Fatty’ in Hungarian and indeed the thin swimming champion had a legendary appetite and had gained quite some pounds. In his prime Pufi weighted ca. 290 pounds.
In 1917 he worked with director Michael Curtiz (then still Mihály Kertész) at Tavasz a télben/Spring in Winter (1917), and Az Ezredes/The Colonel (1917) with the young Béla Lugosi. That year he also worked with another famous director-to-be, Alexander Korda (as Korda Sándor), at Szent Péter esernyöje/St. Peter's Umbrella (1917) with Victor Varconi.
In 1920 he made his first film in Germany, Putschliesel (Erich Schönfelder, 1920) featuring Ossi Oswalda. He was featured as Karl Huszar-Puffy.
The next year, such films followed as Der Mord ohne Täter/The murder without offender (Ewald André Dupont, 1921), the serial Der Mann ohne Namen/The Man Without a Name (Georg Jacoby, 1921) featuring Harry Liedtke, and Der Roman eines Dienstmädchens/The Novel of a Handmaid (Reinhold Schünzel, 1921) with Liane Haid.
That year, he worked twice with director Friedrich Zelnik (later Fredric Zenik) and his star-producer Lya Mara, on Miss Beryll... die Laune eines Millionärs/Miss Beryll, the mood of a millionaire (Friedrich Zelnik, 1921) and on Aus den Memoiren einer Filmschauspielerin/From the memoirs of a film actress (Friedrich Zelnik, 1921).
However, the most famous director he worked with that year was Fritz Lang. Puffy appeared as the emperor of China in the fantasy Der müde Tod/Destiny (Fritz Lang, 1921).
Béla Lugosi. Hungarian postcard. Photo: Angelo, Budapest. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vintage postcard by Verlag Hartiq, no. 576. Photo by Hartiq. Collection: Didier Hanson.
In 1922 Károly Huszár made his American debut in Arctic Adventure (Chester Withey, 1922). That year he also had a part in Fritz Lang’s classic crime thriller Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler - Ein Bild der Zeit/Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922) starring Rudolf Klein-Rogge as arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse. He also appeared opposite film legend Henny Porten in Sie und die Drei/She and the Three (Ewald André Dupont, 1922).
In 1923, Universal offered him a contract to make a series of comedy shorts in Hollywood under the name Charles Puffy. He starred in some 26 shorts between 1924 and 1927 including City Bound (Richard Smith, 1925), Unwelcome (Richard Smith, 1925) and Ah! Gay Vienna! (Harry Sweet, 1927).
He also appeared in minor roles in such feature films as Open All Night (Paul Bern, 1924) starring Viola Dana and Jetta Goudal, the melodramas The Rose of Paris (Irving Cummings, 1924) featuring Mary Philbin as a poor French orphan, and The Love Thief (John McDermott, 1926).
In Hollywood, Puffy also worked with several European directors. He played supporting parts in Benjamin Christensen’s melodrama Mockery (1927) starring Lon Chaney, in Ewald André Dupont’s comedy Love Me and the World Is Mine (1927) and in Alexander Korda’s comedy The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927).
One of his most interesting Hollywood films is The Man Who Laughs (1928) directed by the German Expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni. The film is an adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel of the same name and stars Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine and Mary Philbin as the blind Dea. Universal put over $1,000,000 into The Man Who Laughs, an extremely high budget for an American film at the time.
German collectors card by Ross Verlag in the series Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst - Der Stumme Film, picture no. 94, group 40. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still with Károly Huszár (left) and Rudolf Klein-Rogge (second from left) in Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler/Dr. Mabuse, King of Crime (Fritz Lang, 1922). Caption: Dr. Mabuse, who prints false money, lets the false notes sort by blind people who can not betray him.
Conrad Veidt. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, nr. 1426/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Vaida M. Pál, Budapest.
At the time of the introduction of the sound film, Károly Huszár returned to Germany. He appeared twice in minor roles opposite Marlene Dietrich, in Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame/I Kiss Your Hand Madame (Robert Land, 1929), and in her breakthrough film Der blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930) in which Puffy played the club owner.
After several of such bit roles Puffy played a leading part in the comedy Der nächtse Bitte/Next please (Erich Schönfelder, 1930) opposite Adele Sandrock. However, the following years he was seen only in supporting parts.
Károly Huszár reunited with Alexander Korda for Die Männer um Lucie/The Men around Lucie (Alexander Korda, 1931) with Liane Haid.
In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, he returned to Hungary, where he continued to play supporting parts. Among these Hungarian films are Pardon, tévedtem/Romance in Budapest (Steve Sekely, Géza von Bolváry, 1933) with Franziska Gaál and Paul Hörbiger, Helyet az öregeknek/Room for the Aged (Béla Gaál, 1934) with Szõke Szakáll, and Kleine Mutti/Little Mother (Hermann Kosterlitz a.k.a. Henry Koster, 1935) featuring Franziska Gaál.
His final Hungarian film was Nehéz apának lenni/It's Hard to be a Dad (Márton Keleti, 1938).
Károly Huszár’s death place and date are still unconfirmed. Puffy was Jewish, and decided to flee Hungary when the Holocaust started. About what then happened the sources differ.
A source mentions that Károly Huszár and his wife tried to get into the United States in 1941. Some sources say that he died in Tokyo, Japan in 1942. Others that his train was stopped by the Soviet army and he was imprisoned in a Gulag labour camp in Karaganda, Kazakhstan where he performed in the camp theatre company. Reportedly he died there from diphtheria in 1943, but other sources say he and his wife died of starvation.
Advertisement 'Octavus Roy Cohen, Charles Puffy, Truly a Universal Super Shot'. Collection: Stonemason@Flickr.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4570, 1929-1930. Photo: Defina.
Sources: Hans J. Wollstein (AllMovie), Jan-Christopher Horak (Film History), The Missing Link, Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1207/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Roman Freulich / Unfilman (Universal).
290 pounds
Károly Huszár or Charles Puffy was born as Károly Hochstadt (according to some sources: Hochstein) in Budapest, Austria-Hungary (now Hungary) in 1884.
At 16, the still thin Hochstadt became the long distance swimming champion of Germany. He studied acting at the Országos Színészegyesület Színészképző Iskoláját (National Actor Association's Actor Training School).
Then he worked 16 years on stage in Budapest, where he became a star of the cabarets, and also wrote some comedies.
He started his film career as Károly Huszár in such silent shorts as Víg egyveleg, avagy Pufi és társai/Merry Pompi, or Pufi and his companions (Kornél Tábori, 1914) and Pufi cipöt vesz/Puffy buys shoes (Kornél Tábori, 1914).
In these films he played a character called 'Pufi'. It became his nickname and stage name. ‘Pufi’ means ‘Fatty’ in Hungarian and indeed the thin swimming champion had a legendary appetite and had gained quite some pounds. In his prime Pufi weighted ca. 290 pounds.
In 1917 he worked with director Michael Curtiz (then still Mihály Kertész) at Tavasz a télben/Spring in Winter (1917), and Az Ezredes/The Colonel (1917) with the young Béla Lugosi. That year he also worked with another famous director-to-be, Alexander Korda (as Korda Sándor), at Szent Péter esernyöje/St. Peter's Umbrella (1917) with Victor Varconi.
In 1920 he made his first film in Germany, Putschliesel (Erich Schönfelder, 1920) featuring Ossi Oswalda. He was featured as Karl Huszar-Puffy.
The next year, such films followed as Der Mord ohne Täter/The murder without offender (Ewald André Dupont, 1921), the serial Der Mann ohne Namen/The Man Without a Name (Georg Jacoby, 1921) featuring Harry Liedtke, and Der Roman eines Dienstmädchens/The Novel of a Handmaid (Reinhold Schünzel, 1921) with Liane Haid.
That year, he worked twice with director Friedrich Zelnik (later Fredric Zenik) and his star-producer Lya Mara, on Miss Beryll... die Laune eines Millionärs/Miss Beryll, the mood of a millionaire (Friedrich Zelnik, 1921) and on Aus den Memoiren einer Filmschauspielerin/From the memoirs of a film actress (Friedrich Zelnik, 1921).
However, the most famous director he worked with that year was Fritz Lang. Puffy appeared as the emperor of China in the fantasy Der müde Tod/Destiny (Fritz Lang, 1921).
Béla Lugosi. Hungarian postcard. Photo: Angelo, Budapest. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Vintage postcard by Verlag Hartiq, no. 576. Photo by Hartiq. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Charles Puffy
In 1922 Károly Huszár made his American debut in Arctic Adventure (Chester Withey, 1922). That year he also had a part in Fritz Lang’s classic crime thriller Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler - Ein Bild der Zeit/Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler (1922) starring Rudolf Klein-Rogge as arch-criminal Dr. Mabuse. He also appeared opposite film legend Henny Porten in Sie und die Drei/She and the Three (Ewald André Dupont, 1922).
In 1923, Universal offered him a contract to make a series of comedy shorts in Hollywood under the name Charles Puffy. He starred in some 26 shorts between 1924 and 1927 including City Bound (Richard Smith, 1925), Unwelcome (Richard Smith, 1925) and Ah! Gay Vienna! (Harry Sweet, 1927).
He also appeared in minor roles in such feature films as Open All Night (Paul Bern, 1924) starring Viola Dana and Jetta Goudal, the melodramas The Rose of Paris (Irving Cummings, 1924) featuring Mary Philbin as a poor French orphan, and The Love Thief (John McDermott, 1926).
In Hollywood, Puffy also worked with several European directors. He played supporting parts in Benjamin Christensen’s melodrama Mockery (1927) starring Lon Chaney, in Ewald André Dupont’s comedy Love Me and the World Is Mine (1927) and in Alexander Korda’s comedy The Private Life of Helen of Troy (1927).
One of his most interesting Hollywood films is The Man Who Laughs (1928) directed by the German Expressionist filmmaker Paul Leni. The film is an adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel of the same name and stars Conrad Veidt as Gwynplaine and Mary Philbin as the blind Dea. Universal put over $1,000,000 into The Man Who Laughs, an extremely high budget for an American film at the time.
German collectors card by Ross Verlag in the series Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst - Der Stumme Film, picture no. 94, group 40. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still with Károly Huszár (left) and Rudolf Klein-Rogge (second from left) in Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler/Dr. Mabuse, King of Crime (Fritz Lang, 1922). Caption: Dr. Mabuse, who prints false money, lets the false notes sort by blind people who can not betray him.
Conrad Veidt. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, nr. 1426/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Vaida M. Pál, Budapest.
Holocaust
At the time of the introduction of the sound film, Károly Huszár returned to Germany. He appeared twice in minor roles opposite Marlene Dietrich, in Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame/I Kiss Your Hand Madame (Robert Land, 1929), and in her breakthrough film Der blaue Engel/The Blue Angel (Josef von Sternberg, 1930) in which Puffy played the club owner.
After several of such bit roles Puffy played a leading part in the comedy Der nächtse Bitte/Next please (Erich Schönfelder, 1930) opposite Adele Sandrock. However, the following years he was seen only in supporting parts.
Károly Huszár reunited with Alexander Korda for Die Männer um Lucie/The Men around Lucie (Alexander Korda, 1931) with Liane Haid.
In 1933, after the Nazis came to power, he returned to Hungary, where he continued to play supporting parts. Among these Hungarian films are Pardon, tévedtem/Romance in Budapest (Steve Sekely, Géza von Bolváry, 1933) with Franziska Gaál and Paul Hörbiger, Helyet az öregeknek/Room for the Aged (Béla Gaál, 1934) with Szõke Szakáll, and Kleine Mutti/Little Mother (Hermann Kosterlitz a.k.a. Henry Koster, 1935) featuring Franziska Gaál.
His final Hungarian film was Nehéz apának lenni/It's Hard to be a Dad (Márton Keleti, 1938).
Károly Huszár’s death place and date are still unconfirmed. Puffy was Jewish, and decided to flee Hungary when the Holocaust started. About what then happened the sources differ.
A source mentions that Károly Huszár and his wife tried to get into the United States in 1941. Some sources say that he died in Tokyo, Japan in 1942. Others that his train was stopped by the Soviet army and he was imprisoned in a Gulag labour camp in Karaganda, Kazakhstan where he performed in the camp theatre company. Reportedly he died there from diphtheria in 1943, but other sources say he and his wife died of starvation.
Advertisement 'Octavus Roy Cohen, Charles Puffy, Truly a Universal Super Shot'. Collection: Stonemason@Flickr.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4570, 1929-1930. Photo: Defina.
Sources: Hans J. Wollstein (AllMovie), Jan-Christopher Horak (Film History), The Missing Link, Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
On 21 May 2018, Italian actress Anna-Maria Ferrero has passed away in Paris. With her fragile beauty and assured talent, Ferrero made a respectable impact in the Italian cinema of the 1950s. As a teenager she started playing leads in films by Michelangelo Antonioni, Mario Monicelli, Mauro Bolognini and other major directors, and she would star in many stage plays and films opposite Vittorio Gassman. She was married to actor Jean Sorel.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 340. Photo: Minerva Film.
French postcard by P.I., Paris, no. 49 B. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Vintage card. Photo: Video.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano (Milan), no. 466. Photo: publicity still for Febbre di vivere/Eager to live (Claudio Gora, 1953) with Sandro Milani.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, no. 408.
Anna-Maria Ferrero was born Anna-Maria Isabella Guerra in Rome in 1934. Anna-Maria later changed her last name in honour of famous musical director and conductor Willy Ferrero, who was her godfather.
At the age of 15, she made her screen debut in Il cielo è rosso/The sky is red (Claudio Gora, 1950). Director Claudio Gori had spotted her walking through Via Aurora in Rome, and had offered her a screen test.
AtAllMovie, Hal Erickson writes: “The Italian The Sky is Red (Il Cielo è Rosso) details the romantic adventures of two postwar couples. Despite being confined to a quarantined zone (quarantined for political, rather than health reasons), love finds a way. The Neorealistic elements are passable, but what really 'sold' this film abroad was its graphic-for-its-times sexual content. The cast is headed by Jacques Sernas and Marina Berti, another step in the right direction box office-wise.”
Her next roles were in Domani è un altro giorno/Tomorrow is another day (Léonide Moguy, 1951) starring Pier Angeli, and opposite Raf Vallone in Il Cristo proibito/The forbidden Christ (1951), the only film directed by famous author Curzio Malaparte.
In Le infedeli/The Unfaithfuls (Mario Monicelli, Steno, 1953), she appeared with Gina Lollobrigida. Her delicate, photogenic beauty and assured talent attracted director Michelangelo Antonioni, who cast her opposite Franco Interlenghi in the Italian episode of his I vinti/Youth and Perversion (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1953), three stories of well-off youths who commit murders, one taking place in Paris, another in Rome, and another in London.
The following year she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni in Cronache di poveri amanti/Chronicle of Poor Lovers (Carlo Lizzani, 1954). Her rich role in this film was noted by the critics and the film went on to win the International Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Next she starred opposite Alberto Sordi in Una parigina a Roma/A Parisian in Rome (Erich Kobler, 1954), and with comedy star Totò in Totò e Carolina/Toto and Carolina (Mario Monicelli, 1955). On television she starred in 1956 in the drama Cime tempestose/Wuthering Heights alongside Massimo Girotti.
Italian postcard in the Italy's News Photos by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1244.
Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 295.
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (Ufa), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 1217. Retail price: 25 Pfg. Photo: Dial-Unitalia Film, Rome.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 363. Photo: Universalfoto.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, no. 721. Photo: Minerva Film. Publicity still for Canzoni di mezzo secolo/Half a Century of Song (Domenico Paolella, 1954).
Although her career would only span some 15 years, Anna-Maria Ferrero achieved reasonable status in the Italian cinema. She acted rarely outside Italy, but she was featured in the star-studded Paramount epic War and Peace (King Vidor, 1956) starring Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer and Henry Fonda.
Another co-star in this production filmed in Cinecittà was Vittorio Gassman, who had been her partner since 1953. The couple often worked together. On stage, she had joined his theatre company and worked there for several seasons. Notable were her Ophelia in Hamlet, Desdemona in Othello and her title role in the musical Irma la Douce.
In the cinema, Ferrero and Gassman starred together in the Alexandre Dumas' drama Kean/Kean: Genius or Scoundrel (Vittorio Gassman, Francesco Rosi, 1956), the adventure Giovanni dalle bande nere/The violent patriot (Sergio Grieco, 1956), the romantic comedy Le sorprese dell'amore/Surprise of love (Luigi Comencini, 1959), the drama La notte brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959) and the comedy Il mattatore/Love and larceny (Dino Risi, 1960). In 1960 their relationship ended.
Ferrero had some spirited performances in the adventurous Il gobbo/The Hunchback of Rome (Carlo Lizzani, 1961), and L'oro di Roma/Gold of Rome (Carlo Lizzani, 1961), both with Gérard Blain.
The following year she married the French actor Jean Sorel, with whom she starred in the comedy Un marito in condominio/A husband in the condominium (Angelo Dorigo, 1963).
Ettore Scola directed her opposite Nino Manfredi in Cocaina di domenica/Cocaine on Sunday, an episode of the anthology film Controsesso/Countersex (1965), in which a husband and wife start snorting cocaine after the friend who owned the bottle with the drug is arrested.
Then, at the age of 37, Anna Maria Ferrero suddenly ended her career. Her retirement surprised many, but she never made a come-back to the film world.
At the time of her death, Anna Maria Ferrero was still married to Jean Sorel. She was 84.
Italian postcard by Vetta Traldi, Milano in the Divi del Cinema series, no. 51. Sent by mail in 1955.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano. Photo: Ponti - De Laurentiis. Publicity still for Totò e Carolina/Totò and Carolina (Mario Monicelli, 1955) with Maurizio Arena.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. I 282. Photo: Union Film. Publicity still for Kean - Genio e sregolatezza/Kean: Genius or Scoundrel (Vittorio Gassman, Francesco Rosi, 1957).
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. N. 138.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano (Milan), no. 60.
Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia (English and Italian) and IMDb.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 340. Photo: Minerva Film.
French postcard by P.I., Paris, no. 49 B. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Vintage card. Photo: Video.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano (Milan), no. 466. Photo: publicity still for Febbre di vivere/Eager to live (Claudio Gora, 1953) with Sandro Milani.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, no. 408.
Graphic-for-its-times Sexual Content
Anna-Maria Ferrero was born Anna-Maria Isabella Guerra in Rome in 1934. Anna-Maria later changed her last name in honour of famous musical director and conductor Willy Ferrero, who was her godfather.
At the age of 15, she made her screen debut in Il cielo è rosso/The sky is red (Claudio Gora, 1950). Director Claudio Gori had spotted her walking through Via Aurora in Rome, and had offered her a screen test.
AtAllMovie, Hal Erickson writes: “The Italian The Sky is Red (Il Cielo è Rosso) details the romantic adventures of two postwar couples. Despite being confined to a quarantined zone (quarantined for political, rather than health reasons), love finds a way. The Neorealistic elements are passable, but what really 'sold' this film abroad was its graphic-for-its-times sexual content. The cast is headed by Jacques Sernas and Marina Berti, another step in the right direction box office-wise.”
Her next roles were in Domani è un altro giorno/Tomorrow is another day (Léonide Moguy, 1951) starring Pier Angeli, and opposite Raf Vallone in Il Cristo proibito/The forbidden Christ (1951), the only film directed by famous author Curzio Malaparte.
In Le infedeli/The Unfaithfuls (Mario Monicelli, Steno, 1953), she appeared with Gina Lollobrigida. Her delicate, photogenic beauty and assured talent attracted director Michelangelo Antonioni, who cast her opposite Franco Interlenghi in the Italian episode of his I vinti/Youth and Perversion (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1953), three stories of well-off youths who commit murders, one taking place in Paris, another in Rome, and another in London.
The following year she co-starred with Marcello Mastroianni in Cronache di poveri amanti/Chronicle of Poor Lovers (Carlo Lizzani, 1954). Her rich role in this film was noted by the critics and the film went on to win the International Prize at the Cannes Film Festival.
Next she starred opposite Alberto Sordi in Una parigina a Roma/A Parisian in Rome (Erich Kobler, 1954), and with comedy star Totò in Totò e Carolina/Toto and Carolina (Mario Monicelli, 1955). On television she starred in 1956 in the drama Cime tempestose/Wuthering Heights alongside Massimo Girotti.
Italian postcard in the Italy's News Photos by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1244.
Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 295.
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (Ufa), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 1217. Retail price: 25 Pfg. Photo: Dial-Unitalia Film, Rome.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 363. Photo: Universalfoto.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, no. 721. Photo: Minerva Film. Publicity still for Canzoni di mezzo secolo/Half a Century of Song (Domenico Paolella, 1954).
Gassman and Sorel
Although her career would only span some 15 years, Anna-Maria Ferrero achieved reasonable status in the Italian cinema. She acted rarely outside Italy, but she was featured in the star-studded Paramount epic War and Peace (King Vidor, 1956) starring Audrey Hepburn, Mel Ferrer and Henry Fonda.
Another co-star in this production filmed in Cinecittà was Vittorio Gassman, who had been her partner since 1953. The couple often worked together. On stage, she had joined his theatre company and worked there for several seasons. Notable were her Ophelia in Hamlet, Desdemona in Othello and her title role in the musical Irma la Douce.
In the cinema, Ferrero and Gassman starred together in the Alexandre Dumas' drama Kean/Kean: Genius or Scoundrel (Vittorio Gassman, Francesco Rosi, 1956), the adventure Giovanni dalle bande nere/The violent patriot (Sergio Grieco, 1956), the romantic comedy Le sorprese dell'amore/Surprise of love (Luigi Comencini, 1959), the drama La notte brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959) and the comedy Il mattatore/Love and larceny (Dino Risi, 1960). In 1960 their relationship ended.
Ferrero had some spirited performances in the adventurous Il gobbo/The Hunchback of Rome (Carlo Lizzani, 1961), and L'oro di Roma/Gold of Rome (Carlo Lizzani, 1961), both with Gérard Blain.
The following year she married the French actor Jean Sorel, with whom she starred in the comedy Un marito in condominio/A husband in the condominium (Angelo Dorigo, 1963).
Ettore Scola directed her opposite Nino Manfredi in Cocaina di domenica/Cocaine on Sunday, an episode of the anthology film Controsesso/Countersex (1965), in which a husband and wife start snorting cocaine after the friend who owned the bottle with the drug is arrested.
Then, at the age of 37, Anna Maria Ferrero suddenly ended her career. Her retirement surprised many, but she never made a come-back to the film world.
At the time of her death, Anna Maria Ferrero was still married to Jean Sorel. She was 84.
Italian postcard by Vetta Traldi, Milano in the Divi del Cinema series, no. 51. Sent by mail in 1955.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano. Photo: Ponti - De Laurentiis. Publicity still for Totò e Carolina/Totò and Carolina (Mario Monicelli, 1955) with Maurizio Arena.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin-Charlottenburg, no. I 282. Photo: Union Film. Publicity still for Kean - Genio e sregolatezza/Kean: Genius or Scoundrel (Vittorio Gassman, Francesco Rosi, 1957).
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. N. 138.
Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano (Milan), no. 60.
Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia (English and Italian) and IMDb.
Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) is the first film adaptation of the 1918 operetta of the same name by Hungarian composer Franz Lehár. Director Hubert Marischka was a popular Operetta star and director in Vienna and made contact early on with the new medium of film, in which he worked as actor, director and screenwriter.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 100. Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918). From left to right: Louise Kartousch, director/actor Hubert Marischka, composer Franz Lehár and Ernst Tautenhayn.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 103. Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) with Ernst Tautenhayn.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 107. Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) with Ernst Tautenhayn, Louise Kartousch and Mariette Weber.
The libretto of the operetta Wo die Lerche singt by A. M. Willner and Heinz Reichert was inspired by the stage play Dorf und Stadt (Village and City) by Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer.
The operetta premiered at the Royal Opera in Budapest on 1 January 1918. It was one of Franz Lehár's most successful wartime operettas.
Margit, a young Hungarian country girl (in the film played by Louise Kartousch) travels to a big city where she is seduced and then abandoned by an artist (Hubert Marischka).
Eventually she returns home to the countryside "where the larks sing" and is reconciled with her peasant fiance Pista (Otto Langer). Ernst Tautenhayn played Margit's uncle, the old farmer Törö Pá.
In 1936 the operetta was again adapted into an Operetta film, Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Carl Lamac, 1936) starring Márta Eggerth. It was a co-production between Hungary, Germany and Switzerland.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 108. Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) with Louise Kartousch and Ernst Tautenhayn.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 109 Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) with Louise Kartousch.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 110. Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) with Ernst Tautenhayn, Louise Kartousch and Otto Langer.
German postcard by B.K.W.L. Photo: Ludwig Gutmann, 1918. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918). Caption: "Wo ist denn der Mann mit der schönen Frau?" (Where is the man with the beautiful woman?)
Martha Eggerth and Hans Söhnker in the 1936 sound version of Wo die Lerche singt. German card. Photo: Mitteldeutsche Union Tonfilm. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Karel Lamac, 1936).
Sources: Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 100. Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918). From left to right: Louise Kartousch, director/actor Hubert Marischka, composer Franz Lehár and Ernst Tautenhayn.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 103. Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) with Ernst Tautenhayn.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 107. Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) with Ernst Tautenhayn, Louise Kartousch and Mariette Weber.
A country girl in the big city
The libretto of the operetta Wo die Lerche singt by A. M. Willner and Heinz Reichert was inspired by the stage play Dorf und Stadt (Village and City) by Charlotte Birch-Pfeiffer.
The operetta premiered at the Royal Opera in Budapest on 1 January 1918. It was one of Franz Lehár's most successful wartime operettas.
Margit, a young Hungarian country girl (in the film played by Louise Kartousch) travels to a big city where she is seduced and then abandoned by an artist (Hubert Marischka).
Eventually she returns home to the countryside "where the larks sing" and is reconciled with her peasant fiance Pista (Otto Langer). Ernst Tautenhayn played Margit's uncle, the old farmer Törö Pá.
In 1936 the operetta was again adapted into an Operetta film, Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Carl Lamac, 1936) starring Márta Eggerth. It was a co-production between Hungary, Germany and Switzerland.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 108. Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) with Louise Kartousch and Ernst Tautenhayn.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 109 Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) with Louise Kartousch.
German postcard by B.K.W.I., no. 110. Photo: Delta-Film. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918) with Ernst Tautenhayn, Louise Kartousch and Otto Langer.
German postcard by B.K.W.L. Photo: Ludwig Gutmann, 1918. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Hubert Marischka, 1918). Caption: "Wo ist denn der Mann mit der schönen Frau?" (Where is the man with the beautiful woman?)
Martha Eggerth and Hans Söhnker in the 1936 sound version of Wo die Lerche singt. German card. Photo: Mitteldeutsche Union Tonfilm. Publicity still for Wo die Lerche singt/Where the Lark Sings (Karel Lamac, 1936).
Sources: Wikipedia (German and English) and IMDb.
French publisher Editions O.P., based in Paris, published postcards in two formats, as you can see below. The bigger formats were probably published before and during the war. After the war O.P. started counting again with the smaller formats. Most of the O.P. postcards were in black and white, but for this post we chose 15 hand-coloured gems.
Fernandel. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 9. Photo: Star.
Yves Montand. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 11. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Josette Day. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 15. Photo: Star.
Édith Piaf. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 18. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Simone Signoret. French postcard by Editions O.P., no. 19. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Mireille Balin. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 23. Photo: Teddy Piaz.
Jean-Pierre Aumont. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris no. 45. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Odette Joyeux. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 46. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Dita Parlo. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 46. Photo: Star.
Louise Carletti. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 53. Photo: Le Studio.
Edwige Feuillère. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 64. Photo: Star.
Jean Marais. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 91. Photo: Teddy Piaz.
Jules Berry. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 103. Photo: Star.
Bijou. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 119. Photo: Star.
Madeleine Sologne. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 210. Photo: Teddy Piaz.
This is - for now - the final post in our series on publishers of film star postcards.
Source: Mark Goffee (Ross Verlag).
Fernandel. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 9. Photo: Star.
Yves Montand. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 11. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Josette Day. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 15. Photo: Star.
Édith Piaf. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 18. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Simone Signoret. French postcard by Editions O.P., no. 19. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Mireille Balin. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 23. Photo: Teddy Piaz.
Jean-Pierre Aumont. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris no. 45. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Odette Joyeux. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 46. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Dita Parlo. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 46. Photo: Star.
Louise Carletti. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 53. Photo: Le Studio.
Edwige Feuillère. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 64. Photo: Star.
Jean Marais. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 91. Photo: Teddy Piaz.
Jules Berry. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 103. Photo: Star.
Bijou. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 119. Photo: Star.
Madeleine Sologne. French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 210. Photo: Teddy Piaz.
This is - for now - the final post in our series on publishers of film star postcards.
Source: Mark Goffee (Ross Verlag).
