Paul van Yperen's Blog, page 328

November 8, 2016

Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne (1921)

The Italian silent film Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne/The Son of Madame Sans-Gêne (Baldassarre Negroni, 1921) was based on the novel by Emile Moreau. Madame Sans-Gêne was played by the Italian diva Hesperia.

Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne (1921)
French postcard by Le Deley, Paris. Photo: U.C.I. / Gaumont / Tiber Film. Publicity still for Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne (Baldassarre Negroni, 1921), with  Hesperia  and Pauline Polaire.

Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne (1921)
French postcard by Le Deley, Paris. Photo: U.C.I. / Gaumont / Tiber Film. Publicity still for Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne (Baldassarre Negroni, 1921), with Enrico Scatizzi and Carlo Troisi.

Madame Sans-Gêne
In Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne/The Son of Madame Sans-Gêne, sergeant Lefèvre (Enrico Scatizzi) meets an ironing lady ( Hesperia ) at a 'bal populaire' during the celebrations of the first successes of the French Revolution. They marry and have a son, Antonio. Lefèvre proves himself on the European battlefields and he becomes Marshal and Duke of Danzig. His wife becomes Madame Sans-Gêne, Duchess of Danzig.

When Antonio (Carlo Troisi) has grown up, he falls in love with a young noble lady (Pauline Polaire), but she is already promised to the seigneur Ambzac, a Royalist conspirator. When the girl marries D'Ambzac, Antonio decides to flee with her, and steals money from his father. When the theft is found out, Antonio asks to be sent to the battle front as punishment. There he is charged to ask for reinforcements, but during his travels he meets D'Ambzac again His wife has returned to him, and Antonio forgets his mission.

Condemned to death for high treason, it is his father who signs his death warrant. He brings a gun to his son in prison to spare him the shame of the execution, but finds his wife in the cell instead, who has traded places with her son. During his flight Antonio discovers an enemy plan and informs the command. When at the end of the day victory is celebrated, the parents find their son dying. He dies in his mother's arms, while the Emperor Napoleon decorates him with the Legion of Honour.

Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne, produced by Tiber-film, had its Roman premiere on 12 December 1921. The film was praised in the Italian press. The Cine-Fono journal thought the film well respected history and expressed the right emotions, without too much artifice. The film had sets by renowned artist Camillo Innocenti.

But the film was particularly praised for its acting. La vita cinematografica thought the story old-style romantic, but direction and performance of Scatizzi,  Hesperia  and Troisi were well above the average and lifted the story to a new level. Hesperia had appeared since 1912 in Italian films and had made some very popular films. The diva was married to the director of her film, Baldassarre Negroni.

Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne (1921)
French postcard by Le Deley, Paris. Photo: U.C.I. / Gaumont / Tiber Film. Publicity still for Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne (Baldassarre Negroni, 1921). Here Hesperia as Madame Sans-Gêne is portrayed similarly to François Gérard's portrait of Juliette Récamier.

Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne (1921)
French postcard by Le Deley, Paris. Photo: U.C.I. / Gaumont / Tiber Film. Publicity still for Il figlio di Madame Sans-Gêne (Baldassarre Negroni, 1921), with Hesperia as the woman dressed as soldier in the middle.

Source: Vittorio Martinelli (Il cinema muto italiano, 1921-1922 - Italian), Wikipedia and IMDb.
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Published on November 08, 2016 22:00

November 7, 2016

Oleg Popov (1930-2016)

The legendary Russian clown Oleg Popov has died on 2 November, aged 86. He was once described as the Michelangelo of the circus and was at one time the best-known clown in the world. Dressed in baggy pants with yellow straw hair sticking out from under a tatty cap, he performed simple but joyful sketches in the circus ring, in concert halls and in films.

Oleg Popov (1930-2016)
Russian postcard. Photo: publicity still for The Blue Bird (George Cukor, 1976) with Oleg Popov, Ava Gardner and Todd Lookinland.

Juggler and slack-wire artist
Oleg Konstantinovich Popov was born in 1930 in Vyrubovo near Moscow in the former Soviet Union. He was the son of a clock-repairman and a photo retoucher. According to Dutch Wikipedia , Popov's father was arrested in 1937 after he accidentally damaged a watch which was intended for the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin. The family never heard again from him.

At age 12, Oleg began working as an apprentice typographer for the newspaper Pravda, and he later joined the Pravda's Athletic Club. There, in 1945, someone suggested that he should apply for Moscow's State College of Circus and Variety Arts nearby. He was accepted and studied acrobatics, juggling, and other circus skills. He graduated in 1949.

At 19, he made his debut as a juggler and slack-wire artist at the Tbilisi Circus in the Georgian SSR. Later, he continued his career at the Great Moscow State Circus, on Tsvetnoy Boulevar. This was a government-run circus organisation and still exists today as Circus Nikulin. The circus was a vital part of life in the Soviet Union where, typically every year, more than 70 million citizens would attend one or more shows put on by more than 100 troupes.

Oleg Popov's comic abilities were spotted only after the Second World War. In 1950, the famous clown Karandash invited him to join him on a tour as his assistant and partner. In 1954 Popov got his big break when he replaced Pavel Borovikov, when this clown was injured. Popov's act was a huge hit. Popov portrayed a gentle little man baffled by the big, precarious world. His clown character followed the tradition of the Russian folk character Ivanushka, who fools other people and who is teased himself. His act also incorporated his skills as an acrobat, juggler, and animal trainer.

In 1955, Popov performed abroad for the first time, in Warsaw. The following year, he toured with the Moscow Circus in France, Belgium, and England. It was the first foreign performance by a Soviet circus group. He was immediately noticed by the press, and became an international circus star.

Oleg Popov_Vbpstsi (1981)
Oleg Popov_Vbpstsi (1981). Collection: Manuel Palomino Arjona (Flickr).

Oleg Popov_Vbpstsi (1982)
Oleg Popov_Vbpstsi (1981). Collection: Manuel Palomino Arjona (Flickr).

Circus Clown Oleg Popov_Soviet Circus; 394
Circus Clown Oleg Popov_Soviet Circus; 394. Znakomtes Soviet Circus_Miniterio de Cultura & Soyugostsirl. Collection: Manuel Palomino Arjona (Flickr).

A goodwill ambassador for the Soviet Union
The Soviet regime quickly built on his success abroad and transformed Oleg Popov into a goodwill ambassador for the Soviet Union. He was broadcast from Moscow on American television in 1957, and he appeared at the Brussels World Fair in 1958. With the Moscow Circus, he toured the United States in 1963.

Popov appeared in a dozen films, including Арена Смелых/Ring of the Braves (Sergei Gurov, Yuriy Ozerov, 1953), the comedy Kosolapyy Drug/Clubfooted Friend (Vladimir Sukhobokov, 1959), the Bulgarian drama Ritzar bez bronya/Knight Without Armour (Borislav Sharaliev, 1966) and the musical Ma-ma/Mummy (Elisabeta Bostan, 1977). Jens August at IMDb about Ma-ma: "I can understand why this makes so much effect on both children and adults. It has everything you can fantasize about. Great acting and choreography, and all the small and great details in costumes and makeup. The actors facial expressions are spot on for the animals they are playing. As a child you connect to them at once."

Popov also appeared as a clown in The Blue Bird (George Cukor, 1976), starring Elizabeth Taylor , Jane Fonda and Ava Gardner . This was the first official co-production between the United States and the Soviet Union, and the third screen adaptation of the children's story by Maurice Maeterlinck about two children who set out to find the Blue Bird of Happiness. The film, made in Russia, had a notoriously difficult production, and was a box office failure.

Craig Butler at AllMovie : "Cukor, normally a sensitive and imaginative director, has directed with no sense of style and very little competence. Some of the costumes, at least, are nice, but they're balanced by those which border on the grotesque. Blue Bird holds a certain fascination, as one of those "How did this happen" kind of films, but it loses that appeal long before its 100 minutes comes to an end."Michael Elliott at IMDb : "It's strange to see all the talent that is wasted here but at the same time I think fans of the weird and surreal will probably want to check this out and they might get a few kicks out of it. This version here is completely weird from the opening scene to the last but I think this here is what keeps it entertaining."

Popov's final film was the Soviet-Czech family film Postoronnim vkhod razreshyon/Free Admittance (Josef Pinkava, 1987), based on the books by Natalya Durova.

He published a book of memoirs in 1967, which has been widely translated into numerous languages, in English as Russian Clown (1970). In 1969, Oleg Popov was honoured with the title of People's Artist of the USSR. He toured extensively around the world in subsequent years with the Moscow Circus. In Australia, he was named King of Moomba (1971).

In the early 1990s, at the fall of the Soviet Union, Oleg Popov began touring for a few years with a unit of the Moscow Circus in Germany, where he eventually resettled. He later performed extensively in Germany, in circus shows, on television, or with his own touring show.

In 1991, he married Gabriela Lehmann, a German circus performer, who was 32 years younger than her husband. Popov was previously married to violinist Alexandra Ilinitsjna Ryslavskaja. They had a daughter, Olga Popova (1953), who is also a circus artist and lives in Germany.

In 2006, Popov was invited to perform at the 30th anniversary of the International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo. Aged 75 years of age, he received a standing ovation. In 2015, he returned for the first time to Russia after 28 years of living in Germany. At the First Master gala event at the State Circus of Sochi, he was greeted with a long standing ovation.

Oleg Popov died on 2 November 2016, from a cardiac arrest while on tour, at a hotel in Russia's southern city of Rostov-on-Don. He was 86 (some sources say 87).

Clown Oleg Popov_Soviet Circus (1982)
Clown Oleg Popov_Soviet Circus (1982). Collection: Manuel Palomino Arjona (Flickr).

Oleg Popov_Vbpstsi (1983)
Oleg Popov_Vbpstsi (1983). Collection: Manuel Palomino Arjona (Flickr).

Oleg Popov (Moskauer Staats Zirkus. 1990)
Oleg Popov (Moskauer Staats Zirkus. 1990), Collection: Manuel Palomino Arjona (Flickr).

Sources: Craig Butler (AllMovie), Jens August (IMDb), Michael Elliott (IMDb), The Moscow Times, BBC, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia (English and Dutch), and .
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Published on November 07, 2016 22:00

November 6, 2016

Manfred Krug (1937-2016)

We just learned that Manfred Krug passed away on 21 October. To honour this great German actor, who was often cast as a socialist hero in DEFA films of the former GDR, we repost his EFSP bio. Krug was multi-talented and also became known in East-Germany as a jazz singer. In 1977, he returned to West-Germany, where he became a popular TV star. Mr. Krug, rest in peace.

Manfred Krug
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, no. 966, 1959. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: DEFA / Dassdorf. Publicity still for Reportage 57 (János Veiczi, 1959).

Manfred Krug
German promotion card by Intercord, Stuttgart, 1979.

Powerful body language and rebellious presence
Manfred Krug was born in 1937 in Duisburg, Germany. His parents were Rudolf and Alma Krug. In 1949, after the divorce of his parents, the 13-years-old Manfred moved with his father from Duisburg to the newly founded German Democratic Republic (GDR). The young Krug trained as a steel smelter in Brandenburg an der Havel. A splash of liquid steel caused a distinctive scar on his forehead.

Krug worked for four years in a steel plant and rolling mill. In the evenings he studied and decided to go to drama school. From 1955 to 1957 he was an apprentice at Bertolt Brecht's Berliner Ensemble. In 1957, Krug made his film debut as a guitarist in Die Schönste/The most beautiful (Ernesto Remani, Walter Beck, 1957).

Filmportal.de : “Because of his strong build, his powerful body language, and his rebellious presence, Krug mainly played roles of villains and young rowdies in the early years of his movie career.” He played a smuggler in the crime film Ware für Katalonien/Goods For Catalonia (Richard Groschopp, 1959), based on a true fraud: a criminal sold the entire stock of optical instruments produced by the Zeiss factory in Jena, East Germany, to the Spanish Army and to customers in Barcelona.

Krug also appeared in the successful war film Fünf Patronenhülsen/Five Cartridges (Frank Beyer, 1960) opposite Erwin Geschonneck and Armin Mueller-Stahl . During the Spanish Civil War, a battalion of the International Brigades is cut off without water or ammunition. Five Cartridges won director Frank Beyer great acclaim, and also for Krug many more film roles followed. He also achieved notability as a jazz singer.

He appeared in the drama Professor Mamlock (Konrad Wolf, 1961) about a Jewish surgeon (Wolfgang Heinz) in Germany of the early 1930s. It was based on the play Professor Mamlock, written by the director's father Friedrich Wolf during 1933, when he was in exile in France.

Krug was often cast as the tough guy with a heart of gold, such as in Auf der Sonnenseite/On the Sunny Side (Ralf Kirsten, 1962). In this musical comedy he starred as a steel smelter and an amateur actor and jazz singer, who is sent to a drama school by his factory's committee. The film's script was largely inspired by Krug's biography: he worked in a steel factory before turning to an acting career. His jazz band and his singing career were also a central theme in the plot.

DEFA historian Dagmar Schittly notes that Auf der Sonnenseite was the most popular East German film of the early 1960s, and Krug and the collective crew were awarded the Heinrich Greif Prize for their work. Krug managed to give the Communist system a human face and credibility. Krug and director Kirsten reunited for the historical adventure Mir nach, Canaillen!/Follow Me, Scoundrels (Ralf Kirsten, 1964).

Two years later Krug starred in Spur der Steine/Trace of Stones (Frank Beyer, 1966). After its release, the film was shown only for a few days, before being shelved due to conflicts with the Socialist Unity Party, the ruling communist party in the GDR. Krug’s portrayal of a rebellious and brash building site brigadier was deemed as too ‘anarchic’ by the censors.

Filmportal.de : “Indeed, the role of the aggressive, yet down-to-earth worker who defies authority and often kicks over the traces has always been one of Krug's main roles.” Only after 23 years was the film shown again, in 1989, when the Berlin Wall fell.

His other DEFA-films include Die Fahne von Kriwoj Rog/The Banner of Krivoi Rog (Kurt Maetzig, 1967) starring Erwin Geschonneck, and the contemporary Eastern road movie Weite Straßen – stille Liebe/ Wide streets, silent love (Herrmann Zschoche, 1969) with Jaecki Schwarz , which made Krug a favourite among East-German teenage filmgoers.

Manfred Krug
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, no. 1.819, 1963. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Klaus Fischer. Publicity still for Revue um Mitternacht/Midnight Review (Gottfried Kolditz, 1962).

Manfred Krug in Hauptmann Florian von der Mühle (1968)
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, no. 88/69. Photo: DEFA / Wenzel. Publicity still for Hauptmann Florian von der Mühle/Captain Florian of the Mill (Werner W. Wallroth, 1968).

Manfred Krug and Herwart Grosse in Die gestohlene Schlacht (1972)
East-German postcard by VEB Bild und Heimat Reichenbach i.V., no. AG 500/12/72. Photo: DEFA / Kroiss. Publicity still for Die gestohlene Schlacht/The stolen battle (Erwin Stranka, 1972) with Herwart Grosse.

Pushed off
In 1976 Manfred Krug participated in protests against the expulsion and stripping of GDR citizenship of singer-songwriter Wolf Biermann. Suddenly the popular Krug, who had won numerous awards in the years before (among them the National award and the Medal for Merit of the GDR), was subjected to sanctions and censorship. The situation escalated when Krug beat down a Stasi informer who had insulted and defamed him publicly.

After six months of partly unemployment, Krug requested to leave the GDR in 1977. As soon as he got the approval he left East-Germany and moved to Schöneberg in West Berlin. Twenty years later, he wrote about these events in his book Abgehauen (1997, Pushed off). This memoir became a bestseller and in was filmed by Frank Beyer in 1998.

After moving back to West Germany, Manfred Krug very soon got new roles. In 1978 he appeared as the adventurous truck driver Franz Meersdonk in the TV series Auf Achse/On the Axis. He continued to play in the series until 1995, one year before the show ended its long run. Krug's various television roles even included a two-year stint on the children's program Sesamstraße (1982-1984), the German version of the American children's program Sesame Street.

He was very popular as an attorney in the Berlin-based comedic attorney TV series Liebling Kreuzberg/Darling Kreuzberg (1986-1998). From 1984 till 2001, he also starred as Hamburg-based commissioner Paul Stoever in the Krimi series Tatort, which would eventually run for a total of 41 instalments.

His later feature films include the comedy Neuner (Werner Masten, 1990), and the political drama Der Blaue/The Blue One (Lienhard Wawrzyn, 1994), which was entered into the 44th Berlin International Film Festival. In 2005, his second memoir, Mein schönes Leben (2005, My beautiful life), became another bestseller.

Since 1963, Manfred Krug was married with Ottilie Krug. Together they had three children, including the singer Fanny Krug. In 2002 it was announced that Manfred Krug also had an illegitimate child. Krug died on 21 October 2016 in Berlin.

Manfred Krug
Big East-German card by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, no. 155/70, 1970. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Linke.

Manfred Krug
German promotion card by kv-events.de. Photo: Volker Hinz.


Trailer Spur der Steine/Trace of Stones (1966). Sorry, no subtitles. Source: DEFA-Stiftung (YouTube).


Trailer Feuer unter Deck/Fire below deck (1977). Sorry, no subtitles. Source: DEFA-Stiftung (YouTube).

Sources: Filmportal.de, AllMovie, Wikipedia (English and German) and .
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Published on November 06, 2016 22:00

November 5, 2016

Margit Bara (1928-2016)

On 25 October 2016, Romanian-born actress Margit Bara  passed away at the age of 88. The beautiful star of the Hungarian theatre also appeared in 25 films between 1956 and 1975. In Hungary, she became a legend and is respected as one of the most talented Hungarian actresses of all time.

Margit Bara
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 578, 1957. Photo: Magyar-Film. Publicity still for Szakadék/Abyss (László Ranódy, 1956).

Karoly Makk's masterpiece
Margit Bara was born Margit Éva Bara in Cluj, Romania in 1928. In 1945, she started to play as an extra at the Theatre of Cluj. She played there for ten years, and in the meanwhile she studied for a year at the Academy of Dramatic Arts.

In Cluj, Bara met her first husband, actor Géza Halász, with whom she moved to Hungary in 1955. One of her first films was the Hungarian film Szakadék (László Ranódy, 1956) with Ferenc Bessenyei.

She then starred in the romantic drama Bakaruhában/In Soldier's Uniform (Imre Fehér, 1957). With this film the 1957 Karlovy Vary Film Festival was launched. Set during WW1, the story revolves around a Hungarian journalist (Ivan Darvas) who is required by law to wear his military uniform twice a week. Our hero falls in love with a similarly-uniformed young woman, never dreaming that she is a servant girl (Margit Bara) and, as such, ‘beneath his station.’

Other films in which she played the lead were Csempészek/Smuggler (Félix Máriássy, 1958), and A tettes ismeretlen/Danse macabre (László Ranódy, László Nádasy, 1958) with Andor Ajtay.

She had a supporting part in Ház a sziklák alatt/The House Under the Rocks (Károly Makk, György Hintsch, 1959). This film drama was one of the hits of the 1958 Venice Film Festival, and was equally well received at the San Francisco Film Festival. The film is considered by many to be director Karoly Makk's masterpiece.

Janos Gorbe plays a soldier, sick of heart and mind, who returns to his home after a long and debilitating war. He finds that his wife is dead, and his son is now under the care of his sister-in-law, played by Irene Psota. An embittered hunchback, Psota tends to Gorbe's wounds and keeps him isolated from the rest of the village, hoping in this way that he will eventually fall in love with her. He doesn't, and tragedy is the result.

Margit Bara, Imre Sinkovits
Hungarian postcard by SZ, Budapest, no. 331 / 17 / 564. Retail price: 60 Fillér. Photo: Kovács. Publicity still for Szakadék/Abyss (László Ranódy, 1956) with Imre Sinkovits.

Margit Bara and Hannjo Hasse in Polnocná omsa
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 1834, 1963. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: publicity still for Polnocná omsa/Midnight Mass (Jiri Krejcik, 1962) with Hannjo Hasse.

Docudrama Technique
During the early 1960s, Margit Bara appeared in such Hungarian films as Katonazene (Endre Marton, György Hintsch, 1961).

She had her international breakthrough with the Hungarian drama film Pacsirta/Drama of the Lark (László Ranódy, 1963), based a novel by Dezső Kosztolányi. It was entered into the 1964 Cannes Film Festival where the lead, Antal Páger won the award for Best Actor.

Bara played the lead opposite Miklos Gábor in the Hungarian film drama Kertes házak utcája/A Cozy Cottage (Tamás Fejér, 1963) which was entered into the 1963 Cannes Film Festival.

In 1966 she appeared in Hideg Napok/Cold Days (Andras Kovacs, 1966). Director Kovacs was a leading light of the new Hungarian cinema.

According to Hal Erickson at AllMovie, Kovacs brought his “'docudrama' technique to this story which deals with the systematic slaughter of Jews and Serbians by Hungarian fascists during World War II. Kovacs is not quite a revisionist historian, but he does cast doubt on the 'official' interpretations of this horrible human-rights violation. Nor is the audience allowed to slip into complacency: it comes as a shock to discover that many of the characters whom we're rooting for turn out to be the villains!”

Margit Bara
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 1632, 1961.

Margit Bara
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 1686, 1962. Photo: Hungarofilm.

Jacob the Liar
One of Margit Bara’s final films, Jakob der Lügner/Jacob the Liar (Frank Beyer, 1975), is also one of her most famous works. This East German-Czechoslovakian Holocaust film was based on the novel of the same name by Jurek Becker.

Work on the picture began in 1965, but production was halted in the summer of 1966. Becker, who had originally planned Jacob the Liar as a screenplay, decided to make it a novel instead. In 1972, after the book garnered considerable success, work on the picture resumed.

In a Jewish ghetto in German-occupied Poland, a man named Jakob (Vlastimil Brodský) is summoned to the Gestapo office on a charge he broke the curfew. As the soldier who sent him there merely played a prank on him, he is released, but not before hearing a radio broadcast about the defeats of the German Army. As no one believes he went to the Gestapo and came out alive, Jakob makes up another tale, claiming he owns a radio – a crime punishable by death. He then starts encouraging his friends with false reports about the advance of the Red Army toward their ghetto. The residents, who are desperate and starved, find new hope in Jakob's stories. But it all ends as the Germans deport the people to their death in the extermination camps.

Jacob the Liar was the first ever East German film that was entered into the Berlin International Film Festival in West Berlin: in the XXV Berlinale, Vlastimil Brodský won the Silver Bear for Best Actor. It was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film at the 49th Academy Awards, the only East German picture ever to be selected.

In 1977, there was a malicious rumour campaign against Margit Bara, and she decided to retire. In 1992, she  received the Order of Merit of the Republic of Hungary  and in 2010 she was honoured with the Kossuth Prize, a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Margit Bara passed away in Budapest, Hungaru, on 25 October 2016. She was married twice. First to actor Géza Halász and later to Dezső Gyarmati. With Gyarmati, who died in 2013, she had one child.

Margit Bara
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 1687, 1962. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Hungarofilm.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie) Wikipedia (English and Hungarian) and .
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Published on November 05, 2016 23:00

November 4, 2016

Imported from the USA: Lillian Gish

American actress Lillian Gish (1893-1993) was 'The First Lady of the Silent Screen'. During the 1910s, she was one of director D.W. Griffith's greatest stars. She appeared in his features such as The Birth of a Nation (1915), Broken Blossoms (1919), and Orphans of the Storm (1921). After 13 years with Griffith, she moved to MGM where her first picture was La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926). In the 1940s, after a long interval, she returned to the screen in a handful of films and received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination for her role as Laura Belle McCanles in Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946). Again a decade later she was marvellous in the classic Film Noir The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). Her last film was The Whales of August (Lindsay Anderson, 1987) in which she shared the lead with Bette Davis.

Lillian Gish
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3545/2, 1928-1929. Photo: United Artists.

Lilian Gish
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 236.

Lillian Gish
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 844/1, 1925-1926. Photo: Apeda (Alexander W. Dreyfoos), New York / British-American-Films A.G. Bafag.

Lillian Gish in La Bohème (1926)
Italian postcard by Casa Editrice Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze. Photo: Metro Goldwyn (MGM), Roma, no. 287. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926).

Lillian Gish and John Gilbert in La Bohème (1926)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/1. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) with John Gilbert.

An exquisitely fragile, ethereal beauty
Lillian Diana Gish was born in 1893 in Springfield, Ohio. Her restless father James Lee Gish was an alcoholic who was rarely at home and left the family to more or less to fend for themselves. Mary Robinson McConnell a.k.a. Mary Gish, her mother, had entered into acting in local productions to make money to support the family. As soon as Lillian and her sister Dorothy were old enough, they joined her.

Lillian was six years old when she first appeared in front of an audience. For the next 13 years, she and Dorothy appeared in melodramas before stage audiences with great success. To supplement their income, the two sisters also posed for pictures and paintings. In 1912, their former neighbour girl and child actress Mary Pickford introduced the sisters to film director David Wark Griffith and helped get them contracts with Biograph Studios.

Griffith cast them in the short silent films An Unseen Enemy (D.W. Griffith, 1912), followed by The One She Loved (D.W. Griffith, 1912) and My Baby (D.W. Griffith, 1912). Griffith saw Lillian as an exquisitely fragile, ethereal beauty, and in 1912, she would make 12 films for him.

With 25 films in the next two years, Lillian's exposure to the public was so great that she fast became one of the top stars in the industry, right alongside Mary Pickford. With her doll-like looks and small frame she portrayed innocent, virginal characters who are victimised by a cruel world.

In 1915, Lillian starred as Elsie Stoneman in D.W. Griffith's most ambitious project to date, The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915). It was the highest-grossing film of the silent era. The following year, she appeared in another Griffith classic, Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (D.W. Griffith, 1916). Other famous Griffith productions in which Gish starred were Broken Blossoms or The Yellow Man and the Girl (D.W. Griffith, 1919), Way Down East (D.W. Griffith, 1920), and Orphans of the Storm (D.W. Griffith, 1921), opposite her sister Dorothy.

Lillian Gish
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 844/2. Photo: British-American Film A.-G. (Bafag), Berlin. Lillian Gish in the film The White Sister (Henry King 1923), shot in Italy.

Lillian Gish in Romola
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1034/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Phoebus Film. Lillian Gish in the American period piece Romola (Henry King, 1924), shot on location in Italy, and set in Renaissance Florence.

Lillian Gish, John Gilbert and Renée Adorée in La Bohème (1926)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/2. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) with John Gilbert and Renée Adorée.

Lillian Gish and Roy D'Arcy in La Bohème (1926)
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 63/4. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) / Parufamet. Publicity still for La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) with Roy D'Arcy.

Lillian Gish in The Scarlet Letter
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1885/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Parufamet. Lillian Gish in The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström, 1926).

The First Lady of the American cinema
By the early 1920s, Lillian Gish was known as 'The First Lady of the American cinema', according to Wikipedia . Lillian even tried her hand at film directing with Remodeling Her Husband (Lillian Gish, 1920), when D. W. Griffith took his unit on location. The film, starring her sister Dorothy Gish, is now considered lost.

Then, she could make two films entirely in Italy. In the excellent The White Sister (Henry King, 1923), she played a young woman who becomes a nun when she believes her sweetheart ( Ronald Colman ) has been killed, but things get complicated when he returns alive. Henry King directed her and Colman also in the costume drama Romola (Henry King, 1924), in which also her sister Dorothy co-starred.

D.W. Griffith’s career seemed on its way down. After 13 years with him, Lillian moved to MGM. Her new contract gave her control over the type of picture, the director, the supporting lead and the cameraman.

1926 became her busiest year of the decade with roles in La Bohème (King Vidor, 1926) with John Gilbert, and The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström, 1926). Gish's favourite film of her MGM career, The Wind (Victor Sjöström, 1928), was a commercial failure, but is now recognised as one of the most distinguished works of the silent period.

As the decade wound to a close, ‘talkies’ were replacing silent films, and Gish began to appear for the radio and in acclaimed stage productions. In 1933, she appeared in one sound film, His Double Life (Arthur Hopkins, 1933) with Roland Young, and then didn't make another film for ten years. She appeared in stage roles as varied as Ophelia in Guthrie McClintic's 1936 production of Hamlet, with John Gielgud , and Marguerite in a limited run of La Dame aux Camélias.

Tony Fontana at IMDb : “Lillian never forgot D.W. Griffith, even when everyone else in Hollywood did. She helped care for the ailing Griffith and his wife until Griffith died in 1948.”

Lillian Gish in The Scarlet Letter (1926)
Italian postcard, no. 22. Publicity still for The Scarlet Letter (Victor Sjöström, 1926).

Lillian Gish
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 1487/1, , 1927-1928. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn Mayer / FaNaMet.

Lillian Gish in Annie Laurie (1927)
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 1980/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn Mayer / FaNaMet. Publicity still for Annie Laurie (John S. Robertson, 1927).

Lillian Gish
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 3545/1, 1928-1929. Photo: United Artists.

Lillian Gish
Spanish postcard by EFB, no. A-62.

A rural guardian angel protecting her charges from a murderous preacher
When Lillian Gish returned to the screen in 1943, she played in two big-budget Hollywood pictures, the war drama Commandos Strike at Dawn (John Farrow, 1942) and Top Man (Charles Lamont, 1943). Denny Jackson at IMDb : “Although these roles did not bring her the attention she had in her early career, Lillian still proved she could hold her own with the best of them.”

She earned an Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress for her role of Laura Belle McCanles in the Western Duel in the Sun (King Vidor, 1946). She now excelled playing wilful but conflicted women.

One of the most critically acclaimed roles of her career came in the Film Noir The Night of the Hunter (Charles Laughton, 1955). She played a rural guardian angel protecting her charges from a murderous preacher played by Robert Mitchum. In 1969, she published her autobiography The Movies, Mr. Griffith, and Me. A year later, she received a special Academy Award 'for superlative artistry and distinguished contributions to the progress of motion pictures'.

In her later years Gish became a dedicated advocate for the appreciation and preservation of silent film. At the age of 93, she made what was to be her last film, The Whales of August (Lindsay Anderson, 1987), in which Bette Davis and she starred as elderly sisters in Maine. It exposed her to a new generation of fans.

In 1993, Lillian Gish died at age 99 peacefully in her sleep in New York City. Her 75-year film career is almost unbeatable. Gish never married or had children. She left her entire estate, which was valued at several million dollars, to actress Helen Hayes, who died 18 days after Gish.


Trailer The Birth of a Nation (1915). Source: MrAris67 (YouTube).


Trailer The Wind (1928). Source: MrAris67 (YouTube).


Trailer Duel in the Sun (1946). Source: Movieclips Trailer Vault (YouTube).


Trailer The Night of the Hunter (1955). Source: Criterion Collection (YouTube).


Trailer The Whales of August (1987). Source: mimzy84 (YouTube).

Sources: (IMDb), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
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Published on November 04, 2016 23:00

November 3, 2016

EFSP's Dazzling Dozen: Who's the Joker?

EFSP loves the niches of the film star postcard world. I just found these French playing cards with film stars. The photos were made in colour by the great Sam Lévin, probably around 1960. His dazzling portraits were part of sittings of which we know other pictures which were used for postcards, but the photos used for these playing cards I had never seen before. The producer of the cards gave a bit of thought about which actor would be right for which card. So the sparkling Fernandel became the King of Diamonds and handsome Jean Sorel became the King of Hearts, but I wonder who is the Joker?

Jean Sorel
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

With his dreamy features and glossy, immovable hair, French actor Jean Sorel (1934) was one of the most handsome leading men of the European cinema in the 1960s and 1970s. He worked in the French, Italian and later in the Spanish cinema with such directors as Luis Buñuel and Luchino Visconti. Since 1980 he appeared mostly on television.

Françoise Christophe
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French actress Françoise Christophe (1923-2012) specialized in aristocratic roles. She landed his first major role in Fantômas (Jean Sacha, 1946) as princess Daniloff. Twenty years later, she played Lady McRashley in Fantômas contre Scotland Yard/Fantômas against Scotland Yard (André Hunebelle, 1967), the final part of the trilogy starring Jean Marais and Louis de Funès. In 1966, she made a remarkable interpretation of Queen Mary Tudor in the TV film Marie Tudor/Queen Mary Tudor (Abel Gance, 1966). Since 1948 Christophe was a Pensionnaire of the Comédie-Française and acted in plays by Alfred de Musset, Jean Giraudoux, Molière and Edmond Rostand.

Perrette Pradier
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

In her long career, French actress Perrette Pradier (1938-2013) appeared mainly in the theatre and on stage. In the early 1960s she was one of the most promising actresses of the French cinema, but neither her French films nor her international productions made her a star.

Fernandel
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Actor and singer Fernandel (1903–1971) was for more than forty years France's top comedy star. He was perhaps best-loved for his portrayal of Don Camillo. His horse-like teeth and shy manner became his trademark.

Christine Carère
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Between 1951 and 1966, French actress Christine Carère or Carrère (1930–2008) appeared in 25 films and the television series Blue Light (1966). She was brought to America to appear in A Certain Smile (Jean Negulesco, 1958), based on the book by Francoise Sagan. Then followed a brief Hollywood career, including a leading role in the Pat Boone musical Mardi Gras (Edmund Goulding, 1959).

Claude Sainlouis
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French actor Claude Sainlouis or St. Louis (1933-2014) had a short film career in the late 1950s. He is best known for Chaleurs d'été/Heat of the Summer (Louis Félix, 1959).

Alain Delon
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Alain Delon (1935) was the breathtakingly good-looking James Dean of the French cinema. The 'male Brigitte Bardot' soon proved to be a magnificent actor in masterpieces by Luchino Visconti and Michelangelo Antonioni. In the late sixties Delon came to epitomise the calm, psychopathic hoodlum in the 'policiers' of Jean-Pierre Melville, staring into the camera like a cat assessing a mouse.

Alexandra Stewart
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Canadian actress Alexandra Stewart (1939) started her film career in the French comedy Les Motards (1958), and has since then enjoyed a steady career in both French- and English-language films. Among her best films are some classics by Nouvelle Vague directors Louis Malle and François Truffaut.

Nicole Courcel
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French actress Nicole Courcel (1931-2016) appeared in 43 films between 1947 and 1979. Though she is mostly unknown outside of France, she graced the screen with a number of sensitive performances through the 1950s and 1960s.

Pierre Brasseur
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French actor Pierre Brasseur (1905 – 1972), who appeared in some 150 films and TV productions, was renowned for playing charming and flamboyant characters. He is best known as 19th century actor Frédérick Lemaître in Les Enfants du Paradis/Children of Paradise (Marcel Carné, 1945) and as Docteur Génessier in the horror film Les Yeux sans visage/Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju, 1960). Brasseur was also a poet and playwright.

Françoise Prévost
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

French actress Françoise Prévost (1930–1997) also worked as a journalist and author. She appeared in over 70 films between 1949 and 1985. She emerged with the Nouvelle Vague, with roles of weight in films by Pierre Kast, Jean-Gabriel Albicocco and Jacques Rivette. From the 1960s on, she was also pretty active in the Italian cinema, starring in leading roles in dramas, comedies and genre films. In 1975 Prévost gained critical appreciation and commercial success as an author, with an autobiographical book about her struggle against an incurable disease, Ma vie en plus.

Juliette Mayniel
French playing card. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Doe-eyed French actress Juliette Mayniel (1936) appeared in 35 films and TV films between 1958 and 1978. Her film career made a jump start with two masterpieces, Claude Chabrol’s Les Cousins (1959) and the horror film Les Yeux Sans Visage/Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju, 1960).

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



Sources: Wikipedia and .
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Published on November 03, 2016 23:00

November 2, 2016

Harry Lauder

Scottish music hall and vaudeville theatre singer and comedian Harry Lauder (1870-1950) was perhaps best known for his long-standing hit I Love a Lassie and his other simplehearted Scottish songs. With his performances, he promoted the kilt and the cromach (walking stick) worldwide, especially in America. By 1911, Lauder had become the highest-paid performer in the world, and was the first Scottish artist to sell a million records. He raised huge amounts of money for the war effort during World War I, for which he was subsequently knighted in 1919. He appeared in several films.

Harry Lauder
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. T 2. Photo: Foulsham & Banfield.

Harry Lauder
British postcard in the Rotary Photographic Series, no. 1162 L. Photo: W. Whiteley Ltd.

Harry Lauder, Telling A Funny Story
British postcard by Rotary Photo, no. 1162 M. Photo: S ph. C.

The highest-paid performer in the world
Sir Henry ‘Harry’ Lauder was born in 1870 in his maternal grandfather's house in Edinburgh. He was the eldest of seven children to John Lauder, a Master Potter, and his wife Isabella Urquhart Macleod née McLennan. Upon his father's death, Harry worked part-time at the local flax mill to fund his education and from 1884 on he worked in the cole mine in Hamilton.

In 1891, at age 21, Lauder married Ann Vallance, daughter of a colliery manager in Hamilton. Lauder often sang to the miners in Hamilton who encouraged him to perform in local music halls. He quit the coal mines and became a professional singer in 1894.

In 1900, Lauder travelled to London and was an immediate success at the Charing Cross Music Hall and the London Pavilion. In 1905 Lauder became a national star when he lead the Howard & Wyndham pantomime at the Theatre Royal, Glasgow, for which he wrote I Love a Lassie. Lauder then made a switch from music hall to variety theatre and undertook a tour of America in 1907. The following year, he performed a private show before Edward VII at Sandringham, and in 1911, he again toured the United States where he commanded $1,000 a night.

In 1912, he was top of the bill at Britain's first ever Royal Command Performance, in front of King George V. Harry wrote most of his own songs, favourites of which were Roamin' In The Gloamin', I Love a Lassie, A Wee Deoch-an-Doris, and The End of the Road, which is used by Birmingham City Football Club as their club anthem.

Lauder undertook a world tour extensively during his forty-year career, including 22 trips to the United States — for which he had his own railroad train, the Harry Lauder Special, and made several trips to Australia, where his brother John had emigrated. Lauder was, at one time, the highest-paid performer in the world, making the equivalent of £12,700 a night plus expenses.

During the First World War (1914-1918), Lauder worked tirelessly to organise and recruit performers for shows given to troops serving abroad. Harry raised huge sums of money for war charities and entertained troops in the trenches in France, where he came under enemy fire. His entertainment activities were made poignant by the death in action of his only son, Captain John Lauder, at the end of 1916. Despite his son's death he continued to publicly rally support for the war, ending each of his wartime shows with his theme tune, Keep Right on to the End of the Road. For his many services he was knighted in 1919. After The Great War, Sir Harry Lauder continued to tour the now declining variety theatre circuits until his final tour in North America in 1932.

Harry Lauder
British postcard in the Star Series by G.D. & D., London. Photo: Whitlock.

Harry Lauder
British postcard by the Philco Publishing Company, London, no. 3445 B. Sent by mail in Great Britain in 1909.

Harry Lauder
British postcard in the Rotary Photographic Series, no. 1162 H. Photo: W. Whiteley Ltd.

Roamin' in the Gloamin'
Harry Lauder appeared in several British films. In 1907, he appeared in a short film for British Gaumont singing I Love a Lassie. In 1914, Lauder appeared in 14 Selig Polyscope experimental short sound films, including Harry Lauder Singing Roamin' in the Gloamin' (1914).

He also appeared in a test film for the Photokinema sound-on-disc process in 1921. This film is part of the UCLA Film and Television Archive collection; however, the disc is missing.

Later, he starred in three feature films: the silent Huntingtower (George Pearson, 1927) with Vera Voronina , the early musical Auld Lang Syne (George Pearson, 1929) and The End of the Road (Alex Bryce, 1936).

He was semi-retired in the mid-1930s, until his final retirement was announced in 1935. However, he again entertained troops throughout Britain during World War II, despite his age, and made wireless broadcasts with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra. He also appeared immediately after the war to thank the crews of American food relief ships docking at Glasgow.

Lauder wrote a number of books, which ran into several editions, including Harry Lauder at Home and on Tour (1912), A Minstrel in France (1918), Between You and Me (1919), Roamin' in the Gloamin' (1928 autobiography), My Best Scotch Stories (1929), Wee Drappies (1931) and Ticklin' Talks (circa 1932).

Lauder leased the Glenbranter estate in Argyll to the Forestry Commission and spent his last years at Lauder Hall, his Strathaven home in Scotland, where he died in 1950, in his 80th year. His funeral was covered by Pathe News and wreaths were received from all over the world, including one from Queen Elizabeth (today’s Queen Mother) and another from Mr & Mrs Winston Churchill.

Harry Lauder
British postcard in the Philco Series, no. 3256 B.

Harry Lauder
British postcard in the Rotary Photographic Series, no. 1162 B. Photo: Rotary.

Harry Lauder, That's the Reason noo I wear the Kilt
British postcard, no. 0034. By arrangement with Harry Lauder, A.B. Kendall, and Francis, Day and Hunter. Caption:

That's the Reason noo I Wear the Kilt.
Every night I used to hing my trousers up
On the back o' the bedroom door.
I rue the day - I must have been a jay!
I'll never hing them up any more;
For the wife she used to ramble through my pooches.
When I was fast asleep aneath the quilt;
In the mornin' when I woke, I was always stoney broke -
That's the reason noo I wear a kilt.



In this short film, Harry Lauder joins Charlie Chaplin for a couple of skits, including a mimicry of each other's well-known gait. This eight-minute short was part of an unfinished fund-raising project for injured soldiers during the war effort. Source: Dasinfogod (YouTube).

Sources: Gregory Lauder-Frost (Electric Scotland), Michael Duffy (First World War.com), Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikipedia and .
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Published on November 02, 2016 23:00

November 1, 2016

Sissignora (1942)

María Denis plays the lead in the Italian melodrama Sissignora/Yes, Madam (1942) produced under the Fascist rule of Mussolini. The beautiful star was very successful during the 1930 and 1940s with these melodramas and her Telefoni Bianchi-films, the typical Italian society comedies.

Sissignora
Italian postcard for Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942), with María Denis .

Sissignora
Italian postcard for Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942), with María Denis and Anna Carena.

Maria Denis in Sissignora
Italian postcard for Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942), with María Denis and Emma or Irma Grammatica.

Malice, narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy and egoism
María Denis plays in Sissignora young Cristina Zunio. She is an orphan after the death of her only aunt.

Cristina needs work and asks sister Valeria (Rina Morelli) for help. She thus becomes a domestic with the two old ladies Robbiano (Emma and Irma Grammatica) who treat her with austerity and narrow-mindedness.

Then their nephew, the young sailor Vittorio ( Leonardo Cortese ), returns from a long cruise. The two young people fall in love, opposed by the two old spinsters who won't accept he ties himself to a 'maid'. So they fire her to get rid of her.

Cristina thus starts working for the Bracco-Rinaldi family, who pretend to be high society but are debt-ridden, and they send Cristina away without payment. Meanwhile Vittorio manages to find Cristina and the two decide to marry, so Cristina rejects a marriage offer by the shy Emilio (Elio Marcuzzo), a young man from her native village.

But then sister Valeria conspires with the Robbiani ladies and demands Cristina to break with Vittorio, so he sails away. Alone again, she gets a job at signora Valdata (Evi Maltagliati), widow with a small boy (Silverio Pesu), whose 'cousin' around proves to be her lover. When the child falls ill, they charge Cristina to take care of it, without telling her it suffers from chicken pox, so she is contaminated as well.

It will be Emilio to help her, but too late. When a doctor orders Cristina to recover in hospital she is already dying and soon she blows her last breath. Malice, narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy and egoism have caused the death of the girl.

The novel on which the screenplay of Sissignora/Yes, Madam is based is called La servetta di Masone. It was serialised in the Genovese weekly periodical Il Lavoro between January and March 1940 in which Maria Steno, the author, wrote under the nom-de-plume of Vittoria Greco. Emilio Cecchi and Alberto Lattuada wrote the screenplay.

The film was shot in the Fall and Winter of 1941 at the Cinecittà studios and on location in Genoa for the exteriors. It was produced by Artisti Tecnici Associati (ATA), founded in 1937 by Carlo Ponti, and was distributed in Italy by Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane (ICI).The premiere was in 1942.

The film is unusual for the Italian cinema at the time, because the plot focuses on the maid. Actor Leonardo Cortese , cited by Wikipedia: "it was one of the first films that was shot on the streets." These realist locations were praised by many critics: a sense of truth emanates from those beautiful, external locations, like the markets between sea and rail, and the dance hall where maids and sailors meet in their free time. María Denis later said that for her Neorealism was born with  Sissignora/Yes, Madam (1942).

Sissignora
Italian postcard for Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942), with María Denis , Emma and Irma Grammatica and Leonardo Cortese .

Sissignora
Italian postcard for Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942), with María Denis , Evi Maltagliati and Silverio Pisu.

Maria Denis in Sissignora
Italian postcard. Photo: ICI / ATA. Maria Denis and little Silverio Pisu in Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942).

Sources: Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.
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Published on November 01, 2016 23:00

Sissignora (1942 )

María Denis plays the lead in the Italian melodrama Sissignora/Yes, Madam (1942) produced under the Fascist rule of Mussolini. The beautiful star was very successful during the 1930 and 1940s with these melodramas and her Telefoni Bianchi-films, the typical Italian society comedies.

Sissignora
Italian postcard for Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942), with María Denis .

Sissignora
Italian postcard for Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942), with María Denis and Anna Carena.

Maria Denis in Sissignora
Italian postcard for Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942), with María Denis and Emma or Irma Grammatica.

Malice, narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy and egoism
María Denis plays in Sissignora young Cristina Zunio. She is an orphan after the death of her only aunt.

Cristina needs work and asks sister Valeria (Rina Morelli) for help. She thus becomes a domestic with the two old ladies Robbiano (Emma and Irma Grammatica) who treat her with austerity and narrow-mindedness.

Then their nephew, the young sailor Vittorio ( Leonardo Cortese ), returns from a long cruise. The two young people fall in love, opposed by the two old spinsters who won't accept he ties himself to a 'maid'. So they fire her to get rid of her.

Cristina thus starts working for the Bracco-Rinaldi family, who pretend to be high society but are debt-ridden, and they send Cristina away without payment. Meanwhile Vittorio manages to find Cristina and the two decide to marry, so Cristina rejects a marriage offer by the shy Emilio (Elio Marcuzzo), a young man from her native village.

But then sister Valeria conspires with the Robbiani ladies and demands Cristina to break with Vittorio, so he sails away. Alone again, she gets a job at signora Valdata (Evi Maltagliati), widow with a small boy (Silverio Pesu), whose 'cousin' around proves to be her lover. When the child falls ill, they charge Cristina to take care of it, without telling her it suffers from chicken pox, so she is contaminated as well.

It will be Emilio to help her, but too late. When a doctor orders Cristina to recover in hospital she is already dying and soon she blows her last breath. Malice, narrow-mindedness, hypocrisy and egoism have caused the death of the girl.

The novel on which the screenplay of Sissignora/Yes, Madam is based is called La servetta di Masone. It was serialised in the Genovese weekly periodical Il Lavoro between January and March 1940 in which Maria Steno, the author, wrote under the nom-de-plume of Vittoria Greco. Emilio Cecchi and Alberto Lattuada wrote the screenplay.

The film was shot in the Fall and Winter of 1941 at the Cinecittà studios and on location in Genoa for the exteriors. It was produced by Artisti Tecnici Associati (ATA), founded in 1937 by Carlo Ponti, and was distributed in Italy by Industrie Cinematografiche Italiane (ICI).The premiere was in 1942.

The film is unusual for the Italian cinema at the time, because the plot focuses on the maid. Actor Leonardo Cortese , cited by Wikipedia: "it was one of the first films that was shot on the streets." These realist locations were praised by many critics: a sense of truth emanates from those beautiful, external locations, like the markets between sea and rail, and the dance hall where maids and sailors meet in their free time. María Denis later said that for her Neorealism was born with  Sissignora/Yes, Madam (1942).

Sissignora
Italian postcard for Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942), with María Denis , Emma and Irma Grammatica and Leonardo Cortese .

Sissignora
Italian postcard for Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942), with María Denis , Evi Maltagliati and Silverio Pisu.

Maria Denis in Sissignora
Italian postcard. Photo: ICI / ATA. Maria Denis and little Silverio Pisu in Sissignora (Ferdinando Maria Poggioli, 1942).

Sources: Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.
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Published on November 01, 2016 23:00

October 31, 2016

Jany Holt

Passionate Jany Holt (1909-2005) was a red-haired French actress of Romanian origin. From the 1930s on, she had an extensive career in the French cinema and theatre. She reached her zenith during the late 1930s and the war years playing nuns as well as prostitutes.

Jany Holt
French postcard, no. 540. Photo: R. Voinquel / Flora Films. Publicity still for Raspoutine/Rasputin (Marcel L'Herbier, 1938). Collection: Didier Hanson.

Jany Holt
French postcard by O.P., Paris, no. 16. Photo: Studio Harcourt.

Flaming Red Hair and a Skinny Figure
Jany Holt was born as Ruxandra Ecaterina Vladescu Olt in Bucharest, Romania in 1909 (some sources write 1911). In 1926 she was sent to Paris by her parents to do commercial studies. Instead she preferred to inscribe for a dramatic course with Charles Dullin and Gabrielle Fontan.

Working as a stand-in on stage, she replaced Jackie Monnier opposite Harry Baur in David Golder. In 1935, Ludmilla and Georges Pitoëff engaged her to play in La Créature by Ferdinand Bruckner, which set off her stage career but also led her to the cinema.

In 1931, she had already made her film debut with the film Un homme en habit/A man in dress (Robert Bossis, René Guissart, 1931) with Fernand Gravey , but it was from 1935 on that she had an extensive cinema career. Passionate Jany Holt knew how to conquer the hearts of the film audiences.

With her sharp profile, flaming red hair and skinny figure she could not become a soubrette, so she set for the more melancholic, neurotic characters. She was Ludwig von Beethoven's 'immortal beloved' Giulietta Giucciardi opposite  Harry Baur  in Un grand amour de Beethoven/Beethoven's Great Love (Abel Gance, 1936) and the unhappy lover of Pierre Richard-Willm in Courrier-Sud/Southern Carrier (Pierre Billon, 1936).

On the set of Un grand amour de Beethoven she met Marcel Dalio , who was impressed by her slightly sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. They married in 1936, though the Jewish Dalio refused to convert to Catholicism as Holt's parents had wanted him to do.

From 1936 on, she played quite extreme characters such as the hallucinating daughter of a rabbi with whom the Golem falls in love in Le Golem/The Golem (Julien Duvivier, 1936), the prostitute Nastia in Jean Renoir’s Les Bas-Fonds/The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir, 1936) starring Jean Gabin , and a bar hostess involved in an intrigue between Louis Jouvet and Erich von Stroheim in L’Alibi (Pierre Chenal, 1937).

One of the roles in which she best expressed her melancholy and ardour was in La Maison du Maltais/The House of the Maltese (Pierre Chenal, 1938), in which Holt plays the consumptive prostitute Greta, who dies in Morocco while dreaming of her beloved Normandy. After La Tragédie impériale/Rasputin (Marcel L’Herbier, 1938), in which Holt played a nun who accepts she has to kill, Holt’s best parts followed in the 1940s.

In the meanwhile she divorced Dalio, who fled to Hollywood in 1940. That same year Holt married man-about-town Jacques Porel, son of the legendary stage actress Gabrielle Réjane, who had fallen in love with her radiating personality and her red hair.

Jany Holt
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris. Photo: Teddy Piaz, Paris.

Jany Holt
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 29. Photo: Studio Piaz.

Mystical Setting
Jany Holt played Anne, the adopted daughter of a countess in Le Baron fantôme/The Phantom Baron (Serge de Poligny, 1942) with dialogues by Jean Cocteau. The countess’ daughter Elfy ( Odette Joyeux ) who is forced to do a mariage de raison, doesn’t know that the object of her passion, Hervé ( Alain Cuny ), is in love with the enigmatic Anne.

In Robert Bresson's remarkable directorial debut, Les Anges du péché/Angels of Sin (Robert Bresson, 1943), Holt plays Thérèse, a woman innocently imprisoned. When released she kills the man who committed the crime for which she was sentenced, then seeks refuge at the convent of a nun (Renée Faure) who previously befriended her.

Ronald Bergan wrote in his 2005 obituary on Holt for The Guardian : "Despite Bresson's later rejection of professional actors - 'Art is transformation. Acting can only get in the way' - Holt, who moves from resentful moroseness into a spiritual awareness of her crime, gives an affecting and natural performance. 'I found the film so good that I hardly realised that I was in it,' she once remarked."

Another mystical setting surrounded Holt In La Fiancée des ténèbres/The fiancée of the darkness (De Poligny, 1944), shot at the fortified city of Carcassonne and referring to the cult of the Cathars. Holt played the central character Sylvie, who believes she is cursed.

During the occupation of France by the Nazis, Holt was working for the résistance. In June 1945, she was decorated by general Charles de Gaulle with the Croix de Guerre for services rendered.

In the postwar era, she played some memorable roles as the unfaithful wife of Michel Simon in Non coupable/Not Guilty (Henri Decoin, 1947) and the avenger in Mademoiselle de La Ferté/Miss de La Ferté (Roger Dallier, 1949) with Jean Servais . After that, Holt focused on her stage work.

Remarkable - but clearly smaller - roles in later years were in Gervaise (René Clément, 1955) starring Maria Schell , Die linkshändige Frau/The Left-Handed Woman (Peter Handke, 1978) featuring Edith Clever, La Passerelle/The Catwalk (Jean Claude Sussfeld, 1987), and Métisse/Café au Lait (Mathieu Kassovitz, 1992) with Vincent Cassel.

She also played some supporting parts in Paris-set English-language productions, a French countess in The Green Glove (Rudolph Maté, 1952) with Glenn Ford; Philippe Noiret's mother in the British film A Time for Loving (Christopher Miles, 1971), and a hotel owner in Arthur Penn's thriller Target (Arthur Penn, 1985), starring Gene Hackman.

Her last film was the thriller Noir comme le souvenir/Black for Remembrance (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1994) starring Jane Birkin . Holt's stage career spanned from the 1930s to the 1960s, working with stage directors like Paulette Pax, Jean Cocteau and Robert Murzeau. She had also been active on television from the 1960s to the 1980s, and she translated the correspondence between Gustave Flaubert and Georges Sand in Romanian in 1991. In total she had appeared in 48 films and television productions between 1931 and 1995.

Jany Holt died in a hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine near Paris in 2005, reaching the high age of 96.

Jany Holt
French card by Massilia. Collection: Amit Benyovits.

Sources: Ronald Bergan (The Guardian), James Travers (Le Film Guide), Ciné-Ressources (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and .
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Published on October 31, 2016 23:00

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