Paul van Yperen's Blog, page 427
February 26, 2014
Peter Lorre
Peter Lorre (1904–1964) with his trademark large, popped eyes, his toothy grin and his raspy voice was an American actor of Jewish Austro-Hungarian descent. He was an international sensation as the psychopathic child murderer in Fritz Lang’s M (1931). He later became a popular actor in a two British Hitchcock films and in a series of Hollywood crime films and mysteries. Although he was frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner in the US, he also became the star of the successful Mr. Moto detective series.
Dutch postcard, no. 850. Photo: Warner Bros.
Bertold Brecht
Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in 1904 in the Austro-Hungarian town of Ružomberok in Slovakia, then known by its Hungarian name Rózsahegy. He was the first child of Jewish couple Alajos Löwenstein and Elvira Freischberger. His father was chief bookkeeper at a local textile mill. Besides working as a bookkeeper, Alajos Löwenstein also served as a lieutenant in the Austrian army reserve, which meant that he was often away on military manoeuvres.
When Lorre was four years old, his mother died, probably of food poisoning, leaving Alajos with three very young sons, the youngest only a couple of months old. He soon remarried, to his wife's best friend, Melanie Klein, with whom he had two more children. However, Lorre and his stepmother never got along, and this coloured his childhood memories.
At the outbreak of the Second Balkan War in 1913, Alajos moved the family to Vienna, anticipating that this would lead to a larger conflict and that he would be called up. He was, at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and served on the Eastern front during the winter of 1914-1915, before being put in charge of a prison camp due to heart trouble.
As a youth Peter Lorre ran away from home, worked as a bank clerk and, after stage training in Vienna, made his acting debut in Zurich in Switzerland at the age of 17. In Vienna he worked with the Viennese Art Nouveau artist and puppeteer Richard Teschner. He then moved to the then German town of Breslau, and later to Zürich.
In the late 1920s, Peter Lorre moved to Berlin, where the young and short (165 cm) actor worked with German playwright Bertolt Brecht. He made his film debut in a bit role in the Austrian silent film Die Verschwundene Frau/The vanished woman (Karl Leitner, 1929), followed by another small part in the German drama Der weiße Teufel/The White Devil (Alexandre Volkoff, 1930) starring Ivan Mozzhukhin .
On stage and in the cinema, Lorre played a role in Brecht's Mann ist Mann/A Man's a Man (Bertolt Brecht, Carl Koch, 1930) and as Dr Nakamura in the stage musical Happy End (music by composer Kurt Weill), alongside Brecht's wife Helene Weigel, Oskar Homolka and Kurt Gerron.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1033A. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
Fritz Lang
Peter Lorre became much better known after director Fritz Lang cast him cast in the lead role of Hans Beckert, the mentally ill child murderer in the classic thriller M (1931).
Later, the Nazi propaganda film Der ewige Jude/The Eternal Jew (Fritz Hippler, 1940) used an excerpt from the climactic scene in M in which Lorre is trapped by vengeful citizens. His passionate plea that his compulsion is uncontrollable, says the voice-over, makes him sympathetic and is an example of attempts by Jewish artists to corrupt public morals.
M was Lang’s first sound film and he revealed the expressive possibilities for combining sound and visuals. Lorre's character whistles the tune In the Hall of the Mountain King from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. (Lorre himself could not whistle – it is actually Lang who is heard.)
The film was one of the first to use a leitmotif, associating In the Hall of the Mountain King with the Lorre character. Later in the film, the mere sound of the song lets the audience know that he is nearby, off-screen. This association of a musical theme with a particular character or situation, a technique borrowed from opera, is now a film staple.
Lorre’s next role was the German musical comedy Bomben auf Monte Carlo/Monte Carlo Madness (Hanns Schwarz, 1931) starring Hans Albers and Anna Sten . That year he also co-starred in the comedy Die Koffer des Herrn O.F./The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (Alexis Granowsky, 1931) starring Alfred Abel , and Harald Paulsen.
In 1932 Lorre appeared again alongside Hans Albers in the drama Der weiße Dämon/The White Demon (Kurt Gerron, 1932) and the science fiction film F.P.1 antwortet nicht/F.P.1 Doesn't Respond (Karl Hartl, 1932) about an air station in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Curt Siodmak had written the story after Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. It was the last German film that either Siodmak or Lorre, who played a secondary character, would make in Germany before the war.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1033. Photo: Gaumont British.
Alfred Hitchcock
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Peter Lorre took refuge in Paris, where he appeared with Jean Gabin and Michel Simon in the charming comedy Du haut en bas/High and Low (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933).
Then Lorre moved on to London. There Ivor Montagu, Alfred Hitchcock's associate producer for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), reminded the director about Lorre's performance in M. They first considered him to play the assassin in the film, but wanted to use him in a larger role, despite his limited command of English at the time, which Lorre overcame by learning much of his part phonetically.
The Man Who Knew Too Much was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock's British period. Lorre also was featured in Hitchcock's Secret Agent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936), opposite John Gielgud and Madeleine Carroll .
Lorre settled in Hollywood in 1935, where he specialized in playing sinister foreigners, beginning as the love-obsessed surgeon in the horror film Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935), and as Raskolnikov in the Fyodor Dostoevsky adaptation Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sternberg, 1936).
He starred in a series of eight Mr. Moto movies for Twentieth Century Fox, a parallel to the better known Charlie Chan series. Lorre played the ever-polite (albeit well versed in karate) Japanese detective Mr. Moto. According to Wikipedia , he did not enjoy these films — and twisted his shoulder during a stunt in Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (Norman Foster, 1939) — but they were lucrative for the studio.
When the series folded in 1939, Lorre free-lanced in villainous roles at several studios. In 1940, he co-starred with fellow horror actors Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in the comedy You'll Find Out (David Butler, 1940), a vehicle for bandleader and radio personality Kay Kyser.
Postcard (ca. 1970s).
Sydney Greenstreet
In 1941, Peter Lorre became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He enjoyed considerable popularity as a featured player in Warner Bros. suspense and adventure films. Lorre played the role of effeminate thief Joel Cairo opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), a classic film noir based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett.
The Maltese Falcon was Huston's directorial debut and was nominated for three Academy Awards. Then Lorre portrayed the character Ugarte in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
One of his co-stars in both films was Sydney Greenstreet with whom he made 9 films. Most of them were variations on Casablanca, including Background to Danger (Raoul Walsh, 1943), with George Raft; Passage to Marseille (Michael Curtiz, 1944), reuniting them with Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains , and Three Strangers (Jean Negulesco, 1946).
Three Strangers was a suspense film about three people who are joint partners on a winning lottery ticket starring top-billed Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and third-billed Lorre cast against type by director as the romantic lead.
Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “As far as director Jean Negulesco was concerned, Lorre was the finest actor in Hollywood; Negulesco fought bitterly with the studio brass for permission to cast Lorre as the sympathetic leading man in The Mask of Dimitrios (1946), in which the diminutive actor gave one of his finest and subtlest performances.”
Greenstreet and Lorre's final film together was the suspense thriller The Verdict (1946), director Don Siegel's first film. Lorre branched out into comedy with the role of Dr. Einstein in Frank Capra's version of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), starring Cary Grant and Raymond Massey.
Trailer M (1931). Source: Ageless Trailers (YouTube).
James Bond Villain
After World War II, Peter Lorre's acting career in Hollywood experienced a downturn, whereupon he concentrated on radio and stage work. An exception was the horror classic The Beast with Five Fingers (Robert Florey, 1946).
In Germany Lorre co-wrote, directed and starred in Der Verlorene/The Lost One (1951), an art film in the film noir idiom. Hal Erickson: “In keeping with Lorre's established screen persona, this is a tale of stark terror, disillusionment and defeatism. The actor stars as Dr. Rothe, a German research scientist who during WW2 discovers that his fiancée has been selling his scientific secrets to the British. In a fit of pique, he murders her, but is not punished for the crime, which is passed off by the Nazi authorities as justifiable homicide. (...) Not entirely successful, Der Verlorene is still a fascinating exercise in fatalism from one of the cinema's most distinctive talents.”
Lorre then returned to the United States where he appeared as a character actor in television and feature films, often parodying his 'creepy' image. In 1954, he was the first actor to play a James Bond villain when he portrayed Le Chiffre in a television adaptation of Casino Royale, opposite Barry Nelson as an American James Bond and Linda Christian as the first Bond girl.
Lorre starred alongside Kirk Douglas and James Mason in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (Richard Fleischer, 1954), and appeared in a supporting role in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Irwin Allen, 1961).
He worked with Roger Corman on several low-budget films, including two of the director's Edgar Allan Poe cycle (Tales of Terror, 1962 and The Raven, 1963).
He was married three times: actress Celia Lovsky (1934–1945); actress Kaaren Verne (1945–1950) and Anne Marie Brenning (1953-1964, his death). In 1953, Brenning bore his only child, Catharine.
In later life, Catharine made headlines after serial killer Kenneth Bianchi confessed to police investigators after his arrest that he and his cousin and fellow Hillside Strangler Angelo Buono, disguised as police officers, had stopped her in 1977 with the intent of abducting and murdering her, but let her go upon learning that she was the daughter of Peter Lorre. It was only after Bianchi was arrested that Catharine realized whom she had met. Catharine died in 1985 of complications arising from diabetes.
Lorre had suffered for years from chronic gallbladder troubles, for which doctors had prescribed morphine. Lorre became trapped between the constant pain and addiction to morphine to ease the problem. It was during the period of the Mr. Moto films that Lorre struggled and overcame his addiction. Abruptly gaining a hundred pounds in a very short period and never fully recovering from his addiction to morphine, Lorre suffered many personal and career disappointments in his later years.
His final film was the Jerry Lewis comedy The Patsy (Jerry Lewis, 1964) in which, ironically, the dourly demonic Lorre played a director of comedy films. A few months after completing this film, Peter Lorre died of a stroke in 1964 in Los Angeles. He was 59.
Scene from The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Source: Mill Creek Entertainment (YouTube).
Scene from Der Verlorene/The Lost One (1951). Source: CineKarmakar (YouTube).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
Dutch postcard, no. 850. Photo: Warner Bros.
Bertold Brecht
Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in 1904 in the Austro-Hungarian town of Ružomberok in Slovakia, then known by its Hungarian name Rózsahegy. He was the first child of Jewish couple Alajos Löwenstein and Elvira Freischberger. His father was chief bookkeeper at a local textile mill. Besides working as a bookkeeper, Alajos Löwenstein also served as a lieutenant in the Austrian army reserve, which meant that he was often away on military manoeuvres.
When Lorre was four years old, his mother died, probably of food poisoning, leaving Alajos with three very young sons, the youngest only a couple of months old. He soon remarried, to his wife's best friend, Melanie Klein, with whom he had two more children. However, Lorre and his stepmother never got along, and this coloured his childhood memories.
At the outbreak of the Second Balkan War in 1913, Alajos moved the family to Vienna, anticipating that this would lead to a larger conflict and that he would be called up. He was, at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and served on the Eastern front during the winter of 1914-1915, before being put in charge of a prison camp due to heart trouble.
As a youth Peter Lorre ran away from home, worked as a bank clerk and, after stage training in Vienna, made his acting debut in Zurich in Switzerland at the age of 17. In Vienna he worked with the Viennese Art Nouveau artist and puppeteer Richard Teschner. He then moved to the then German town of Breslau, and later to Zürich.
In the late 1920s, Peter Lorre moved to Berlin, where the young and short (165 cm) actor worked with German playwright Bertolt Brecht. He made his film debut in a bit role in the Austrian silent film Die Verschwundene Frau/The vanished woman (Karl Leitner, 1929), followed by another small part in the German drama Der weiße Teufel/The White Devil (Alexandre Volkoff, 1930) starring Ivan Mozzhukhin .
On stage and in the cinema, Lorre played a role in Brecht's Mann ist Mann/A Man's a Man (Bertolt Brecht, Carl Koch, 1930) and as Dr Nakamura in the stage musical Happy End (music by composer Kurt Weill), alongside Brecht's wife Helene Weigel, Oskar Homolka and Kurt Gerron.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1033A. Photo: 20th Century Fox.
Fritz Lang
Peter Lorre became much better known after director Fritz Lang cast him cast in the lead role of Hans Beckert, the mentally ill child murderer in the classic thriller M (1931).
Later, the Nazi propaganda film Der ewige Jude/The Eternal Jew (Fritz Hippler, 1940) used an excerpt from the climactic scene in M in which Lorre is trapped by vengeful citizens. His passionate plea that his compulsion is uncontrollable, says the voice-over, makes him sympathetic and is an example of attempts by Jewish artists to corrupt public morals.
M was Lang’s first sound film and he revealed the expressive possibilities for combining sound and visuals. Lorre's character whistles the tune In the Hall of the Mountain King from Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1. (Lorre himself could not whistle – it is actually Lang who is heard.)
The film was one of the first to use a leitmotif, associating In the Hall of the Mountain King with the Lorre character. Later in the film, the mere sound of the song lets the audience know that he is nearby, off-screen. This association of a musical theme with a particular character or situation, a technique borrowed from opera, is now a film staple.
Lorre’s next role was the German musical comedy Bomben auf Monte Carlo/Monte Carlo Madness (Hanns Schwarz, 1931) starring Hans Albers and Anna Sten . That year he also co-starred in the comedy Die Koffer des Herrn O.F./The Trunks of Mr. O.F. (Alexis Granowsky, 1931) starring Alfred Abel , and Harald Paulsen.
In 1932 Lorre appeared again alongside Hans Albers in the drama Der weiße Dämon/The White Demon (Kurt Gerron, 1932) and the science fiction film F.P.1 antwortet nicht/F.P.1 Doesn't Respond (Karl Hartl, 1932) about an air station in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Curt Siodmak had written the story after Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic flight. It was the last German film that either Siodmak or Lorre, who played a secondary character, would make in Germany before the war.
British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. 1033. Photo: Gaumont British.
Alfred Hitchcock
When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Peter Lorre took refuge in Paris, where he appeared with Jean Gabin and Michel Simon in the charming comedy Du haut en bas/High and Low (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1933).
Then Lorre moved on to London. There Ivor Montagu, Alfred Hitchcock's associate producer for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), reminded the director about Lorre's performance in M. They first considered him to play the assassin in the film, but wanted to use him in a larger role, despite his limited command of English at the time, which Lorre overcame by learning much of his part phonetically.
The Man Who Knew Too Much was one of the most successful and critically acclaimed films of Hitchcock's British period. Lorre also was featured in Hitchcock's Secret Agent (Alfred Hitchcock, 1936), opposite John Gielgud and Madeleine Carroll .
Lorre settled in Hollywood in 1935, where he specialized in playing sinister foreigners, beginning as the love-obsessed surgeon in the horror film Mad Love (Karl Freund, 1935), and as Raskolnikov in the Fyodor Dostoevsky adaptation Crime and Punishment (Josef von Sternberg, 1936).
He starred in a series of eight Mr. Moto movies for Twentieth Century Fox, a parallel to the better known Charlie Chan series. Lorre played the ever-polite (albeit well versed in karate) Japanese detective Mr. Moto. According to Wikipedia , he did not enjoy these films — and twisted his shoulder during a stunt in Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (Norman Foster, 1939) — but they were lucrative for the studio.
When the series folded in 1939, Lorre free-lanced in villainous roles at several studios. In 1940, he co-starred with fellow horror actors Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in the comedy You'll Find Out (David Butler, 1940), a vehicle for bandleader and radio personality Kay Kyser.
Postcard (ca. 1970s).
Sydney Greenstreet
In 1941, Peter Lorre became a naturalized citizen of the United States. He enjoyed considerable popularity as a featured player in Warner Bros. suspense and adventure films. Lorre played the role of effeminate thief Joel Cairo opposite Humphrey Bogart in The Maltese Falcon (John Huston, 1941), a classic film noir based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett.
The Maltese Falcon was Huston's directorial debut and was nominated for three Academy Awards. Then Lorre portrayed the character Ugarte in Casablanca (Michael Curtiz, 1942).
One of his co-stars in both films was Sydney Greenstreet with whom he made 9 films. Most of them were variations on Casablanca, including Background to Danger (Raoul Walsh, 1943), with George Raft; Passage to Marseille (Michael Curtiz, 1944), reuniting them with Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains , and Three Strangers (Jean Negulesco, 1946).
Three Strangers was a suspense film about three people who are joint partners on a winning lottery ticket starring top-billed Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and third-billed Lorre cast against type by director as the romantic lead.
Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “As far as director Jean Negulesco was concerned, Lorre was the finest actor in Hollywood; Negulesco fought bitterly with the studio brass for permission to cast Lorre as the sympathetic leading man in The Mask of Dimitrios (1946), in which the diminutive actor gave one of his finest and subtlest performances.”
Greenstreet and Lorre's final film together was the suspense thriller The Verdict (1946), director Don Siegel's first film. Lorre branched out into comedy with the role of Dr. Einstein in Frank Capra's version of Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), starring Cary Grant and Raymond Massey.
Trailer M (1931). Source: Ageless Trailers (YouTube).
James Bond Villain
After World War II, Peter Lorre's acting career in Hollywood experienced a downturn, whereupon he concentrated on radio and stage work. An exception was the horror classic The Beast with Five Fingers (Robert Florey, 1946).
In Germany Lorre co-wrote, directed and starred in Der Verlorene/The Lost One (1951), an art film in the film noir idiom. Hal Erickson: “In keeping with Lorre's established screen persona, this is a tale of stark terror, disillusionment and defeatism. The actor stars as Dr. Rothe, a German research scientist who during WW2 discovers that his fiancée has been selling his scientific secrets to the British. In a fit of pique, he murders her, but is not punished for the crime, which is passed off by the Nazi authorities as justifiable homicide. (...) Not entirely successful, Der Verlorene is still a fascinating exercise in fatalism from one of the cinema's most distinctive talents.”
Lorre then returned to the United States where he appeared as a character actor in television and feature films, often parodying his 'creepy' image. In 1954, he was the first actor to play a James Bond villain when he portrayed Le Chiffre in a television adaptation of Casino Royale, opposite Barry Nelson as an American James Bond and Linda Christian as the first Bond girl.
Lorre starred alongside Kirk Douglas and James Mason in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea (Richard Fleischer, 1954), and appeared in a supporting role in Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (Irwin Allen, 1961).
He worked with Roger Corman on several low-budget films, including two of the director's Edgar Allan Poe cycle (Tales of Terror, 1962 and The Raven, 1963).
He was married three times: actress Celia Lovsky (1934–1945); actress Kaaren Verne (1945–1950) and Anne Marie Brenning (1953-1964, his death). In 1953, Brenning bore his only child, Catharine.
In later life, Catharine made headlines after serial killer Kenneth Bianchi confessed to police investigators after his arrest that he and his cousin and fellow Hillside Strangler Angelo Buono, disguised as police officers, had stopped her in 1977 with the intent of abducting and murdering her, but let her go upon learning that she was the daughter of Peter Lorre. It was only after Bianchi was arrested that Catharine realized whom she had met. Catharine died in 1985 of complications arising from diabetes.
Lorre had suffered for years from chronic gallbladder troubles, for which doctors had prescribed morphine. Lorre became trapped between the constant pain and addiction to morphine to ease the problem. It was during the period of the Mr. Moto films that Lorre struggled and overcame his addiction. Abruptly gaining a hundred pounds in a very short period and never fully recovering from his addiction to morphine, Lorre suffered many personal and career disappointments in his later years.
His final film was the Jerry Lewis comedy The Patsy (Jerry Lewis, 1964) in which, ironically, the dourly demonic Lorre played a director of comedy films. A few months after completing this film, Peter Lorre died of a stroke in 1964 in Los Angeles. He was 59.
Scene from The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Source: Mill Creek Entertainment (YouTube).
Scene from Der Verlorene/The Lost One (1951). Source: CineKarmakar (YouTube).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
February 25, 2014
André Claveau
From the 1940s to the 1960s, André Claveau (1911–2003) was a popular singer and film actor in France. He won the 1958 Eurovision Song Contest with Dors, mon amour (Sleep, My Love).
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 160. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Prince Of The Charm Song
André Claveau was born in Paris, France in 1911 (some sources say 1915). He was the only son of an upholsterer and as a young boy, he decided to become a cabinetmaker. In 1919, he became an apprentice to the French Compagnie des Arts, founded by André Mare and Louis Süe. He studied woodworking and cabinetmaking, and later continued his training at the Ecole Boulle.
André worked as a graphic artist and jewellery designer. He created theatre sets (including for L'Hermine by Jean Anouilh), and playbills for such artists as Damia and Jean Lumière.
His singing career began in 1936, when he participated in the amateur contest Premières Chances (First opportunities) organized by the radio station Le Poste Parisien. He won with the song Chez moi. He was accompanied by the pianist and composer Alec Siniavine who went on to accompany him at subsequent performances.
During the next six years, Claveau moved on from the third, to the second and to the first part of the program in various music halls. In 1938, he had a hit with the song Quand un Petit Oiseau (When a little bird) and he made his film debut in Champions de France (Willy Rozier, 1938).
In 1942, during the occupation of France by the Nazis, Claveau was spotted by impresario Marc Duthyl and his reputation grew. He had smash hits with Ah! C'qu'on s'aimait (1941) and Mon chemin n'est pas le votre (1942). His warm voice and charisma allowed him to become the host of a variety show on Radio Paris.
After the war he was banned for two years off the radio, because of his activities during the war. Claveau returned to the radio as a singer and had several successes such as Une Chanson à la Diable (1949), Marjolaine and Deux petits chaussons.
Claveau was called the Prince de la chanson de charme (Prince of the charm song). He was also the first to interpret the evergreen Bon anniversaire (Happy birthday), written by Jacques Larue and composed by Louiguy. The song was part of the soundtrack of the film Un jour avec vous/A day with you (Jean-René Legrand, 1951).
French postcard by O.P, Paris, no. 117. Photo: Le Studio.
French postcard by O.P, Paris, no. 94. Photo: Le Studio.
Eurovision Song Contest
Between 1947 and 1955, André Claveau appeared in numerous French films in which he sang his hit songs. Among them were Le destin s'amuse/Fate has fun (Emil E. Reinert, 1947) with Dany Robin , Sous le ciel de Paris/Under the Sky of Paris (Julien Duvivier, 1951) and Cœur-sur-Mer (Jacques Daniel-Norman 1951) with Armand Bernard .
He also starred in such film comedies as Pas de vacances pour Monsieur le Maire/No Vacation for Mr. Mayor (Maurice Labro, 1951), with Grégoire Aslan and Louis de Funès , and the short film Le Huitième Art et la Manière/The Eighth Art and Way (Maurice Regamey, 1952) with Christian Alers and Louis de Funès .
In the Franco-Italian comedy-drama Saluti e baci/Love and Kisses (Maurice Labro, Giorgio Simonelli, 1953) a group of singers get together en masse to help those less fortunate than themselves.
Songs like Moulin Rouge (1953), and La Complainte de la Butte (1955) maintained his popularity through the 1950s. Claveau also performed the song Je t'aime bien pourtant in the classic musical French Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1955) starring Jean Gabin and Françoise Arnoul .
In 1958, he won the third edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. He sang Dors, mon amour (Sleep, My Love) with music composed by Pierre Delanoë and with lyrics by Hubert Giraud. The Swiss entry, Lys Assia came in second. In later years, Claveau was a few times the French vote announcer.
His final film was Prisonniers de la brousse/Prisoners of the jungle (Willy Rozier, 1960) with Georges Marchal .
The Yé-yé music wave in the early 1960s affected Claveau’s popularity and his successes diminished.
At the end of the 1960s Claveau decided to finish his career. He retired completely and never performed again.
At the age of 91, André Claveau died in Brassac, France in 2003. He was not married and had no children.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 295. Photo: Ch. Vandamme, Paris.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 556, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.
André Claveau sings a reprise of Dors, Mon Amour at the Eurovision Song Contest. Source: Huelezelf (YouTube).
Sources: Dave Thompson (AllMusic), Du temps des cerises aux feuilles mortes (French), Wikipedia (French and English) and .
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 160. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Prince Of The Charm Song
André Claveau was born in Paris, France in 1911 (some sources say 1915). He was the only son of an upholsterer and as a young boy, he decided to become a cabinetmaker. In 1919, he became an apprentice to the French Compagnie des Arts, founded by André Mare and Louis Süe. He studied woodworking and cabinetmaking, and later continued his training at the Ecole Boulle.
André worked as a graphic artist and jewellery designer. He created theatre sets (including for L'Hermine by Jean Anouilh), and playbills for such artists as Damia and Jean Lumière.
His singing career began in 1936, when he participated in the amateur contest Premières Chances (First opportunities) organized by the radio station Le Poste Parisien. He won with the song Chez moi. He was accompanied by the pianist and composer Alec Siniavine who went on to accompany him at subsequent performances.
During the next six years, Claveau moved on from the third, to the second and to the first part of the program in various music halls. In 1938, he had a hit with the song Quand un Petit Oiseau (When a little bird) and he made his film debut in Champions de France (Willy Rozier, 1938).
In 1942, during the occupation of France by the Nazis, Claveau was spotted by impresario Marc Duthyl and his reputation grew. He had smash hits with Ah! C'qu'on s'aimait (1941) and Mon chemin n'est pas le votre (1942). His warm voice and charisma allowed him to become the host of a variety show on Radio Paris.
After the war he was banned for two years off the radio, because of his activities during the war. Claveau returned to the radio as a singer and had several successes such as Une Chanson à la Diable (1949), Marjolaine and Deux petits chaussons.
Claveau was called the Prince de la chanson de charme (Prince of the charm song). He was also the first to interpret the evergreen Bon anniversaire (Happy birthday), written by Jacques Larue and composed by Louiguy. The song was part of the soundtrack of the film Un jour avec vous/A day with you (Jean-René Legrand, 1951).
French postcard by O.P, Paris, no. 117. Photo: Le Studio.
French postcard by O.P, Paris, no. 94. Photo: Le Studio.
Eurovision Song Contest
Between 1947 and 1955, André Claveau appeared in numerous French films in which he sang his hit songs. Among them were Le destin s'amuse/Fate has fun (Emil E. Reinert, 1947) with Dany Robin , Sous le ciel de Paris/Under the Sky of Paris (Julien Duvivier, 1951) and Cœur-sur-Mer (Jacques Daniel-Norman 1951) with Armand Bernard .
He also starred in such film comedies as Pas de vacances pour Monsieur le Maire/No Vacation for Mr. Mayor (Maurice Labro, 1951), with Grégoire Aslan and Louis de Funès , and the short film Le Huitième Art et la Manière/The Eighth Art and Way (Maurice Regamey, 1952) with Christian Alers and Louis de Funès .
In the Franco-Italian comedy-drama Saluti e baci/Love and Kisses (Maurice Labro, Giorgio Simonelli, 1953) a group of singers get together en masse to help those less fortunate than themselves.
Songs like Moulin Rouge (1953), and La Complainte de la Butte (1955) maintained his popularity through the 1950s. Claveau also performed the song Je t'aime bien pourtant in the classic musical French Cancan (Jean Renoir, 1955) starring Jean Gabin and Françoise Arnoul .
In 1958, he won the third edition of the Eurovision Song Contest. He sang Dors, mon amour (Sleep, My Love) with music composed by Pierre Delanoë and with lyrics by Hubert Giraud. The Swiss entry, Lys Assia came in second. In later years, Claveau was a few times the French vote announcer.
His final film was Prisonniers de la brousse/Prisoners of the jungle (Willy Rozier, 1960) with Georges Marchal .
The Yé-yé music wave in the early 1960s affected Claveau’s popularity and his successes diminished.
At the end of the 1960s Claveau decided to finish his career. He retired completely and never performed again.
At the age of 91, André Claveau died in Brassac, France in 2003. He was not married and had no children.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 295. Photo: Ch. Vandamme, Paris.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 556, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.
André Claveau sings a reprise of Dors, Mon Amour at the Eurovision Song Contest. Source: Huelezelf (YouTube).
Sources: Dave Thompson (AllMusic), Du temps des cerises aux feuilles mortes (French), Wikipedia (French and English) and .
February 24, 2014
Heinz Ohlsen
Blonde German actor Heinz Ohlsen (1922-1999) appeared as a young man in a handful of German films of the early war years. Ten years later he continued his career with a few more film roles.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, nr. G 146, 1941-1944. Photo: Star-Foto-Atelier / Tobis.
The Hitlerjugend Market
Heinz Ohlsen was born as Heinz Gustav Hans Oehlschlager in Berlin, Germany, in 1922.
The handsome blonde boy started his career in 1940 with bit parts in the comedies Zwei Welten/Two Worlds (Gustaf Gründgens, 1949) and Der Kleinstadtpoet/Poet of a Small Town (Josef von Báky, 1940) with Paul Kemp .
The following year he played a young Irishman in the Nazi-made anti-British propaganda film Mein Leben für Irland/My Life for Ireland (Max W. Kimmich, 1941) starring Anna Dammann and René Deltgen .
Set in an English boarding school, Mein Leben für Irland tells of the Irish revolt against British domination. The sons of Irish rebels are sent to an English school to become good British patriots, but they secretly await the day they can fight for their country’s independence against the British, who are depicted as treacherous oppressors bent on world hegemony.
Mein Leben für Irland was aimed largely at the Hitlerjugend market and was directed with assurance by Max Kimmich, who happened to be Joseph Goebbels’ brother-in-law.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3203/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Haenchen / Tobis.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3456/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Star-Foto-Atelier / Tobis.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3562/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Binz, Berlin.
Love at the Wheel
That same year Heinz Ohlsen played the son of Willy Fritsch in Leichte Muse/Easy Muse (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1941).
He appeared opposite another famous actor, Heinrich George , in the romantic drama Schicksal/Fate (Géza von Bolváry, 1942).
After this film, the film career of the still very young actor would be interrupted for nearly a decade. He probably had to join the German army but there is no information on the internet about this period in his life.
Eight years later Ohlsen returned to the screen in the short Amor am Steuer/Love at the Wheel (Günther Hassert, 1950) with Sonja Masur.
The following year he played a supporting part in the crime film Grenzstation 58/Boundary Station 58 (Harry Hasso, 1951) starring Hansi Knoteck and Mady Rahl .
His last film role was a supporting part in the Heinz Rühmann comedy Der eiserne Gustav/The Iron Gustav (Georg Hurdalek, 1958). Based on a true event the film shows a coachman taking a journey from Berlin to Paris in 1928.
Heinz Ohlsen died in 1999. He was 76, but we did not find more information about him.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3242/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Binz / Tobis.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no A 3697/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Binz, Berlin.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 107, 1941-1944. Photo: Star-Foto-Atelier / Tobis.
Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), International Historic Films and .
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, nr. G 146, 1941-1944. Photo: Star-Foto-Atelier / Tobis.
The Hitlerjugend Market
Heinz Ohlsen was born as Heinz Gustav Hans Oehlschlager in Berlin, Germany, in 1922.
The handsome blonde boy started his career in 1940 with bit parts in the comedies Zwei Welten/Two Worlds (Gustaf Gründgens, 1949) and Der Kleinstadtpoet/Poet of a Small Town (Josef von Báky, 1940) with Paul Kemp .
The following year he played a young Irishman in the Nazi-made anti-British propaganda film Mein Leben für Irland/My Life for Ireland (Max W. Kimmich, 1941) starring Anna Dammann and René Deltgen .
Set in an English boarding school, Mein Leben für Irland tells of the Irish revolt against British domination. The sons of Irish rebels are sent to an English school to become good British patriots, but they secretly await the day they can fight for their country’s independence against the British, who are depicted as treacherous oppressors bent on world hegemony.
Mein Leben für Irland was aimed largely at the Hitlerjugend market and was directed with assurance by Max Kimmich, who happened to be Joseph Goebbels’ brother-in-law.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3203/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Haenchen / Tobis.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3456/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Star-Foto-Atelier / Tobis.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3562/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Binz, Berlin.
Love at the Wheel
That same year Heinz Ohlsen played the son of Willy Fritsch in Leichte Muse/Easy Muse (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1941).
He appeared opposite another famous actor, Heinrich George , in the romantic drama Schicksal/Fate (Géza von Bolváry, 1942).
After this film, the film career of the still very young actor would be interrupted for nearly a decade. He probably had to join the German army but there is no information on the internet about this period in his life.
Eight years later Ohlsen returned to the screen in the short Amor am Steuer/Love at the Wheel (Günther Hassert, 1950) with Sonja Masur.
The following year he played a supporting part in the crime film Grenzstation 58/Boundary Station 58 (Harry Hasso, 1951) starring Hansi Knoteck and Mady Rahl .
His last film role was a supporting part in the Heinz Rühmann comedy Der eiserne Gustav/The Iron Gustav (Georg Hurdalek, 1958). Based on a true event the film shows a coachman taking a journey from Berlin to Paris in 1928.
Heinz Ohlsen died in 1999. He was 76, but we did not find more information about him.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3242/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Binz / Tobis.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no A 3697/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Binz, Berlin.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 107, 1941-1944. Photo: Star-Foto-Atelier / Tobis.
Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), International Historic Films and .
February 23, 2014
Tora Teje
Swedish stage actress Tora Teje (1893-1970) starred in several classics of the Scandinavian silent cinema.
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1092/14. Photo: publicity still of Tora Teje in Klostret i Sendomir/The Monastery of Sendomir (Victor Sjöström, 1920).
Kleptomaniac
Tora Teje was the stage name of Tora Adelhejt Sylwander-Johansson. She was born in the St. Mary Magdalene parish in the Södermalm quarter of Stockholm, Sweden in 1893.
Tora studied at Dramatens elevskola, the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm, from 1908 to 1911.
During her whole career - apart from the years 1913-1922, she was engaged at Dramaten, the Royal Dramatic Theatre, where she played many leading roles.
She played the title roles of Jean Racine's Phaedra and Euripides' Medea, Indra's daughter in August Strindberg's Ett drömspel/A Dream Play, Nina Leeds in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude and Christine Mannon in O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Elektra.
In the cinema, Tora Teje had her breakthrough with the romantic comedy Erotikon (1920) by Mauritz Stiller. It is based on the 1917 play A kék róka by Ferenc Herczeg. The story deals with a professor (Anders de Wahl) who is obsessed by the sexual life of bugs, but doesn’t notice his wife (Teje) is courted by two men. One of the two ( Lars Hanson ) is – unjustly - jealous of the other. The film became a commercial success and was sold to 45 markets abroad.
Two years later, Teje played a kleptomaniac, indicated as ‘Modern Hysteric’, in Benjamin Christensen's Häxan/Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922). Häxan is a study of how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch-hunts. The film was made as a documentary but contains dramatized sequences that are comparable to horror films.
Hal Erickson at AllMovie : "Beginning in a deceptively sedate fashion with a series of woodcuts and engravings (a technique later adopted by RKO producer Val Lewton), the film then shifts into gear with a progression of dramatic vignettes, illustrating the awesome power of witchcraft in the Middle Ages. So powerful are some of these images that even some modern viewers will avert their eyes from the screen."
With Christensen's meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and the lengthy production period, the film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made, costing nearly two million Swedish kronor. Although it won acclaim in Denmark and Sweden, the film was banned in the United States and heavily censored in other countries for what were considered at that time graphic depictions of torture, nudity and sexual perversion
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1092/7. Photo: publicity still of Tora Teje in Karin Ingmarsdotter (Victor Sjöström, 1920).
Oh God, we had fun!
Previously, Victor Sjöström had directed her in two films, Karin Ingmarsdotter/Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (1920) and the Gothic drama Klostret i Sendomir/The Monastery of Sendomir (1920).
Karin Ingmarsdotter/God's Way (1920) is the second part in Sjöström's large-scale adaption of Selma Lagerlöf's novel Jerusalem, following Ingmarssönerna/Sons of Ingmar (Victor Sjöström, 1919), and depicting chapter three and four from the novel. Teje played the title role as the daughter of Ingmar (Victor Sjöström). The critical reception of the film was unenthusiastic and Sjöström decided to not film any more parts. Eventually the suite was finished by Gustaf Molander in 1926.
Klostret i Sendomir, based on a story by Franz Grillparzer, deals with a 17th century monk (Tore Svennberg) who tells two visitors about a mighty count who discovers that his unfaithful wife has a longstanding affair with her own cousin and that even his daughter is not his own. He had to use all his resources to build the monastery where they are now staying. At the end of the film it is revealed that the monk is in fact the count himself.
Teje also acted in Familjens traditioner/Family Traditions (Rune Carlsten, 1920) with Gösta Ekman and Mary Johnson.
She had the lead in Norrtullsligan/The Nurtull Gang (Per Lindberg, 1923) about low-paid female clerks who go on strike, and acted in 33.333 (Gustav Molander, 1924) with Einar Hanson as the winner of lottery ticket.
Her last silent performances were as Marguerite Gauthier in Damen med kameliorna/The Lady with the Camelias (Olof Molander, 1925), based on Alexandre Dumas fils’ famous play and with Uno Henning as Armand Duval, and as Signe Rosenkrans in the August Strindberg adaptation Giftas/Getting Married (Olof Molander, 1926), again with Henning.
After years on stage Teje returned one time to the screen in 1939, acting opposite Victor Sjöström in Gubben kommer/The Old Man is Coming, based on Gösta Gustaf-Janson’s novel.
From 1913 to 1948 Teje was married to court photographer Herrman Sylwander. Together they had a son, actor and stage director
Tora Teje died in 1970 in Stockholm. She was 77.
Einar Hanson . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 955/2, 1925-1926. Photo: Richard Oswald-Film A.G., Berlin.
Uno Henning . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1940/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still for Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1927).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia (Swedish and English), and
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1092/14. Photo: publicity still of Tora Teje in Klostret i Sendomir/The Monastery of Sendomir (Victor Sjöström, 1920).
Kleptomaniac
Tora Teje was the stage name of Tora Adelhejt Sylwander-Johansson. She was born in the St. Mary Magdalene parish in the Södermalm quarter of Stockholm, Sweden in 1893.
Tora studied at Dramatens elevskola, the Royal Dramatic Theatre School in Stockholm, from 1908 to 1911.
During her whole career - apart from the years 1913-1922, she was engaged at Dramaten, the Royal Dramatic Theatre, where she played many leading roles.
She played the title roles of Jean Racine's Phaedra and Euripides' Medea, Indra's daughter in August Strindberg's Ett drömspel/A Dream Play, Nina Leeds in Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude and Christine Mannon in O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Elektra.
In the cinema, Tora Teje had her breakthrough with the romantic comedy Erotikon (1920) by Mauritz Stiller. It is based on the 1917 play A kék róka by Ferenc Herczeg. The story deals with a professor (Anders de Wahl) who is obsessed by the sexual life of bugs, but doesn’t notice his wife (Teje) is courted by two men. One of the two ( Lars Hanson ) is – unjustly - jealous of the other. The film became a commercial success and was sold to 45 markets abroad.
Two years later, Teje played a kleptomaniac, indicated as ‘Modern Hysteric’, in Benjamin Christensen's Häxan/Witchcraft Through the Ages (1922). Häxan is a study of how superstition and the misunderstanding of diseases and mental illness could lead to the hysteria of the witch-hunts. The film was made as a documentary but contains dramatized sequences that are comparable to horror films.
Hal Erickson at AllMovie : "Beginning in a deceptively sedate fashion with a series of woodcuts and engravings (a technique later adopted by RKO producer Val Lewton), the film then shifts into gear with a progression of dramatic vignettes, illustrating the awesome power of witchcraft in the Middle Ages. So powerful are some of these images that even some modern viewers will avert their eyes from the screen."
With Christensen's meticulous recreation of medieval scenes and the lengthy production period, the film was the most expensive Scandinavian silent film ever made, costing nearly two million Swedish kronor. Although it won acclaim in Denmark and Sweden, the film was banned in the United States and heavily censored in other countries for what were considered at that time graphic depictions of torture, nudity and sexual perversion
Swedish postcard by Nordisk Konst, Stockholm, no. 1092/7. Photo: publicity still of Tora Teje in Karin Ingmarsdotter (Victor Sjöström, 1920).
Oh God, we had fun!
Previously, Victor Sjöström had directed her in two films, Karin Ingmarsdotter/Karin, Daughter of Ingmar (1920) and the Gothic drama Klostret i Sendomir/The Monastery of Sendomir (1920).
Karin Ingmarsdotter/God's Way (1920) is the second part in Sjöström's large-scale adaption of Selma Lagerlöf's novel Jerusalem, following Ingmarssönerna/Sons of Ingmar (Victor Sjöström, 1919), and depicting chapter three and four from the novel. Teje played the title role as the daughter of Ingmar (Victor Sjöström). The critical reception of the film was unenthusiastic and Sjöström decided to not film any more parts. Eventually the suite was finished by Gustaf Molander in 1926.
Klostret i Sendomir, based on a story by Franz Grillparzer, deals with a 17th century monk (Tore Svennberg) who tells two visitors about a mighty count who discovers that his unfaithful wife has a longstanding affair with her own cousin and that even his daughter is not his own. He had to use all his resources to build the monastery where they are now staying. At the end of the film it is revealed that the monk is in fact the count himself.
Teje also acted in Familjens traditioner/Family Traditions (Rune Carlsten, 1920) with Gösta Ekman and Mary Johnson.
She had the lead in Norrtullsligan/The Nurtull Gang (Per Lindberg, 1923) about low-paid female clerks who go on strike, and acted in 33.333 (Gustav Molander, 1924) with Einar Hanson as the winner of lottery ticket.
Her last silent performances were as Marguerite Gauthier in Damen med kameliorna/The Lady with the Camelias (Olof Molander, 1925), based on Alexandre Dumas fils’ famous play and with Uno Henning as Armand Duval, and as Signe Rosenkrans in the August Strindberg adaptation Giftas/Getting Married (Olof Molander, 1926), again with Henning.
After years on stage Teje returned one time to the screen in 1939, acting opposite Victor Sjöström in Gubben kommer/The Old Man is Coming, based on Gösta Gustaf-Janson’s novel.
From 1913 to 1948 Teje was married to court photographer Herrman Sylwander. Together they had a son, actor and stage director
Tora Teje died in 1970 in Stockholm. She was 77.
Einar Hanson . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 955/2, 1925-1926. Photo: Richard Oswald-Film A.G., Berlin.
Uno Henning . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1940/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Publicity still for Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney/The Love of Jeanne Ney (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1927).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia (Swedish and English), and
February 22, 2014
Blanchette Brunoy
French actress Blanchette Brunoy (1915-2005) appeared in over 90 film and television productions between 1936 and 1998. She is possibly best-remembered for her roles in Jean Renoir's La Bête Humaine (1938), Jacques Becker's comedy-thriller Goupi mains rouges (1943), and Marcel Carné's La Marie du port (1950).
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 12.
An Abundance Of Authentic Gallic Atmosphere
Blanchette Brunoy was born Blanche Bilhaud in Paris in 1915. She was the daughter of a physician, Marcel Bilhaud, and the niece and goddaughter of writer Georges Duhamel. Thanks to him, she discovered the theatre.
As a young girl she studied acting at the Conservatoire de Paris under André Brunot. One of her first film roles was an uncredited bit part in Un mauvais garçon/Counsel for Romance (Jean Boyer, 1936) featuring Danielle Darrieux and Henri Garat .
She played a victim of Jules Berry in the French-Italian film drama Le voleur de femmes/The Woman Thief ( Abel Gance , 1936). On stage, she participated in the creation of the Chevaliers de la table ronde/Knights of the Round Table by Jean Cocteau in 1937.
On screen, she became known as Colette’s heroin Claudine in Claudine à l’école/Pauline at school (Serge de Poligny, 1937). She played the supporting part of Flore in the classic La Bête Humaine/The Human Beast (Jean Renoir, 1938), based on the novel by Émile Zola, and starring Jean Gabin and Simone Simon .
More supporting parts followed in Cavalcade d'amour/Love Cavalcade (Raymond Bernard, 1940), written by Jean Anouilh. First she often played the type of the sweet young woman and later that of the balanced, calm and devoted wife or the petty bourgeois mother.
During the occupation of France by the Nazis, she starred in films like Au Bonheur des Dames/Shop Girls of Paris (André Cayatte, 1943) opposite Michel Simon , and Le Voyageur sans Bagages/The traveler without luggage (1943), directed by famous stage author Jean Anouilh who adapted it from his own 1936 play.
Her most popular role was ‘Goupi-Muguet’ in Goupi Mains Rouges/It Happened at the Inn (Jean Becker, 1943), a subversive detective story with a literary style about a murder among a scruffy family of peasants known as the Goupis.
Hal Erickson at AllMovie : “Nearly plotless, Goupi Mains Rogues offers an unforgettable cast of characters and an abundance of authentic Gallic atmosphere.”
French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 34. Photo: Studio Piaz.
French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 89. Paris. Photo: Films Eclair Journal.
French postcard by Editions P.I,, Paris, offered by Les Carbines Korès, 'Carbopolane', no. 89. Photo: Éclair Journal.
Controversial Subject Matter
After the war, Blanchette Brunoy co-starred with Pierre Fresnay in Vient de paraître/Just out (Jacques Houssin, 1949). Then she played one of her best-known parts as the mistress of Jean Gabin in the romantic drama La Marie du port/Marie of the Port (Marcel Carné, 1950), based on a novel by Georges Simenon.
James Travers at French Film Guide: “Partly on account of its controversial subject matter, but mainly because Carné's style of cinema was going out of fashion, La Marie du port was ill-received by many critics on its first release. Whilst it may not match the excellence of the director's pre-WWII films, it is nonetheless a work of great merit - well-scripted, attractively shot in the stark poetic realist style of Carné's earlier films, and with some nuanced performances from a talented cast.”
In the drama Tourments/Agonies (Jacques Daniel-Norman, 1954), Blanchette Brunoy and Tino Rossi played a couple who have adopted a little boy whose real mother (Jacqueline Porel) assigns a ruthless private detective ( Louis de Funès ) to kidnap the kid.
Later films include the comedies Les Veinards/The Lucky (Philippe de Broca, Jean Girault, 1963), and Bébert et l'omnibus/Bebert and the Train (Yves Robert, 1963).
An interesting experiment is Françoise ou La vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Françoise (André Cayatte, 1964), telling the story of a marriage break-up told from the man's ( Jacques Charrier ) point of view, and the film's companion piece, Jean-Marc ou La vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Jean-Marc (André Cayatte, 1964), which tells the story from the woman's ( Marie-José Nat ) point of view.
That year, Brunoy also appeared in L'Enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot/Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, directed, written and produced by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and starring Romy Schneider . In 1964, the film remained unfinished when Clouzot suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized, but 45 years later, in 2009, it was presented as a semi-documentary by Serge Bromberg. Bromberg had made his 94 minutes documentary with material selected from 15 hours (185 reels) of found scenes. In 2010 it received the César Award for Best Documentary.
From then on, Blanchette Brunoy worked mostly for television and the stage. In 1984, director Edouard Molinaro asked her for a part in L'Amour en douce/Love on the Quiet (Edouard Molinaro, 1985) with Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Béart.
One of her last film parts was in the crime comedy ...Comme elle respire/White Lies (Pierre Salvadori, 1998) starring Marie Trintignant.
In 2005, Blanchette Brunoy died in Manosque, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence of old age. She was 89. Brunoy was married to the actors Robert Hommet (?–1958) and Maurice Maillot (1961–1968), until their deaths.
French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 20. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
French postcard by S.E.R.P., Paris, no. 106. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), James Travers (French Film Guide), Christian Grenier (DVD Toile.com) (French), Cinémemorial (French), Wikipedia and .
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 12.
An Abundance Of Authentic Gallic Atmosphere
Blanchette Brunoy was born Blanche Bilhaud in Paris in 1915. She was the daughter of a physician, Marcel Bilhaud, and the niece and goddaughter of writer Georges Duhamel. Thanks to him, she discovered the theatre.
As a young girl she studied acting at the Conservatoire de Paris under André Brunot. One of her first film roles was an uncredited bit part in Un mauvais garçon/Counsel for Romance (Jean Boyer, 1936) featuring Danielle Darrieux and Henri Garat .
She played a victim of Jules Berry in the French-Italian film drama Le voleur de femmes/The Woman Thief ( Abel Gance , 1936). On stage, she participated in the creation of the Chevaliers de la table ronde/Knights of the Round Table by Jean Cocteau in 1937.
On screen, she became known as Colette’s heroin Claudine in Claudine à l’école/Pauline at school (Serge de Poligny, 1937). She played the supporting part of Flore in the classic La Bête Humaine/The Human Beast (Jean Renoir, 1938), based on the novel by Émile Zola, and starring Jean Gabin and Simone Simon .
More supporting parts followed in Cavalcade d'amour/Love Cavalcade (Raymond Bernard, 1940), written by Jean Anouilh. First she often played the type of the sweet young woman and later that of the balanced, calm and devoted wife or the petty bourgeois mother.
During the occupation of France by the Nazis, she starred in films like Au Bonheur des Dames/Shop Girls of Paris (André Cayatte, 1943) opposite Michel Simon , and Le Voyageur sans Bagages/The traveler without luggage (1943), directed by famous stage author Jean Anouilh who adapted it from his own 1936 play.
Her most popular role was ‘Goupi-Muguet’ in Goupi Mains Rouges/It Happened at the Inn (Jean Becker, 1943), a subversive detective story with a literary style about a murder among a scruffy family of peasants known as the Goupis.
Hal Erickson at AllMovie : “Nearly plotless, Goupi Mains Rogues offers an unforgettable cast of characters and an abundance of authentic Gallic atmosphere.”
French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 34. Photo: Studio Piaz.
French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 89. Paris. Photo: Films Eclair Journal.
French postcard by Editions P.I,, Paris, offered by Les Carbines Korès, 'Carbopolane', no. 89. Photo: Éclair Journal.
Controversial Subject Matter
After the war, Blanchette Brunoy co-starred with Pierre Fresnay in Vient de paraître/Just out (Jacques Houssin, 1949). Then she played one of her best-known parts as the mistress of Jean Gabin in the romantic drama La Marie du port/Marie of the Port (Marcel Carné, 1950), based on a novel by Georges Simenon.
James Travers at French Film Guide: “Partly on account of its controversial subject matter, but mainly because Carné's style of cinema was going out of fashion, La Marie du port was ill-received by many critics on its first release. Whilst it may not match the excellence of the director's pre-WWII films, it is nonetheless a work of great merit - well-scripted, attractively shot in the stark poetic realist style of Carné's earlier films, and with some nuanced performances from a talented cast.”
In the drama Tourments/Agonies (Jacques Daniel-Norman, 1954), Blanchette Brunoy and Tino Rossi played a couple who have adopted a little boy whose real mother (Jacqueline Porel) assigns a ruthless private detective ( Louis de Funès ) to kidnap the kid.
Later films include the comedies Les Veinards/The Lucky (Philippe de Broca, Jean Girault, 1963), and Bébert et l'omnibus/Bebert and the Train (Yves Robert, 1963).
An interesting experiment is Françoise ou La vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Françoise (André Cayatte, 1964), telling the story of a marriage break-up told from the man's ( Jacques Charrier ) point of view, and the film's companion piece, Jean-Marc ou La vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Jean-Marc (André Cayatte, 1964), which tells the story from the woman's ( Marie-José Nat ) point of view.
That year, Brunoy also appeared in L'Enfer d'Henri-Georges Clouzot/Henri-Georges Clouzot's Inferno, directed, written and produced by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and starring Romy Schneider . In 1964, the film remained unfinished when Clouzot suffered a heart attack and was hospitalized, but 45 years later, in 2009, it was presented as a semi-documentary by Serge Bromberg. Bromberg had made his 94 minutes documentary with material selected from 15 hours (185 reels) of found scenes. In 2010 it received the César Award for Best Documentary.
From then on, Blanchette Brunoy worked mostly for television and the stage. In 1984, director Edouard Molinaro asked her for a part in L'Amour en douce/Love on the Quiet (Edouard Molinaro, 1985) with Daniel Auteuil and Emmanuelle Béart.
One of her last film parts was in the crime comedy ...Comme elle respire/White Lies (Pierre Salvadori, 1998) starring Marie Trintignant.
In 2005, Blanchette Brunoy died in Manosque, Alpes-de-Haute-Provence of old age. She was 89. Brunoy was married to the actors Robert Hommet (?–1958) and Maurice Maillot (1961–1968), until their deaths.
French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 20. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
French postcard by S.E.R.P., Paris, no. 106. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), James Travers (French Film Guide), Christian Grenier (DVD Toile.com) (French), Cinémemorial (French), Wikipedia and .
February 21, 2014
Dorothy Wilding
Dorothy Wilding (1893-1976) was a noted English society photographer with studios in London and New York. Wilding photographed many British film stars in the 1920s and 1930s, but was also the first woman to be appointed as the Official Royal Photographer.
Madeleine Carroll . British postcard by Real Photograph, London in the Picturegoer series, no. 352a. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Madeleine Carroll . British postcard by Real Photograph, London in the Picturegoer series, no. 352b. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Brightly Lit Linear Compositions
Dorothy Frances Edith Wilding was born in 1893. She was the last of a large family of 10 children who lived near Gloucester.
Unwanted by her parents, Dorothy was passed on to a childless aunt and uncle in Cheltenham, aged just four. She wanted to become an actress or artist but this career was disallowed by her uncle, so she chose the art of photography.
One day she saw a camera in a shop window in Cheltenham, and according to her memoirs she thought: ‘If they won’t allow me to be an actress, or paint portraits, I’ll do it through the camera instead’.
At the age of 16 Wilding taught herself the art of photography, from lighting to retouching. She finally persuaded her family to let her move to London. She began her photographic career as an apprentice to Bond Street photographer Marian Neilson.
By 1915 she had saved enough money to lease a studio in George Street, Portman Square. She took her first pictures by artificial light, designing a system of tracks that fixed to the ceiling for her two 1,000 watt lamps with pale blue reflectors.
In the 1920s and 1930s, she photographed several film stars including Jessie Matthews , Diana Wynyard , Anna May Wong , Madeleine Carroll , Ivor Novello , Maurice Chevalier , and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
According to the National Portrait Gallery website , she is best known for her brightly lit linear compositions photographed in high key lighting against a white background. The success of the Wilding Look was clearly based upon her superb lighting techniques, her high standard of retouching and finishing, and her society connections.
She portrayed such celebrities as Noël Coward, Cecil Beaton, George Bernard Shaw, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Aldous Huxley, and Barbara Hutton. By 1929 she had already moved studio a few times, and employed seven assistants.
Ivor Novello . British postcard in the Picturegoer series by real Photograph, London, no. 39c. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Matheson Lang . British postcard in the Picturegoer series, no. 87A. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
A Sitting Booked For A Mrs. Simpson
Dorothy Wilding shot her first British Royal Family portrait of the 26-year-old Prince George (later Duke of Kent) in 1928. Six years later Wilding was selected to take the official engagement photographs of Prince George before his marriage to Princess Marina of Greece.
In 1935 a sitting booked for a Mrs. Simpson on a Friday found Wilding away from the studio at her country cottage. She had to direct the shoot down the telephone to her leading deputy camera operator.
Wallis Warfield Simpson was the future Duchess of Windsor, and she was accompanied to the studio by Edward, Prince of Wales at a time when the relationship was not mentioned in the British press. A hand-coloured image from this session would later appear on the cover of Time magazine, marking Wallis as 'Woman of the Year'.
A further important series of Royal Sittings were also taken in her absence when Wilding was based in America. This sitting was eventually followed by the famous Wilding portrait of the newly ascended Elizabeth II that was used for a series of definitive postage stamps of Great Britain used between 1952 and 1967, and a series of Canadian stamps in use from 1954 to 1962.
A previous portrait sitting of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, wife of George VI, had turned into a double portrait of the royal couple and was adapted for the 1937 Coronation issue stamp.
That portrait led to Wilding being the first woman to be appointed as the Official Royal Photographer for the 1937 Coronation.
John Gielgud . British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. 762A. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
John Gielgud . British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. 762. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Clearly Ahead Of Their Time
In 1937, Dorothy Wilding also opened a second photo studio in New York. There she photographed Fannie Hurst, Tallulah Bankhead, Gracie Fields and Gertrude Lawrence at the time of her appearance in Pygmalion.
In 1940, a German bomb destroyed her London studio. She went to New York with her ailing husband, designer Rufus Leighton-Pearce, who she had met in the 1920s when he created a revolutionary art deco design for her studio. He died there and she dedicated much her time to building her US business.
In the 1940s and 1950s her subjects included Dame Barbara Cartland, Dame Daphne du Maurier, Sir John Gielgud , Harry Belafonte, Yehudi Menuhin, William Somerset Maugham, and Yul Brynner.
She is also known for her pictorial style nude photographs which include the dancer Jacques Cartier and the artist's model Rhoda Beasley photographed shortly before her early tragic death.
John Chillingworth : “Her 1930s commercial and advertising images were clearly ahead of their time, preceding 1960’s eroticism by 30 years!”
Wilding’s relationship with the Royal family, as their favoured photographer, continued right up until 1958 when she decided to sell her Bond Street studio, aged 65. She had closed the 56th Street, Manhattan, studio in 1957.
Her autobiography In Pursuit of Perfection was published in 1958. After her retirement Wilding faded from the public consciousness, and she passed away in a nursing home in 1976. At the time her death hardly got even a line of obituary.
Her surviving archives were presented to the National Portrait Gallery by her sister Mrs. Susan Morton and formed the basis of a major NPG retrospective exhibition and catalogue in 1991, The Pursuit of Perfection.
Elizabeth Allan . British postcard. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Yvonne Arnaud . British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. 378A. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Dorothy Dickson . British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no T4a. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
This is the seventh post in a series on film star photographers. Earlier posts were on the Reutlinger Studio in Paris, Italian star photographer Attilio Badodi, the German photographer Ernst Schneider, Dutch photo artist Godfried de Groot, Milanese photographers Arturo Varischi and Giovanni Artico and on the French Studio Lorelle.
Sources: John Chillingworth, National Portrait Gallery, Stamp Online, and Wikipedia. See also the Flickr set on Wilding by dovima_is_devine_II.
Madeleine Carroll . British postcard by Real Photograph, London in the Picturegoer series, no. 352a. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Madeleine Carroll . British postcard by Real Photograph, London in the Picturegoer series, no. 352b. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Brightly Lit Linear Compositions
Dorothy Frances Edith Wilding was born in 1893. She was the last of a large family of 10 children who lived near Gloucester.
Unwanted by her parents, Dorothy was passed on to a childless aunt and uncle in Cheltenham, aged just four. She wanted to become an actress or artist but this career was disallowed by her uncle, so she chose the art of photography.
One day she saw a camera in a shop window in Cheltenham, and according to her memoirs she thought: ‘If they won’t allow me to be an actress, or paint portraits, I’ll do it through the camera instead’.
At the age of 16 Wilding taught herself the art of photography, from lighting to retouching. She finally persuaded her family to let her move to London. She began her photographic career as an apprentice to Bond Street photographer Marian Neilson.
By 1915 she had saved enough money to lease a studio in George Street, Portman Square. She took her first pictures by artificial light, designing a system of tracks that fixed to the ceiling for her two 1,000 watt lamps with pale blue reflectors.
In the 1920s and 1930s, she photographed several film stars including Jessie Matthews , Diana Wynyard , Anna May Wong , Madeleine Carroll , Ivor Novello , Maurice Chevalier , and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.
According to the National Portrait Gallery website , she is best known for her brightly lit linear compositions photographed in high key lighting against a white background. The success of the Wilding Look was clearly based upon her superb lighting techniques, her high standard of retouching and finishing, and her society connections.
She portrayed such celebrities as Noël Coward, Cecil Beaton, George Bernard Shaw, Earl Mountbatten of Burma, Aldous Huxley, and Barbara Hutton. By 1929 she had already moved studio a few times, and employed seven assistants.
Ivor Novello . British postcard in the Picturegoer series by real Photograph, London, no. 39c. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Matheson Lang . British postcard in the Picturegoer series, no. 87A. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
A Sitting Booked For A Mrs. Simpson
Dorothy Wilding shot her first British Royal Family portrait of the 26-year-old Prince George (later Duke of Kent) in 1928. Six years later Wilding was selected to take the official engagement photographs of Prince George before his marriage to Princess Marina of Greece.
In 1935 a sitting booked for a Mrs. Simpson on a Friday found Wilding away from the studio at her country cottage. She had to direct the shoot down the telephone to her leading deputy camera operator.
Wallis Warfield Simpson was the future Duchess of Windsor, and she was accompanied to the studio by Edward, Prince of Wales at a time when the relationship was not mentioned in the British press. A hand-coloured image from this session would later appear on the cover of Time magazine, marking Wallis as 'Woman of the Year'.
A further important series of Royal Sittings were also taken in her absence when Wilding was based in America. This sitting was eventually followed by the famous Wilding portrait of the newly ascended Elizabeth II that was used for a series of definitive postage stamps of Great Britain used between 1952 and 1967, and a series of Canadian stamps in use from 1954 to 1962.
A previous portrait sitting of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, wife of George VI, had turned into a double portrait of the royal couple and was adapted for the 1937 Coronation issue stamp.
That portrait led to Wilding being the first woman to be appointed as the Official Royal Photographer for the 1937 Coronation.
John Gielgud . British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. 762A. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
John Gielgud . British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. 762. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Clearly Ahead Of Their Time
In 1937, Dorothy Wilding also opened a second photo studio in New York. There she photographed Fannie Hurst, Tallulah Bankhead, Gracie Fields and Gertrude Lawrence at the time of her appearance in Pygmalion.
In 1940, a German bomb destroyed her London studio. She went to New York with her ailing husband, designer Rufus Leighton-Pearce, who she had met in the 1920s when he created a revolutionary art deco design for her studio. He died there and she dedicated much her time to building her US business.
In the 1940s and 1950s her subjects included Dame Barbara Cartland, Dame Daphne du Maurier, Sir John Gielgud , Harry Belafonte, Yehudi Menuhin, William Somerset Maugham, and Yul Brynner.
She is also known for her pictorial style nude photographs which include the dancer Jacques Cartier and the artist's model Rhoda Beasley photographed shortly before her early tragic death.
John Chillingworth : “Her 1930s commercial and advertising images were clearly ahead of their time, preceding 1960’s eroticism by 30 years!”
Wilding’s relationship with the Royal family, as their favoured photographer, continued right up until 1958 when she decided to sell her Bond Street studio, aged 65. She had closed the 56th Street, Manhattan, studio in 1957.
Her autobiography In Pursuit of Perfection was published in 1958. After her retirement Wilding faded from the public consciousness, and she passed away in a nursing home in 1976. At the time her death hardly got even a line of obituary.
Her surviving archives were presented to the National Portrait Gallery by her sister Mrs. Susan Morton and formed the basis of a major NPG retrospective exhibition and catalogue in 1991, The Pursuit of Perfection.
Elizabeth Allan . British postcard. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Yvonne Arnaud . British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, no. 378A. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Dorothy Dickson . British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no T4a. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
This is the seventh post in a series on film star photographers. Earlier posts were on the Reutlinger Studio in Paris, Italian star photographer Attilio Badodi, the German photographer Ernst Schneider, Dutch photo artist Godfried de Groot, Milanese photographers Arturo Varischi and Giovanni Artico and on the French Studio Lorelle.
Sources: John Chillingworth, National Portrait Gallery, Stamp Online, and Wikipedia. See also the Flickr set on Wilding by dovima_is_devine_II.
February 20, 2014
Fernandel
Actor and singer Fernandel (1903–1971) was for more than forty years France's top comedy star. He was perhaps best-loved for his portrayal of Don Camillo. His horse-like teeth and shy manner became his trademark.
Mexican Collectors card, no. 276.
French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 9. Photo: Star.
French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 573. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French postcard by PSG, offered by Corvisart, Epinal no. 443. Photo: Nisak.
Popular, Common, Likable
Fernandel was born as Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin in Marseille, France, as the son of a music-hall entertainer. His brother Fransined would become an actor too.
Fernandel began performing while still a child. In his teens he supported himself in a variety of jobs while gaining experience as an amateur comedian and singer. In 1922 he turned professional, soon becoming popular in vaudeville, operettas, and music-hall revues. He married with Henriette Manse in 1925.
His film debut was in Le blanc et le noir/White and Black (Robert Florey, Marc Allégret, 1930) at the side of Raimu . Marc Allégret was also the director of his first successful film La meilleure bobonne (Marc Allégret, Claude Heymann, 1930).
Very popular was his serious role in the screen adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's Le Rosier de Madame Husson/The Virgin Man (Bernard-Deschamps, 1932).
Writer/director Marcel Pagnol used his immense talent and great sensitivity in a series of films: as a half-witted in Angèle (1934), Regain/Harvest (1937), Le Schpountz/Heartbeat (1938), La Fille du puisatier/The Well-Digger's Daughter (1940), and later as a scrupulously honest schoolteacher in Topaze (1951).
Fernandel became a typical actor of the comedy genre: popular, common, likable and with a concealed grain of drama. For more than four decades and in nearly 150 films he was French most popular comedy star.
French postcard by Viny, no. 25. Photo: Star.
French postcard, Serie P 35.
Postcard. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 129. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 114. Photo: Roger Forster.
French postcard by O.P., Paris, no. 115. Photo: R. Tomatis.
Don Camillo
Fernandel was perhaps best-loved for his portrayal of Don Camillo, the humorously indomitable priest of a little Italian parish at war with the village 's communist mayor, Peppone (played by Gino Cervi ) in the popular film series of the 1950s.
Director Julien Duvivier first brought the books by Giovanni Guareschi to life in Le Petit monde de Don Camillo/The Little World of Don Camillo (1951) and Le Retour de Don Camillo/The Return of Don Camillo (1953).
With other directors Fernandel made La Grande bagarre de Don Camillo/Don Camillo's Last Round (Carmine Gallone, 1955), Don Camillo Monseigneur/Don Camillo: Monsignor (Carmine Gallone, 1961), and Don Camillo en Russie/Don Camillo in Moscow (Luigi Comencini, 1965).
Among his other successes were L'auberge rouge/The Red Inn (Claude Autant-Lara, 1951), Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs/Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (Jacques Becker, 1954) and La Vache et le Prisonnier/The Cow and I (Henri Verneuil, 1959).
He also appeared in Italian and American films. His first Hollywood motion picture was Around the World in Eighty Days (Michael Anderson, 1956) in which he played David Niven 's coachman. His popular performance in that film led to starring with Bob Hope and Anita Ekberg in the comedy Paris Holiday (Gerd Oswald, 1958).
In addition to acting, Fernandel also directed or co-produced several of his own films. In 1970 Fernandel started with the shooting of the sixth Don Camillo film, Don Camillo et les contestastaires/Don Camillo and the Youth of Today, directed by Christian-Jaque. After a few weeks he had to stop because of poor health.
Shortly afterwards Fernandel died from lung cancer. He is buried in the Cimetière de Passy, Paris, France. Fernandel and his wife Henriette had three children, including actor Franck Fernandel and actress Josette Contandin.
French postcard by editions O.P., Paris, no. 49. Photo: Teddy Piaz.
French postcard by Editions Chantal, Rueil. Photo: D.U.C.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, no. 304. Photo: Sam Lévin.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2919, 1967. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Unifrancefilm.
German postcard by Progress, no. 1.973, 1964. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: publicity still for Le diable et les dix commandements/The Devil and the Ten Commandments (Julien Duvivier, 1962).
German postcard by Progress, no. 2994, 1967. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: publicity still for Le voyage du père/Father's Trip (Denys de La Patellière, 1966) with Lilli Palmer .
Sources: (IMDb), Wikipedia, AllMovie, and .
Mexican Collectors card, no. 276.
French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 9. Photo: Star.
French postcard by Editions P.I., no. 573. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French postcard by PSG, offered by Corvisart, Epinal no. 443. Photo: Nisak.
Popular, Common, Likable
Fernandel was born as Fernand Joseph Désiré Contandin in Marseille, France, as the son of a music-hall entertainer. His brother Fransined would become an actor too.
Fernandel began performing while still a child. In his teens he supported himself in a variety of jobs while gaining experience as an amateur comedian and singer. In 1922 he turned professional, soon becoming popular in vaudeville, operettas, and music-hall revues. He married with Henriette Manse in 1925.
His film debut was in Le blanc et le noir/White and Black (Robert Florey, Marc Allégret, 1930) at the side of Raimu . Marc Allégret was also the director of his first successful film La meilleure bobonne (Marc Allégret, Claude Heymann, 1930).
Very popular was his serious role in the screen adaptation of Guy de Maupassant's Le Rosier de Madame Husson/The Virgin Man (Bernard-Deschamps, 1932).
Writer/director Marcel Pagnol used his immense talent and great sensitivity in a series of films: as a half-witted in Angèle (1934), Regain/Harvest (1937), Le Schpountz/Heartbeat (1938), La Fille du puisatier/The Well-Digger's Daughter (1940), and later as a scrupulously honest schoolteacher in Topaze (1951).
Fernandel became a typical actor of the comedy genre: popular, common, likable and with a concealed grain of drama. For more than four decades and in nearly 150 films he was French most popular comedy star.
French postcard by Viny, no. 25. Photo: Star.
French postcard, Serie P 35.
Postcard. Photo: Studio Harcourt.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 129. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 114. Photo: Roger Forster.
French postcard by O.P., Paris, no. 115. Photo: R. Tomatis.
Don Camillo
Fernandel was perhaps best-loved for his portrayal of Don Camillo, the humorously indomitable priest of a little Italian parish at war with the village 's communist mayor, Peppone (played by Gino Cervi ) in the popular film series of the 1950s.
Director Julien Duvivier first brought the books by Giovanni Guareschi to life in Le Petit monde de Don Camillo/The Little World of Don Camillo (1951) and Le Retour de Don Camillo/The Return of Don Camillo (1953).
With other directors Fernandel made La Grande bagarre de Don Camillo/Don Camillo's Last Round (Carmine Gallone, 1955), Don Camillo Monseigneur/Don Camillo: Monsignor (Carmine Gallone, 1961), and Don Camillo en Russie/Don Camillo in Moscow (Luigi Comencini, 1965).
Among his other successes were L'auberge rouge/The Red Inn (Claude Autant-Lara, 1951), Ali Baba et les quarante voleurs/Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (Jacques Becker, 1954) and La Vache et le Prisonnier/The Cow and I (Henri Verneuil, 1959).
He also appeared in Italian and American films. His first Hollywood motion picture was Around the World in Eighty Days (Michael Anderson, 1956) in which he played David Niven 's coachman. His popular performance in that film led to starring with Bob Hope and Anita Ekberg in the comedy Paris Holiday (Gerd Oswald, 1958).
In addition to acting, Fernandel also directed or co-produced several of his own films. In 1970 Fernandel started with the shooting of the sixth Don Camillo film, Don Camillo et les contestastaires/Don Camillo and the Youth of Today, directed by Christian-Jaque. After a few weeks he had to stop because of poor health.
Shortly afterwards Fernandel died from lung cancer. He is buried in the Cimetière de Passy, Paris, France. Fernandel and his wife Henriette had three children, including actor Franck Fernandel and actress Josette Contandin.
French postcard by editions O.P., Paris, no. 49. Photo: Teddy Piaz.
French postcard by Editions Chantal, Rueil. Photo: D.U.C.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, no. 304. Photo: Sam Lévin.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2919, 1967. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Unifrancefilm.
German postcard by Progress, no. 1.973, 1964. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: publicity still for Le diable et les dix commandements/The Devil and the Ten Commandments (Julien Duvivier, 1962).
German postcard by Progress, no. 2994, 1967. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: publicity still for Le voyage du père/Father's Trip (Denys de La Patellière, 1966) with Lilli Palmer .
Sources: (IMDb), Wikipedia, AllMovie, and .
February 19, 2014
Franca Parisi
Beautiful and elegant Franca Parisi (1933) is an Italian actress who appeared in German and Italian films of the 1950s. During the 1960s she was mainly cast as a sexy but second rate Sophia Loren in low-budget Italian adventure and horror films.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam (Dutch licency holder for Universum-Film Aktien-gesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof), no. 1086. Photo: Ufa/Film-Foto. Publicity still for Scampolo (Alfred Weidenmann, 1958).
Sexy Girlfriend
Franca Parisi, also known as Franca Parisi Strahl and Margaret Taylor, was born in 1933 in Palermo, Italy.
She attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome and appeared in supporting parts in such Italian films as Il prezzo dell'onore/Pride (Ferdinando Baldi, 1953), the religious Il figlio dell'uomo/The son of man (Virgilio Sabel, 1954) and L'angelo bianco/The white angel (Raffaello Matarazzo, 1955) starring Yvonne Sanson .
She also appeared in German co-productions like Die heilige Lüge/Sacred Lie ( Wolfgang Liebeneiner , 1954), the Heimatfilm Heidemelodie/Melody of the Moors (Ulrich Erfurth, 1956) and the tearjerker Die Heilige und ihr Narr/The Saint and Her Fool (Gustav Ucicky, 1957).
She then appeared in two successful Romy Schneider films, the last part of the Sissi-trilogy, Sissi - Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin/Sissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress (Ernst Marischka, 1957) and Scampolo (Alfred Weidenmann, 1958) in which she appeared as the sexy girlfriend of Paul Hubschmid .
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel. Photo: Berolina / Constantin / Wesel.
An Overcooked Pizza Roll with Eyes
Franca Parisi started the 1960s with the entertaining low-budget horrorfilm Seddok, l'erede di Satana/Atom Age Vampire (Anton Giulio Majano, 1960), produced by Mario Bava.
According to Cavett Binion at AllMovie this is a “less-stylish variant on Franju's classic Les Yeux Sans Visage, (which) borrows heavily from that film's plot to tell the tale of a scientist who employs a radical new procedure to restore the beauty of a young hoochie-koochie dancer disfigured in a car accident.
All goes well after the bandages come off... but (…) the young lass begins transforming into a monster - which, despite the title, is not really a vampire, but more like something resembling an overcooked pizza roll with eyes.” Franca appeared as the beautiful assistant of the mad scientist.
Next she co-starred in the adventure films Capitano di ventura/Rampage of Evil (Angelo Dorigo, 1961) with Gérard Landry, and L'ammutinamento/White Slave Ship (1961) starring Pier Angeli .
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 1367. Photo: Berolina / Constantin / Wesel. Publicity still for Die heilige Lüge/Sacred Lie (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1954).
Biblical Epic
Franca Parisi appeared as Margaret Taylor in the Biblical epic Il vecchio testamento/The Old Testament (Gianfranco Parolini, 1962) starring bodybuilder Brad Harris , and in the Peplum I dieci gladiatori/The Ten Gladiators (Gianfranco Parolini, 1963).
In the second half of the 1960s she often appeared on TV in series as Le avventure di Laura Storm/The Adventures of Laura Storm (1965) and Le inchieste del commissario Maigret/The investigations of Inspector Maigret (1966) with Gino Cervi as Maigret.
She also worked in the theatre, although she generally played supporting parts as the second or third woman. Franca Parisi continued to work in the Italian theatre and the cinema till the end of the 1960’s.
Her last films were the Greek-Italian romantic drama O lipotaktis/The Mandrake (Christos Kefalas, 1970) and Armida, il dramma di una sposa/Armida, the drama of a wife (Bruno Mattei, 1970) in which she played the title role.
In the early 1970s she appeared again as Margaret Taylor in small parts in British TV series like Z Cars (1973) and Doctor at Sea (1974).
Franca Parisi then retired. She had been married to Austrian actor Erwin Strahl, with whom she co-starred in Die heilige Lüge/Sacred Lie ( Wolfgang Liebeneiner , 1954).
English leader and first scenes of Seddok, l'erede di Satana/Atom Age Vampire (1960). Source: Wowvidfreak99 (YouTube).
Trailer of Scampolo (1958). Source: www.ischia.org (YouTube).
Sources: Cavett Binion (AllMovie), Mymovies.it (Italian) and .
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg, Rotterdam (Dutch licency holder for Universum-Film Aktien-gesellschaft, Berlin-Tempelhof), no. 1086. Photo: Ufa/Film-Foto. Publicity still for Scampolo (Alfred Weidenmann, 1958).
Sexy Girlfriend
Franca Parisi, also known as Franca Parisi Strahl and Margaret Taylor, was born in 1933 in Palermo, Italy.
She attended the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome and appeared in supporting parts in such Italian films as Il prezzo dell'onore/Pride (Ferdinando Baldi, 1953), the religious Il figlio dell'uomo/The son of man (Virgilio Sabel, 1954) and L'angelo bianco/The white angel (Raffaello Matarazzo, 1955) starring Yvonne Sanson .
She also appeared in German co-productions like Die heilige Lüge/Sacred Lie ( Wolfgang Liebeneiner , 1954), the Heimatfilm Heidemelodie/Melody of the Moors (Ulrich Erfurth, 1956) and the tearjerker Die Heilige und ihr Narr/The Saint and Her Fool (Gustav Ucicky, 1957).
She then appeared in two successful Romy Schneider films, the last part of the Sissi-trilogy, Sissi - Schicksalsjahre einer Kaiserin/Sissi: The Fateful Years of an Empress (Ernst Marischka, 1957) and Scampolo (Alfred Weidenmann, 1958) in which she appeared as the sexy girlfriend of Paul Hubschmid .
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel. Photo: Berolina / Constantin / Wesel.
An Overcooked Pizza Roll with Eyes
Franca Parisi started the 1960s with the entertaining low-budget horrorfilm Seddok, l'erede di Satana/Atom Age Vampire (Anton Giulio Majano, 1960), produced by Mario Bava.
According to Cavett Binion at AllMovie this is a “less-stylish variant on Franju's classic Les Yeux Sans Visage, (which) borrows heavily from that film's plot to tell the tale of a scientist who employs a radical new procedure to restore the beauty of a young hoochie-koochie dancer disfigured in a car accident.
All goes well after the bandages come off... but (…) the young lass begins transforming into a monster - which, despite the title, is not really a vampire, but more like something resembling an overcooked pizza roll with eyes.” Franca appeared as the beautiful assistant of the mad scientist.
Next she co-starred in the adventure films Capitano di ventura/Rampage of Evil (Angelo Dorigo, 1961) with Gérard Landry, and L'ammutinamento/White Slave Ship (1961) starring Pier Angeli .
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 1367. Photo: Berolina / Constantin / Wesel. Publicity still for Die heilige Lüge/Sacred Lie (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1954).
Biblical Epic
Franca Parisi appeared as Margaret Taylor in the Biblical epic Il vecchio testamento/The Old Testament (Gianfranco Parolini, 1962) starring bodybuilder Brad Harris , and in the Peplum I dieci gladiatori/The Ten Gladiators (Gianfranco Parolini, 1963).
In the second half of the 1960s she often appeared on TV in series as Le avventure di Laura Storm/The Adventures of Laura Storm (1965) and Le inchieste del commissario Maigret/The investigations of Inspector Maigret (1966) with Gino Cervi as Maigret.
She also worked in the theatre, although she generally played supporting parts as the second or third woman. Franca Parisi continued to work in the Italian theatre and the cinema till the end of the 1960’s.
Her last films were the Greek-Italian romantic drama O lipotaktis/The Mandrake (Christos Kefalas, 1970) and Armida, il dramma di una sposa/Armida, the drama of a wife (Bruno Mattei, 1970) in which she played the title role.
In the early 1970s she appeared again as Margaret Taylor in small parts in British TV series like Z Cars (1973) and Doctor at Sea (1974).
Franca Parisi then retired. She had been married to Austrian actor Erwin Strahl, with whom she co-starred in Die heilige Lüge/Sacred Lie ( Wolfgang Liebeneiner , 1954).
English leader and first scenes of Seddok, l'erede di Satana/Atom Age Vampire (1960). Source: Wowvidfreak99 (YouTube).
Trailer of Scampolo (1958). Source: www.ischia.org (YouTube).
Sources: Cavett Binion (AllMovie), Mymovies.it (Italian) and .
February 18, 2014
Heinz Rühmann
Actor, director and producer Heinz Rühmann (1902-1994) was one of Germany's most popular film stars and played in more than 100 films over nearly 70 years. He was a favourite actor of Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels but also of Anne Frank. She pasted his postcard on the wall of her room in her family's hiding place during the war, where it can still be seen today.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 8247/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Fox / Badal.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6341/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Deutsche Lichtspiel-Syndikat (DLS). Publicity photo for the comedy Der Stolz der 3. Kompanie/The Pride of the Third Company (Fred Sauer, 1932).
Mean Son
Heinrich Wilhelm Rühmann was born in Essen, Germany, in 1902. He was born as one of three children (he had two sisters) to Hermann and Margarethe Rühmann. After his parents had divorced in 1916, his father committed suicide.
In 1919 Heinz decided to take acting lessons and six months later he got his first theatre engagement at the Lobe and Thalia theatre.
His first film part was in the silent film Das Deutsche Mutterherz/The German Mother's Heart (Géza von Bolváry, 1926) as a mean son who beats his mother (Margarete Kupfer).
After the introduction of the sound film, Ufa Producer Erich Pommer engaged the young actor for Die Drei von der Tankstelle/Three Good Friends (Wilhelm Thiele, 1930). His cheeky and cheerful role in this successful film operetta at the side of the dream couple Willy Fritsch and Lilian Harvey led to immediate stardom.
Rühmann was signed on by the Ufa and in the following years, he became one of the busiest comedians of the German cinema. His successes included Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht/Looking for His Murderer (Robert Siodmak, 1931) and Der Stolz der 3. Kompanie/The Pride of the Third Company (Fred Sauer, 1932).
According to Filmportal.de , Rühmann predominantly played roguish, street-smart characters who get on in their life by small cheatings and cheekiness but meet their fate and all contradictions surrounding it with indifference.
He found ideal complementing film partners in the comedians Theo Lingen and Hans Moser in such films as Meine Frau, die Hochstaplerin/My Wife, the Fraud (Kurt Gerron, 1931), Man braucht kein Geld/No Money Is Needed (Carl Boese, 1932) and 13 Stühle/13 Chairs (E.W. Emo, 1938).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6564/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Atelier Schneider, Berlin.
German postcard by Das Programm von Heute, Berkin. Photo: Tobis-Schmoll.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 189/1. Photo: Elite-Cinema. Publicity still for Heimkehr ins Glück/Return to Happiness (Carl Boese, 1933).
German postcard by Das Programm von Heute, Berlin / Ross Verlag. Photo: Cine-Allianz. Collection: Miss Mertens.
Jewish Wife
Although Heinz Rühmann never supported the Nazi regime, his career survived – and flourished - only after he divorced his Jewish wife, Maria Bernheim. She married the Swedish actor Rolf von Nauckhoff and thus got the departure permission to Sweden. Rühmann supported her financially during the war and she survived the Holocaust. After the war the couple explained on German television that pressure by the Nazis had forced them to separate.
Two films which marked the height of his career in this period were Der Mustergatte/Model Husband (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1937) and Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war/The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes (Karl Hartl, 1937). In the latter he starred as the reserved but smart partner of Hans Albers .
In 1938, he directed his first film Lauter Lügen/Many Lies (1938) starring Hertha Feiler , who later became his second wife. Hertha had a Jewish grandfather, a fact that caused Rühmann again problems with the Nazi cultural authorities. However, he retained his reputation as an apolitical star during the entire Nazi era.
Also from 1938 on, he produced his own films as well as films by other directors with the production company Terra. Among those films were Der Florentiner Hut/The Leghorn Hat (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1939), Kleider machen Leute/Fine feathers make fine birds (Helmut Käutner, 1940) and Quax, der Bruchpilot (Kurt Hoffmann, 1941).
From 1938 to 1943 he also played at the Preussische Staatstheater in Berlin and was awarded Staatsschauspieler (National Actor) in 1940.
One of his most popular and best films was Die Feuerzangenbowle/The Fire-Tongs Bowl(Helmut Weiss, 1944), a nostalgic and very funny comedy about mistaken identities. The premiere of Die Feuerzangenbowle was forbidden by the Nazi film censor for 'disrespect for authority', according to Wikipedia . Through his good relationships with the regime, however, Rühmann was able to screen the film in public. He brought the film to the Führerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze for a private screening for Hermann Göring and others. Afterward, Göring was able to get the ban on the film lifted by Adolf Hitler.
He was a favourite actor of both Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. In August 1944, Goebbels put Rühmann on the Gottbegnadeten list of indispensable actors and thus was spared having to take part in the war effort. At the end of the war he was forced to witness the rape of his wife Hertha Feiler by Russian soldiers in his Berlin villa.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3535/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra. Probably a publicity still for Quax, der Bruchpilot (Kurt Hoffmann, 1941).
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3852/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3227/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa / Baumann.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3774/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
Working Prohibition
After the Second World War, Heinz Rühmann's career had a tough start. First he was confronted with a working prohibition by the Allies. He toured the part of Germany occupied by the Soviets with his own production of Der Mustergatte/Model Husband and in 1947 he staged the play in Munich and Berlin.
In that year, he also founded the film company Comedia together with Alf Teich. They had a critical success with Berliner Ballade/The Berliner (Robert A. Stemmle, 1948), a satiric look at life in postwar Berlin, but Comedia went bankrupt in 1952.
Producer Gyula Trebitsch helped him get a comeback as an actor with Keine Angst vor grossen Tieren/No Fear for Big Animals (Ulrich Erfurth, 1953) . Subsequently his roles became more and more tragicomic.
He established himself again as a star with the title role of the internationally acclaimed Der Hauptmann von Köpenick/The Captain from Köpenick (Helmut Käutner, 1956). The Oscar nominated film told the true story of a Prussian cobbler, Wilhelm Voigt, who dressed up as an army officer and took over the town hall in Köpenick. In the days of the German Empire, the army had an almost sacred status, and this cobbler embarrassed army officers and civil servants, who obeyed him without questioning.
Other big hits were the thriller Es geschah am hellichten Tag/It Happened in Broad Daylight (Ladislao Vajda, 1958) and the satire Der brave Soldat Schwejk/The Good Soldier Schweik (Axel von Ambesser, 1960) based on the novels by Jaroslav Hašek.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 213, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3555, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
German postcard by K & B / Filmwelt Berlin Archiv für Film-Geschichte, no. 57. Photo: Deutsche London Film / T. von Mindszenty. Publicity still for Keine Angst vor grossen Tieren/No Fear for Big Animals (1953) with Ingeborg Körner.
German collectors card by Lux.
Germany's Most Beloved Actor
Heinz Rühmann played such popular character roles as the title role in Mein Schulfreund/My School Chum (Robert Siodmak, 1960) and as father Brown in Das schwarze Schaf/The Black Sheep (Helmut Ashley, 1960).
He was an ensemble member at the famous Vienna Burgtheater from 1960 to 1962. In Hollywood he played a supporting role in Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer, 1965).
From 1968 on, Rühmann mainly worked for TV productions. Twelve times he was voted Germany's most beloved actor and he won a large number of awards.
He also published several books: Heinz Rühmann erzählt vom Geschenk der Weisen und andren Begebenheiten (1978), his memories Das war's (1982) and the photo biography Ein Leben in Bildern (1987).
He gave his farewell performance in In weiter Ferne, so nah!/Faraway, So Close! (Wim Wenders, 1993).
Heinz Rühmann died in 1994 in Aufkirchen, Germany. He was married three times, with Maria Herbot (1924-1938), Hertha Feiler (1939-1970; her death) and Hertha Droemer (1974-1994; his death).
He was the father of Peter Rühmann (mother: Hertha Feiler) and the grandfather of actress Melanie Rühmann.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2642, 1966. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Progress. Publicity still for Hokuspokus oder: Wie lasse ich meinen Mann verschwinden...?/Hocuspocus (Kurt Hoffmann, 1966).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2662, 1966. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Progress. Publicity still for Hokuspokus oder: Wie lasse ich meinen Mann verschwinden...?/Hocuspocus (Kurt Hoffmann, 1966).
Scene from Die Drei von der Tankstelle/Three Good Friends (Wilhelm Thiele, 1930). Source: Ein Lied Geht Um die Welt (YouTube).
Heinz Rühmann sings one of the most popular lullabies La Le Lu to Oliver Grimm in Wenn der Vater mit dem Sohne/Like father like son (Hans Quest, 1955).
Sources: Filmportal.de, Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos),
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 8247/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Fox / Badal.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6341/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Deutsche Lichtspiel-Syndikat (DLS). Publicity photo for the comedy Der Stolz der 3. Kompanie/The Pride of the Third Company (Fred Sauer, 1932).
Mean Son
Heinrich Wilhelm Rühmann was born in Essen, Germany, in 1902. He was born as one of three children (he had two sisters) to Hermann and Margarethe Rühmann. After his parents had divorced in 1916, his father committed suicide.
In 1919 Heinz decided to take acting lessons and six months later he got his first theatre engagement at the Lobe and Thalia theatre.
His first film part was in the silent film Das Deutsche Mutterherz/The German Mother's Heart (Géza von Bolváry, 1926) as a mean son who beats his mother (Margarete Kupfer).
After the introduction of the sound film, Ufa Producer Erich Pommer engaged the young actor for Die Drei von der Tankstelle/Three Good Friends (Wilhelm Thiele, 1930). His cheeky and cheerful role in this successful film operetta at the side of the dream couple Willy Fritsch and Lilian Harvey led to immediate stardom.
Rühmann was signed on by the Ufa and in the following years, he became one of the busiest comedians of the German cinema. His successes included Der Mann, der seinen Mörder sucht/Looking for His Murderer (Robert Siodmak, 1931) and Der Stolz der 3. Kompanie/The Pride of the Third Company (Fred Sauer, 1932).
According to Filmportal.de , Rühmann predominantly played roguish, street-smart characters who get on in their life by small cheatings and cheekiness but meet their fate and all contradictions surrounding it with indifference.
He found ideal complementing film partners in the comedians Theo Lingen and Hans Moser in such films as Meine Frau, die Hochstaplerin/My Wife, the Fraud (Kurt Gerron, 1931), Man braucht kein Geld/No Money Is Needed (Carl Boese, 1932) and 13 Stühle/13 Chairs (E.W. Emo, 1938).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6564/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Atelier Schneider, Berlin.
German postcard by Das Programm von Heute, Berkin. Photo: Tobis-Schmoll.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. 189/1. Photo: Elite-Cinema. Publicity still for Heimkehr ins Glück/Return to Happiness (Carl Boese, 1933).
German postcard by Das Programm von Heute, Berlin / Ross Verlag. Photo: Cine-Allianz. Collection: Miss Mertens.
Jewish Wife
Although Heinz Rühmann never supported the Nazi regime, his career survived – and flourished - only after he divorced his Jewish wife, Maria Bernheim. She married the Swedish actor Rolf von Nauckhoff and thus got the departure permission to Sweden. Rühmann supported her financially during the war and she survived the Holocaust. After the war the couple explained on German television that pressure by the Nazis had forced them to separate.
Two films which marked the height of his career in this period were Der Mustergatte/Model Husband (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1937) and Der Mann, der Sherlock Holmes war/The Man Who Was Sherlock Holmes (Karl Hartl, 1937). In the latter he starred as the reserved but smart partner of Hans Albers .
In 1938, he directed his first film Lauter Lügen/Many Lies (1938) starring Hertha Feiler , who later became his second wife. Hertha had a Jewish grandfather, a fact that caused Rühmann again problems with the Nazi cultural authorities. However, he retained his reputation as an apolitical star during the entire Nazi era.
Also from 1938 on, he produced his own films as well as films by other directors with the production company Terra. Among those films were Der Florentiner Hut/The Leghorn Hat (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1939), Kleider machen Leute/Fine feathers make fine birds (Helmut Käutner, 1940) and Quax, der Bruchpilot (Kurt Hoffmann, 1941).
From 1938 to 1943 he also played at the Preussische Staatstheater in Berlin and was awarded Staatsschauspieler (National Actor) in 1940.
One of his most popular and best films was Die Feuerzangenbowle/The Fire-Tongs Bowl(Helmut Weiss, 1944), a nostalgic and very funny comedy about mistaken identities. The premiere of Die Feuerzangenbowle was forbidden by the Nazi film censor for 'disrespect for authority', according to Wikipedia . Through his good relationships with the regime, however, Rühmann was able to screen the film in public. He brought the film to the Führerhauptquartier Wolfsschanze for a private screening for Hermann Göring and others. Afterward, Göring was able to get the ban on the film lifted by Adolf Hitler.
He was a favourite actor of both Adolf Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. In August 1944, Goebbels put Rühmann on the Gottbegnadeten list of indispensable actors and thus was spared having to take part in the war effort. At the end of the war he was forced to witness the rape of his wife Hertha Feiler by Russian soldiers in his Berlin villa.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3535/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra. Probably a publicity still for Quax, der Bruchpilot (Kurt Hoffmann, 1941).
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3852/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3227/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa / Baumann.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3774/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
Working Prohibition
After the Second World War, Heinz Rühmann's career had a tough start. First he was confronted with a working prohibition by the Allies. He toured the part of Germany occupied by the Soviets with his own production of Der Mustergatte/Model Husband and in 1947 he staged the play in Munich and Berlin.
In that year, he also founded the film company Comedia together with Alf Teich. They had a critical success with Berliner Ballade/The Berliner (Robert A. Stemmle, 1948), a satiric look at life in postwar Berlin, but Comedia went bankrupt in 1952.
Producer Gyula Trebitsch helped him get a comeback as an actor with Keine Angst vor grossen Tieren/No Fear for Big Animals (Ulrich Erfurth, 1953) . Subsequently his roles became more and more tragicomic.
He established himself again as a star with the title role of the internationally acclaimed Der Hauptmann von Köpenick/The Captain from Köpenick (Helmut Käutner, 1956). The Oscar nominated film told the true story of a Prussian cobbler, Wilhelm Voigt, who dressed up as an army officer and took over the town hall in Köpenick. In the days of the German Empire, the army had an almost sacred status, and this cobbler embarrassed army officers and civil servants, who obeyed him without questioning.
Other big hits were the thriller Es geschah am hellichten Tag/It Happened in Broad Daylight (Ladislao Vajda, 1958) and the satire Der brave Soldat Schwejk/The Good Soldier Schweik (Axel von Ambesser, 1960) based on the novels by Jaroslav Hašek.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 213, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3555, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
German postcard by K & B / Filmwelt Berlin Archiv für Film-Geschichte, no. 57. Photo: Deutsche London Film / T. von Mindszenty. Publicity still for Keine Angst vor grossen Tieren/No Fear for Big Animals (1953) with Ingeborg Körner.
German collectors card by Lux.
Germany's Most Beloved Actor
Heinz Rühmann played such popular character roles as the title role in Mein Schulfreund/My School Chum (Robert Siodmak, 1960) and as father Brown in Das schwarze Schaf/The Black Sheep (Helmut Ashley, 1960).
He was an ensemble member at the famous Vienna Burgtheater from 1960 to 1962. In Hollywood he played a supporting role in Ship of Fools (Stanley Kramer, 1965).
From 1968 on, Rühmann mainly worked for TV productions. Twelve times he was voted Germany's most beloved actor and he won a large number of awards.
He also published several books: Heinz Rühmann erzählt vom Geschenk der Weisen und andren Begebenheiten (1978), his memories Das war's (1982) and the photo biography Ein Leben in Bildern (1987).
He gave his farewell performance in In weiter Ferne, so nah!/Faraway, So Close! (Wim Wenders, 1993).
Heinz Rühmann died in 1994 in Aufkirchen, Germany. He was married three times, with Maria Herbot (1924-1938), Hertha Feiler (1939-1970; her death) and Hertha Droemer (1974-1994; his death).
He was the father of Peter Rühmann (mother: Hertha Feiler) and the grandfather of actress Melanie Rühmann.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2642, 1966. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Progress. Publicity still for Hokuspokus oder: Wie lasse ich meinen Mann verschwinden...?/Hocuspocus (Kurt Hoffmann, 1966).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2662, 1966. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Progress. Publicity still for Hokuspokus oder: Wie lasse ich meinen Mann verschwinden...?/Hocuspocus (Kurt Hoffmann, 1966).
Scene from Die Drei von der Tankstelle/Three Good Friends (Wilhelm Thiele, 1930). Source: Ein Lied Geht Um die Welt (YouTube).
Heinz Rühmann sings one of the most popular lullabies La Le Lu to Oliver Grimm in Wenn der Vater mit dem Sohne/Like father like son (Hans Quest, 1955).
Sources: Filmportal.de, Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos),
February 17, 2014
Pero Alexander
German actor Pero Alexander (1921) played in a dozen Heimat films and other light entertainment pictures of the 1950s.
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. T 616. Photo: Berolina / Constantin / Wesel. Still from Wenn der vater mit dem Sohne/If the Father and the Son (Hans Quest, 1955).
Tawdry White Slavery Melodrama
Pero Alexander was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1921. His birth name was Hans Eduard Pfingstler and in his early films, he was sometimes featured as Peter Alexander.
In 1952 he made his film debut in Straße zur Heimat/The Way Homewards (Romano Mengon, 1952) starring Angelika Hauff.
Soon followed supporting roles in more Heimat films like Wetterleuchten am Dachstein/Storm Clouds Over Dachstein (Anton Kutter, 1953) with Marianne Koch, and Einmal kehr' ich wieder/Once I'll Return (Géza von Bolváry, 1953) with Paul Dahlke.
His first leading part was in the drama Maria Johanna (1953), which was directed by Swedish film star Signe Hasso and her former husband Harry Hasso.
Alexander had a small role in the white slavery melodrama Mannequins für Rio/They Were So Young (Kurt Neumann, 1954), a German-American co-production starring Johanna Matz , Scott Brady and Raymond Burr.
Hal Erickson wrote at AllMovie : "Filmed on location in Rio De Janeiro, They Were So Young is a tawdry 'white slavery' melodrama, elevated by a first-rate cast and excellent production values."
Other films were the musical comedy Sonne über der Adria/Sun Over The Adria (Karl Georg Külb, 1954) and the Heinz Rühmann comedy Wenn der Vater mit dem Sohne/Like Father Like Son (Hans Quest, 1955).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden. Photo: Hansa / Allianz-Film / Betzler. Still from Einmahl kehr' ich wieder/Once I'll Return (1953).
German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, no. FK 1727. Photo: Wesel / Berolina / Constantin Film.
Fathers
In the second half of the 1950s, Pero Alexander played more supporting parts, such as in Mädchen ohne Grenzen/A Girl Without Boundaries (Géza von Radványi, 1955), starring Sonja Ziemann and Ivan Desny , Das Schloß in Tirol/Castle in Tyrol (Géza von Radványi, 1957) starring Karlheinz Böhm and Erika Remberg , and Vater, Mutter und neun Kinder/Father, Mother and Nine Children (Erich Engels, 1958).
He played a romantic lead opposite Heidi Brühl in Vater, unser bestes Stück/Father, Our Best Piece (Günther Lüders, 1957) and then played in the crime dramas Das Nachtlokal zum Silbermond/5 Sinners (Wolfgang Gluck, 1959) and Orientalische Nächte/Nights in the Orient (Heinz Paul, 1960), both starring Marina Petrova.
Hal Erickson writes at AllMovie about Das Nachtlokal zum Silbermond/5 Sinners: "Dark, moody and pessimistic, 5 Sinners, has the flavor, if not the substance of the classic film noir, but perhaps because of its tawdry ambiance, the film was frequently shown in grind houses specializing in 'nudies.'"
In the early 1960s, he played his last film roles in Hohe Tannen/High Pines (August Rieger, 1960), Treibjagd auf ein Leben/Hunt For A Life (Ralph Lothar, 1961), and Das Mädchen auf der Titelseite/The Girl on the Front Page (Fritz Bornemann, 1961).
During the 1960s he incidentally appeared on TV like in the Austrian crime series Spiel um Schmuck/Gambling for jewellery (1966), directed by and starring Curd Jürgens.
We could not find more biographical online information on Pero Alexander.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden. Photo: Hansa / Allianz-Film / Betzler. Still from Einmahl kehr' ich wieder/Once I'll Return (Géza von Bolváry, 1953).
Austrian postcard by HDH Verlag, Wien (Vienna) (llicency holder for Ufa, Berlin). Photo: Bavaria-Film / Hansa-Film / Günter Matern.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Filmportal.de and .
German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. T 616. Photo: Berolina / Constantin / Wesel. Still from Wenn der vater mit dem Sohne/If the Father and the Son (Hans Quest, 1955).
Tawdry White Slavery Melodrama
Pero Alexander was born in Stuttgart, Germany in 1921. His birth name was Hans Eduard Pfingstler and in his early films, he was sometimes featured as Peter Alexander.
In 1952 he made his film debut in Straße zur Heimat/The Way Homewards (Romano Mengon, 1952) starring Angelika Hauff.
Soon followed supporting roles in more Heimat films like Wetterleuchten am Dachstein/Storm Clouds Over Dachstein (Anton Kutter, 1953) with Marianne Koch, and Einmal kehr' ich wieder/Once I'll Return (Géza von Bolváry, 1953) with Paul Dahlke.
His first leading part was in the drama Maria Johanna (1953), which was directed by Swedish film star Signe Hasso and her former husband Harry Hasso.
Alexander had a small role in the white slavery melodrama Mannequins für Rio/They Were So Young (Kurt Neumann, 1954), a German-American co-production starring Johanna Matz , Scott Brady and Raymond Burr.
Hal Erickson wrote at AllMovie : "Filmed on location in Rio De Janeiro, They Were So Young is a tawdry 'white slavery' melodrama, elevated by a first-rate cast and excellent production values."
Other films were the musical comedy Sonne über der Adria/Sun Over The Adria (Karl Georg Külb, 1954) and the Heinz Rühmann comedy Wenn der Vater mit dem Sohne/Like Father Like Son (Hans Quest, 1955).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden. Photo: Hansa / Allianz-Film / Betzler. Still from Einmahl kehr' ich wieder/Once I'll Return (1953).
German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, no. FK 1727. Photo: Wesel / Berolina / Constantin Film.
Fathers
In the second half of the 1950s, Pero Alexander played more supporting parts, such as in Mädchen ohne Grenzen/A Girl Without Boundaries (Géza von Radványi, 1955), starring Sonja Ziemann and Ivan Desny , Das Schloß in Tirol/Castle in Tyrol (Géza von Radványi, 1957) starring Karlheinz Böhm and Erika Remberg , and Vater, Mutter und neun Kinder/Father, Mother and Nine Children (Erich Engels, 1958).
He played a romantic lead opposite Heidi Brühl in Vater, unser bestes Stück/Father, Our Best Piece (Günther Lüders, 1957) and then played in the crime dramas Das Nachtlokal zum Silbermond/5 Sinners (Wolfgang Gluck, 1959) and Orientalische Nächte/Nights in the Orient (Heinz Paul, 1960), both starring Marina Petrova.
Hal Erickson writes at AllMovie about Das Nachtlokal zum Silbermond/5 Sinners: "Dark, moody and pessimistic, 5 Sinners, has the flavor, if not the substance of the classic film noir, but perhaps because of its tawdry ambiance, the film was frequently shown in grind houses specializing in 'nudies.'"
In the early 1960s, he played his last film roles in Hohe Tannen/High Pines (August Rieger, 1960), Treibjagd auf ein Leben/Hunt For A Life (Ralph Lothar, 1961), and Das Mädchen auf der Titelseite/The Girl on the Front Page (Fritz Bornemann, 1961).
During the 1960s he incidentally appeared on TV like in the Austrian crime series Spiel um Schmuck/Gambling for jewellery (1966), directed by and starring Curd Jürgens.
We could not find more biographical online information on Pero Alexander.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden. Photo: Hansa / Allianz-Film / Betzler. Still from Einmahl kehr' ich wieder/Once I'll Return (Géza von Bolváry, 1953).
Austrian postcard by HDH Verlag, Wien (Vienna) (llicency holder for Ufa, Berlin). Photo: Bavaria-Film / Hansa-Film / Günter Matern.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Filmportal.de and .
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