Armin Mueller-Stahl

May 12, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

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.

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Rare vintage postcards from the Collection of Didier Hanson

May 12, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

Petula Clark

May 13, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

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, , 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.

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.

Hans Adalbert Schlettow

May 14, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

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 (1929)

May 15, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

Gustav Fröhlich

May 16, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

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.

Unione Cinematografica Italiana

May 17, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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).

Barbara Rütting

May 18, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

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.

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Giorgia Moll

May 19, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

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.

Nina & Frederik

May 20, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

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 Mandolinen 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).

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.

Károly Huszár (Charles Puffy)

May 21, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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).

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.

Anna-Maria Ferrero (1934-2018)

May 22, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

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 (1918)

May 23, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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.

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.

Editions O.P.

May 24, 2018, 10:00 pm

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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).

Carl Möhner

May 25, 2018, 10:00 pm

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Handsome Austrian film actor Carl Möhner (1921–2005) appeared in over 40 films between 1949 and 1976, including the French gangster classic Du rififi chez les hommes/Rififi (1955).


German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorff, no. 1529. Photo: Indus / Prima-S.N. / Pathé / Schorcht. Publicity still for Du rififi chez les hommes/Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955).


German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F 65. Photo: Bayer.


German postcard by F.J. Rüdel, Hamburg-Bergedorf. Photo: Gloria.

Perfect Robbery Goes Wrong

Carl Martin Rudolf Möhner (sometimes Karl Mohner) was born in Wien (Vienna), Austria, in 1921.

He visited the theatre school in his hometown in 1937 and went on to work in several German and Austrian theatres. World War II interrupted his career.

After the war he made his film debut in the drama Vagabunden/Vagabonds (Rolf Hansen, 1949) with Paula Wessely. Next he appeared in a supporting part in Pünktchen und Anton/Punktchen and Anton (Thomas Engel, 1953), based on the popular children’s book by Erich Kästner.

In 1954 he had his breakthrough in Die Leitze Bruecke/The Last Bridge (Helmut Käutner, 1954) filmed in a manner resembling Italian neorealism. The film starring Maria Schell and Bernhard Wicki won the International Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival and was a commercial success.

During the following years Möhner had a busy international film career. Among his best known films are the classic French gangster film Du rififi chez les hommes/Rififi (Jules Dassin, 1955) - one of the best ‘perfect robbery goes wrong’ films, and the WW II thriller Sink the Bismarck (Lewis Gilbert, 1960) in which he played the feared Captain Ernest Lindemann of the fabled German battleship Bismarck which had to be destroyed by the British navy.

In Germany he appeared in Wo die alten Wälder rauschen/Where the old forests rustle (Alfons Stummer, 1956) with Willy Fritsch, Die Geierwally/The Geierwally (Frantisek Cáp, 1956) opposite Barbara Rütting, and Weißer Holunder/Elder White (Paul May, 1957) with Germaine Damar.

In France he again appeared opposite Jean Servais in another fine thriller by Jules Dassin, Celui qui doit mourir/He Who Must Die (1957). In the UK he played in the hospital-set drama Behind the Mask (Brian Desmond-Hurst, 1958) with Vanessa Redgrave, and the war drama The Camp on Blood Island (Val Guest, 1958).

In Turkey, he wrote and directed Istanbul macerasi/The Istanbul Adventure (1958). He also appeared opposite Jayne Mansfield in the British crime drama The Challenge/It Takes a Thief (John Gilling, 1960).


German collectors card. Photo: publicity still for Die Letzte Brücke/The Last Bridge (Helmut Käutner, 1954) with Maria Schell.


German postcard by Ufa, no. FK 1723. Photo: Kossler/Ringfilm.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden/Westf., no. 2309. Photo: Gloria. Publicity still for Wo die alten Wälder rauschen//Where the old forests rustle (1956).

Campy Euro-trash

By the early 1960s, Carl Möhner began to dedicate himself to painting. Soon he had exhibitions in several European cities. In 1963 he won the gold medal in the IX Premio Internationale de Pittura San Vitto Romano.

Later on, he was awarded several times more. His style is characterised as ‘simple’ and ‘childlike innocent’.

In Italy he starred in the Peplum Il Crollo di Roma/The Fall of Rome (Antonio Margheriti aka Anthony M. Dawson, 1963).

Möhner also appeared in three Euro-Westerns: Jim il Primo/The Last Gun (Sergio Bergonzelli aka Serge Bergon, 1964) with Cameron Mitchell, L'uomo dalla pistola d'oro/The Man Who Came to Kill (Alfonso Balcázar, 1965), and 30 Winchester per El Diabolo/30 Winchesters for El Diablo (Frank G. Carroll, 1967).

He appeared in campy euro-trash as the shocker Cave of the Living Dead (Akos Rathonyi, 1965), the sexploitation classic Carmen, Baby (Radley Metzger, 1967), and Nazi-sexploiter Eine Armee Gretchen/She Devils of the SS (Erwin C. Dietrich, 1974) featuring Birgit Bergen.

His final film was the French drama Une Femme à Sa Fenetre/A Woman at her Window (Pierre Granier-Deferre, 1976) starring Romy Schneider.

Then Möhner retired from the film business, and moved to Texas to work on his paintings. Carl Möhner died in McAllen, Texas from Parkinson's disease. He was 83. Since 1978, Möhner was married to Wilma Langhamer and they had two sons, Gunther and Gernot Möhner, who also worked as an actor.


German postcard by Kolibri Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf., no. 2322. Photo: Ostermayr / Unitas. Publicity still for Der Geierwally/Vulture Wally (Frantisek Cáp, 1956).


German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 259. Photo: Bayer/Divina/Gloria.


German postcard distributed by Rodenstock-Sonnenbrille. Photo: Rodenstock/Roth. In his film Weisser Holunder/White Elder (1957) Carl Möhner wore Rodenstock sunglasses.

Sources: Carl Mohner Artist.com, Tom B. (Westerns All’Italiana), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.

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Marie Déa

May 26, 2018, 10:00 pm

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French actress Marie Déa (1912-1992) became famous through two classics of the French cinema, Marcel Carné 's Les Visiteurs du Soir/The Devil's Envoys (1942) and Jean Cocteau's Orphée/Orpheus (1950).


French postcard, no. 410. Photo: Discina.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 8. Photo: Pathé Cinema.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 8. Photo: Studio Paz.


French postcard by Edit. Chantal, Rueil, no. 32. Photo: Discina, Paris.


French postcard by Edit. Chantal, Rueil, no. 32 A. Photo: Discina, Paris.

No-nonsense and Gutsy

Marie Déa was born as Odette Alice Marie Deupès in Nanterre, France in 1912.

After completing a law studies she followed a drama course and began her career with small roles. In 1939 she appeared in the film Nord-Atlantique/North Atlantic (Maurice Cloche, 1939), which introduced her to the public.

In her next film Pièges/Personal Column (Robert Siodmak, 1939) she starred opposite Maurice Chevalier. In this excellent thriller, Déa plays an amateur detective, whose friend was a victim of a maniac who finds his preys through small ads.

James Travers at Films de France: “Marie Déa is impressive as the no-nonsense and gutsy Adrienne, a refreshing contrast to the feeble, two-dimensional screen heroines of the time. In many ways, Pièges is the template for the crime thriller which would become one of the most popular genres in French cinema in subsequent decades.”

Next she was the leading lady in Premier bal/First Ball (Christian-Jaque, 1941) opposite François Périer, Histoire de rire/Foolish Husbands (Marcel L’Herbier, 1941) with Fernand Gravey, and Le journal tombe à cinq heures/The newspaper falls at five o'clock (Georges Lacombe, 1942) starring Pierre Fresnay.

In 1942 she appeared in Les visiteurs du soir/The Devil's Envoys (Marcel Carné, 1942), one of the timeless masterpieces which came out of the fruitful collaboration between director Marcel Carné and screenwriter Jacques Prévert. The film was hailed as a major cinematographic achievement upon its release in 1942 and was one of the most popular films made under the Nazi Occupation.

In this tale set in the Middle Ages, Marie Déa plays a baron’s daughter with a pure heart who is lured from her fiancé by a handsome minstrel (Alain Cuny), who is sent by the devil. The minstrel is caught in his own trap and falls in love, and the couple then has to fight the devil.

At IMDb, DB Dumonteil writes: “During the German occupation, it was an alibi: the Devil was meant to represent Hitler and the two lovers the Resistance. But for the people at the time, their hints at French plight were so disguised - or else, it would have been banned by the censorship -, they only saw the escapist movie which they did need.”


German postcard. Photo: IFA. Publicity still for Pièges/Personal Column (Robert Siodmak, 1939) with Maurice Chevalier.


French postcard by Editions E.C., Paris, no. 32. Photo: Pathé.


French postcard by Ed. ChantaI, Rueil, Paris, no. 57. Photo: C.P.L.F.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 82. Photo: Studio Paz.

Magical and Entertaining

After the war, Marie Déa continued to play leading roles in French films, but most of them were quite mediocre. Interesting is the remake La maternelle (Henri Diamant-Berger, 1949), in which Déa played a headmistress of a kindergarten in poverty-stricken Ménilmontant. In Spain she appeared opposite Fernando Rey in Aventuras de Juan Lucas/Adventures of Juan Lucas (Rafael Gil, 1949).

Then she appeared in another classic of the French cinema, Jean Cocteau’s Orphée/Orpheus (1950), an update of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice in post-war France. Déa played Eurydice to Jean Marais’ modern Orpheus.

RobertF97 at IMDb: "Writer-director Jean Cocteau turns the everyday world into a magical realm. Mirrors turn to pools which are portals to other worlds, car radios pick up coded messages from Death's World. In less talented hands than Cocteau's, the delicate fantasy could have easily become ridiculous but he handles it with brilliance and the film works perfectly. Here Cocteau creates a truly poetic film. The story is magical and entertaining and the film is filled with wondrously surreal images (particularly striking is the frequent use of filming an action performed backwards, and then reversing it which creates a very strange impression).”

During the 1950s, Déa only played incidentally supporting parts in films, such as in the comedy La jument verte/The Green Mare (Claude Autant-Lara, 1959) starring Bourvil.

During the following decade she was seen with Fernandel in L'assassin est dans l'annuaire/Assassin in the Phonebook (Léo Joannon, 1962), and in the crime drama Le glaive et la balance/The Sword and the Balance (André Cayatte, 1963) starring Anthony Perkins. During the 1960s and 1970s, she regularly worked for TV.

Among her later film appearances are Mariage/Marriage (Claude Lelouch, 1974) with Bulle Ogier, L'homme pressé/Man in a Hurry (Edouard Molinaro, 1977) starring Alain Delon, and Subversion (Stanislav Stanojevic, 1979).

In 1992, Marie Déa died accidentally after a fire in Paris. She was 79.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 82. Photo: Carlet.


French postcard by SERP, Paris, no. 8. Photo: Studio Harcourt.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 82. Photo: Ch. Vandamme, Les Mirages.


French postcard. Photo: MGM.

Sources: James Travers (Films de France), DB Dumonteil (IMDb), Robert F87 (IMDb), Wikipedia (French) and IMDb.

Ursula Thiess

May 27, 2018, 10:00 pm

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German film star Ursula Thiess (1924–2010) was dubbed by Life magazine as the ‘most beautiful woman in the world’. Howard Hughes offered her a long-term contract to RKO, but five years later she gave up her acting career after marrying Robert Taylor. The glamorous, luscious looking actress had only starred in a handful of Hollywood movies.


Mexican collectors card, no. 160. Photo: publicity still for The Iron Glove (William Castle, 1954).


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, no. 1240. Photo: Columbia. Publicity still for The Iron Glove (William Castle, 1954).


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D. 543. Photo: Universal International.

Unusual Beauty

Ursula Thiess was born as Ursula Schmidt in Hamburg, Germany in 1924 to Wilhelmine Lange and Hans Schmidt, who was the manager of a printing shop.

In 1939, she refused to join the paramilitary Hitler Youth movement, and therefore the authorities of the Third Reich took her out of school and made her work as a farm labourer for one year.

After that she began her entertainment career appearing on the stage and dubbing female voices in foreign films. She met and married German film producer Georg Otto Thiess in 1942. They would have two children, Manuela (1944) and Michael (1946), but the relatively unhappy marriage dissolved in 1947.

In 1948, she began a modeling career in Berlin. As Ursula Thiess she was featured in many German magazines, and the photos of the unusual beauty appeared on several covers. She also had a small role in the German film Nachtwache/Keepers of the Night (Harald Braun, 1949) starring Luise Ullrich.

Film mogul Howard Hughes had spotted her and urged her to leave postwar Germany. The trip coincided with a cover shoot in Life magazine. The magazine called her the ‘most beautiful woman in the world’ and Hughes signed her for a long-term contract to RKO.

Her debut film was as a half caste English/India(n) girl in the outdoor drama Monsoon (Rod Amateau, 1952) opposite the frequently bare-chested George Nader. She was voted Most Promising Star of 1952 by Modern Screen Magazine along with Marilyn Monroe.

She then co-starred with Robert Stack in the clunky adventure film The Iron Glove (William Castle, 1954) and appeared opposite Rock Hudson in the more enjoyable Bengal Brigade (Laslo Benedek, 1954).

The following years she appeared with Glenn Ford in The Americano (William Castle, 1955), and with Robert Mitchum in Bandido (Richard Fleischer, 1956), set during the Mexican civil war of 1916.

In these run-of-the-mill action adventure stories she was mainly a (highly) decorative element, supporting the leading men. She also was a popular pin-up in film fan magazines. At IMDb, Gary Brumburgh describes her as a ‘Glamorous brunette beauty’: “Gorgeous was too tame a word for this foreigner stunner.”


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 955. Photo: Döring Film G.m.b.H. Publicity still for Monsoon (Rod Amateau, 1952).


German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. I 410. Photo: RKO. Publicity still for The Americano (William Castle, 1955).


German postcard by Universum-Film AG (UFA), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 779. Photo: RKO-Radio Film.

Blind Date

Ursula Thiess had met handsome film star Robert Taylor on a blind date in April 1952 after his marriage to actress Barbara Stanwyck had ended the previous year. They married two years later.

When she was up to co-star with Clark Gable in The King and Four Queens (Raoul Walsh, 1956) at Gable's request, she turned it down to focus on her family. The Taylors had two children Terry (1955) and Tessa (1959). They moved with Ursula's two children from her previous marriage, to their ranch in Brentwood, California, in 1956, and lived there until Taylor's death from cancer in 1969.

She did appear in three episodes of her husband's TV series The Detectives Starring Robert Taylor (1959) during its first season, playing a police reporter who has a brief affair with Taylor's character. Ursula's two children, Manuela and Michael, had many adjustment problems adapting to their new life, and were often in trouble with the police, causing the family to suffer bad publicity as a result.

Michael, who had served a year in a German prison for attempting to poison his natural father, died shortly before Robert Taylor's death, in 1969. He had committed suicide by overdose at the age of 24. Ursula discovered him dead when she stopped by his motel to drop him off some medication.

After Taylor's death, she was obliged to sell their ranch. Thiess did some film and TV appearances before bowing out completely. Her last film was the completely overlooked Left Hand of Gemini (1972) with Richard Egan and Ian McShane.

She moved to Bel Air, and married film distributor Marshal Schacker in 1973. They stayed married until his death from cancer in 1986. Ursula had undergone surgery for a benign brain tumour in 1979, but recovered to lead a normal life, often visiting Hawaii while her children pursued their careers. She wrote her autobiography, ...But I Have Promises to Keep: My Life Before, With and After Robert Taylor.

In 2010, Ursula Thiess died of natural causes in an assisted living care facility in Burbank, US at the age of 86. She was survived by three of her four children, Manuela, Terry, and Tessa.


German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorff, no 522. Photo: RKO.


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1372. Photo: Dear Film. Publicity still for Bandido! (Richard Fleischer, 1956).


German postcard by Kunst und Film Verlag H. Lukow, Hannover, no. L2/1042. Caption: Filmschauspieler aus aller Welt (Film actors from around the world).

From top left to down right: Linda Darnell, Tyrone Power, Elizabeth Taylor, Robert Taylor and Ursula Thiess, Gina Lollobrigida and her husband Milko Skofic, Audrey Hepburn and Mel Ferrer, Mona Baptiste, Mara Lane and Gloria DeHaven.


Beverly Hills House of the Taylor family, 510, Roxbury Drive, Los Angeles, USA.

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), E.A. Kral (Beatrice Daily Sun), The Telegraph, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

Roger Duchesne

May 28, 2018, 10:00 pm

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French film actor Roger Duchesne (1906-1996) appeared in 30 films between 1934 and 1957. He is best remembered as the silver haired gangster Bob in Jean-Pierre Melville's Policier Bob le flambeur/Bob the Gambler (1956).


French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no 218. Photo: Teddy Piaz.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 77. Photo: Studio Piaz.


French postcard, no. 775. Photo: Studio Harcourt.

Soldier of Fortune

Roger Duchesne was born as Roger André Charles Jordens in Luxeuil-les-Bains, France in 1906.

In 1934, he started his film career with Vers l'abîme/Towards the abyss (Hans Steinhoff, Serge Véber, 1934) starring Raymond Rouleau and Brigitte Helm, a French language version of the UFA production Die Insel/The Island (Hans Steinhoff, 1934).

He played his first lead in the spy film Les loups entre eux/The Wolves Among Them (Léon Mathot, 1936) opposite Jules Berry. He also co-starred that year in the innovative Le roman d'un tricheur/Confessions of a Cheat (Sacha Guitry, 1936) starring Sacha Guitry himself and his wife Jacqueline Delubac.

James Travers writes at Films de France: “Regarded as one of Sacha Guitry’s best films, Le Roman d’un tricheur is a hugely entertaining comedy, featuring some unforgettable visual comic gags. Having no dialogue, the film is perhaps best described a silent film with voice-over commentary, in which the film’s central character (the cheat, played by Guitry himself) narrates the story of his life.”

Another interesting film was the comedy Messieurs les ronds de cuir/The Bureaucrats (Yves Mirande, 1937) with Lucien Baroux and Arletty.

Duchesne also appeared in Le Golem/The Golem (Julien Duvivier, 1936). Hal Erickson notes at AllMovie: “Filmed in Czechoslovakia, this French-language adaptation of the oft-filmed Jewish folk tale The Golem was one of the most expensive productions ever made in that country. The story, which some have cited as a precursor to Frankenstein, is set in Prague's Jewish Ghetto. Fearing an anti-Semitic pogrom at the hands of Emperor Rudolf (Harry Baur), Rabbi Jacob (Charles Dorat) magically brings a statue to life to protect his people from harm.”

In the espionage drama Gibraltar/It Happened in Gibraltar (Fyodor Otsep a.k.a. Fedor Ozep, 1938), he co-starred with Viviane Romance, and Erich von Stroheim, who also co-wrote the script. He also appeared in the melodrama Tempête Sur L'Asie/Storm over Asia (Richard Oswald, 1938) which featured Conrad Veidt as a soldier of fortune who spearheads an expedition in Mongolia in hopes of finding hitherto untapped oil reserves.


French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 81. Photo: Teddy Piaz.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 77. Photo: Roger Carlet.


French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 70. Photo: Star.

Gestapo

Roger Duchesne continued to work after the Nazis had occupied France. He co-starred in Montmartre-sur-Seine (Georges Lacombe, 1941) starring Édith Piaf and Jean-Louis Barrault.

Other popular films during the war period were La femme perdue/The Lost Woman (Jean Choux, 1942) starring Renée Saint-Cyr, and the entertaining Fernandel farce Adrien (Fernandel, 1943).

In September 1944, Duchesne was arrested while hiding in Paris, accused of having worked for the Gestapo. Then followed a gap in his film career of more than ten years.

Roger Duchesne made a great come-back with Bob le flambeur/Bob the Gambler (1956), a gangster film directed by Jean-Pierre Melville. He starred in the title role as the old, silver-haired gangster and gambler Bob, living in the Montmartre district of Paris, who experiences a run of bad luck that leaves him nearly broke. Duchesne made of Bob a gentleman with scruples.

The film is often considered a Film Noir and precursor to the French Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) because of its use of handheld camera and a single jump cut. The engaging and witty film was only the director's fourth film, made before Melville had access to the bigger budgets and the bigger stars (Jean-Paul Belmondo, Alain Delon) of his later pictures. However, Bob le Flambeur was not a great commercial success on its first release.

Duchesne made only one more film, Marchands de filles/Sellers of Girls (Maurice Cloche, 1957). In this crime drama, a poor woman (Agnès Laurent) finds herself the victim of a group of white slavers and drug smugglers. The criminals take the woman to South America, where she teams up with a mysterious stranger (Georges Marchal) in an effort to defeat her captors and find her way back home.

Marchands de filles would be Roger Duchesne's final film. Not much is known about his further life.  He died in 1996 in Les Mureaux, France, at the age of 90.


French postcard by Viny, no. 63. Photo: Osso-Film.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris. Photo: Roger Carlet.


French postcard, no. 22. Photo: Consortium du film.


French postcard by S.E.R.P., Paris, no. 3. Photo: Studio Harcourt. Sadly, a former owner cut the edges of the card.


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

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

Ernst Lubitsch

May 29, 2018, 10:00 pm

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The next ten days, EFSP has its own little Lubitsch festival! We will do posts on 9 of his films, but we start today with a post on the master himself, Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947). The German-American actor, screenwriter, producer and film director started his career in the silent cinema of the Weimar Republic. During the 1920s, his urbane comedies of manners made him Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director. His films were promoted as having 'the Lubitsch touch', due to his wit and style.


German postcar by Ross Verlag, no. 415/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 1926. Photo: Fritz Richard. Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 1743. Photo: Alex Binder, Paris. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 581/4, 1919-1924. Photo: B.B.B. Collection: Didier Hanson. Ernst Lubitsch with Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin and Mary Pickford.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 581/5, 1919-1924. Photo: B.B.B. Collection: Didier Hanson. Ernst Lubitsch with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks.

Ethnic Jewish Humour

Ernst Lubitsch was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1892. He was the son of Anna (née Lindenstaedt) and Simon Lubitsch, a prosperous tailor. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father born in Grodno and his mother from Wriezen (Oder), outside Berlin.

Ernst was drawn to the stage while participating in plays staged by the Sophien Gymnasium, his Berlin high school, which he quit at 16.

To satisfy both his own urge to act and his father's desire that he take over the family business, he began leading a double life, working as a bookkeeper at his father's store by day and appearing in cabarets and music halls by night.

By 1911, he was a member of Max Reinhardt's renowned Deutsches Theater, where he quickly advanced from bit parts to character leads. To supplement his income, Lubitsch took a job in 1912 as an apprentice and general-purpose handyman at Berlin's Bioscope film studios, and learned silent film acting.

Lubitsch soon made his film debut in Die ideale Gattin/The Ideal Wife (Hanns Heinz Ewers, Marc Henry, 1913) with Lyda Salmanova. The comedy Die Firma heiratetThe Firm Weds (Carl Wilhelm, 1913) with Albert Paulig, and its sequel Der Stolz der Firma/The Pride of the Firm (Carl Wilhelm, 1914) turned him into a popular comedian.

Till 1920, he acted in approximately thirty films. Lubitsch appeared in a series of very successful film comedies as a character named Meyer in which he emphasised ethnic Jewish humour, including Meyer auf der Alm (?, 1913), and Meyer Als Soldat/Meyer as Soldier (?, 1914).

In 1914 he began to write and direct his own films. His first film as a director in was Fräulein Seifenschaum/Miss Soapsuds(1914) and he established his reputation as a director, writer, producer and comedian with the foundation of the Malu-Film company, together with the actor Ernst Matráy.

He  made his mark as a serious director with the drama Die Augen der Mumie Ma/The Eyes of the Mummy (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918), starring Pola Negri. He gradually abandoned acting to concentrate on directing and his last film appearance was opposite Pola Negri and Paul Wegener in the drama Sumurun (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920).


With Ossi Oswalda. German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 337/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Zander & Labisch.


German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 1983. Photo: Union Film. Publicity still for Der Blusen-König (Ernst Lubitsch, 1917). Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1999. Photo: Union Film. Ossi Oswalda and Hermann Thimig in the Ossi's Tagebuch (Ernst Lubitsch, 1917).


Henny Porten as Anna Boleyn, in Anna Boleyn (1920). German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 645/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Union Film.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 581/2, 1919-1924. Photo: B.B.B. Collection: Didier Hanson. Ernst Lubitsch with Mary Pickford.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1523/3, 1927-1928. Photo: Parufamet. Pola Negri in Forbidden Paradise (Ernst Lubitsch, 1924).

Grand Master

As a director, Ernst Lubitsch alternated between escapist comedies and large-scale historical dramas, enjoying great international success with both.

A triumph was Die Austernprinzessin/The Oyster Princess (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919), featuring Ossi Oswalda, a sparkling satire caricaturing American manners.

Ephraim Katz in The Film Encyclopedia: "For the first time he demonstrated the subtle humor and the virtuoso visual wit that would in time become known as 'the Lubitsch Touch'. The style was characterised by a parsimonious compression of ideas and situations into single shots or brief scenes that provided an ironic key to the characters and to the meaning of the entire film."

His reputation as a grand master of world cinema reached a new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame DuBarry/Passion (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) with Pola Negri, and Anna Boleyn/Deception (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) starring Henny Porten and Emil Jannings. Both of these films found American distributorship by early 1921.

Madame Du Barry and Anna Boleyn, along with his Carmen/Gypsy Blood (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921) were selected by The New York Times on its list of the 15 most important movies of 1921.

With glowing reviews under his belt, and American money flowing his way, Lubitsch formed his own production company and made the high-budget spectacular Das Weib des Pharao/The Loves of Pharaoh (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921).

In 1922, he married Helene Kraus. They divorced in 1931.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2008. Photo: Union-Film. Publicity still for Wenn vier dasselbe tun/When Four Do the Same (Ernst Lubitsch, 1917), starring Ossi Oswalda as the girl, Fritz Schulz (here on the left) as her lover, and Emil Jannings as her father (here on the right).


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2012. Photo: Union Film. Publicity still for Prinz Sami/Prince Sami (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918). Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2835. Photo: publicity still for Die Augen der Mumie Ma/The Eyes of the Mummy (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918) with Pola Negri. Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 611/2. Photo: Union / Ufa. Publicity still for Die Austernprinzessin/The Oyster Princess (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) with Victor Janson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 627/6. Photo: Union Film. Publicity still of Reinhold Schünzel and Pola Negri in Madame DuBarry (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919). After the death of king Louis XV (Emil Jannings), his minister Choiseul (Schünzel) chases DuBarry (Negri) from the Royal palace.

Hollywood

Ernst Lubitsch's success in Europe brought him to the shores of America to promote Das Weib des Pharao/The Loves of Pharaoh (1922) and he got acquainted with the thriving US film industry.

Lubitsch returned briefly to Germany but soon left for good for Hollywood. He was contracted by Mary Pickford, who wanted him to direct her in Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall.  Upon arrival, he rejected the project and directed her instead in Rosita (1923).

Director and star clashed during its filming. While the resuly was deemed a failure from her point of view, it was a critical and commercial success. It ended up as the only project that they made together.

A free agent after just one American film, Lubitsch was signed to a remarkable three-year, six-picture contract by Warner Brothers that guaranteed the director his choice of both cast and crew, and full editing control over the final cut.

Settling in America, Lubitsch established his reputation for sophisticated comedy with such stylish films as The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926).

Ephraim Katz: "Lubitsch grasped the American psychology with an amazing accuracy and focused his satire on two main themes -- sex and money. With characteristic laconic wit, he depicted sex as a frivolous pastime, a sophisticated game moneyed people play to occupy their hours of leisure. To be safe, he set his plots against foreign backgrounds -- Paris, Vienna, Budapest -- or some mythical land, but the implication was clearly American and audiences rarely failed to recognize themselves or their friends, their manners, their foibles, their weaknesses."

But his films were only marginally profitable for Warner Brothers, and Lubitsch's contract was eventually dissolved by mutual consent, with MGM-Paramount buying out the remainder.

His first film for MGM, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) with Ramon Novarro, was well regarded, but also lost money.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 635/5, 1919-1924. Photo: Union. Publicity still for Die Puppe/The Doll (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) with Ossi Oswalda and Hermann Thimig.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 636/4. Photo: Maxim Film. Publicity still for Romeo und Julia im Schnee/Romeo and Juliet in the Snow (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920), with Lotte Neumann (Julia) and Gustav von Wangenheim (Romeo Montekugerl).


German postcard by Ross Verlag no. 639/5. Photo: Messter-Film. Publicity still for Kohlhiesels Töchter/Kohlhiesel's Daughters (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) with Emil Jannings and Henny Porten.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 760/5. Photo: Alex Binder. Publicity still for Die Bergkatze/Wildcat (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921) with Pola Negri.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 832/1, 1919-1924. Union Film. Publicity still for Sumurun (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) with Jenny Hasselqvist aka Jenny Hasselquist.

Musicals

Lubitsch seized upon the advent of talkies to direct musicals. With his first sound film, The Love Parade (1929), starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Lubitsch hit his stride as a maker of worldly musical comedies and earned himself another Oscar nomination.

While most of Lubitsch's silent films had been made for Warner Bros., most of his early sound pictures were for Paramount.

The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) were hailed by critics as masterpieces of the newly emerging musical genre. Lubitsch served on the faculty of the University of Southern California for a time.

His next film was a romantic comedy, written with Samson Raphaelson, Trouble in Paradise (1932). The cynical comedy was popular both with critics and with audiences.

But it was a project that could only have been made before the enforcement of the Production Code, and after 1935, Trouble in Paradise was withdrawn from circulation. It was not seen again until 1968.

Ernst Lubitsch continued to specialize in comedy, whether with music, as in MGM's opulent The Merry Widow (1934) and Paramount's One Hour with You (1932), or without, as in Design for Living (1933).

He made only one other dramatic film, the anti-war Broken Lullaby/The Man I Killed (1932).

In 1935, he was appointed Paramount's production manager, thus becoming the only major Hollywood director to run a large studio.

But Lubitsch had trouble delegating authority, which was a problem when he was overseeing sixty different films. He was fired after a year on the job, and returned to full-time moviemaking.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 838/1. Photo: Terra Film A.G., Berlin. Publicity still for Rosita (Ernst Lubitsch, 1923).


Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 98/6. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927).


French postcard by Cinémagazine Edition, Paris, no. 794. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Love Parade (Ernst Lubitsch, 1929) with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald.


Dutch-Belgian promotion card for Cacao Van Houten, no. 11 and 12. Printed by N.V. Ned Reclamefabriek. This card was part of a series of promo cards for a quiz by Van Houten Chocolate. The public had to go to stores to guess which film star was on the photo in the shop window. There were 24 photos. At the right we recognized (with the help from a former owner of the card :)) Jack Buchanan and Jeanette MacDonald in Monte Carlo (Ernst Lubitsch, 1930). But who are the actors on the other picture? Name also the title of the film and the production company. In the past you could win a Philips Radio...


Maurice Chevalier and Miriam Hopkins. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5976/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931).

Garbo Laughs!

In 1935 he married his second wife, British actress Vivian Gaye. They had one daughter, Nicola Lubitsch in 1938. And in 1936, he became a naturalized US citizen.

Lubitsch moved to MGM, and directed Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939). The famously serious actress' laughing scene in this satirical comedy was heavily promoted by studio publicists with the tagline "Garbo Laughs!"

In 1940, Lubitsch directed The Shop Around the Corner, an artful comedy of cross purposes.

The film reunited Lubitsch with his Merry Widow screenwriter Raphaelson, and starred James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as a pair of bickering co-workers in Budapest, each unaware that the other is their secret romantic correspondent.

Lubitsch went independent to direct That Uncertain Feeling (1941, a remake of his 1925 film Kiss Me Again), and the dark anti-Nazi farce To Be or Not to Be (1942).

William McPeak at IMDb on To Be or Not to Be (1942): "a biting satire of Nazi tyranny that also poked fun at Lubitsch's own theater roots with the problems and bickering--but also the triumph--of a somewhat raggedy acting troupe in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. Jack Benny's perfect deadpan humor worked well with the zany vivaciousness of Carole Lombard, and a cast of veteran character actors from both Hollywood and Lubitsch's native Germany provided all the chemistry needed to make this a classic comedy, as well as a fierce statement against the perpetrators of war."

A heart condition curtailed his activity, and he spent much of his time in supervisory capacities. His next film, Heaven Can Wait (1943) was another Raphaelson collaboration.

Then, Lubitsch worked with Edwin Justus Mayer on the scripting process of A Royal Scandal (1945), a remake of Lubitsch's silent film A Forbidden Paradise. The script was written and prepared under Lubitsch, and he was the original director of this film, and directed the rehearsals. He became ill during shooting, so he hired Otto Preminger, another disciple of Max Reinhardt's Viennese theatre work,to do the rest of the shooting.

After A Royal Scandal, Lubitsch regained his health, and directed Cluny Brown (1946), with Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones.

In 1947, he was awarded a Special Academy Award. Ernst Lubitsch died later that year in Hollywood of a heart attack, his sixth. He was 55.

His last film, That Lady in Ermine (1948) with Betty Grable, was completed by Otto Preminger and released posthumously.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6732/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for One Hour with You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932) with Roland Young, Genevieve Tobin, Jeanette MacDonald, and Maurice Chevalier.


French postcard by Europe, no. 73. Photo: Paramount. Maurice Chevalier and Lily Damita in Une heure près de toi (George Cukor, Ernst Lubitsch, 1932), the French language version of One Hour With You.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1606/2, 1937-1938. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (Ernst Lubitsch, 1938) with Claudette Colbert.


Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, no. C 181. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Ninotschka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939) with Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas.


Meyer aus Berlin/Meyer from Berlin (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919). Source: Bob Toomey (YouTube)


Trailer for Ninotschka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939). Source: OscarMovieTrailers (You Tube).

Sources: Ephraim Katz (The Film Encyclopedia), William McPeak (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Carmen (1918)

May 30, 2018, 10:00 pm

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In Lubitsch's silent drama Carmen (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918) the gypsy vamp was of course played by Pola Negri. She does a great job. Her Don José was played by Harry Liedtke. The film was an international success.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2765. Photo: Atelier Eberth / Union. Pola Negri as Carmen in the German silent drama Carmen (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918).


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2849. Photo: Union. Pola Negrias Carmen in Carmen (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918).


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2850. Photo: Union. Pola Negri as Carmen and Harry Liedtke as Don José in the German silent drama Carmen (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918).

Sassy, playful, capricious, cruel, generous…

Ernst Lubitsch’s career as a filmmaker blossomed just as the First World War was drawing to a close. In 1918, he went from being mostly a comedic director to a supposedly more serious filmmaker of pseudo-historical tragedies, with bigger budgets and a new star - Pola Negri, a fellow actor from the Deutsches Theater.

Lubitsch based his drama Carmen (1918) on the novella Carmen by Prosper Mérimée. Like George Bizet's opera Carmen, the film only adapts the third part of Mérimée's novella.

Lubitsch transformed the character of Don José (Harry Liedtke) at the beginning of the story from bandit on the run to honest man in love with his childhood sweetheart.

The story is told by a man at a camp-fire who says that it took place many years before. Don José was a Dragoon Sergeant in Sevilla who fell madly in love with Carmen (Pola Negri), a beautiful gypsy. For her, he killed an officer and gave up his fiancée and his career in the army, and became a smuggler.

But Carmen's love did not last. She left him and went to Gibraltar where she fell in love with the famous bullfighter Escamillo. Back in Sevilla, Carmen rode triumphantly in Escamillo's carriage on his way to a bullfight. At the end of the bullfight, José confronted Carmen and when she told him that she no longer loved him, stabbed her to death.

Back at the camp-fire seen at the beginning, the man who told the story adds that some say that Carmen did not die ′for she was in league with the Devil himself.'

Carmen debuted in December 1918 at the U.T. Lichtspiele on Kurfürstendamm. It was a huge success in Germany with audiences and press.

After the unexpected American success of Madame Dubarry (released as Passion in December 1919), Carmen was re-edited for an American release in 1921, as Gypsy Blood. In the American version the framing story was hand-coloured and Lubitsch’s name was left off the credits. Adolph Zukor brought Pola Negri to Hollywood in the summer of 1922. He was not interested in Lubitsch, who had also hoped to get a contract with Paramount.

In her review at Movies Silently, Fritzi Kramer writes: "I am a fan of Geraldine Farrar’s lively take on the role in the 1915 Cecil B. DeMille version but Pola Negri is the best silent Carmen by far. Sassy, playful, capricious, cruel, generous… Negri projects all of Carmen’s contradictions on the screen and delivers an astonishing performance."


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2851. Photo: Union. Pola Negri as Carmen and Harry Liedtke as Don José in Carmen (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918).


German collectors card by Ross Verlag in the series Vom Werden deutscher Filmkunst - Der Stumme Film, picture no, 59, group 43. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still for Carmen (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918) with Harry Liedtke and Pola Negri.

Sources: Fritzi Kramer (Movies Silently), Stefan Droessler (Le Gionate del Cinema Muto), Wikipedia and IMDb.