Paul van Yperen's Blog, page 424
March 28, 2014
Marie Bell
French stage and film actress Marie Bell (1900-1985) played elegant roles in late silent and early sound films. She is best known for her work in film classics as Jacques Feyder's Le Grand Jeu (1934) and Julien Duvivier's Un Carnet de Bal (1937).
Vintage postcard, no. 7.
French Resistance
Marie Bell was born as Marie-Jeanne Bellon-Downey in Bègles in the Gironde in 1900. At 13 she made her stage debut as a dancer at the London Pavillion.
Back in France, she was trained at the Conservatoire de Bordeaux (Bordeaux Conservatory) and then at the Conservatoire de Paris (Paris Conservatory). There she won the First Prize in 1921.
She appeared in such silent films as Paris (René Hervil, 1924) with Dolly Davis , and Madame Récamier (Tony Lekain, Gaston Ravel, 1928) with Françoise Rosay . After appearing in films for four years Bell joined the distinguished Comedie-Française and would stay there till 1953.
She was mainly a stage actress, but she became a leading film actress in France when sound film arrived, playing in one film after another.
Her early sound films include La nuit est à nous/The Night is Ours (Henry Roussel, 1929) with Jean Murat , L'homme qui assassina/The Man Who Committed the Murder (Kurt Bernhardt, Jean Tarride, 1930) with Jean Angelo , and L'homme à l'hispano/The Man in the Hispano-Suiza (Jean Epstein, 1932).
Her best remembered roles are in the superior Foreign Legion melodrama Le grand jeu/The Full Deck (Jacques Feyder, 1934) opposite Pierre Richard-Willm and Un carnet de bal/Dance Program (Julien Duvivier, 1937) opposite Louis Jouvet and Fernandel .
During the German Occupation of France (1940-1944), she participated in the French resistance as one of nine directors of the Front National du Théatre.
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 733. Photo: Paramount.
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 680. Photo: Studio G.L. Manuel Frères.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 860. Marie Bell in the early sound film La nuit est à nous/The Night Belongs To Us (Roger Lion, Carl Froehlich, Henry Roussell, 1930). It was the French version of the German film Die Nacht gehört uns (1929) by Froehlich and Roussell. Both versions were shot in Berlin. The film, based on a play by Henri Kistemaeckers, tells about a female daredevil in car races, Bettine Barsac, who has a car accident but is saved by an unknown man. Soon after they meet again, but he proves to be a married man. Bell's co-stars were Henry Roussell, Jean Murat and Sylvie .
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 766. Photo: Schmoll. Publicity still for La nuit est à nous/The Night Belongs To Us (Roger Lion, Carl Froehlich, Henry Roussell, 1930).
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 988. Photo: Paramount.
Luchino Visconti
Since 1934, Marie Bell was the director of the Théâtre des Ambassadeurs and from 1958 till her death she was the director of the Theatre du Gymnase, which now bears her name.
Her interpretation of the role of Phèdre in the tragedy by Jean Racine was highly noted. Author André Malraux was cited in the magazine L'Avant-Scène n°34": "Seeing Marie Bell in Phèdre is a unique opportunity for anyone who wants to know what is the French genius."
She was best known as a classical actress, but she was not afraid to appear in pieces of avant-garde theatre, as in Le Balcon (1960) written by Jean Genet and directed by Peter Brook.
After years of absence, she returned to the cinema with a small part in Il Gattoparde/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) and as the mad mother of Sandra ( Claudia Cardinale ) in Luchino Visconti's film Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa/Sandra (1965).
In 1969 she was a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. She was awarded the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour) by President Charles de Gaulle for her valiant work in the French Resistance.
Her final film appearance was in a film by Jean-Claude Brialy , Les volets clos/Closed Shutters (1972).
Marie Bell died in 1985 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. She was married to film actor Jean Chevrier .
French postcard by Editions Chantal (EC), Paris, no. 80. Photo: Piaz.
French postcard by Editions Chantal, Paris, no. 591.
French postcard by PC Paris, no. 84.
French postcard. Photo: collection: Ciné Miroir.
French postcard by SERP, Paris, no. 61. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Davyd (Artistes1940) (French), Ciné-Ressources (French), Wikipedia and .
Vintage postcard, no. 7.
French Resistance
Marie Bell was born as Marie-Jeanne Bellon-Downey in Bègles in the Gironde in 1900. At 13 she made her stage debut as a dancer at the London Pavillion.
Back in France, she was trained at the Conservatoire de Bordeaux (Bordeaux Conservatory) and then at the Conservatoire de Paris (Paris Conservatory). There she won the First Prize in 1921.
She appeared in such silent films as Paris (René Hervil, 1924) with Dolly Davis , and Madame Récamier (Tony Lekain, Gaston Ravel, 1928) with Françoise Rosay . After appearing in films for four years Bell joined the distinguished Comedie-Française and would stay there till 1953.
She was mainly a stage actress, but she became a leading film actress in France when sound film arrived, playing in one film after another.
Her early sound films include La nuit est à nous/The Night is Ours (Henry Roussel, 1929) with Jean Murat , L'homme qui assassina/The Man Who Committed the Murder (Kurt Bernhardt, Jean Tarride, 1930) with Jean Angelo , and L'homme à l'hispano/The Man in the Hispano-Suiza (Jean Epstein, 1932).
Her best remembered roles are in the superior Foreign Legion melodrama Le grand jeu/The Full Deck (Jacques Feyder, 1934) opposite Pierre Richard-Willm and Un carnet de bal/Dance Program (Julien Duvivier, 1937) opposite Louis Jouvet and Fernandel .
During the German Occupation of France (1940-1944), she participated in the French resistance as one of nine directors of the Front National du Théatre.
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 733. Photo: Paramount.
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 680. Photo: Studio G.L. Manuel Frères.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 860. Marie Bell in the early sound film La nuit est à nous/The Night Belongs To Us (Roger Lion, Carl Froehlich, Henry Roussell, 1930). It was the French version of the German film Die Nacht gehört uns (1929) by Froehlich and Roussell. Both versions were shot in Berlin. The film, based on a play by Henri Kistemaeckers, tells about a female daredevil in car races, Bettine Barsac, who has a car accident but is saved by an unknown man. Soon after they meet again, but he proves to be a married man. Bell's co-stars were Henry Roussell, Jean Murat and Sylvie .
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 766. Photo: Schmoll. Publicity still for La nuit est à nous/The Night Belongs To Us (Roger Lion, Carl Froehlich, Henry Roussell, 1930).
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 988. Photo: Paramount.
Luchino Visconti
Since 1934, Marie Bell was the director of the Théâtre des Ambassadeurs and from 1958 till her death she was the director of the Theatre du Gymnase, which now bears her name.
Her interpretation of the role of Phèdre in the tragedy by Jean Racine was highly noted. Author André Malraux was cited in the magazine L'Avant-Scène n°34": "Seeing Marie Bell in Phèdre is a unique opportunity for anyone who wants to know what is the French genius."
She was best known as a classical actress, but she was not afraid to appear in pieces of avant-garde theatre, as in Le Balcon (1960) written by Jean Genet and directed by Peter Brook.
After years of absence, she returned to the cinema with a small part in Il Gattoparde/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) and as the mad mother of Sandra ( Claudia Cardinale ) in Luchino Visconti's film Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa/Sandra (1965).
In 1969 she was a member of the jury at the Cannes Film Festival. She was awarded the Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour) by President Charles de Gaulle for her valiant work in the French Resistance.
Her final film appearance was in a film by Jean-Claude Brialy , Les volets clos/Closed Shutters (1972).
Marie Bell died in 1985 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. She was married to film actor Jean Chevrier .
French postcard by Editions Chantal (EC), Paris, no. 80. Photo: Piaz.
French postcard by Editions Chantal, Paris, no. 591.
French postcard by PC Paris, no. 84.
French postcard. Photo: collection: Ciné Miroir.
French postcard by SERP, Paris, no. 61. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Davyd (Artistes1940) (French), Ciné-Ressources (French), Wikipedia and .
March 27, 2014
David Niven
British Academy Award-winning actor David Niven (1910-1983) impersonated the archetypal English gentleman, witty, naturally charming, immaculate in dress and behaviour, but he also had a dash of light-hearted sexual roguishness. He is probably best known for his role as the punctuality-obsessed adventurer Phileas Fogg in Around the World in 80 Days (1956).
Spanish collector's card by Cifesa / I.G. Viladot, Barcelona.
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 211. Photo: R.K.O. Radio. Publicity still for Bachelor Mother (Garson Kanin, 1939) with Ginger Rogers.
Whisky Sales and Horse Rodeo Promotion
James David Graham Niven was born in London, England. He was the son of British Army captain William Edward Graham Niven and the French/British Henrietta Julia de Gacher. He was named David for his birth on St. David's Day.
His father was killed during the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915 and his mother remarried a politician, Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt. David was shipped off to a succession of boarding schools by his stepfather, who didn't care much for the boy. Young Niven hated the experience and was a poor student.
He trained at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, which gave him the officer and gentleman bearing that was to be his trademark. Niven relocated to New York, where he began an unsuccessful career in whisky sales and horse rodeo promotion in Atlantic City.
After subsequent detours to Bermuda and Cuba, he finally arrived in Hollywood. His first work was as an extra. He then found himself an agent, Bill Hawks, and was signed up for a non-speaking part in Mutiny On The Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935).
He accepted a contract with independent film producer Samuel Goldwyn. After several secondary roles for Goldwyn, he was loaned out for a lead role as Bertie Wooster in the 20th Century Fox feature Thank You, Jeeves (Arthur Greville Collins, 1936).
Niven joined what became known as the Hollywood Raj, a group of British actors in Hollywood. Other members of the group included Boris Karloff, Stan Laurel, Basil Rathbone, Ronald Colman and C. Aubrey Smith .
One of his first major roles was in The Charge of the Light Brigade (Michael Curtiz, 1936) starring Errol Flynn, with whom he briefly lived. A year later he starred as Capt. Fritz von Tarlenheim in The Prisoner of Zenda (John Cromwell, William S. Van Dyke, 1937).
Not wanting to be typecast as a 'swashbuckler' as Flynn had been, Niven made films such as the comedies Dinner at the Ritz (Harold Schuster, 1937) which was filmed in London, and Bachelor Mother (Garson Kanin, 1939) with Ginger Rogers.
Niven’s first major success was The Dawn Patrol (Edmund Goulding, 1938) with Errol Flynn. He also appeared in the very successful Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939) starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier .
After suspension by Samuel Goldwyn over a salary dispute, David was back to star in the Western The Real Glory (Henry Hathaway, 1939) with Gary Cooper, and as a gentleman thief in Raffles (Sam Wood, William Wyler, 1940), a remake of the Ronald Colman original.
Dutch postcard by ´t Sticht, Utrecht, no. 3085. Photo R.K.O. Radio Films.
Dutch postcard by HEMO. Photo: Eagle Lion.
British card in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1376. Photo: Samuel Goldwyn.
A Matter of Life and Death
After the United Kingdom declared war in 1939, David Niven returned to England and joined the British Army. Niven would take part in the Normandy landings, arriving several days after D-Day. He was given leave to appear in the propaganda films The First of the Few ( Leslie Howard , 1942) and The Way Ahead (Carol Reed, 1944).
On his discharge as a colonel he played the poet-airman caught between life and death in A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1946), one of his most effective roles.
On his return to Hollywood after the war, he was made a Legionnaire of the Legion of Merit, the highest American order that can be earned by a foreigner.
Niven found that he still wasn't getting any important roles; despite ten years experience, he was considered too 'lightweight' to be a major name. His films included The Perfect Marriage (Lewis Allen, 1946) with Loretta Young, Magnificent Doll (Frank Borzage, 1946) opposite Ginger Rogers, and The Bishop's Wife (Henry Koster, 1947) with Cary Grant.
After his Goldwyn contract ended in 1949, Niven marked time with inconsequential films including the British production The Elusive Pimpernel (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1950).
In 1952 he joined Dick Powell, Charles Boyer , and Ida Lupino to form Four Star, a television production company. Niven was finally able to choose strong dramatic roles for himself, becoming one of TV's first and most prolific stars, although his public still preferred him as a light comedian.
The actor's film career also took an upswing in the 1950s with starring performances in the controversial The Moon Is Blue (Otto Preminger, 1953) - a harmless concoction which was denied a Production Code seal because the word 'virgin' was bandied about; and the mammoth Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson, 1956), in which Niven played his most famous role, erudite 19th century globetrotter Phileas Fogg.
He won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as the fraudulent major in Separate Tables (Delbert Mann, 1958), in which he co-starred with Deborah Kerr and Rita Hayworth.
During the 1960s he appeared as a compassionate explosives expert in the blockbuster The Guns of Navarone (J. Lee Thompson, 1961), and the sophisticated thief Sir Charles Litton opposite Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1963).
Ian Fleming recommended him for the role of James Bond for Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962), but producer Albert R. Broccoli thought that Niven was too old.
In 1967, Niven finally starred as Sir James Bond in the satire Casino Royale (John Huston a.o., 1967). He also starred in the French comedy Le Cerveau/The Brain (Gerard Oury, 1969).
British postcard in the People series by Show Parade Picture Service, London, no. P 1057. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation Ltd. Publicity still for Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939).
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin, no. FK 4248. Retail price: 0,25 Pfg. Photo: Columbia Film. Publicity still for Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958).
Postcard. Photo: Alberto Sordi and David Niven in The Best of Enemies (Guy Hamilton, 1961). Collection: Pierre sur le Ciel.
Lou Gehrig's Disease
David Niven was married twice. First to Primula Susan Rollo, the aristocratic daughter of a British lawyer. In 1946, she died at age 28 of injuries from an accidental fall in the home of Tyrone Power . While playing hide and seek, she walked through a door believing it led to a closet. Instead, it led to a stone staircase to the basement. Niven later claimed to have been so grief stricken that he thought for a while that he'd gone mad.
In 1948, Niven met Hjördis Paulina Tersmeden, a divorced Swedish fashion model and frustrated actress. They married six weeks later. The actor's rebound second marriage was as unhappy as his previous marriage had been happy. He was the father, with Primula Rollo, of David Niven Jr. and Jamie Niven; and the father, with Hjordis, of two adopted daughters, Kristina (adopted 1960) and Fiona (adopted 1962).
Late in life, he gained critical acclaim for his memoirs of his boyhood and acting career, The Moon's a Balloon (1971) and Bring On the Empty Horses (1975).
The 1970s saw Niven appear in two very different star-studded ensemble murder mysteries; the blackly comical Murder by Death (Robert Moore, 1976) and the Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978).
In 1980, Niven began experiencing fatigue, muscle weakness, and a warble in his voice. A 1981 TV talkshow interview alarmed family and friends; viewers wondered if Niven had either been drinking or suffered a stroke. He received the diagnosis of motor neurone disease (Lou Gehrig's Disease) later that year.
His hosting duties of the American Film Institute tribute to Fred Astaire marked his final appearance in Hollywood. He shot two cameos as Sir Charles Litton for his final films, Trail of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1982) and Curse of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1983) - his voice by this time was so weak, he was dubbed by Rich Little.
David Niven died at home in Château-d'Oex, Switzerland in 1983 at age 73.
Scene from A Matter of Life and Death (1946). Source: Mutikonka (YouTube).
Trailer Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Source: Old School Trailers (YouTube).
Original trailer of The Pink Panther (1963). Source: gocha 07 (YouTube).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia, Britmovie, and .
Spanish collector's card by Cifesa / I.G. Viladot, Barcelona.
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. PC 211. Photo: R.K.O. Radio. Publicity still for Bachelor Mother (Garson Kanin, 1939) with Ginger Rogers.
Whisky Sales and Horse Rodeo Promotion
James David Graham Niven was born in London, England. He was the son of British Army captain William Edward Graham Niven and the French/British Henrietta Julia de Gacher. He was named David for his birth on St. David's Day.
His father was killed during the Gallipoli Campaign in 1915 and his mother remarried a politician, Sir Thomas Comyn-Platt. David was shipped off to a succession of boarding schools by his stepfather, who didn't care much for the boy. Young Niven hated the experience and was a poor student.
He trained at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, which gave him the officer and gentleman bearing that was to be his trademark. Niven relocated to New York, where he began an unsuccessful career in whisky sales and horse rodeo promotion in Atlantic City.
After subsequent detours to Bermuda and Cuba, he finally arrived in Hollywood. His first work was as an extra. He then found himself an agent, Bill Hawks, and was signed up for a non-speaking part in Mutiny On The Bounty (Frank Lloyd, 1935).
He accepted a contract with independent film producer Samuel Goldwyn. After several secondary roles for Goldwyn, he was loaned out for a lead role as Bertie Wooster in the 20th Century Fox feature Thank You, Jeeves (Arthur Greville Collins, 1936).
Niven joined what became known as the Hollywood Raj, a group of British actors in Hollywood. Other members of the group included Boris Karloff, Stan Laurel, Basil Rathbone, Ronald Colman and C. Aubrey Smith .
One of his first major roles was in The Charge of the Light Brigade (Michael Curtiz, 1936) starring Errol Flynn, with whom he briefly lived. A year later he starred as Capt. Fritz von Tarlenheim in The Prisoner of Zenda (John Cromwell, William S. Van Dyke, 1937).
Not wanting to be typecast as a 'swashbuckler' as Flynn had been, Niven made films such as the comedies Dinner at the Ritz (Harold Schuster, 1937) which was filmed in London, and Bachelor Mother (Garson Kanin, 1939) with Ginger Rogers.
Niven’s first major success was The Dawn Patrol (Edmund Goulding, 1938) with Errol Flynn. He also appeared in the very successful Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939) starring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier .
After suspension by Samuel Goldwyn over a salary dispute, David was back to star in the Western The Real Glory (Henry Hathaway, 1939) with Gary Cooper, and as a gentleman thief in Raffles (Sam Wood, William Wyler, 1940), a remake of the Ronald Colman original.
Dutch postcard by ´t Sticht, Utrecht, no. 3085. Photo R.K.O. Radio Films.
Dutch postcard by HEMO. Photo: Eagle Lion.
British card in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1376. Photo: Samuel Goldwyn.
A Matter of Life and Death
After the United Kingdom declared war in 1939, David Niven returned to England and joined the British Army. Niven would take part in the Normandy landings, arriving several days after D-Day. He was given leave to appear in the propaganda films The First of the Few ( Leslie Howard , 1942) and The Way Ahead (Carol Reed, 1944).
On his discharge as a colonel he played the poet-airman caught between life and death in A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1946), one of his most effective roles.
On his return to Hollywood after the war, he was made a Legionnaire of the Legion of Merit, the highest American order that can be earned by a foreigner.
Niven found that he still wasn't getting any important roles; despite ten years experience, he was considered too 'lightweight' to be a major name. His films included The Perfect Marriage (Lewis Allen, 1946) with Loretta Young, Magnificent Doll (Frank Borzage, 1946) opposite Ginger Rogers, and The Bishop's Wife (Henry Koster, 1947) with Cary Grant.
After his Goldwyn contract ended in 1949, Niven marked time with inconsequential films including the British production The Elusive Pimpernel (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1950).
In 1952 he joined Dick Powell, Charles Boyer , and Ida Lupino to form Four Star, a television production company. Niven was finally able to choose strong dramatic roles for himself, becoming one of TV's first and most prolific stars, although his public still preferred him as a light comedian.
The actor's film career also took an upswing in the 1950s with starring performances in the controversial The Moon Is Blue (Otto Preminger, 1953) - a harmless concoction which was denied a Production Code seal because the word 'virgin' was bandied about; and the mammoth Around the World in 80 Days (Michael Anderson, 1956), in which Niven played his most famous role, erudite 19th century globetrotter Phileas Fogg.
He won a Best Actor Oscar for his performance as the fraudulent major in Separate Tables (Delbert Mann, 1958), in which he co-starred with Deborah Kerr and Rita Hayworth.
During the 1960s he appeared as a compassionate explosives expert in the blockbuster The Guns of Navarone (J. Lee Thompson, 1961), and the sophisticated thief Sir Charles Litton opposite Peter Sellers in The Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1963).
Ian Fleming recommended him for the role of James Bond for Dr. No (Terence Young, 1962), but producer Albert R. Broccoli thought that Niven was too old.
In 1967, Niven finally starred as Sir James Bond in the satire Casino Royale (John Huston a.o., 1967). He also starred in the French comedy Le Cerveau/The Brain (Gerard Oury, 1969).
British postcard in the People series by Show Parade Picture Service, London, no. P 1057. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Organisation Ltd. Publicity still for Wuthering Heights (William Wyler, 1939).
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin, no. FK 4248. Retail price: 0,25 Pfg. Photo: Columbia Film. Publicity still for Bonjour Tristesse (Otto Preminger, 1958).
Postcard. Photo: Alberto Sordi and David Niven in The Best of Enemies (Guy Hamilton, 1961). Collection: Pierre sur le Ciel.
Lou Gehrig's Disease
David Niven was married twice. First to Primula Susan Rollo, the aristocratic daughter of a British lawyer. In 1946, she died at age 28 of injuries from an accidental fall in the home of Tyrone Power . While playing hide and seek, she walked through a door believing it led to a closet. Instead, it led to a stone staircase to the basement. Niven later claimed to have been so grief stricken that he thought for a while that he'd gone mad.
In 1948, Niven met Hjördis Paulina Tersmeden, a divorced Swedish fashion model and frustrated actress. They married six weeks later. The actor's rebound second marriage was as unhappy as his previous marriage had been happy. He was the father, with Primula Rollo, of David Niven Jr. and Jamie Niven; and the father, with Hjordis, of two adopted daughters, Kristina (adopted 1960) and Fiona (adopted 1962).
Late in life, he gained critical acclaim for his memoirs of his boyhood and acting career, The Moon's a Balloon (1971) and Bring On the Empty Horses (1975).
The 1970s saw Niven appear in two very different star-studded ensemble murder mysteries; the blackly comical Murder by Death (Robert Moore, 1976) and the Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile (John Guillermin, 1978).
In 1980, Niven began experiencing fatigue, muscle weakness, and a warble in his voice. A 1981 TV talkshow interview alarmed family and friends; viewers wondered if Niven had either been drinking or suffered a stroke. He received the diagnosis of motor neurone disease (Lou Gehrig's Disease) later that year.
His hosting duties of the American Film Institute tribute to Fred Astaire marked his final appearance in Hollywood. He shot two cameos as Sir Charles Litton for his final films, Trail of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1982) and Curse of the Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1983) - his voice by this time was so weak, he was dubbed by Rich Little.
David Niven died at home in Château-d'Oex, Switzerland in 1983 at age 73.
Scene from A Matter of Life and Death (1946). Source: Mutikonka (YouTube).
Trailer Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Source: Old School Trailers (YouTube).
Original trailer of The Pink Panther (1963). Source: gocha 07 (YouTube).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia, Britmovie, and .
March 26, 2014
Margot Hielscher
Gorgeous German singer, film actress and costume designer Margot Hielscher (1919) appeared in 200 TV productions, 60 films and 2 Eurovision Song Contests (1957 and 1958). She is now the oldest living person who ever participated at the Contest.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 230. 1941-1944. Photo: Hammerer / Wien-Film.
Women are No Angels
Margot Hielscher was born in Berlin in 1919. Her father owned a travel agency.
From 1935 till 1939 she trained as a costume and fashion designer. Thus she met in Berlin the contemporary stars of the cinema and the music world. This stimulated her to study singing and acting, and she took classes with Albert Florath and Mary Koppenhöfer.
Since 1939, she worked as a costume designer for the Ufa. One of the first films on which she worked was the comedy Hurra, ich bin Papa!/Hurrah! I'm a Papa (Kurt Hoffmann, 1939) starring Heinz Rühmann . Reportedly, Rühmann later asked her to marry him, which she refused.
Soon she also was discovered as an actress. In 1940 she made her first film appearance in Das Herz der Königin/The Heart of the Queen (Carl Froelich, 1940) alongside the famous Zarah Leander .
For the Terra studio she appeared in the romance Auf Wiedersehn, Franziska!/Goodbye, Franziska! (Helmut Käutner, 1941) starring Marianne Hoppe .
From 1942 on she worked for the Bavaria Studio in Munich. She played roles in several romantic comedies in which she also performed as a singer and she soon became one of the most popular actresses of the German cinema during the Second World War.
In 1943 she sang the song Frauen sind keine Engel (Women are No Angels) in the film with the same title by Willi Forst . It would become her best known song. During the war, Hielscher undertook several tours for the troops as a singer with the Big Band of Gene Hammers.
According to IMDb , Josef Goebbels thought her singing was too ‘American’. He insisted that she shouldn't play opposite Ferdinand Marian in the film Dreimal Komödie/3 x Comedy (Victor Tourjansky, 1944-1949) because she wasn't ‘German’ enough. At that time, all the film castings had to be agreed on by Goebbels. However, after another screen-test with some more ‘German’ make-up, Goebbels finally agreed on her casting.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3656/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Hämmerer / Wien Film.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3854/1. 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.
Margot´s Revue
After the war, Margot Hielscher had her career high, when she appeared in front of enthusiastic GI’s with her show Margot´s Revue.
She contributed as a co-screenwriter to the film Hallo Fräulein/Hello Fraulein (Rudolf Jugert, 1949), which was partially based on her experiences of the immediate post-war period. While shooting this film, she also met her future husband, film composer Friedrich Meyer. 10 years later followed their wedding.
IMDb states that she decided to obtain a pilot's licence in Switzerland in 1952 because her friend Herbert von Karajan cynically told her that it was a good thing that there still were certain things that were only for men. Hielscher proved him wrong and passed her test.
In the 1950s she focussed on her singing career and many of her film appearances were only vocal numbers, such as in the noir Nachts auf den Straßen/Detour (1952) starring Hans Albers and Hildegard Kneff .
She incidentally appeared in international films such as The Devil Makes Three (Andrew Marton, 1952) starring Gene Kelly, and Nel gorgo del peccato (Vittorio Cottafavi, 1954) with Franco Fabrizi .
Her voice was a mix of jazz vocals and operetta soprano. In 1957, Hielscher was chosen to represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Telefon, Telefon (Telephone, Telephone). The song finished 4th out of 10 songs, and gained a total of 8 points.
Hielscher was chosen again to represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest 1958 with the song Für Zwei Groschen Musik (Music For Two Pennies). The song finished 7th out of 10 songs, and gained a total of 5 points.
East-German postcard by Progress, 1955. Photo: Progress.
German postcard. Photo: Sessner, Dachau.
Period Sex Comedy
Margot Hielscher went on to appear in countless TV shows and series till the late 1980s. Among her series were Salto mortale (1969) with Gustav Knuth, and the comedy series Suchen Sie Dr. Suk!/Are you looking for Dr. Suck! (1972) with Ferdy Maine.
For the Bayerischen Fernsehen (Bavaria TV), she was the host of the 1960s TV show Zu Gast bei Margot Hielscher (Hosted by Margot Hielscher), in which she received some 700 guests including Maurice Chevalier and Romy Schneider .
She incidentally played in films, including the period sex comedy Frau Wirtins tolle Töchterlein/The Countess Died of Laughter (Franz Antel, 1973) and the Thomas Mann adaptation Der Zauberberg/The Magic Mountain (Hans W. Geissendörfer, 1982) with Rod Steiger.
In 1991 and 1992 she performed in the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies alongside Eartha Kitt in the Theater des Westens (Theater of the West) in Berlin.
After roles in the TV series Rivalen der Rennbahn/Rivals at the Race Track (1989) and Der Nelkenkönig/The Carnation King (Franz Josef Gottlieb, 1994) she finally pulled back from the film business, but kept appearing regularly in the theatre.
Thus she performed in the Philharmonie München (Munich Philharmonic) in 2006, in the Philharmonie Berlin (Berlin Philharmonic) in 2007 and in the Komödie im Bayerischen Hof München (Comedy in the Bavarian Court Munich) in 2008, with Christian Ude.
In 1978 she received the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Germany’s Order of Merit) and in 1985 she was awarded with the Filmband in Gold for long and outstanding achievements in German film.
Since 1942 Margot Hielscher lives in the Munich district of Bogenhausen (Duke Park).
Scene from Hallo Fräulein/Hello Fraulein (Rudolf Jugert, 1949). Source: Alparfan (YouTube).
Margot Hielscher sang for Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest 1958, held in Hilversum, The Netherlands. Her song was Für Zwei Groschen Musik. Source: huelezelf (YouTube).
Sources: Alexander Darda (Margot-Hielscher.de), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Stephanie D’heil (Steffi-Line), Wikipedia and .
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 230. 1941-1944. Photo: Hammerer / Wien-Film.
Women are No Angels
Margot Hielscher was born in Berlin in 1919. Her father owned a travel agency.
From 1935 till 1939 she trained as a costume and fashion designer. Thus she met in Berlin the contemporary stars of the cinema and the music world. This stimulated her to study singing and acting, and she took classes with Albert Florath and Mary Koppenhöfer.
Since 1939, she worked as a costume designer for the Ufa. One of the first films on which she worked was the comedy Hurra, ich bin Papa!/Hurrah! I'm a Papa (Kurt Hoffmann, 1939) starring Heinz Rühmann . Reportedly, Rühmann later asked her to marry him, which she refused.
Soon she also was discovered as an actress. In 1940 she made her first film appearance in Das Herz der Königin/The Heart of the Queen (Carl Froelich, 1940) alongside the famous Zarah Leander .
For the Terra studio she appeared in the romance Auf Wiedersehn, Franziska!/Goodbye, Franziska! (Helmut Käutner, 1941) starring Marianne Hoppe .
From 1942 on she worked for the Bavaria Studio in Munich. She played roles in several romantic comedies in which she also performed as a singer and she soon became one of the most popular actresses of the German cinema during the Second World War.
In 1943 she sang the song Frauen sind keine Engel (Women are No Angels) in the film with the same title by Willi Forst . It would become her best known song. During the war, Hielscher undertook several tours for the troops as a singer with the Big Band of Gene Hammers.
According to IMDb , Josef Goebbels thought her singing was too ‘American’. He insisted that she shouldn't play opposite Ferdinand Marian in the film Dreimal Komödie/3 x Comedy (Victor Tourjansky, 1944-1949) because she wasn't ‘German’ enough. At that time, all the film castings had to be agreed on by Goebbels. However, after another screen-test with some more ‘German’ make-up, Goebbels finally agreed on her casting.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3656/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Hämmerer / Wien Film.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3854/1. 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.
Margot´s Revue
After the war, Margot Hielscher had her career high, when she appeared in front of enthusiastic GI’s with her show Margot´s Revue.
She contributed as a co-screenwriter to the film Hallo Fräulein/Hello Fraulein (Rudolf Jugert, 1949), which was partially based on her experiences of the immediate post-war period. While shooting this film, she also met her future husband, film composer Friedrich Meyer. 10 years later followed their wedding.
IMDb states that she decided to obtain a pilot's licence in Switzerland in 1952 because her friend Herbert von Karajan cynically told her that it was a good thing that there still were certain things that were only for men. Hielscher proved him wrong and passed her test.
In the 1950s she focussed on her singing career and many of her film appearances were only vocal numbers, such as in the noir Nachts auf den Straßen/Detour (1952) starring Hans Albers and Hildegard Kneff .
She incidentally appeared in international films such as The Devil Makes Three (Andrew Marton, 1952) starring Gene Kelly, and Nel gorgo del peccato (Vittorio Cottafavi, 1954) with Franco Fabrizi .
Her voice was a mix of jazz vocals and operetta soprano. In 1957, Hielscher was chosen to represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest with the song Telefon, Telefon (Telephone, Telephone). The song finished 4th out of 10 songs, and gained a total of 8 points.
Hielscher was chosen again to represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest 1958 with the song Für Zwei Groschen Musik (Music For Two Pennies). The song finished 7th out of 10 songs, and gained a total of 5 points.
East-German postcard by Progress, 1955. Photo: Progress.
German postcard. Photo: Sessner, Dachau.
Period Sex Comedy
Margot Hielscher went on to appear in countless TV shows and series till the late 1980s. Among her series were Salto mortale (1969) with Gustav Knuth, and the comedy series Suchen Sie Dr. Suk!/Are you looking for Dr. Suck! (1972) with Ferdy Maine.
For the Bayerischen Fernsehen (Bavaria TV), she was the host of the 1960s TV show Zu Gast bei Margot Hielscher (Hosted by Margot Hielscher), in which she received some 700 guests including Maurice Chevalier and Romy Schneider .
She incidentally played in films, including the period sex comedy Frau Wirtins tolle Töchterlein/The Countess Died of Laughter (Franz Antel, 1973) and the Thomas Mann adaptation Der Zauberberg/The Magic Mountain (Hans W. Geissendörfer, 1982) with Rod Steiger.
In 1991 and 1992 she performed in the Stephen Sondheim musical Follies alongside Eartha Kitt in the Theater des Westens (Theater of the West) in Berlin.
After roles in the TV series Rivalen der Rennbahn/Rivals at the Race Track (1989) and Der Nelkenkönig/The Carnation King (Franz Josef Gottlieb, 1994) she finally pulled back from the film business, but kept appearing regularly in the theatre.
Thus she performed in the Philharmonie München (Munich Philharmonic) in 2006, in the Philharmonie Berlin (Berlin Philharmonic) in 2007 and in the Komödie im Bayerischen Hof München (Comedy in the Bavarian Court Munich) in 2008, with Christian Ude.
In 1978 she received the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Germany’s Order of Merit) and in 1985 she was awarded with the Filmband in Gold for long and outstanding achievements in German film.
Since 1942 Margot Hielscher lives in the Munich district of Bogenhausen (Duke Park).
Scene from Hallo Fräulein/Hello Fraulein (Rudolf Jugert, 1949). Source: Alparfan (YouTube).
Margot Hielscher sang for Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest 1958, held in Hilversum, The Netherlands. Her song was Für Zwei Groschen Musik. Source: huelezelf (YouTube).
Sources: Alexander Darda (Margot-Hielscher.de), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Stephanie D’heil (Steffi-Line), Wikipedia and .
March 25, 2014
Victor Sjöström
Victor Sjöström (1879-1960) was one of the most important Swedish film actors and directors, famous for his poetic and touching narratives, such as Ingeborg Holm (1913), Terje Vigen/A Man There Was (1916) - by then the most expensive Swedish film made - and Körkarlen/The Phantom Carriage (1920), considered as one of the best Swedish silent films. From 1923 he worked in Hollywood under the name of Victor Seastrom, directing such films as He Who Gets Slapped (1924), featuring Lon Chaney, and The Wind (1928), starring Lilian Gish. He returned to Sweden at the advent of sound cinema, and continued working there. Memorable is his last acting part in Smultronstället/Wild Strawberries (1957) by Ingmar Bergman
Swedish postcard. Victor Sjöström in Ingmarssönerna/Sons of Ingmar (Victor Sjöström, 1919), based on Selma Lagerlöf's novel. Young Ingmar at Heaven's Gate. The caption translates: "I would like to meet Old Ingmar to ask for his advice in an awkward matter."
A Breach of Respectability
Victor David Sjöström was born in Silbodal, in the Värmland region of Sweden, in 1879. He was only a year old when his father, business man Olof Adolf Sjöström, moved the family to Brooklyn, New York in 1880.
As a boy, Sjöström was close to his mother, actress Sofia Elisabeth Hartman, who died in New Tork during childbirth in 1886. Victor was seven years old then. Sjöström returned to Sweden where he lived with relatives in Stockholm. His uncle was a leading actor at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm during the latter part of the 19th century: Victor Hartman.
The teen-aged Sjöström loved the theatre, but after his education, he turned to business, becoming a donuts salesman. Fortunately for the future of Swedish cinema, he was a flop as a salesman, and turned to the theatre, becoming an actor and then director.
The Swedish film production company Svenska Bio hired him and fellow stage director Mauritz Stiller to helm motion pictures. His debut was the silent film Ett hemligt giftermål/A Ruined Life (Victor Sjöström, 1912) with Hilda Borgström and John Ekman.
That year, he also made the silent drama Trädgårdsmästaren/The Gardener (Victor Sjöström, 1912), the first film to ever be banned by the Swedish censor system. Sjöström himself played a brutal gardener who rapes a young, innocent woman ( Lili Beck ) in his employ in a lovely greenhouse. In the final scene, the girl is found dead the next morning on the floor of the greenhouse, with red roses around her. The official comments of the censors were: "A breach of respectability. The association of death and beauty poses a threat to public order." The film was long thought to have been lost, but in 1979 a copy was found in an archive in the United States.
Between 1912 and 1915, Victor Sjöström directed 31 films of which only three still survive. In 1913, he directed Ingeborg Holm (1913), which is considered the first classic of Swedish cinema. His films of the 1910's are marked by subtle character portrayal, fine storytelling and evocative settings in which the Swedish landscape often plays a key psychological role. The naturalistic quality of his films was enhanced by his (then revolutionary) preference for on-location filming, especially in rural and village settings.
Sjöström's other surviving films include Ingmarssönerna/Sons of Ingmar (Victor Sjöström, 1919), the sequel Karin Ingmarsdotter/Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (Victor Sjöström, 1920) and Körkarlen/The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, 1921), all based on stories by the Nobel-prize winning novelist Selma Lagerlöf.
Released on New Year's Day 1921, Körkarlen/The Phantom Carriage starred Victor Sjöström himself, alongside Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg and Astrid Holm. The film is notable for its special effects, its advanced (for the time) narrative structure with flashbacks within flashbacks, and for having been a major influence on Ingmar Bergman.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 146.
Greta Garbo . Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 5930. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Name the Man
In the 1920s, Victor Sjöström accepted an offer from the Goldwyn Studio to work in the United States. In Sweden, he had acted in his own films as well as in those for others but in Hollywood, he devoted himself solely to directing. Using an anglicised name, Victor Seastrom, he made Name the Man (1924), a dramatic film based on the Hall Caine novel.
His first M.G.M. production was the melodrama He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Seastrom, 1924) starring Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer. It was not only a critical success but a huge hit, getting the new studio off onto a sound footing. According to Jon C. Hopwood at IMDb : "He was highly respected by studio boss Louis B. Mayer and by production head Irving Thalberg, who shared Sjöström's concerns with art that did not exclude profit."
Sjöström went on to direct great stars of the day such as Lillian Gish in The Scarlet Letter (Victor Seastrom, 1926) and The Wind (Victor Seastrom, 1928), Greta Garbo in The Divine Woman (Victor Seastrom, 1928), and John Gilbert in The Masks of the Devil (Victor Seastrom, 1928) .
He finished his Hollywood career after his first talkie, A Lady to Love (Victor Seastrom, 1930), starring Vilma Bánky and Edward G. Robinson.
Uncomfortable with the modifications needed to direct talking films, Victor Sjöström returned to Sweden where he directed two more films, a Swedish and a German version of the drama Markurells i Wadköping/Väter und Söhne/Father and Son (Victor Sjöström, 1931).
His final directing effort was an English language drama filmed in the United Kingdom, the swashbuckler Under the Red Robe (Victor Seastrom, 1937), starring Conrad Veidt and Annabella .
Over the following fifteen years, Sjöström returned to acting in the theatre, performed a variety of leading roles in more than a dozen films and worked as director of the Svensk Film Industri company.
At age 78 he gave his final acting performance, probably his best remembered, as the elderly professor in Ingmar Bergman's film Smultronstället/Wild Strawberries (1957), for which he won the National Board of Review's Best Actor Award.
In 1960, Victor Sjöström died in Stockholm at the age of eighty and was interred there in the Norra begravningsplatsen.
He married three times, to Alexandra Stjagoff (1900–1912), actress Lili Beck (1913–1916) and actress Edith Erastoff (1922–1945). He and Erastoff had two daughters: actress Guje Lagerwall (1918) and Caje Bjerke (1918).
Trädgårdsmästaren/The Gardener (Victor Sjöström, 1912). Source: forgottenmovie (YouTube).
Körkarlen/The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, 1921). Source: William Thomas Sherman (YouTube).
Sources: (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
Swedish postcard. Victor Sjöström in Ingmarssönerna/Sons of Ingmar (Victor Sjöström, 1919), based on Selma Lagerlöf's novel. Young Ingmar at Heaven's Gate. The caption translates: "I would like to meet Old Ingmar to ask for his advice in an awkward matter."
A Breach of Respectability
Victor David Sjöström was born in Silbodal, in the Värmland region of Sweden, in 1879. He was only a year old when his father, business man Olof Adolf Sjöström, moved the family to Brooklyn, New York in 1880.
As a boy, Sjöström was close to his mother, actress Sofia Elisabeth Hartman, who died in New Tork during childbirth in 1886. Victor was seven years old then. Sjöström returned to Sweden where he lived with relatives in Stockholm. His uncle was a leading actor at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm during the latter part of the 19th century: Victor Hartman.
The teen-aged Sjöström loved the theatre, but after his education, he turned to business, becoming a donuts salesman. Fortunately for the future of Swedish cinema, he was a flop as a salesman, and turned to the theatre, becoming an actor and then director.
The Swedish film production company Svenska Bio hired him and fellow stage director Mauritz Stiller to helm motion pictures. His debut was the silent film Ett hemligt giftermål/A Ruined Life (Victor Sjöström, 1912) with Hilda Borgström and John Ekman.
That year, he also made the silent drama Trädgårdsmästaren/The Gardener (Victor Sjöström, 1912), the first film to ever be banned by the Swedish censor system. Sjöström himself played a brutal gardener who rapes a young, innocent woman ( Lili Beck ) in his employ in a lovely greenhouse. In the final scene, the girl is found dead the next morning on the floor of the greenhouse, with red roses around her. The official comments of the censors were: "A breach of respectability. The association of death and beauty poses a threat to public order." The film was long thought to have been lost, but in 1979 a copy was found in an archive in the United States.
Between 1912 and 1915, Victor Sjöström directed 31 films of which only three still survive. In 1913, he directed Ingeborg Holm (1913), which is considered the first classic of Swedish cinema. His films of the 1910's are marked by subtle character portrayal, fine storytelling and evocative settings in which the Swedish landscape often plays a key psychological role. The naturalistic quality of his films was enhanced by his (then revolutionary) preference for on-location filming, especially in rural and village settings.
Sjöström's other surviving films include Ingmarssönerna/Sons of Ingmar (Victor Sjöström, 1919), the sequel Karin Ingmarsdotter/Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (Victor Sjöström, 1920) and Körkarlen/The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, 1921), all based on stories by the Nobel-prize winning novelist Selma Lagerlöf.
Released on New Year's Day 1921, Körkarlen/The Phantom Carriage starred Victor Sjöström himself, alongside Hilda Borgström, Tore Svennberg and Astrid Holm. The film is notable for its special effects, its advanced (for the time) narrative structure with flashbacks within flashbacks, and for having been a major influence on Ingmar Bergman.
French postcard by Editions Cinémagazine, no. 146.
Greta Garbo . Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 5930. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
Name the Man
In the 1920s, Victor Sjöström accepted an offer from the Goldwyn Studio to work in the United States. In Sweden, he had acted in his own films as well as in those for others but in Hollywood, he devoted himself solely to directing. Using an anglicised name, Victor Seastrom, he made Name the Man (1924), a dramatic film based on the Hall Caine novel.
His first M.G.M. production was the melodrama He Who Gets Slapped (Victor Seastrom, 1924) starring Lon Chaney and Norma Shearer. It was not only a critical success but a huge hit, getting the new studio off onto a sound footing. According to Jon C. Hopwood at IMDb : "He was highly respected by studio boss Louis B. Mayer and by production head Irving Thalberg, who shared Sjöström's concerns with art that did not exclude profit."
Sjöström went on to direct great stars of the day such as Lillian Gish in The Scarlet Letter (Victor Seastrom, 1926) and The Wind (Victor Seastrom, 1928), Greta Garbo in The Divine Woman (Victor Seastrom, 1928), and John Gilbert in The Masks of the Devil (Victor Seastrom, 1928) .
He finished his Hollywood career after his first talkie, A Lady to Love (Victor Seastrom, 1930), starring Vilma Bánky and Edward G. Robinson.
Uncomfortable with the modifications needed to direct talking films, Victor Sjöström returned to Sweden where he directed two more films, a Swedish and a German version of the drama Markurells i Wadköping/Väter und Söhne/Father and Son (Victor Sjöström, 1931).
His final directing effort was an English language drama filmed in the United Kingdom, the swashbuckler Under the Red Robe (Victor Seastrom, 1937), starring Conrad Veidt and Annabella .
Over the following fifteen years, Sjöström returned to acting in the theatre, performed a variety of leading roles in more than a dozen films and worked as director of the Svensk Film Industri company.
At age 78 he gave his final acting performance, probably his best remembered, as the elderly professor in Ingmar Bergman's film Smultronstället/Wild Strawberries (1957), for which he won the National Board of Review's Best Actor Award.
In 1960, Victor Sjöström died in Stockholm at the age of eighty and was interred there in the Norra begravningsplatsen.
He married three times, to Alexandra Stjagoff (1900–1912), actress Lili Beck (1913–1916) and actress Edith Erastoff (1922–1945). He and Erastoff had two daughters: actress Guje Lagerwall (1918) and Caje Bjerke (1918).
Trädgårdsmästaren/The Gardener (Victor Sjöström, 1912). Source: forgottenmovie (YouTube).
Körkarlen/The Phantom Carriage (Victor Sjöström, 1921). Source: William Thomas Sherman (YouTube).
Sources: (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
March 24, 2014
France Dhélia
France Dhélia (1894-1964) was a French actress of the silent cinema.
French postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.
The Sultan of Love
France Dhélia was born Franceline Benoit in 1894, in a village near Blois, thus raised in the area of the famous French royal castles along the Loire river.
She made her film début under the name of Mado Floréal in L’Ambitieuse (Camille de Morlhon, 1912) with Gabriel Signoret .
Afterwards she played in various comedies with the character Fred, directed by René Hervil, who also played Fred himself.
During the First World War, she took the name of France Dhélia. She made her first film with director René Le Somptier and appeared in her first feature-length film: L’instinct est maitre/The Instinct is the Ruler (Jacques Feyder, 1917).
In 1918 she rose to stardom when she played Sultane Daoulah in La sultane d’amour/The Sultan of Love (René Le Somptier, Charles Burguet, 1918). It was the first film shot at the new Victorine studios in Nice. The film had sets designed by Marco de Gastyne.
This film was followed by Malencontre/Inopportune (Germaine Dulac, 1920), La montée vers l’Acropole/The Climb to the Acropolis (René Le Somptier, 1920), Le coeur magnifique/The Magnificent Heart ( Séverin-Mars , Jean Legrand, 1921), La bête traquée/The Trapped Beast (René Le Somptier, Michel Carré, 1922) with Edmond Van Daële, the comedy Petite hôtel à louer/Little Hotel for Rent (Pierre Colombier, 1923) with Gaston Modot , the title role in La garçonne/The Flapper (Armand du Plessy, 1923), and Néné (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1924).
French postcard in the series Les Vedettes du Cinéma by Editions Filma, no. 4. Photo: Films Aubert.
The Queen of Sheba
Between 1923 and 1925 France Dhélia performed in many films by Gaston Roudès, her favourite director.
These films included La guitare et le jazz band/The Guitar and the Jazz band (1923), L’ombre du bonheur (1924) with Constant Rémy, Pulcinella (1925),La maternelle/The Nursery School (1925) with Lucien Dalsace, Le chemin de la gloire/The Road of Glory (1926), Cousine de France/Cousin of France (1927) with Jean-Louis Allibert, and La maison au soleil/House in the Sun (1928).
In those years Dhélia was often paired with actor Lucien Dalsace, as in La maternelle, Oiseaux de passage and Les petits.
Around 1925 she was at the peak of her success. When sound film set in, Dhélia continued to play mostly in films by Roudès, though she did not always play the lead anymore.
Her sound films include Le gamin de Paris/Paris Urchin (1932) with Alice Tissot, Roger la Honte (1933) with Constant Rémy, Flofloche (1934), and Le chante de l’amour/The Song of Love (1935).&
Her last film, was Une main a frappé/A Hand Hit (1939). An exception was the part of the Queen of Sheba in the biblical film Le berceau de dieu/The Cradle of God (Fred LeRoy Granville, 1926).
Other exceptions were the main female character, Blanche, in Jean Epstein’s late silent crime drama Sa tête/Her Head (1929), and a minor part in the early sound film Méphisto (1930, Henri Delbain, Georges Vinter) opposite a young Jean Gabin . At age 45, France Dhélia quitted cinema, and a quarter of a century later she died quietly in Paris in 1964.
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 177.
French postcard by Cinémagazine, no. 122.
Sources: Caroline Hanotte (CineArtistes), Wikipedia (French) and .
French postcard. Collection: Didier Hanson.
The Sultan of Love
France Dhélia was born Franceline Benoit in 1894, in a village near Blois, thus raised in the area of the famous French royal castles along the Loire river.
She made her film début under the name of Mado Floréal in L’Ambitieuse (Camille de Morlhon, 1912) with Gabriel Signoret .
Afterwards she played in various comedies with the character Fred, directed by René Hervil, who also played Fred himself.
During the First World War, she took the name of France Dhélia. She made her first film with director René Le Somptier and appeared in her first feature-length film: L’instinct est maitre/The Instinct is the Ruler (Jacques Feyder, 1917).
In 1918 she rose to stardom when she played Sultane Daoulah in La sultane d’amour/The Sultan of Love (René Le Somptier, Charles Burguet, 1918). It was the first film shot at the new Victorine studios in Nice. The film had sets designed by Marco de Gastyne.
This film was followed by Malencontre/Inopportune (Germaine Dulac, 1920), La montée vers l’Acropole/The Climb to the Acropolis (René Le Somptier, 1920), Le coeur magnifique/The Magnificent Heart ( Séverin-Mars , Jean Legrand, 1921), La bête traquée/The Trapped Beast (René Le Somptier, Michel Carré, 1922) with Edmond Van Daële, the comedy Petite hôtel à louer/Little Hotel for Rent (Pierre Colombier, 1923) with Gaston Modot , the title role in La garçonne/The Flapper (Armand du Plessy, 1923), and Néné (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1924).
French postcard in the series Les Vedettes du Cinéma by Editions Filma, no. 4. Photo: Films Aubert.
The Queen of Sheba
Between 1923 and 1925 France Dhélia performed in many films by Gaston Roudès, her favourite director.
These films included La guitare et le jazz band/The Guitar and the Jazz band (1923), L’ombre du bonheur (1924) with Constant Rémy, Pulcinella (1925),La maternelle/The Nursery School (1925) with Lucien Dalsace, Le chemin de la gloire/The Road of Glory (1926), Cousine de France/Cousin of France (1927) with Jean-Louis Allibert, and La maison au soleil/House in the Sun (1928).
In those years Dhélia was often paired with actor Lucien Dalsace, as in La maternelle, Oiseaux de passage and Les petits.
Around 1925 she was at the peak of her success. When sound film set in, Dhélia continued to play mostly in films by Roudès, though she did not always play the lead anymore.
Her sound films include Le gamin de Paris/Paris Urchin (1932) with Alice Tissot, Roger la Honte (1933) with Constant Rémy, Flofloche (1934), and Le chante de l’amour/The Song of Love (1935).&
Her last film, was Une main a frappé/A Hand Hit (1939). An exception was the part of the Queen of Sheba in the biblical film Le berceau de dieu/The Cradle of God (Fred LeRoy Granville, 1926).
Other exceptions were the main female character, Blanche, in Jean Epstein’s late silent crime drama Sa tête/Her Head (1929), and a minor part in the early sound film Méphisto (1930, Henri Delbain, Georges Vinter) opposite a young Jean Gabin . At age 45, France Dhélia quitted cinema, and a quarter of a century later she died quietly in Paris in 1964.
French postcard by Cinémagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 177.
French postcard by Cinémagazine, no. 122.
Sources: Caroline Hanotte (CineArtistes), Wikipedia (French) and .
March 23, 2014
Roger Moore
Suave and handsome English actor Roger Moore (1927) will always be remembered as the guy who replaced Sean Connery as James Bond, but he is also our favourite Ivanhoe, Saint and Persuader on TV.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam. Sent by Mail in 1963. Photo: still from the TV series Ivanhoe (1958-1959).
Belgian postcard by Publistar, Bruxelles, no. 1295. Photo: POK / Publistar / TPL. Publicity still for the TV series The Saint (1963-1966).
French postcard by Publistar, Marseille, no. 734. Publicity still for the TV series Maverick (1960-1961).
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for The Man with the Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton, 1974).
A Noble knight and Champion of Justice
Sir Roger George Moore was born in 1927 in Stockwell near London as the son of policeman George Alfred Moore and Lillian 'Lily' Moore-Pope.
Moore served in the British military during the Second World War. He first wanted to be an artist, but got into films full time after becoming an extra in productions like Perfect Strangers (Alexander Korda, 1945) and Piccadilly Incident (Herbert Wilcox, 1946).
In the early 1950s, he appeared on television and also worked as a male model, appearing in print advertisements for products like knitwear (earning him the amusing nickname 'The Big Knit'), and toothpaste.
In 1953 the suave and handsome actor got a contract with MGM, but in Hollywood Moore had little success with movies like The Last Time I Saw Paris (Richard Brooks, 1954) and Interrupted Melody (Curtis Bernhardt, 1955).
It was the British TV series Ivanhoe (1958-1959) in which Roger Moore would make his name. As Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a noble knight and champion of justice during the reign of evil Prince John (Andrew Keir), he became the favourite action hero for millions of European kids.
Other series were The Alaskans (1959) and Maverick (1960-1961), in which he played cousin Beau.
Worldwide he got his big breakthrough as Simon Templar in the TV series The Saint (1962-1969). It was with 118 episodes one of the two longest-running British series of its kind.
Belgian postcard by S. Best (SB), Antwerpen. Photo: still from Ivanhoe. This postcard was a gift from Mary of the A Plethora of Postcards blog.
Dutch postcard by Int. Filmpers, Amsterdam.
Dutch postcard of Roger Moore as Ivanhoe, no. 761.
Dutch postcard by Int. Filmpers P.D.B., Amsterdam. Photo: publicity still for the TV series Ivanhoe (1958-1959).
Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor, no. 553. Publicity still for The Saint (1963-1966) with Dawn Addams .
Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. 6298.
Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, no. AX 6370. Sent by mail in 1966.
Spanish postcard by Raker, no. 36, 1965. Retail price: 5 Ptas. Photo: publicity still for The Saint.
007
In an effort to change this, Roger Moore agreed to star with Tony Curtis as two millionaire playboys in another British TV show, The Persuaders! (1971-1972). It became hugely popular in Europe and Australia, but again it did not catch on in the States and was cancelled there.
Just prior to making the series he starred in the dark The Man Who Haunted Himself (Basil Dearden, 1970), which proved there was more to him than light-hearted roles. He would never become popular with critics though, who often derided his acting as limited and wooden.
At the age of 45, Roger Moore accepted the role of James Bond. Live and Let Die (Guy Hamilton, 1973) grossed more than Diamonds Are Forever (Guy Hamilton, 1971) – Sean Connery 's last outing as James Bond.
Moore's James Bond was light-hearted, more so than any other official actor to portray 007. He often portrayed Bond as a playboy, with his tongue firmly in cheek.
Between 1973 and 1985 he starred in six more Bond films, The Man with the Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton, 1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977), Moonraker (Lewis Gilbert, 1979), For Your Eyes Only (John Glen, 1981), Octopussy (John Glen, 1983), and finally A View to a Kill (John Glen, 1985).
Vintage collectors card.
Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor. Photo: this could be a still for the Italian western Un branco di vigliacchi/No Man's Land (Fabrizio Taglioni, 1962). The girl could be Luisa Mattioli, a later Mrs. Moore.
Danish postcard by Forlaget Holger Danske, no. 119. Photo: publicity still for The Persuaders (1971-1972) with Tony Curtis.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Agin.
French postcard by La Roue Tourne, Paris.
Vintage postcard.
French postcard by Editions F.Nugeron. Photo: J. Ritchie.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. With Sean Connery .
Disastrous Flops
In between the James Bond series, Roger Moore had also starred in other successful films such as The Wild Geese (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1978) and North Sea Hijack (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1979).
The USA finally took completely to him when he starred alongside Burt Reynolds in the big American hit The Cannonball Run (Hal Needham, 1981).
Moore did not act onscreen for five years after he stopped playing Bond.
Later he made a long series of disastrous flops like Feuer, Eis & Dynamit/Fire, Ice and Dynamite (Willy Bogner, 1990), Bullseye! (Michael Winner, 1990), Bed & Breakfast (Robert Ellis Miller, 1991), The Quest (Jean-Claude van Damme, 1996), Spice World (Bob Spiers, 1997), The Enemy (Tom Kinninmont, 2001) and Boat Trip (Mort Nathan, 2002).
Through the years Moore became more of a personality than an actor, appearing on TV chat shows and hosting documentaries.
Since 1991 he is a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. For his charity work he was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1999 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 2003.
He married four times, to skater Doorn Van Steyn (1946-1953), singer Dorothy Squires (1953-1968), Italian actress Luisa Mattioli (1969-1996) and Danish-Swedish multi-millionaire Christina 'Kiki' Tholstrup (2002-present). He has three children: Geoffrey Moore, Christian Moore and Deborah Moore.
In 2007 (3 days before he turned 80), Roger Moore was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work on television and in film. In 2008, the French government appointed Moore a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Despite declaring in 2009 that he had retired from acting, Roger Moore is still active in the cinema. In 2010 he provided the voice of a talking cat called Lazenby in the family action comedy Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (Brad Payton, 2010), which contained several references to, and parodies of, Bond films. Last year he completed a new TV version of The Saint (Simon West, 2013) in which he played Jasper opposite Adam Rayner as Simon Templar.
Dutch card by Loeb uitgevers, Amsterdam, 1985. Photo: Danjaq S.A. Roger Moore as James Bond in Live and Let Die (1973, Guy Hamilton). The Bond girl is British actress Jane Seymour, who played Solitaire.
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for Live and Let Die (Guy Hamilton, 1973) with Tommy Lane.
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, no. 5992805, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for The Man with the Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton, 1974) with Britt Ekland and Maud Adams.
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977) with Barbara Bach.
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, no. 5992807, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977) with Barbara Bach.
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for Octopussy (John Glen, 1983).
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for A View to a Kill (John Glen, 1985).
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A., 1985. Publicity still for A View to a Kill (John Glen, 1985).
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for A View To A Kill (John Glen, 1985).
Sources: Wikipedia and .
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam. Sent by Mail in 1963. Photo: still from the TV series Ivanhoe (1958-1959).
Belgian postcard by Publistar, Bruxelles, no. 1295. Photo: POK / Publistar / TPL. Publicity still for the TV series The Saint (1963-1966).
French postcard by Publistar, Marseille, no. 734. Publicity still for the TV series Maverick (1960-1961).
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for The Man with the Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton, 1974).
A Noble knight and Champion of Justice
Sir Roger George Moore was born in 1927 in Stockwell near London as the son of policeman George Alfred Moore and Lillian 'Lily' Moore-Pope.
Moore served in the British military during the Second World War. He first wanted to be an artist, but got into films full time after becoming an extra in productions like Perfect Strangers (Alexander Korda, 1945) and Piccadilly Incident (Herbert Wilcox, 1946).
In the early 1950s, he appeared on television and also worked as a male model, appearing in print advertisements for products like knitwear (earning him the amusing nickname 'The Big Knit'), and toothpaste.
In 1953 the suave and handsome actor got a contract with MGM, but in Hollywood Moore had little success with movies like The Last Time I Saw Paris (Richard Brooks, 1954) and Interrupted Melody (Curtis Bernhardt, 1955).
It was the British TV series Ivanhoe (1958-1959) in which Roger Moore would make his name. As Sir Wilfred of Ivanhoe, a noble knight and champion of justice during the reign of evil Prince John (Andrew Keir), he became the favourite action hero for millions of European kids.
Other series were The Alaskans (1959) and Maverick (1960-1961), in which he played cousin Beau.
Worldwide he got his big breakthrough as Simon Templar in the TV series The Saint (1962-1969). It was with 118 episodes one of the two longest-running British series of its kind.
Belgian postcard by S. Best (SB), Antwerpen. Photo: still from Ivanhoe. This postcard was a gift from Mary of the A Plethora of Postcards blog.
Dutch postcard by Int. Filmpers, Amsterdam.
Dutch postcard of Roger Moore as Ivanhoe, no. 761.
Dutch postcard by Int. Filmpers P.D.B., Amsterdam. Photo: publicity still for the TV series Ivanhoe (1958-1959).
Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor, no. 553. Publicity still for The Saint (1963-1966) with Dawn Addams .
Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, Utrecht, no. 6298.
Dutch postcard by 't Sticht, no. AX 6370. Sent by mail in 1966.
Spanish postcard by Raker, no. 36, 1965. Retail price: 5 Ptas. Photo: publicity still for The Saint.
007
In an effort to change this, Roger Moore agreed to star with Tony Curtis as two millionaire playboys in another British TV show, The Persuaders! (1971-1972). It became hugely popular in Europe and Australia, but again it did not catch on in the States and was cancelled there.
Just prior to making the series he starred in the dark The Man Who Haunted Himself (Basil Dearden, 1970), which proved there was more to him than light-hearted roles. He would never become popular with critics though, who often derided his acting as limited and wooden.
At the age of 45, Roger Moore accepted the role of James Bond. Live and Let Die (Guy Hamilton, 1973) grossed more than Diamonds Are Forever (Guy Hamilton, 1971) – Sean Connery 's last outing as James Bond.
Moore's James Bond was light-hearted, more so than any other official actor to portray 007. He often portrayed Bond as a playboy, with his tongue firmly in cheek.
Between 1973 and 1985 he starred in six more Bond films, The Man with the Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton, 1974), The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977), Moonraker (Lewis Gilbert, 1979), For Your Eyes Only (John Glen, 1981), Octopussy (John Glen, 1983), and finally A View to a Kill (John Glen, 1985).
Vintage collectors card.
Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor. Photo: this could be a still for the Italian western Un branco di vigliacchi/No Man's Land (Fabrizio Taglioni, 1962). The girl could be Luisa Mattioli, a later Mrs. Moore.
Danish postcard by Forlaget Holger Danske, no. 119. Photo: publicity still for The Persuaders (1971-1972) with Tony Curtis.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Agin.
French postcard by La Roue Tourne, Paris.
Vintage postcard.
French postcard by Editions F.Nugeron. Photo: J. Ritchie.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. With Sean Connery .
Disastrous Flops
In between the James Bond series, Roger Moore had also starred in other successful films such as The Wild Geese (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1978) and North Sea Hijack (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1979).
The USA finally took completely to him when he starred alongside Burt Reynolds in the big American hit The Cannonball Run (Hal Needham, 1981).
Moore did not act onscreen for five years after he stopped playing Bond.
Later he made a long series of disastrous flops like Feuer, Eis & Dynamit/Fire, Ice and Dynamite (Willy Bogner, 1990), Bullseye! (Michael Winner, 1990), Bed & Breakfast (Robert Ellis Miller, 1991), The Quest (Jean-Claude van Damme, 1996), Spice World (Bob Spiers, 1997), The Enemy (Tom Kinninmont, 2001) and Boat Trip (Mort Nathan, 2002).
Through the years Moore became more of a personality than an actor, appearing on TV chat shows and hosting documentaries.
Since 1991 he is a goodwill ambassador for UNICEF. For his charity work he was created a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1999 and a Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in 2003.
He married four times, to skater Doorn Van Steyn (1946-1953), singer Dorothy Squires (1953-1968), Italian actress Luisa Mattioli (1969-1996) and Danish-Swedish multi-millionaire Christina 'Kiki' Tholstrup (2002-present). He has three children: Geoffrey Moore, Christian Moore and Deborah Moore.
In 2007 (3 days before he turned 80), Roger Moore was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work on television and in film. In 2008, the French government appointed Moore a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres.
Despite declaring in 2009 that he had retired from acting, Roger Moore is still active in the cinema. In 2010 he provided the voice of a talking cat called Lazenby in the family action comedy Cats & Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore (Brad Payton, 2010), which contained several references to, and parodies of, Bond films. Last year he completed a new TV version of The Saint (Simon West, 2013) in which he played Jasper opposite Adam Rayner as Simon Templar.
Dutch card by Loeb uitgevers, Amsterdam, 1985. Photo: Danjaq S.A. Roger Moore as James Bond in Live and Let Die (1973, Guy Hamilton). The Bond girl is British actress Jane Seymour, who played Solitaire.
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for Live and Let Die (Guy Hamilton, 1973) with Tommy Lane.
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, no. 5992805, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for The Man with the Golden Gun (Guy Hamilton, 1974) with Britt Ekland and Maud Adams.
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977) with Barbara Bach.
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, no. 5992807, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for The Spy Who Loved Me (Lewis Gilbert, 1977) with Barbara Bach.
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for Octopussy (John Glen, 1983).
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for A View to a Kill (John Glen, 1985).
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A., 1985. Publicity still for A View to a Kill (John Glen, 1985).
Dutch postcard by Loeb Uitgevers BV, Amsterdam, 1985. Photo: Eon Productions / Gilrose Publications / Danjaq S.A. Publicity still for A View To A Kill (John Glen, 1985).
Sources: Wikipedia and .
March 22, 2014
Rotophot
How did the culture of film star postcards start? There is probably not just one answer to that question, but the history of the German company Rotophot GmbH, where Heinrich Ross started his career, is exemplary. During the First World War, the internationally orientated Rotophot could only work for the German market and it began publishing ‘Film-Sterne karten’, as part of one of the first major film promotion actions.
Gudrun Hildebrandt . German postcard by Rotophot, no. 1381/82. Sent by mail in 1909.
Ellen Richter . German postcard by Rotophot., no. 1651. Photo: Willinger.
Hedda Vernon . German postcard in the Fim Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 68/5. Photo: Eiko-Film.
Henny Porten . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 114/1. Photo: Messter Film, Berlin.
Fern Andra . German postcard by Rotophot, Berlin, no. 128/3, in the Film Sterne Series. Photo: Fern Andra Atelier.
Mass Production
The origins of the popular Ross Verlag cards go back to the Rotophot artist postcards. The ´Rotophot-Gesellschaft für photographische Industrie´ was located at the Alexandrinenstraße 110 in Berlin.
The company was founded by Hans Kraemer on 8 January 1900 with the purpose of ‘mass production of photographic reproductions’. Kraemer, born in 1870 in Mannheim, came from a family of industrialists. He studied natural sciences, philosophy, history and cultural history in Berlin and Heidelberg.
The possibilities of photography, their distribution and reproduction on books and postcards, tied Kraemer’s attention. He decided to produce Bromsilberpostkarten in large numbers.
The period around 1900 was considered a ´golden era´ for the publication of technically high quality postcards. Celebrities from many fields offered the motives: nobles, opera singers, actors, vaudeville and circus stars. Daring erotic images also corresponded to the public taste. Especially these postcards from Rotophot were liked by the public.
Within a short time, Rotophot became a serious competitor of the NPG, the Neuen Photographischen Gesellschaft (New Photographic Society). The NPG had begun in 1895 with ‘kilometer-Photography’, an industrial-scale production of postcards.
Parallel to the NPG, Rotophot expanded internationally. In 1902 Rotophot closed a contract with Giesen Bros. & Co. in London. Photos of English artists, produced by Rotophot in Berlin, came through Giesen Bros & Co in the UK.
Hella Moja . German postcard in the Film Sterne Series by Rotophot, no. 501/2. Photo: Decla. Publicity still for Das Mädel von nebenan (Otto Rippert, 1917).
Fern Andra . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 514/4. Photo: Fern Andra Atelier. Publicity still with (in the back) Alfred Abel in Ein Blatt im Sturm... doch das Schicksal hat es verweht ( Fern Andra , 1917).
Mia May . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 528/5. Photo:May Film. Publicity still for Fünf Minuten zu spät/Five Minutes Too Late (Uwe Jens Krafft, 1918).
Ressel Orla . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 548/4, 1919-1924. Photo: Decla. Publicity still for Das Glück der Frau Beate/The luck of the Mrs. Beate (Alwin Neuß, Otto Rippert, 1918).
Hedda Vernon . German postcard in the Film Sterne Series by Rotophot, no. 560/2. Photo: Eiko Film. Publicity still for Wo ein Wille, ist ein Weg (Hubert Moest, 1918) with right back Ernst Hofmann .
One of the first major German film promotion actions
In 1904 a subsidiary company was established, the Bromsilber-Bild-Vertriebs-Gesellschaft with offices in Vienna and Budapest. Head of this division was Heinrich Ross, who had recently joined the company.
From 1905 on, all Rotophot cards wore the letters RPH as a logo, with a serial number for re-orders. In 1910, Rotophot founded subsidiaries in Vienna and Budapest. There were also sales offices in Hamburg, Cologne, Nuremberg, Wroclaw, Poznan, Warsaw, Riga, Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Zurich, Milan, Bucharest, Odessa and Buenos Aires.
The start of the First World War in August 1914 meant for the export-oriented Rotophot a serious loss initially. After some difficulty it found a balance again by using new motifs, such as fighters who were now in demand instead of opera stars.
At that time, cinema only existed for 20 years and film was still a relatively new phenomenon. The German military administration tried to distract people from their worries with entertainment films. In 1916, the state gave the young film industry large amounts of money for major projects.
The postcard publishers NPG and Rotophot were involved in this operation. In 1916 Heinrich Ross started the Film Sterne series, which presented postcards with new film scenes and portraits of the previously unknown film actors. The Film Sterne series is thus one of the first major German film promotion actions.
Friedrich Zelnik . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 126/3. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.
Paul Hartmann . German postcard in the Film-Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 161/3. Photo: Nicole Perscheid, Berlin.
Bernd Aldor . German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 164/2. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.
Bruno Kastner . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 190/1, 1916-1919. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.
Bruno Decarli . German postcard.by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 217/1. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.
The first of the fan and autograph postcard series
Occasionally, there had been film postcards published in Europe previously. However, the Film-Sterne series can be regarded as the first of the fan and autograph postcard series that followed in the next decades.
There were three separate series of Rotophot artist postcards: stage star cards, running from no. 1 to 30, film star postcards, running from no. 61-224 (why the series started with no. 61 is unknown), and film and scenes cards, running from no. 500 to about 600. Rotophot also produced film posters, such as for Homunculus (1916), designed by Hans Zoozmann.
The Rotophot Symbol RPH was part of the Film-Sterne logo. Some of the very early film star cards had only ‘film’ on the logo.
Other early Rotophot cards have as part of their logo the drawing of a horse, ‘Ross’ translates as horse.
From 1919 Heinrich Ross marketed the Film-Sterne series by his own publishing company. Each card was now wearing the name Ross Verlag.
Wanda Treumann . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 87/4. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin/Messter Film.
Maria Carmi . German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 90/5. Photo: Karl Schenker.
Lotte Neumann . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-sterne series, no. 94/2. Photo: NBFMB / Karl Schenker.
Hella Moja . German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 78/6. Photo: Decla / Karl Schenker, Berlin.
Lisa Weise. German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 104/1.
Sources: Mark Goffee (Rosscards.com), Postkarten-Archiv.de (German), Wikipedia (German), and IMDb.
Gudrun Hildebrandt . German postcard by Rotophot, no. 1381/82. Sent by mail in 1909.
Ellen Richter . German postcard by Rotophot., no. 1651. Photo: Willinger.
Hedda Vernon . German postcard in the Fim Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 68/5. Photo: Eiko-Film.
Henny Porten . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 114/1. Photo: Messter Film, Berlin.
Fern Andra . German postcard by Rotophot, Berlin, no. 128/3, in the Film Sterne Series. Photo: Fern Andra Atelier.
Mass Production
The origins of the popular Ross Verlag cards go back to the Rotophot artist postcards. The ´Rotophot-Gesellschaft für photographische Industrie´ was located at the Alexandrinenstraße 110 in Berlin.
The company was founded by Hans Kraemer on 8 January 1900 with the purpose of ‘mass production of photographic reproductions’. Kraemer, born in 1870 in Mannheim, came from a family of industrialists. He studied natural sciences, philosophy, history and cultural history in Berlin and Heidelberg.
The possibilities of photography, their distribution and reproduction on books and postcards, tied Kraemer’s attention. He decided to produce Bromsilberpostkarten in large numbers.
The period around 1900 was considered a ´golden era´ for the publication of technically high quality postcards. Celebrities from many fields offered the motives: nobles, opera singers, actors, vaudeville and circus stars. Daring erotic images also corresponded to the public taste. Especially these postcards from Rotophot were liked by the public.
Within a short time, Rotophot became a serious competitor of the NPG, the Neuen Photographischen Gesellschaft (New Photographic Society). The NPG had begun in 1895 with ‘kilometer-Photography’, an industrial-scale production of postcards.
Parallel to the NPG, Rotophot expanded internationally. In 1902 Rotophot closed a contract with Giesen Bros. & Co. in London. Photos of English artists, produced by Rotophot in Berlin, came through Giesen Bros & Co in the UK.
Hella Moja . German postcard in the Film Sterne Series by Rotophot, no. 501/2. Photo: Decla. Publicity still for Das Mädel von nebenan (Otto Rippert, 1917).
Fern Andra . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 514/4. Photo: Fern Andra Atelier. Publicity still with (in the back) Alfred Abel in Ein Blatt im Sturm... doch das Schicksal hat es verweht ( Fern Andra , 1917).
Mia May . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 528/5. Photo:May Film. Publicity still for Fünf Minuten zu spät/Five Minutes Too Late (Uwe Jens Krafft, 1918).
Ressel Orla . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 548/4, 1919-1924. Photo: Decla. Publicity still for Das Glück der Frau Beate/The luck of the Mrs. Beate (Alwin Neuß, Otto Rippert, 1918).
Hedda Vernon . German postcard in the Film Sterne Series by Rotophot, no. 560/2. Photo: Eiko Film. Publicity still for Wo ein Wille, ist ein Weg (Hubert Moest, 1918) with right back Ernst Hofmann .
One of the first major German film promotion actions
In 1904 a subsidiary company was established, the Bromsilber-Bild-Vertriebs-Gesellschaft with offices in Vienna and Budapest. Head of this division was Heinrich Ross, who had recently joined the company.
From 1905 on, all Rotophot cards wore the letters RPH as a logo, with a serial number for re-orders. In 1910, Rotophot founded subsidiaries in Vienna and Budapest. There were also sales offices in Hamburg, Cologne, Nuremberg, Wroclaw, Poznan, Warsaw, Riga, Stockholm, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Amsterdam, London, Paris, Zurich, Milan, Bucharest, Odessa and Buenos Aires.
The start of the First World War in August 1914 meant for the export-oriented Rotophot a serious loss initially. After some difficulty it found a balance again by using new motifs, such as fighters who were now in demand instead of opera stars.
At that time, cinema only existed for 20 years and film was still a relatively new phenomenon. The German military administration tried to distract people from their worries with entertainment films. In 1916, the state gave the young film industry large amounts of money for major projects.
The postcard publishers NPG and Rotophot were involved in this operation. In 1916 Heinrich Ross started the Film Sterne series, which presented postcards with new film scenes and portraits of the previously unknown film actors. The Film Sterne series is thus one of the first major German film promotion actions.
Friedrich Zelnik . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 126/3. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin.
Paul Hartmann . German postcard in the Film-Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 161/3. Photo: Nicole Perscheid, Berlin.
Bernd Aldor . German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot., no. 164/2. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.
Bruno Kastner . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 190/1, 1916-1919. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.
Bruno Decarli . German postcard.by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 217/1. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.
The first of the fan and autograph postcard series
Occasionally, there had been film postcards published in Europe previously. However, the Film-Sterne series can be regarded as the first of the fan and autograph postcard series that followed in the next decades.
There were three separate series of Rotophot artist postcards: stage star cards, running from no. 1 to 30, film star postcards, running from no. 61-224 (why the series started with no. 61 is unknown), and film and scenes cards, running from no. 500 to about 600. Rotophot also produced film posters, such as for Homunculus (1916), designed by Hans Zoozmann.
The Rotophot Symbol RPH was part of the Film-Sterne logo. Some of the very early film star cards had only ‘film’ on the logo.
Other early Rotophot cards have as part of their logo the drawing of a horse, ‘Ross’ translates as horse.
From 1919 Heinrich Ross marketed the Film-Sterne series by his own publishing company. Each card was now wearing the name Ross Verlag.
Wanda Treumann . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film Sterne series, no. 87/4. Photo: Karl Schenker, Berlin/Messter Film.
Maria Carmi . German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 90/5. Photo: Karl Schenker.
Lotte Neumann . German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-sterne series, no. 94/2. Photo: NBFMB / Karl Schenker.
Hella Moja . German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 78/6. Photo: Decla / Karl Schenker, Berlin.
Lisa Weise. German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 104/1.
Sources: Mark Goffee (Rosscards.com), Postkarten-Archiv.de (German), Wikipedia (German), and IMDb.
March 21, 2014
Anthony Delon
Former wild boy Anthony Delon (1964) is the son of screen idol Alain Delon and film actress Nathalie Delon. The handsome French-American actor was first better known as a jet setting playboy than as a serious film star, but coming of age he stepped out of the shadow of his famous father.
French postcard no. 1036.
Genes and Good Looks
Anthony Delon was born as Antoine Delon in the famous Cedar Sinai hospital of Beverly Hills, USA. He was the son of actors Alain Delon and Nathalie Delon, and at the time, his father worked in Hollywood.
After his family’s return to France, Anthony spent his first school years at bilingual schools. After the divorce of his parents in 1968, he lived with his mother. He was a rebellious and wild child and his parents sent him to a boarding school.
When 19, Delon had his own leather company and part-owned a club, but his business partner in the venture was shot. Delon himself, for unrelated incidents, went to prison for a month. In the US, his genes and his good looks helped him get a modelling job with American photographer Bruce Weber.
This lead to a leading part in the Italian romance-drama Una spina nel cuore/A Thorn in the Heart (Alberto Lattuada, 1986), loosely based on the novel with the same title by Piero Chiara. His co-stars were Sophie Duez and Antonella Lualdi .
Even more prestigious was his next leading part in the drama Crónica de una muerte anunciada/Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Francesco Rosi, 1987), adapted by Tonino Guerra from the eponymous novel by Gabriel García Márquez. The film also starred Rupert Everett , Ornella Muti , and Gian Maria Volonté, and premiered at the Cannes film festival in May 1987.
According to Wikipedia , the film was a critical success in Latin America and Eastern Europe but was snubbed by the French critics.
At 24, Delon returned to the US and lived in Los Angeles for two years. He took some acting classes for about six months, and then just partied. He was even once, alongside Ivana Trump, Joan Collins and Richard Branson, one of the Miss World judges. During the 1980s, playboy Delon was one of the boyfriends of Princess Stéphanie of Monaco, and he also had a relationship with sexy actress Valerie Kaprisky.
French postcard by Editions Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. ST-184.
Italian postcard. Photo: publicity still for the Italian romance-drama Una spina nel cuore/A Thorn in the Heart (Alberto Lattuada, 1986) with Sophie Duez.
A Huge Box Office Smash
In 1990 Anthony Delon returned to France. He played parts in the film comedies La Femme fardée/The Strange Woman (José Pinheiro, 1990) with Jeanne Moreau , which was a spectacular flop.
He found most of his work on TV in series and films like Sup de fric/Cash Academy (Christian Gion, 1992), starring Jean Poiret.
Ten years after Crónica de una muerte anunciada, Delon played a small role in the French film La Vérité si je mens!/Would I Lie to You? (Thomas Gilou, 1997), about working-class immigrants living in metropolitan Paris. It was a huge box office smash and lead to two sequels.
For Delon, the success meant he could finally step out of the shadow of his father. That same year, he played the lead in the TV miniseries Deserto di fuoco/Desert of Fire (Enzo G. Castellari, 1997). This was a European co-production between Italy, Germany and France, with a cast including such European stars as Claudia Cardinale , Arielle Dombasle, Vittorio Gassman , Marie Laforêt , Franco Nero , Fabio Testi and Jean Sorel .
The following years, he played several roles in French TV series and films. In the TV film Un amour de femme (Sylvie Verheyde, 2001) he played the husband of a woman (Hélène Fillières) who has an affair with a female dance instructor (Raffaëla Anderson).
Other films were the comedy Jeu de cons/Con Games (Jean-Michel Verner, 2001), the drama Danse avec lui/Dance With Him (Valérie Guignabodet, 2007) with Mathilde Seigner and Sami Frey, and Mensch (Steve Suissa, 2009) starring Nicolas Cazalé.
French postcard no. 68.
French postcard no. 1023.
That Essential Quality Of Being Alive
In 2006, Anthony Delon married his long-time girlfriend Sophie Clerico. He has two daughters with her, Lou Delon (1996) and Liv Delon (2001).
In his autobiography, Le premier maillon (2008), he wrote that he has another daughter, Alyson Le Borges (1986), from an affair with a former Crazy Horse dancer, Marie Hélène.
Recently, Delon appeared with Charles Dance and Anouk Aimée in the British film Paris Connections (Harley Cokeliss, 2010) written by Michael Tupy, based on a thriller by Jackie Collins. It was the first film funded by supermarket Tesco and released exclusively in their stores.
He also had a small part in the French drama film Polisse/Poliss (Maïwenn, 2011) with French rapper Joeystarr, Karin Viard, and Riccardo Scamarcio. The film centres on the Brigade de Protection des Mineurs, the Child Protection Unit of the Paris Police, and a photographer who is assigned to cover the unit. The title is a childish spelling of the word ‘police’. The film won the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and in 2012, it was nominated for thirteen César Awards (the French Oscar), winning two.
James Travers at French Film Guide (formerly Films de France ): “Yet, whilst the film is crude, and unbearably tacky in a few places, it has that essential quality of being alive. In fact, it is a film that positively bursts with life. If we care to look beyond the soap-tinted surface, the characters and the world they inhabit do have a depth and reality to them, we do empathise with the troubled child protagonists and acquire a deeper respect for their police protectors. It is a film that it is difficult to like entirely, and some will doubtless hate it for the inelegant way it knocks the stuffing out of today's mainstream cinema conventions, yet it is a film that has definitely made its mark.”
Clip of Anthony Delon singing Qu'elle Revienne... (1987). Source: Bultofrance (YouTube).
Trailer Paris Connections (2010). Source: Parisconnections (YouTube).
Sources: Tobias Jones (The Independent), James Travers (French Film Guide), AllMovie, AlloCiné (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and .
French postcard no. 1036.
Genes and Good Looks
Anthony Delon was born as Antoine Delon in the famous Cedar Sinai hospital of Beverly Hills, USA. He was the son of actors Alain Delon and Nathalie Delon, and at the time, his father worked in Hollywood.
After his family’s return to France, Anthony spent his first school years at bilingual schools. After the divorce of his parents in 1968, he lived with his mother. He was a rebellious and wild child and his parents sent him to a boarding school.
When 19, Delon had his own leather company and part-owned a club, but his business partner in the venture was shot. Delon himself, for unrelated incidents, went to prison for a month. In the US, his genes and his good looks helped him get a modelling job with American photographer Bruce Weber.
This lead to a leading part in the Italian romance-drama Una spina nel cuore/A Thorn in the Heart (Alberto Lattuada, 1986), loosely based on the novel with the same title by Piero Chiara. His co-stars were Sophie Duez and Antonella Lualdi .
Even more prestigious was his next leading part in the drama Crónica de una muerte anunciada/Chronicle of a Death Foretold (Francesco Rosi, 1987), adapted by Tonino Guerra from the eponymous novel by Gabriel García Márquez. The film also starred Rupert Everett , Ornella Muti , and Gian Maria Volonté, and premiered at the Cannes film festival in May 1987.
According to Wikipedia , the film was a critical success in Latin America and Eastern Europe but was snubbed by the French critics.
At 24, Delon returned to the US and lived in Los Angeles for two years. He took some acting classes for about six months, and then just partied. He was even once, alongside Ivana Trump, Joan Collins and Richard Branson, one of the Miss World judges. During the 1980s, playboy Delon was one of the boyfriends of Princess Stéphanie of Monaco, and he also had a relationship with sexy actress Valerie Kaprisky.
French postcard by Editions Humour à la Carte, Paris, no. ST-184.
Italian postcard. Photo: publicity still for the Italian romance-drama Una spina nel cuore/A Thorn in the Heart (Alberto Lattuada, 1986) with Sophie Duez.
A Huge Box Office Smash
In 1990 Anthony Delon returned to France. He played parts in the film comedies La Femme fardée/The Strange Woman (José Pinheiro, 1990) with Jeanne Moreau , which was a spectacular flop.
He found most of his work on TV in series and films like Sup de fric/Cash Academy (Christian Gion, 1992), starring Jean Poiret.
Ten years after Crónica de una muerte anunciada, Delon played a small role in the French film La Vérité si je mens!/Would I Lie to You? (Thomas Gilou, 1997), about working-class immigrants living in metropolitan Paris. It was a huge box office smash and lead to two sequels.
For Delon, the success meant he could finally step out of the shadow of his father. That same year, he played the lead in the TV miniseries Deserto di fuoco/Desert of Fire (Enzo G. Castellari, 1997). This was a European co-production between Italy, Germany and France, with a cast including such European stars as Claudia Cardinale , Arielle Dombasle, Vittorio Gassman , Marie Laforêt , Franco Nero , Fabio Testi and Jean Sorel .
The following years, he played several roles in French TV series and films. In the TV film Un amour de femme (Sylvie Verheyde, 2001) he played the husband of a woman (Hélène Fillières) who has an affair with a female dance instructor (Raffaëla Anderson).
Other films were the comedy Jeu de cons/Con Games (Jean-Michel Verner, 2001), the drama Danse avec lui/Dance With Him (Valérie Guignabodet, 2007) with Mathilde Seigner and Sami Frey, and Mensch (Steve Suissa, 2009) starring Nicolas Cazalé.
French postcard no. 68.
French postcard no. 1023.
That Essential Quality Of Being Alive
In 2006, Anthony Delon married his long-time girlfriend Sophie Clerico. He has two daughters with her, Lou Delon (1996) and Liv Delon (2001).
In his autobiography, Le premier maillon (2008), he wrote that he has another daughter, Alyson Le Borges (1986), from an affair with a former Crazy Horse dancer, Marie Hélène.
Recently, Delon appeared with Charles Dance and Anouk Aimée in the British film Paris Connections (Harley Cokeliss, 2010) written by Michael Tupy, based on a thriller by Jackie Collins. It was the first film funded by supermarket Tesco and released exclusively in their stores.
He also had a small part in the French drama film Polisse/Poliss (Maïwenn, 2011) with French rapper Joeystarr, Karin Viard, and Riccardo Scamarcio. The film centres on the Brigade de Protection des Mineurs, the Child Protection Unit of the Paris Police, and a photographer who is assigned to cover the unit. The title is a childish spelling of the word ‘police’. The film won the Jury Prize at the 2011 Cannes Film Festival and in 2012, it was nominated for thirteen César Awards (the French Oscar), winning two.
James Travers at French Film Guide (formerly Films de France ): “Yet, whilst the film is crude, and unbearably tacky in a few places, it has that essential quality of being alive. In fact, it is a film that positively bursts with life. If we care to look beyond the soap-tinted surface, the characters and the world they inhabit do have a depth and reality to them, we do empathise with the troubled child protagonists and acquire a deeper respect for their police protectors. It is a film that it is difficult to like entirely, and some will doubtless hate it for the inelegant way it knocks the stuffing out of today's mainstream cinema conventions, yet it is a film that has definitely made its mark.”
Clip of Anthony Delon singing Qu'elle Revienne... (1987). Source: Bultofrance (YouTube).
Trailer Paris Connections (2010). Source: Parisconnections (YouTube).
Sources: Tobias Jones (The Independent), James Travers (French Film Guide), AllMovie, AlloCiné (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and .
March 20, 2014
Laurent Terzieff
During the 1960s and 1970s handsome French actor Laurent Terzieff (1935-2010) starred in many films by noted French and Italian directors. The magnetic and politically engaged actor began his film career as one of the existential youth in Les Tricheurs (1958) and later often portrayed cynical bohemians or political activists.
French Postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 1007. Photo: Studio Vallois.
French Postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 1099. Photo: Studio Vauclair.
French Postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 963. Photo: Studio Vauclair.
Bohemian and Cynical Student
Laurent Terzieff was born Laurent Didier Alex Laurent Tchemerzine in 1935 in Toulouse, France. He was the son of a French visual artist and a Russian sculptor who had emigrated to France during the First World War.
The spectacle of the bombardments during WW II had a dramatic effect on nine-year-old Laurent. As an adolescent, he was fascinated with philosophy and poetry.
He assisted director Roger Blin by the production of the play La Sonate des spectres (The Ghost Sonata) by August Strindberg. Then and there, he decided to become an actor.
Terzieff made his debut in 1953 with the Theatre of Babylon in Tous contre Adamov (All Against Adamov) by Jean-Marie Serreau. His film début was opposite Yves Montand in Premier mai/The First of May (Luis Saslavsky, 1958).
A year earlier he had gained some notoriety playing a role as an assassin in L'affaire Weidmann/The Weidmann case (Jean Prat, 1957), an episode of the TV series En votre âme et conscience/In your conscience (1954-1969).
Legendary director Marcel Carné spotted him and offered him a leading role opposite Pascale Petit , Jacques Charrier and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Les Tricheurs/The Cheats (Marcel Carné, 1958), a portrait of the existentialist youth in the late 1950s.
At AllMovie , Hal Erickson writes: “Carné's youthful characters are not so much people as symbols of the postwar relaxation of worldwide manners and mores. In anticipation of the hippie flicks of the 1960s, the main characters indulge in a great deal of sex, but abstain from true love and commitment, citing these things as irrelevant in a world full of instant gratification.“
Les Tricheurs was Terzieff’s breakthrough in the cinema. For a long time, the public would identify him with the bohemian and cynical student.
French Postcard by St. Anne, Marseille. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 71. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Famous Directors
Laurent Terzieff played roles in films by such famous directors as Gillo Pontecorvo in Kapò (1959) about a young Jewish girl (Susan Strasberg) who leads an escape attempt from a concentration camp, Claude Autant-Lara in Tu ne tueras point/Thou Shalt Not Kill (1961), a portrait of a conscientious objector, and Jacques Demy in the portmanteau (omnibus film) Les Sept Péchés/The Seven Deadly Sins (1962). He appeared in a segment about the lusty conversation between two young men, one of whom has x-ray eyes that enable him to see through women's clothing.
Terzieff starred with Rosanna Schiaffino and Elsa Martinelli in the Italian film La Notte Brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959). Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote this social drama about three young Roman criminals and three beautiful prostitutes without any perspective in life but having some money to spend during a night of illusions and adventures.
More famous Italian film directors would ask him for their films. Terzieff appeared as a revolutionary on the run from government troops in Vanina Vanini/The Betrayer (Roberto Rossellini, 1961), as the centaur in Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) opposite Maria Callas, as an anarchistic petty thief in Ostia (Sergio Citti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970), and as a military in Il deserto dei Tartari/Desert of the Tartars (Valerio Zurlini, 1976) opposite Vittorio Gassman and Jacques Perrin .
In France, he played in A cœur joie/Two Weeks in September (Serge Bourguignon, 1967) with Brigitte Bardot , and La Prisonnière/Woman in Chains (Henri Georges Clouzot, 1968), in which he interpreted a disturbed modern art gallery owner who manipulates Elisabeth Wiener .
He made four films with director Philippe Garrel. Le Révélateur/The developper (Philippe Garrel, 1968) was shot in May 1968 during the student revolution, and Les hautes solitudes (Philippe Garrel, 1974), a biographical film about actress Jean Seberg.
Terzieff worked with more great auteurs. Famous Spanish director Luis Buñuel took him and Paul Frankeur on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in La Voie lactée/The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969). He was once directed by Jean-Luc Godard in Détective/Detective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985).
On television he appeared in the American-Italian Mini-Series Moses the Lawgiver/Moses (Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974) starring Burt Lancaster.
French Postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 994. Photo: De Kermadec.
French Postcard by Editions La Malibran, Paris, no. T 2. Photo: Claude Schwartz.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2992, 1967. Photo: Progress.
Director, Writer and Actor
Since the 1980s, Laurent Terzieff was seen less in the cinemas, and mostly acted on stage. In the theatre he often worked as a director, writer and actor with his own troupe, co-founded in 1961 with his companion Pascale de Boysson. He also ran the theatre Lucernaire in Paris.
His later film roles include a Trotskyist in Rouge Baiser/Red Kiss (Véra Belmont, 1985), an anarchist in Germinal (Claude Berri, 1993) starring Gérard Depardieu , and the painter Hérigault in Le radeau de la Méduse/The Raft of the Medusa (Iradj Azimi, 1994), inspired by a tragic maritime event that happened in 1816.
Politically engaged, Terzieff signed in 1960 La Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la Guerre d'Algérie (Declaration on the Right of Insubordination in the War of Algeria), and in 2002, the petition Pas en notre nom (Not in our name) against the Iraq War.
In his seventies, the gaunt-faced actor had not lost his magnetism, as was proved by his appearance in the Agatha Christie adaptation Mon petit doigt m'a dit.../A Little Bird Told Me... (Pascal Thomas, 2005) with Catherine Frot and André Dussollier.
Terzieff also stayed active in the theatre. In 2009 he played an acclaimed Philoctetes in the play by Sophocles.
His last films were the comedy J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster/I always dreamed of being a gangster (Samuel Benchetrit, 2008) with Jean Rochefort, and the Italian production Le ombre rosse/The Red Shadow (Francesco Maselli, 2009). Posthumously he was seen opposite Sharon Stone in the thriller Largo Winch 2/The Burma Conspiracy (Jérôme Salle, 2011).
During his long career Laurent Terzieff was hailed with many awards (Prix Gérard Philippe, Molière for Best director and Best Show for Temps contre temps (Time against time) in 1993), and he was also an Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite (Officer of the Order of Merit) and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (Commander of Arts and Letters).
Laurent Terzieff died in 2010 in Paris from a lung ailment. He was 75. He was the widower of actress Pascale de Boysson.
Final scene of La Notte Brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (1959). Source: VigGig88 (YouTube).
Scene from La Voie lactée/The Milky Way (1969). (Spanish subtitles). Source: Carlospejino8 (YouTube).
Trailer of Détective/Detective (1985). Source: Danios 12345 (YouTube).
Trailer of Germinal (1993). Source: sonysloba (YouTube).
Sources: Hans Beerekamp (Het Schimmenrijk) (Dutch), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Evene.fr (French), Ciné-Ressources (Cinémathèque française) (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and .
French Postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 1007. Photo: Studio Vallois.
French Postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 1099. Photo: Studio Vauclair.
French Postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 963. Photo: Studio Vauclair.
Bohemian and Cynical Student
Laurent Terzieff was born Laurent Didier Alex Laurent Tchemerzine in 1935 in Toulouse, France. He was the son of a French visual artist and a Russian sculptor who had emigrated to France during the First World War.
The spectacle of the bombardments during WW II had a dramatic effect on nine-year-old Laurent. As an adolescent, he was fascinated with philosophy and poetry.
He assisted director Roger Blin by the production of the play La Sonate des spectres (The Ghost Sonata) by August Strindberg. Then and there, he decided to become an actor.
Terzieff made his debut in 1953 with the Theatre of Babylon in Tous contre Adamov (All Against Adamov) by Jean-Marie Serreau. His film début was opposite Yves Montand in Premier mai/The First of May (Luis Saslavsky, 1958).
A year earlier he had gained some notoriety playing a role as an assassin in L'affaire Weidmann/The Weidmann case (Jean Prat, 1957), an episode of the TV series En votre âme et conscience/In your conscience (1954-1969).
Legendary director Marcel Carné spotted him and offered him a leading role opposite Pascale Petit , Jacques Charrier and Jean-Paul Belmondo in Les Tricheurs/The Cheats (Marcel Carné, 1958), a portrait of the existentialist youth in the late 1950s.
At AllMovie , Hal Erickson writes: “Carné's youthful characters are not so much people as symbols of the postwar relaxation of worldwide manners and mores. In anticipation of the hippie flicks of the 1960s, the main characters indulge in a great deal of sex, but abstain from true love and commitment, citing these things as irrelevant in a world full of instant gratification.“
Les Tricheurs was Terzieff’s breakthrough in the cinema. For a long time, the public would identify him with the bohemian and cynical student.
French Postcard by St. Anne, Marseille. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 71. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Famous Directors
Laurent Terzieff played roles in films by such famous directors as Gillo Pontecorvo in Kapò (1959) about a young Jewish girl (Susan Strasberg) who leads an escape attempt from a concentration camp, Claude Autant-Lara in Tu ne tueras point/Thou Shalt Not Kill (1961), a portrait of a conscientious objector, and Jacques Demy in the portmanteau (omnibus film) Les Sept Péchés/The Seven Deadly Sins (1962). He appeared in a segment about the lusty conversation between two young men, one of whom has x-ray eyes that enable him to see through women's clothing.
Terzieff starred with Rosanna Schiaffino and Elsa Martinelli in the Italian film La Notte Brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (Mauro Bolognini, 1959). Pier Paolo Pasolini wrote this social drama about three young Roman criminals and three beautiful prostitutes without any perspective in life but having some money to spend during a night of illusions and adventures.
More famous Italian film directors would ask him for their films. Terzieff appeared as a revolutionary on the run from government troops in Vanina Vanini/The Betrayer (Roberto Rossellini, 1961), as the centaur in Medea (Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1969) opposite Maria Callas, as an anarchistic petty thief in Ostia (Sergio Citti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, 1970), and as a military in Il deserto dei Tartari/Desert of the Tartars (Valerio Zurlini, 1976) opposite Vittorio Gassman and Jacques Perrin .
In France, he played in A cœur joie/Two Weeks in September (Serge Bourguignon, 1967) with Brigitte Bardot , and La Prisonnière/Woman in Chains (Henri Georges Clouzot, 1968), in which he interpreted a disturbed modern art gallery owner who manipulates Elisabeth Wiener .
He made four films with director Philippe Garrel. Le Révélateur/The developper (Philippe Garrel, 1968) was shot in May 1968 during the student revolution, and Les hautes solitudes (Philippe Garrel, 1974), a biographical film about actress Jean Seberg.
Terzieff worked with more great auteurs. Famous Spanish director Luis Buñuel took him and Paul Frankeur on a pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in La Voie lactée/The Milky Way (Luis Buñuel, 1969). He was once directed by Jean-Luc Godard in Détective/Detective (Jean-Luc Godard, 1985).
On television he appeared in the American-Italian Mini-Series Moses the Lawgiver/Moses (Gianfranco De Bosio, 1974) starring Burt Lancaster.
French Postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 994. Photo: De Kermadec.
French Postcard by Editions La Malibran, Paris, no. T 2. Photo: Claude Schwartz.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2992, 1967. Photo: Progress.
Director, Writer and Actor
Since the 1980s, Laurent Terzieff was seen less in the cinemas, and mostly acted on stage. In the theatre he often worked as a director, writer and actor with his own troupe, co-founded in 1961 with his companion Pascale de Boysson. He also ran the theatre Lucernaire in Paris.
His later film roles include a Trotskyist in Rouge Baiser/Red Kiss (Véra Belmont, 1985), an anarchist in Germinal (Claude Berri, 1993) starring Gérard Depardieu , and the painter Hérigault in Le radeau de la Méduse/The Raft of the Medusa (Iradj Azimi, 1994), inspired by a tragic maritime event that happened in 1816.
Politically engaged, Terzieff signed in 1960 La Déclaration sur le droit à l'insoumission dans la Guerre d'Algérie (Declaration on the Right of Insubordination in the War of Algeria), and in 2002, the petition Pas en notre nom (Not in our name) against the Iraq War.
In his seventies, the gaunt-faced actor had not lost his magnetism, as was proved by his appearance in the Agatha Christie adaptation Mon petit doigt m'a dit.../A Little Bird Told Me... (Pascal Thomas, 2005) with Catherine Frot and André Dussollier.
Terzieff also stayed active in the theatre. In 2009 he played an acclaimed Philoctetes in the play by Sophocles.
His last films were the comedy J'ai toujours rêvé d'être un gangster/I always dreamed of being a gangster (Samuel Benchetrit, 2008) with Jean Rochefort, and the Italian production Le ombre rosse/The Red Shadow (Francesco Maselli, 2009). Posthumously he was seen opposite Sharon Stone in the thriller Largo Winch 2/The Burma Conspiracy (Jérôme Salle, 2011).
During his long career Laurent Terzieff was hailed with many awards (Prix Gérard Philippe, Molière for Best director and Best Show for Temps contre temps (Time against time) in 1993), and he was also an Officier de l'Ordre du Mérite (Officer of the Order of Merit) and Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres (Commander of Arts and Letters).
Laurent Terzieff died in 2010 in Paris from a lung ailment. He was 75. He was the widower of actress Pascale de Boysson.
Final scene of La Notte Brava/Bad Girls Don't Cry (1959). Source: VigGig88 (YouTube).
Scene from La Voie lactée/The Milky Way (1969). (Spanish subtitles). Source: Carlospejino8 (YouTube).
Trailer of Détective/Detective (1985). Source: Danios 12345 (YouTube).
Trailer of Germinal (1993). Source: sonysloba (YouTube).
Sources: Hans Beerekamp (Het Schimmenrijk) (Dutch), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Evene.fr (French), Ciné-Ressources (Cinémathèque française) (French), Wikipedia (French and English), and .
March 19, 2014
Albert Paulig
Albert Paulig (1873-1933) was a popular comedian in the German silent cinema of the 1910s and 1920s.
German postcard in the Film-Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 122/2. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin. Ca. 1916-1918.
His Own Comedy Series
Born in Stollberg, Germany in 1873, Albert Paulig was trained to become a teacher. He also did a musical training at the Konservatorium Dresden (conservatory of Dresden), but initially he became a salesman.
In 1896 he had his stage debut at the Stadttheater in Zwickau. Other locations he performed were Łódź, Hannover and Dresden. In 1901 he first performed in Berlin at the Deutsch-Amerikanischen Theater, after which he did several guest performances in other Berlin stages.
In 1913, when he was already 40, Albert Paulig was discovered as a film comedian. Because of his success he got his own series in the 1910s, the Albert-Paulig series, with titles just as simple as Paulig als Asta Nielsen/Paulig as Asta Nielsen (Albert Paulig, 1915) or Albert hat Prokura/Albert has the power of attorney (Uwe Jenss Kraft 1919).
Starting with Alberts Hose/Albert’s Pants (1915), Paulig directed his own comedy series. But in between he also acted in films by other directors.
Paulig for example played opposite Ernst Lubisch in both the popular success Die Firma heiratet/The Firm Weds (Carl Wilhelm, 1914) and its unofficial sequel Der Stolz der Firma/The Pride of the Firm (Carl Wilhelm, 1914). He also co-starred with Hanni Weisse in Meine Braut, seine Frau/My bride, his wife (Danny Kaden, 1916).
German postcard by G.L., no. 3172/3. Photo: Elite, Berlin. Albert Paulig, Alfred Walters and Fritzi Arco in the operetta Die Dollarprinzessin (The dollar princess). This operetta by Leo Fall was first performed in Vienna in 1907, this card is for the Berlin version of 1908.
Strong Popularity
After he stopped his Albert-Paulig series in 1919, Paulig’s popularity remained strong among audiences. During the 1920s, he acted in over 100 films. While Albert Paulig mostly performed in supporting parts, he sometimes had major parts as the protagonist or the main antagonist.
Albert Paulig co-starred with Mia May and Georg Alexander in the comedy Die platonische Ehe/The platonic marriage (Paul Leni, 1919), and acted with Hans Albers and Ria Jende in Der Schuss aus dem Fenster/The shot out the window (director unknown, 1920).
He did several small parts in the Ossi Oswalda comedies of the late 1910s and early 1920s such as Das Mädchen aus dem wilden Westen/The girl from the Wild West (Erich Schönfelder, 1921). The most famous example is the classic Die Austernprinzessin/The Oyster Princess ( Ernst Lubisch , 1919).
Paulig was reunited with Hanni Weisse in the comedy Weil Du es bist/Because it's you (Hans Werckmeister, 1925). He had the lead as Archduke Albert Paul in G’schichten aus dem Wienerwald/Tales from the Vienna Woods (Jaap Speyer, 1928), co-starring Eric Barclay, Magnus Stifter and Fritz Schulz .
In the later 1920s, he was often seen in supporting parts in the sensational Harry Piel adventure films, such as Der Mann ohne Nerven/The Man Without Nerves (Harry Piel, 1924), Zigano, der Brigant vom Monte Diavolo/Zigano ( Harry Piel , 1925), Sein grösster Bluff/His Greatest Bluff ( Harry Piel , 1927), Panik/Panic (Harry Piel, 1928), and Männer ohne Beruf/Men without Profession ( Harry Piel , 1929).
German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 1332. Berlin. Photo: Willinger.
Army Officers
When sound film set in, Paulig managed to continue his career, often portraying aristocrats and industrials, but in particular army officers. An example of the latter is Schön is die Manöverzeit/Manoeuver Time Is Fine (Erich Schönfelder, Margarete Schön, 1931) with Ida Wüst .
He also acted the musical Es war einmal ein Walzer/Once There Was a Waltz (Victor Janson, 1932) written by Billy Wilder, Der Prinz von Arkadien/The Prince from Arcadien (Karl Hartl, 1932) with Willi Forst, Das Testament des Cornelius Gulden/The Testament of Cornelius Gulden (E.W. Emo, 1932), starring Magda Schneider and Georg Alexander , and Manolescu, der Fürst der Diebe/Manolescu (George C. Klaren, Willi Wolff, 1933), starring Iván Petrovich .
The crime film K1 greift ein/K1 intervenes (Edmund Heuberger, 1933) was his last film.
He couldn’t attend the premiere of the film, as he died himself in Berlin on 19 March 1933, because of a heart failure, two days after the film had passed censorship.
According to Filmportal.de , which lists his most extended filmography, Albert Paulig acted in 183 films.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3024/1, 1928-1929.
Sources: Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (German and English), and .
German postcard in the Film-Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 122/2. Photo: Nicola Perscheid, Berlin. Ca. 1916-1918.
His Own Comedy Series
Born in Stollberg, Germany in 1873, Albert Paulig was trained to become a teacher. He also did a musical training at the Konservatorium Dresden (conservatory of Dresden), but initially he became a salesman.
In 1896 he had his stage debut at the Stadttheater in Zwickau. Other locations he performed were Łódź, Hannover and Dresden. In 1901 he first performed in Berlin at the Deutsch-Amerikanischen Theater, after which he did several guest performances in other Berlin stages.
In 1913, when he was already 40, Albert Paulig was discovered as a film comedian. Because of his success he got his own series in the 1910s, the Albert-Paulig series, with titles just as simple as Paulig als Asta Nielsen/Paulig as Asta Nielsen (Albert Paulig, 1915) or Albert hat Prokura/Albert has the power of attorney (Uwe Jenss Kraft 1919).
Starting with Alberts Hose/Albert’s Pants (1915), Paulig directed his own comedy series. But in between he also acted in films by other directors.
Paulig for example played opposite Ernst Lubisch in both the popular success Die Firma heiratet/The Firm Weds (Carl Wilhelm, 1914) and its unofficial sequel Der Stolz der Firma/The Pride of the Firm (Carl Wilhelm, 1914). He also co-starred with Hanni Weisse in Meine Braut, seine Frau/My bride, his wife (Danny Kaden, 1916).
German postcard by G.L., no. 3172/3. Photo: Elite, Berlin. Albert Paulig, Alfred Walters and Fritzi Arco in the operetta Die Dollarprinzessin (The dollar princess). This operetta by Leo Fall was first performed in Vienna in 1907, this card is for the Berlin version of 1908.
Strong Popularity
After he stopped his Albert-Paulig series in 1919, Paulig’s popularity remained strong among audiences. During the 1920s, he acted in over 100 films. While Albert Paulig mostly performed in supporting parts, he sometimes had major parts as the protagonist or the main antagonist.
Albert Paulig co-starred with Mia May and Georg Alexander in the comedy Die platonische Ehe/The platonic marriage (Paul Leni, 1919), and acted with Hans Albers and Ria Jende in Der Schuss aus dem Fenster/The shot out the window (director unknown, 1920).
He did several small parts in the Ossi Oswalda comedies of the late 1910s and early 1920s such as Das Mädchen aus dem wilden Westen/The girl from the Wild West (Erich Schönfelder, 1921). The most famous example is the classic Die Austernprinzessin/The Oyster Princess ( Ernst Lubisch , 1919).
Paulig was reunited with Hanni Weisse in the comedy Weil Du es bist/Because it's you (Hans Werckmeister, 1925). He had the lead as Archduke Albert Paul in G’schichten aus dem Wienerwald/Tales from the Vienna Woods (Jaap Speyer, 1928), co-starring Eric Barclay, Magnus Stifter and Fritz Schulz .
In the later 1920s, he was often seen in supporting parts in the sensational Harry Piel adventure films, such as Der Mann ohne Nerven/The Man Without Nerves (Harry Piel, 1924), Zigano, der Brigant vom Monte Diavolo/Zigano ( Harry Piel , 1925), Sein grösster Bluff/His Greatest Bluff ( Harry Piel , 1927), Panik/Panic (Harry Piel, 1928), and Männer ohne Beruf/Men without Profession ( Harry Piel , 1929).
German postcard by Photochemie, no. K. 1332. Berlin. Photo: Willinger.
Army Officers
When sound film set in, Paulig managed to continue his career, often portraying aristocrats and industrials, but in particular army officers. An example of the latter is Schön is die Manöverzeit/Manoeuver Time Is Fine (Erich Schönfelder, Margarete Schön, 1931) with Ida Wüst .
He also acted the musical Es war einmal ein Walzer/Once There Was a Waltz (Victor Janson, 1932) written by Billy Wilder, Der Prinz von Arkadien/The Prince from Arcadien (Karl Hartl, 1932) with Willi Forst, Das Testament des Cornelius Gulden/The Testament of Cornelius Gulden (E.W. Emo, 1932), starring Magda Schneider and Georg Alexander , and Manolescu, der Fürst der Diebe/Manolescu (George C. Klaren, Willi Wolff, 1933), starring Iván Petrovich .
The crime film K1 greift ein/K1 intervenes (Edmund Heuberger, 1933) was his last film.
He couldn’t attend the premiere of the film, as he died himself in Berlin on 19 March 1933, because of a heart failure, two days after the film had passed censorship.
According to Filmportal.de , which lists his most extended filmography, Albert Paulig acted in 183 films.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3024/1, 1928-1929.
Sources: Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (German and English), and .
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