Paul van Yperen's Blog, page 430
January 27, 2014
George Alexander
Sir George Alexander (1858-1918) was an English actor and theatre manager. One of his most famous stage roles was in The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope, which premiered in 1896.
British postcard by J. Beagles & Co., Ltd., Printers & Publishers, no. 516 B. Photo: Ellis & Walery. Publicity photo for a stage production of The Prisoner of Zenda.
Lady Windermere's Fan
George Alexander was born in 1858 as George Alexander Gibb Samson in Reading, Berkshire, England.
He began acting in amateur theatricals in 1875. Four years later he embarked on a professional acting career, making his London debut in 1881.
He played many roles in the leading companies, including Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum. In 1890, he produced his first play at the Avenue Theatre and in 1891 he became the actor manager of St. James's Theatre, where he produced several major plays of the day such as Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde in 189).
Alexander also appeared in The Second Mrs Tanqueray by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero in which he played Aubrey Tanqueray. The play made Mrs. Patrick Campbell into a theatrical star.
British postcard by J. Beagles & Co., E.G., no. 515.M (matt), no. G 515 (glossy). Photo: Langfier Ltd London.
British postcard by Davidson Bros.´Real Photo` series, no. 1090. Sent by mail in 1907. Photo: Lizzie Caswall Smith.
The Importance of Being Earnest
One of the most famous first nights in Victorian Theatre occurred on 14 February 1895 when The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde hit the stage.
The Prince of Wales was in attendance and a good dozen policemen could be seen patrolling the streets outside. A tip-off had warned both the author and the actor/manager that Lord Alfred Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensbury was hoping to get into the theatre and create havoc during the play.
Fortunately the Marquess was ushered from the premises and in disgust threw his grotesque bouquet of vegetables that he was carrying into the gutter. Queensbury then set into motion the events that led to Wilde's downfall and disgrace.
Upon his release from prison in 1897, Wilde moved to the continent.
In 1900, Alexander, who had acquired the acting rights for The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere's Fan, visited Wilde in Paris and offered the poverty-stricken former writer some voluntary payments on the plays and to bequeath the rights to Wilde's estranged sons.
British postcard by J. Beagles & Co, Kondon, no. 515 S. Photo: Ellis & Walery.
British postcard by Rotary Photos E.C., no. 103c.
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray
Later, George Alexander threw himself into the development of the modern drawing room comedy.
It was here his true talent shone. With a light comic air and a delicate grace Alec, as he was affectionately known, brought many care-free parts to life.
He remained at the St. James's Theatre to the end of his life. In 1911 he was knighted by King George V for his services to the theatre.
He appeared in two silent films. He repeated his stage role of Aubrey Tanqueray in the film adaptation The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (Fred Paul, 1916).
The following year he appeared as himself in Masks and Faces (Fred Paul, 1917). In this silent curiosity were also appearing the legendary stage actors Henry Irving and Gerald DuMaurier as well as the famous authors George Bernard Shaw and J.M. Barrie.
George Alexander later appeared as a character in David Lodge's novel about the life of Henry James, Author, Author.
George Alexander died in 1918. He was the great, great uncle of actor/comedian Hugh Laurie.
British postcard in the Wrench series, no. 1002. Sent by mail in 1902. Photo: Langfier Ltd London.
British postcard by Rotary, no. 4225 F. Photo: Foulsham and Banfield.
Sources: and Wikipedia.
British postcard by J. Beagles & Co., Ltd., Printers & Publishers, no. 516 B. Photo: Ellis & Walery. Publicity photo for a stage production of The Prisoner of Zenda.
Lady Windermere's Fan
George Alexander was born in 1858 as George Alexander Gibb Samson in Reading, Berkshire, England.
He began acting in amateur theatricals in 1875. Four years later he embarked on a professional acting career, making his London debut in 1881.
He played many roles in the leading companies, including Sir Henry Irving's Lyceum. In 1890, he produced his first play at the Avenue Theatre and in 1891 he became the actor manager of St. James's Theatre, where he produced several major plays of the day such as Lady Windermere's Fan by Oscar Wilde in 189).
Alexander also appeared in The Second Mrs Tanqueray by Sir Arthur Wing Pinero in which he played Aubrey Tanqueray. The play made Mrs. Patrick Campbell into a theatrical star.
British postcard by J. Beagles & Co., E.G., no. 515.M (matt), no. G 515 (glossy). Photo: Langfier Ltd London.
British postcard by Davidson Bros.´Real Photo` series, no. 1090. Sent by mail in 1907. Photo: Lizzie Caswall Smith.
The Importance of Being Earnest
One of the most famous first nights in Victorian Theatre occurred on 14 February 1895 when The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde hit the stage.
The Prince of Wales was in attendance and a good dozen policemen could be seen patrolling the streets outside. A tip-off had warned both the author and the actor/manager that Lord Alfred Douglas's father, the Marquess of Queensbury was hoping to get into the theatre and create havoc during the play.
Fortunately the Marquess was ushered from the premises and in disgust threw his grotesque bouquet of vegetables that he was carrying into the gutter. Queensbury then set into motion the events that led to Wilde's downfall and disgrace.
Upon his release from prison in 1897, Wilde moved to the continent.
In 1900, Alexander, who had acquired the acting rights for The Importance of Being Earnest and Lady Windermere's Fan, visited Wilde in Paris and offered the poverty-stricken former writer some voluntary payments on the plays and to bequeath the rights to Wilde's estranged sons.
British postcard by J. Beagles & Co, Kondon, no. 515 S. Photo: Ellis & Walery.
British postcard by Rotary Photos E.C., no. 103c.
The Second Mrs. Tanqueray
Later, George Alexander threw himself into the development of the modern drawing room comedy.
It was here his true talent shone. With a light comic air and a delicate grace Alec, as he was affectionately known, brought many care-free parts to life.
He remained at the St. James's Theatre to the end of his life. In 1911 he was knighted by King George V for his services to the theatre.
He appeared in two silent films. He repeated his stage role of Aubrey Tanqueray in the film adaptation The Second Mrs. Tanqueray (Fred Paul, 1916).
The following year he appeared as himself in Masks and Faces (Fred Paul, 1917). In this silent curiosity were also appearing the legendary stage actors Henry Irving and Gerald DuMaurier as well as the famous authors George Bernard Shaw and J.M. Barrie.
George Alexander later appeared as a character in David Lodge's novel about the life of Henry James, Author, Author.
George Alexander died in 1918. He was the great, great uncle of actor/comedian Hugh Laurie.
British postcard in the Wrench series, no. 1002. Sent by mail in 1902. Photo: Langfier Ltd London.
British postcard by Rotary, no. 4225 F. Photo: Foulsham and Banfield.
Sources: and Wikipedia.
January 26, 2014
Fred Bertelmann (1925-2014)
On 22 January 2014, German singer and actor Fred Bertelmann (1925-2014) died. His biggest hit was the song Der lachende Vagabund (1957), which he also sang in the Schlager film of the same name.
German postcard by ISV, no. E 22. Photo: Constantin / Grimm.
Eurovision Song Contest
Fred Bertelmann was born in Duisburg, Germany in 1925. Aged 9 he became a chorister and later also studied cello, trumpet, guitar and singing.
In World War II, he fought in the Wehrmacht but then became a prisoner of war and was sent to Alabama, where he first heard of swing music. After his return to Germany he founded his own band and often performed in American GI clubs in Germany.
In 1950 he toured Sweden with Arne Hülphers and Zarah Leander . He also worked as a solo singer of Schlager songs.
His most popular song was the 1957 published Der lachende Vagabund, a cover version of Jim Lowes song Gambler’s Guitar.
Other hits include Wenn es Nacht wird in Montana, In Hamburg sind die Nächte lang, Zwei Gitarren am Meer, Ein kleines Lied auf allen Wegen, and Arrivederci Roma.
wice, in 1958 and 1964, he sang at the German preliminary round of the Eurovision Song Contest.
Belgian postcard by Cox, no. 25. With Conny Froboess .
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., no. 019. Photo: Kolibri / Appelt.
German postcard by Terra-Color, no. F 170. Photo: Electrola / Melodie / Gloria / Sascha / Appelt.
Superhit
Fred Bertelmann performed one of his songs in the romantic comedy Pulverschnee nach Übersee/Powder Snow to Übersee (Hermann Leitner, 1956) with Adrian Hoven and Marianne Hold .
This lead to several more film parts. He played the lead in Der lachende Vagabund/The Laughing Rover (Thomas Engel, 1958) opposite Susanne Cramer , a tie-in on his superhit of a year earlier.
In total he appeared in 18 Schlager films, but he also starred in stage musicals as Kiss me Kate.
Since 1966 he was married to television presenter and actress Ruth Kappelsberger.
He was honoured with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
In late 2013 he suffered from severe pneumonia. Fred Bertelmann died on 22 January 2014 in Berg, Upper Bavaria. He was 88.
Fred Bertelmann sings Der lachende Vagabund (1958). Source: Fritz5169 (YouTube).
Sources: FredBertelmann.de (German), Wikipedia (German and English), and .
German postcard by ISV, no. E 22. Photo: Constantin / Grimm.
Eurovision Song Contest
Fred Bertelmann was born in Duisburg, Germany in 1925. Aged 9 he became a chorister and later also studied cello, trumpet, guitar and singing.
In World War II, he fought in the Wehrmacht but then became a prisoner of war and was sent to Alabama, where he first heard of swing music. After his return to Germany he founded his own band and often performed in American GI clubs in Germany.
In 1950 he toured Sweden with Arne Hülphers and Zarah Leander . He also worked as a solo singer of Schlager songs.
His most popular song was the 1957 published Der lachende Vagabund, a cover version of Jim Lowes song Gambler’s Guitar.
Other hits include Wenn es Nacht wird in Montana, In Hamburg sind die Nächte lang, Zwei Gitarren am Meer, Ein kleines Lied auf allen Wegen, and Arrivederci Roma.
wice, in 1958 and 1964, he sang at the German preliminary round of the Eurovision Song Contest.
Belgian postcard by Cox, no. 25. With Conny Froboess .
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., no. 019. Photo: Kolibri / Appelt.
German postcard by Terra-Color, no. F 170. Photo: Electrola / Melodie / Gloria / Sascha / Appelt.
Superhit
Fred Bertelmann performed one of his songs in the romantic comedy Pulverschnee nach Übersee/Powder Snow to Übersee (Hermann Leitner, 1956) with Adrian Hoven and Marianne Hold .
This lead to several more film parts. He played the lead in Der lachende Vagabund/The Laughing Rover (Thomas Engel, 1958) opposite Susanne Cramer , a tie-in on his superhit of a year earlier.
In total he appeared in 18 Schlager films, but he also starred in stage musicals as Kiss me Kate.
Since 1966 he was married to television presenter and actress Ruth Kappelsberger.
He was honoured with the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.
In late 2013 he suffered from severe pneumonia. Fred Bertelmann died on 22 January 2014 in Berg, Upper Bavaria. He was 88.
Fred Bertelmann sings Der lachende Vagabund (1958). Source: Fritz5169 (YouTube).
Sources: FredBertelmann.de (German), Wikipedia (German and English), and .
January 25, 2014
Shirley Eaton
Stunning Shirley Eaton (1937) played a cockney bombshell in British films throughout the 1950s and 1960s. She became famous as golden girl Jill Masterson in the third 007 adventure Goldfinger (1964). Five years later, Eaton retired.
Italian postcard. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Around the World Under the Sea (1966).
Carry On
Shirley Jean Eaton was born in Edgware, Middlesex, in 1937. She grew up in the suburb of Harrow Weald, where she attended Roe Green Junior School on Princes Avenue. Eaton won a place at the Aida Foster School, a specialist drama school, and remained there until she was sixteen.
Her stage debut was at age 12 in Set to Partners (1949) and following it up the following year with Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera!
In 1954 she debuted at the West End in Going to Town. All through the fifties she was a singing star both on the stage and on Television. She had her own act in Variety shows all over the country and starred at The Prince of Wales Theatre in London in her own solo singing act.
Throughout her career, she worked with top British male comedy stars from the period including Jimmy Edwards, Max Bygraves, Bob Monkhouse and Arthur Askey. Her female co-stars included Peggy Mount, Thora Hird and Dora Bryan.
From 1953 on, she also appeared in the cinema. Her debut was a bit part in the comedy-drama A Day to Remember (Ralph Thomas, 1953) starring Stanley Holloway.
She had a supporting part in the comedy Doctor in the House (Ralph Thomas, 1954), about a group of medical students including Dirk Bogarde and Kenneth More. In Great Britain, Doctor in the House was the most popular film at the box office of 1954, and its success spawned six sequels, and the television series Doctor in the House.
Other early film roles include Three Men In A Boat (Ken Annakin, 1956) opposite Laurence Harvey , and Date with Disaster (Charles Saunders, 1957), in which she co-starred with Tom Drake. Eaton participated in the British heat of the 1957 Eurovision Song Contest.
She also sang and danced with the Crazy Gang in Life Is a Circus (Val Guest, 1958). That year, she also co-starred with William Hartnell and Bob Monkhouse in the comedy Carry On Sergeant (Gerald Thomas, 1958) - the first in the series of Carry On films, with 31 entries.
Carry On Sergeant had not been conceived as the start of a series, but after the film's surprising success producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas set about planning a further project. Eaton returned as a nurse in Carry On Nurse (Gerald Thomas, 1959) which was the year’s top grossing film in the UK, and after this success the Carry On series of films evolved. In 1960, Eaton returned one more time in the series, in Carry on Constable (Gerald Thomas, 1960).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, no. 1085. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: J. Arthur Rank / Progress.
Goldfinger
Shirley Eaton co-starred with popular pulp novelist Mickey Spillane in the crime film The Girl Hunters (Roy Rowland, 1963). Spillane played his own literary creation, private detective Mike Hammer and Eaton was a seductive femme fatale.
Between 1962 and 1968, she also made three episodes of the spy thriller TV series The Saint, starring Roger Moore as the suave and sophisticated Simon Templar.
Eaton achieved most recognition for her short performance in Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964), the third film in the James Bond series starring Sean Connery . As the gold-painted Jill Masterson, Eaton even gained more recognition than Honor Blackman , who played the main Bond Girl, Pussy Galore.
Eaton graced the cover of Life Magazine of 6 November 1964 in her gold-painted persona. Her character's death, being painted head to toe in gold paint and suffering ‘skin suffocation’ led to an urban myth that Eaton had died during filming. She appeared in a 2003 episode of the series MythBusters to dispel the rumour.
Goldfinger was the first Bond film to win an Academy Award and was a financial success, recouping its budget in just two weeks.
After Goldfinger, Eaton made only a few more films, including a version of the Agatha Christie mystery Ten Little Indians (George Pollock, 1965) co-starring Hugh O'Brian, the science fiction film Around the World Under the Sea (Andrew Marton, 1966) starring Lloyd Bridges, and the spy story The Million Eyes of Sumuru (Lindsay Shonteff, 1967).
Eaton played the beautiful but evil Sumuru, who plans world domination by having her sexy all-female army eliminate male leaders and replace them with her female agents. She reprised her role in Jesus Franco's The Girl from Rio/The Seven Secrets of Sumuru (1970).
Then she retired to spend more time with her family. Eaton was married to Colin Lenton Rowe from 1957 until his death in 1994. The couple had two children. In 1999, Shirley Eaton published an autobiography titled Golden Girl. Her new art/autobiography book Under My Skin will be published Spring of 2014 and she is publishing an art calendar for 2014 with her own photography.
Trailer Carry On Nurse (Gerald Thomas, 1959). Source: UmbrellaEntAU (YouTube).
Trailer Around the World Under the Sea (Andrew Marton, 1966). Source: WarnerArchive (YouTube).
Sources: (IMDb), Wikipedia, and.
Italian postcard. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Around the World Under the Sea (1966).
Carry On
Shirley Jean Eaton was born in Edgware, Middlesex, in 1937. She grew up in the suburb of Harrow Weald, where she attended Roe Green Junior School on Princes Avenue. Eaton won a place at the Aida Foster School, a specialist drama school, and remained there until she was sixteen.
Her stage debut was at age 12 in Set to Partners (1949) and following it up the following year with Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera!
In 1954 she debuted at the West End in Going to Town. All through the fifties she was a singing star both on the stage and on Television. She had her own act in Variety shows all over the country and starred at The Prince of Wales Theatre in London in her own solo singing act.
Throughout her career, she worked with top British male comedy stars from the period including Jimmy Edwards, Max Bygraves, Bob Monkhouse and Arthur Askey. Her female co-stars included Peggy Mount, Thora Hird and Dora Bryan.
From 1953 on, she also appeared in the cinema. Her debut was a bit part in the comedy-drama A Day to Remember (Ralph Thomas, 1953) starring Stanley Holloway.
She had a supporting part in the comedy Doctor in the House (Ralph Thomas, 1954), about a group of medical students including Dirk Bogarde and Kenneth More. In Great Britain, Doctor in the House was the most popular film at the box office of 1954, and its success spawned six sequels, and the television series Doctor in the House.
Other early film roles include Three Men In A Boat (Ken Annakin, 1956) opposite Laurence Harvey , and Date with Disaster (Charles Saunders, 1957), in which she co-starred with Tom Drake. Eaton participated in the British heat of the 1957 Eurovision Song Contest.
She also sang and danced with the Crazy Gang in Life Is a Circus (Val Guest, 1958). That year, she also co-starred with William Hartnell and Bob Monkhouse in the comedy Carry On Sergeant (Gerald Thomas, 1958) - the first in the series of Carry On films, with 31 entries.
Carry On Sergeant had not been conceived as the start of a series, but after the film's surprising success producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas set about planning a further project. Eaton returned as a nurse in Carry On Nurse (Gerald Thomas, 1959) which was the year’s top grossing film in the UK, and after this success the Carry On series of films evolved. In 1960, Eaton returned one more time in the series, in Carry on Constable (Gerald Thomas, 1960).
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, no. 1085. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: J. Arthur Rank / Progress.
Goldfinger
Shirley Eaton co-starred with popular pulp novelist Mickey Spillane in the crime film The Girl Hunters (Roy Rowland, 1963). Spillane played his own literary creation, private detective Mike Hammer and Eaton was a seductive femme fatale.
Between 1962 and 1968, she also made three episodes of the spy thriller TV series The Saint, starring Roger Moore as the suave and sophisticated Simon Templar.
Eaton achieved most recognition for her short performance in Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964), the third film in the James Bond series starring Sean Connery . As the gold-painted Jill Masterson, Eaton even gained more recognition than Honor Blackman , who played the main Bond Girl, Pussy Galore.
Eaton graced the cover of Life Magazine of 6 November 1964 in her gold-painted persona. Her character's death, being painted head to toe in gold paint and suffering ‘skin suffocation’ led to an urban myth that Eaton had died during filming. She appeared in a 2003 episode of the series MythBusters to dispel the rumour.
Goldfinger was the first Bond film to win an Academy Award and was a financial success, recouping its budget in just two weeks.
After Goldfinger, Eaton made only a few more films, including a version of the Agatha Christie mystery Ten Little Indians (George Pollock, 1965) co-starring Hugh O'Brian, the science fiction film Around the World Under the Sea (Andrew Marton, 1966) starring Lloyd Bridges, and the spy story The Million Eyes of Sumuru (Lindsay Shonteff, 1967).
Eaton played the beautiful but evil Sumuru, who plans world domination by having her sexy all-female army eliminate male leaders and replace them with her female agents. She reprised her role in Jesus Franco's The Girl from Rio/The Seven Secrets of Sumuru (1970).
Then she retired to spend more time with her family. Eaton was married to Colin Lenton Rowe from 1957 until his death in 1994. The couple had two children. In 1999, Shirley Eaton published an autobiography titled Golden Girl. Her new art/autobiography book Under My Skin will be published Spring of 2014 and she is publishing an art calendar for 2014 with her own photography.
Trailer Carry On Nurse (Gerald Thomas, 1959). Source: UmbrellaEntAU (YouTube).
Trailer Around the World Under the Sea (Andrew Marton, 1966). Source: WarnerArchive (YouTube).
Sources: (IMDb), Wikipedia, and.
January 24, 2014
Ernst Schneider
Ernst Schneider was one of the most acclaimed studio photographers of Berlin during the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s. Many celebrities from the theatre, the opera, the circus, and later the cinema came to his studio. Schneider also belonged to the esteemed fashion photographers of the German capital, and published books with his nude photography.
Karina Bell . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 2094/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ossi Oswalda . German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 3871/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Ernst Schneider, Berlin / FPS.
Hans Stüwe. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 645, 1919-1924. Photo: Atelier Schneider, Berlin.
Nude Photography
Ernst Schneider started his career in photography sometime at the turn of the 20th Century. Exact data are not available at the net.
His first fashion shots were published in magazines like Welt der Frau (World of Women) and Gartenlaube (Gazebo).
In 1908, he published Die Gestalt des Menschen und Ihre Schönheit: Vorlagen zum Studium des nackten menschlichen Körpers (The Human Form and Beauty: templates to study the naked human body). This book with nude photography was also published in the U.S. by the publisher J. Singer and Company in 1908.
In addition to beautiful women Schneider photographed opera and theatre stars such as Franz Lehar, Richard Tauber and Hans Albers . Even Mata Hari posed for Schneider’s camera.
Madge Lessing . German advertising postcard by Richard Habisch & Co., Berlin, for Gargoyle Bohner Wasch, sent by mail in 1911. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Sascha Gura. German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K 3072. Photo: Ernst Schneider.
Iris Arlan. Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5513. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Ossi Oswalda . German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 761/2, 1925-1926. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Hanni Weisse . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3087/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Richard Tauber . German postcard by Odeon. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
The City's Best Fashion Houses
Around 1908 Atelier Ernst Schneider started to work closely together with such postcard publishers as Rotophot and Neue Photographische Gesellschaft (NPG) and from 1919 on with Ross Verlag.
From 1910 on, the studio was located at Unter den Linden 62-63. Atelier Ernst Schneider moved to the fashionable Kurfürstendamm in 1932. The company remained there until the end of the 1930s.
Schneider worked for the city's best fashion houses and he had a large villa in Wannsee, where many fashion photographs were taken. During the 1930s his work appeared in Vanity Fair and Die Illustrierte Berliner Zeitung.
What later happened to Ernst Schneider and his studio is unclear. If you have more information, please let us know.
Evelyn Holt . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3688/1, 1928 - 1929. Photo: Atelier Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Agnes Esterhazy . German postcard by Ross Verlag, nr. 3705/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Ernst Schneider.
Marcella Albani. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3704/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Werner Fuetterer . German postcard by Ross Verlag, nr. 4050/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin / Europäische Film-Production. Publicity still for Morgenröte/Dawnings (Wolfgang Neff, Burton George, 1929).
Olga Tschechova . German postcard by Ross Verlag no. 4652/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Lya Mara . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4308/4, 1929-1930. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
This is the third post in a new series on star photographers. The first post was on the Reutlinger Studio in Paris and the second on Italian star photographer Attilio Badodi .
Sources: Detlef Krenz (diegeschichteberlins.de) (German), Postkarten-Archiv.de (German) and Luminous Lint.
Karina Bell . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 2094/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ossi Oswalda . German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 3871/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Ernst Schneider, Berlin / FPS.
Hans Stüwe. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 645, 1919-1924. Photo: Atelier Schneider, Berlin.
Nude Photography
Ernst Schneider started his career in photography sometime at the turn of the 20th Century. Exact data are not available at the net.
His first fashion shots were published in magazines like Welt der Frau (World of Women) and Gartenlaube (Gazebo).
In 1908, he published Die Gestalt des Menschen und Ihre Schönheit: Vorlagen zum Studium des nackten menschlichen Körpers (The Human Form and Beauty: templates to study the naked human body). This book with nude photography was also published in the U.S. by the publisher J. Singer and Company in 1908.
In addition to beautiful women Schneider photographed opera and theatre stars such as Franz Lehar, Richard Tauber and Hans Albers . Even Mata Hari posed for Schneider’s camera.
Madge Lessing . German advertising postcard by Richard Habisch & Co., Berlin, for Gargoyle Bohner Wasch, sent by mail in 1911. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Sascha Gura. German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K 3072. Photo: Ernst Schneider.
Iris Arlan. Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5513. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Ossi Oswalda . German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 761/2, 1925-1926. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Hanni Weisse . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3087/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Richard Tauber . German postcard by Odeon. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
The City's Best Fashion Houses
Around 1908 Atelier Ernst Schneider started to work closely together with such postcard publishers as Rotophot and Neue Photographische Gesellschaft (NPG) and from 1919 on with Ross Verlag.
From 1910 on, the studio was located at Unter den Linden 62-63. Atelier Ernst Schneider moved to the fashionable Kurfürstendamm in 1932. The company remained there until the end of the 1930s.
Schneider worked for the city's best fashion houses and he had a large villa in Wannsee, where many fashion photographs were taken. During the 1930s his work appeared in Vanity Fair and Die Illustrierte Berliner Zeitung.
What later happened to Ernst Schneider and his studio is unclear. If you have more information, please let us know.
Evelyn Holt . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3688/1, 1928 - 1929. Photo: Atelier Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Agnes Esterhazy . German postcard by Ross Verlag, nr. 3705/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Ernst Schneider.
Marcella Albani. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3704/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Werner Fuetterer . German postcard by Ross Verlag, nr. 4050/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin / Europäische Film-Production. Publicity still for Morgenröte/Dawnings (Wolfgang Neff, Burton George, 1929).
Olga Tschechova . German postcard by Ross Verlag no. 4652/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
Lya Mara . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4308/4, 1929-1930. Photo: Ernst Schneider, Berlin.
This is the third post in a new series on star photographers. The first post was on the Reutlinger Studio in Paris and the second on Italian star photographer Attilio Badodi .
Sources: Detlef Krenz (diegeschichteberlins.de) (German), Postkarten-Archiv.de (German) and Luminous Lint.
January 23, 2014
Hans Stüwe
German actor and singer Hans Stüwe (1901-1976) was also a renown opera director and music historian. With his striking, ascetic looks, he became a big star of the German cinema of the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Four times he was the film partner of Ufa diva Zarah Leander.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5082. Photo: PDC Verleih Mondial A.G.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5781. Photo: AAFA / Lux Film Verleih.
French postcard by Cinemagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 604.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 645, 1919-1924. Photo: Atelier Schneider, Berlin.
Striking Ascetic Looks
Hans Stüwe was born in Halle an der Saale, Germany, in 1901. His father was a landowner.
Hans studied art history and music in Halle and Leipzig, and in 1923 he made his debut as a baritone at the Stadttheater in Königsberg. He would engage in directing operas and through the years he presented many forgotten operas and published also books on music theory.
He moved to Berlin and started to work as a stage actor too. His role in the play Des Königs befehl (The King's Order) in 1926 made him a big star. From then on he also started to work as a film actor.
With his striking, ascetic looks he soon became a well-known face. In Prinz Louis Ferdinand/Prince Louis Ferdinand (Hans Behrendt, 1927) he already played the title role. This silent historical film, based on the life of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (1772–1806), was part of the series of Prussian films made during the Weimar period.
In the crime film Feme/Assassination (Richard Oswald, 1927) he was an assassin, in Schinderhannes/The Prince of Rogues (Kurt/Curtis Bernhardt, 1928) he embodied the18th century outlaw Schinderhannes, in the French-German horror film Cagliostro (Richard Oswald, 1929) he was the eighteenth century Italian occultist Alessandro Cagliostro, and in Die Jugendgeliebte/Goethe's Young Love (Hans Tintner, 1930) he played the famous poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3267/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier König-Rohde, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4006/1, 1929-1930.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4237/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Dührkoop, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4285/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Sandau, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4953/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Yva, Berlin.
Patriotic Films
In the first German feature full sound film Dich hab ich geliebt/Because I Loved You (Rudolph Walther-Fein, 1929), Hans Stüwe had the leading role opposite Mady Christians . It followed part-sound films which had been released earlier in the year.
Next he appeared in the Swiss-German war film Tannenberg (Heinz Paul, 1932), based around the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg during the First World War, a notable German victory. The film focuses on a German landowner Captain von Arndt and his family. The production cost over half a million Reichsmarks to make and employed 8,000 people.
Tannenberg was in sharp contrast to recent anti-war films such as Westfront 1918 (G.W. Pabst, 1930), and served as a national symbol in Germany. It was due to be released on 26 August 1932, the eighteenth anniversary of the battle, but was delayed by the censors acting on a request from the German President Paul von Hindenburg who was unhappy with his portrayal in the film and the première was pushed back until certain scenes had been cut. The film was re-issued in 1936 during the Nazi era.
In another patriotic film, Trenck - Der Roman einer großen Liebe/Trenck (Ernst Neubach, Heinz Paul, 1932), Stüwe played the Eighteenth century adventurer Friedrich von der Trenck.
In Die Tänzerin von Sanssouci/The Dancer of Sanssouci ( Friedrich/Frederic Zelnik , 1932), he played Baron von Cocceji , who was the rival of Prussian ruler Friedrich dem Großen (Frederick the Great) ( Otto Gebühr ) in courting the Italian dance girl Barberina ( Lil Dagover ).
In another costume drama, Liselotte von der Pfalz/Private Life of Louis XIV (Carl Froelich, 1935) he appeared as Liselotte's ( Renate Müller ) husband, Philipp von Orleans.
In Richard Eichberg's big adventure epic Der Tiger von Eschnapur/The Tiger of Eschnapur and the sequel Das indische Grabmal/The Indian/The Indian Tomb (Richard Eichberg, 1938), he excelled as the German architect Peter Fürbringeras, who travels to India to build a tomb for the Rajah ( Frits van Dongen ).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5168/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Elli Cahn, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5518, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Elli Cahn, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5537/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Harlip, Berlin.
French postcard in the Europe series, nr. 602. Sent by mail in 1933.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6853/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Lydor, Berlin / Aafa Film.
Zarah Leander
Hans Stüwe embodied the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Es war eine rauschende Ballnacht/It Was a Gay Ball night (Carl Froelich, 1939), co-starring with Zarah Leander and Marika Rökk .
He was again the film partner of Zarah Leander in Der Weg ins Freie/The Way to Freedom (Rolf Hansen, 1941), Damals/At That Time (Rolf Hansen, 1943) and Ave Maria (Alfred Braun, 1953).
After the Second World War, Stüwe engaged himself with directing operas. He suffered from depressions and in the summer of 1950 he did several suicide attempts.
Recovered in 1951, he decided to start acting again. He played a central role in the classic Heimatfilm Grün ist die Heide/The Heath Is Green (Hans Deppe, 1951).
He also had good parts in other Heimatfilms such as Am Brunnen vor dem Tore/At the fountain in front of the gates (Hans Wolff, 1952) opposite Sonja Ziemann , and Komm zurück.../Come Back... (Alfred Braun, 1953).
In 1957 he had his final film role in Blaue Jungs/Seamen (Wolfgang Schleif, 1957) with Karlheinz Böhm , made on location in Hawaii and Tahiti.
From then on he focussed completely on his work as an opera and stage director, and he also worked for radio and TV.
In 1976, Hans Stüwe died of cancer in Berlin, at the age of 75. He was married to Dolbrina Kalschewa. Reportedly the actor had been so shy and reserved that Kalschewa had to ask him to marry her. The pair had a son.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3145/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Lindner / Ufa. Publicity still for Der Weg ins Freie/The Way to Freedom (Rolf Hansen, 1941) with Zarah Leander.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 2527/1, 1939-1940. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3127/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3314/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Binz, Berlin.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3745/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
Zarah Leander sings Nur nicht aus liebe weinen (Just don't cry for love) in Es war eine Rauschende Ballnacht/It Was a Gay Ballnight (1939).
Sources: Stephanie D'heil (Steffi-line) (German), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), (IMDb), Wikipedia (German and English) and .
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5082. Photo: PDC Verleih Mondial A.G.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5781. Photo: AAFA / Lux Film Verleih.
French postcard by Cinemagazine-Edition, Paris, no. 604.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 645, 1919-1924. Photo: Atelier Schneider, Berlin.
Striking Ascetic Looks
Hans Stüwe was born in Halle an der Saale, Germany, in 1901. His father was a landowner.
Hans studied art history and music in Halle and Leipzig, and in 1923 he made his debut as a baritone at the Stadttheater in Königsberg. He would engage in directing operas and through the years he presented many forgotten operas and published also books on music theory.
He moved to Berlin and started to work as a stage actor too. His role in the play Des Königs befehl (The King's Order) in 1926 made him a big star. From then on he also started to work as a film actor.
With his striking, ascetic looks he soon became a well-known face. In Prinz Louis Ferdinand/Prince Louis Ferdinand (Hans Behrendt, 1927) he already played the title role. This silent historical film, based on the life of Prince Louis Ferdinand of Prussia (1772–1806), was part of the series of Prussian films made during the Weimar period.
In the crime film Feme/Assassination (Richard Oswald, 1927) he was an assassin, in Schinderhannes/The Prince of Rogues (Kurt/Curtis Bernhardt, 1928) he embodied the18th century outlaw Schinderhannes, in the French-German horror film Cagliostro (Richard Oswald, 1929) he was the eighteenth century Italian occultist Alessandro Cagliostro, and in Die Jugendgeliebte/Goethe's Young Love (Hans Tintner, 1930) he played the famous poet Johann Wolfgang Goethe.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3267/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier König-Rohde, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4006/1, 1929-1930.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4237/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Dührkoop, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4285/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Sandau, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4953/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Yva, Berlin.
Patriotic Films
In the first German feature full sound film Dich hab ich geliebt/Because I Loved You (Rudolph Walther-Fein, 1929), Hans Stüwe had the leading role opposite Mady Christians . It followed part-sound films which had been released earlier in the year.
Next he appeared in the Swiss-German war film Tannenberg (Heinz Paul, 1932), based around the 1914 Battle of Tannenberg during the First World War, a notable German victory. The film focuses on a German landowner Captain von Arndt and his family. The production cost over half a million Reichsmarks to make and employed 8,000 people.
Tannenberg was in sharp contrast to recent anti-war films such as Westfront 1918 (G.W. Pabst, 1930), and served as a national symbol in Germany. It was due to be released on 26 August 1932, the eighteenth anniversary of the battle, but was delayed by the censors acting on a request from the German President Paul von Hindenburg who was unhappy with his portrayal in the film and the première was pushed back until certain scenes had been cut. The film was re-issued in 1936 during the Nazi era.
In another patriotic film, Trenck - Der Roman einer großen Liebe/Trenck (Ernst Neubach, Heinz Paul, 1932), Stüwe played the Eighteenth century adventurer Friedrich von der Trenck.
In Die Tänzerin von Sanssouci/The Dancer of Sanssouci ( Friedrich/Frederic Zelnik , 1932), he played Baron von Cocceji , who was the rival of Prussian ruler Friedrich dem Großen (Frederick the Great) ( Otto Gebühr ) in courting the Italian dance girl Barberina ( Lil Dagover ).
In another costume drama, Liselotte von der Pfalz/Private Life of Louis XIV (Carl Froelich, 1935) he appeared as Liselotte's ( Renate Müller ) husband, Philipp von Orleans.
In Richard Eichberg's big adventure epic Der Tiger von Eschnapur/The Tiger of Eschnapur and the sequel Das indische Grabmal/The Indian/The Indian Tomb (Richard Eichberg, 1938), he excelled as the German architect Peter Fürbringeras, who travels to India to build a tomb for the Rajah ( Frits van Dongen ).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5168/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Elli Cahn, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5518, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Elli Cahn, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5537/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Harlip, Berlin.
French postcard in the Europe series, nr. 602. Sent by mail in 1933.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6853/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Lydor, Berlin / Aafa Film.
Zarah Leander
Hans Stüwe embodied the Russian composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky in Es war eine rauschende Ballnacht/It Was a Gay Ball night (Carl Froelich, 1939), co-starring with Zarah Leander and Marika Rökk .
He was again the film partner of Zarah Leander in Der Weg ins Freie/The Way to Freedom (Rolf Hansen, 1941), Damals/At That Time (Rolf Hansen, 1943) and Ave Maria (Alfred Braun, 1953).
After the Second World War, Stüwe engaged himself with directing operas. He suffered from depressions and in the summer of 1950 he did several suicide attempts.
Recovered in 1951, he decided to start acting again. He played a central role in the classic Heimatfilm Grün ist die Heide/The Heath Is Green (Hans Deppe, 1951).
He also had good parts in other Heimatfilms such as Am Brunnen vor dem Tore/At the fountain in front of the gates (Hans Wolff, 1952) opposite Sonja Ziemann , and Komm zurück.../Come Back... (Alfred Braun, 1953).
In 1957 he had his final film role in Blaue Jungs/Seamen (Wolfgang Schleif, 1957) with Karlheinz Böhm , made on location in Hawaii and Tahiti.
From then on he focussed completely on his work as an opera and stage director, and he also worked for radio and TV.
In 1976, Hans Stüwe died of cancer in Berlin, at the age of 75. He was married to Dolbrina Kalschewa. Reportedly the actor had been so shy and reserved that Kalschewa had to ask him to marry her. The pair had a son.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3145/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Lindner / Ufa. Publicity still for Der Weg ins Freie/The Way to Freedom (Rolf Hansen, 1941) with Zarah Leander.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 2527/1, 1939-1940. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3127/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. A 3314/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Binz, Berlin.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3745/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
Zarah Leander sings Nur nicht aus liebe weinen (Just don't cry for love) in Es war eine Rauschende Ballnacht/It Was a Gay Ballnight (1939).
Sources: Stephanie D'heil (Steffi-line) (German), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), (IMDb), Wikipedia (German and English) and .
January 22, 2014
María Mercader
María Mercader (1918-2011) was a Spanish actress who acted in Spanish and Italian films, largely between 1939 and 1952. She was the second wife of Vittorio De Sica and mother of Christian and Manuel De Sica.
Spanish Collectors Card by Cifesa / I.G. Viladot Sil, Barcelona.
Italian Films
María Mercader Forcada was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1918. Her brother or her cousin (sources conflict) was Ramón Mercader, the murderer of Leon Trotsky in 1940, in Mexico.
As a young girl Mercader already had a minor part in the Spanish silent film La bruja/The witch (Maximilano Thous, 1923), but her film career really set off in 1939 when she acted in the Spanish musical Molinos de viento/Windmills (Rosario Pi, 1939).
This was followed by her acting in the French crime film L’étrange nuit de Noël/The strange Christmas night (Yvan Noë, 1939), starring Pierre Alcover and Sylvia Bataille .
In the same year she started to act in Italian films, probably first in Il segreto inviolabile/The unbreakable secret (1939), shot at the Titanus studios in Rome but directed by her Spanish compatriot Julio (de) Fleischner, and with another compatriot, José Nieto, as the male star of the film. It was the alternate-language version of the Spanish film Su mayor aventura/His greatest adventure (Julio de Fleischner, 1940)
This set off a huge string of Italian films during the war years, directed by ‘routiniers’ such as Mario Bonnard (La gerla di papa Martin/Disillusion, 1941; Il re si diverte/The King's Jester, 1941) and Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia (La forza bruta/Brute Force, 1941; Il prigioniero di Santa Cruz/The prisoner of Santa Cruz, 1941; Una famiglia impossibile/An impossible family, 1941; Due cuori di sequestro/Two hearts under seizure, 1941; Se io fossi onesto/If I were really honest, 1942), but also films directed by Giacomo Gentilomo (Brivido/Thrill, 1941) and Luigi Zampa (L’attore scomparso/The Actor Died, 1941).
In Il prigioniero di Santa Cruz, Mercader played opposite her compatriot Juan De Landa, who later played Bragana in Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943). With Michel Simon and Rossano Brazzi , the stars of Tosca (Jean Renoir, Carl Koch, 1941), she acted in the Rigoletto adaptation Il re si diverte/The King's Jester (Mario Bonnard).
Her co-actors in those years were generally established actors such as Ruggero Ruggeri and Armando Falconi , but also such young, upcoming stars as Massimo Serato , Roberto Villa and Leonardo Cortese, and female stars such as Vivi Gioi and Doris Duranti .
María Mercader occasionally acted in Spanish films as well.
Italian postcard by A. Scarmiglia Edizioni, Roma (ASER), no. 105. Photo: Bragaglia, Atlas Film.
Madly In Love
In 1942, on the set of the comedy Un garibaldino al convent/A Garibaldian in the Convent, María Mercader met the director of the film, Vittorio De Sica. He fell madly in love with her, though De Sica was married to actress Giuditta Rissone.
Mercader and De Sica immediately after this production acted together in the comedy Se io fossi onesto/If I were really honest (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1942).
They were paired again in Non sono superstizioso...ma!/I'm not superstitious ... but! (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1943) and I nostri sogni/Our dreams (Vittorio Cottafavi, 1943).
Nevertheless, in those war years Mercader acted in much more films without than with De Sica. These included Finalmente soli!/Finally alone (Giacomo Gentilomo, 1942) with Enrico Viarisio, Musica proibita/Forbidden Music (Carlo Campogalliani, 1942) with singer Tito Gobbi, Il treno crociato/The Red Cross Train (Carlo Campogalliani, 1943) with Rossano Brazzi , La vita è bella/Life is beautiful (Carlo Campogalliani, 1943) with singer Alberto Rabagliati and rising star Anna Magnani, and La primadonna (Ivo Perilli, 1943) with Anneliese Uhlig .
She also was one of the female all-star cast of Nessuno torna indietro/Responsibility Comes Back (Alessandro Blasetti, 1943), co-starring Elisa Cegani, Valentina Cortese , María Denis , Doris Duranti and Mariella Lotti.
During the German occupation of Rome and the Repubblica sociale di Salò, Mercader didn’t join the fascist industry in Venice, so her film acting stopped.
Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini Editori, Firenze, no. 4351. Photo: Pesce / ENIC.
Leading Pair
After the Liberation of Rome, María Mercader renewed her film acting career, and became a leading pair again with Vittorio De Sica in L’ippocampo/The hippocampus (Gian Paolo Rosmino, 1945).
She also had a supporting part in De Sica’s own film La porta del cielo/The Gate of Heaven (Vittorio De Sica, 1945) starring Marina Berti and Massimo Girotti .
After Il canto della vita/The song of life (Carmine Gallone, 1945), starring Alida Valli , she played a minor part in Natale in campo 119/Christmas at Camp 119 (Pietro Francisci, 1947).
Mercader played Clotilda Serra opposite De Sica and the upcoming actor Giorgio De Lullo in the Edmondo De Amicis adaptation Cuore/Heart and Soul (1948), which De Sica co-directed with Duilio Coletti.
After a lead in the period piece Il cavaliere misterioso/The Mysterious Cavalier (Riccardo Freda, 1948), with Vittorio Gassman as Casanova, Mercader stayed away from the screen until 1952, when she was paired with De Sica again in Buongiorno elefante!/Hello Elephant (Gianni Franciolini, 1952), scripted by Suso Cecchi D’Amico and Cesare Zavattini.
After that, only incidental performances followed, such as Christian De Sica’s mother in Giovannino (Paolo Nuzzi, 1976).
In 1988 she acted in La casa del sorriso/The House of Smiles by Marco Ferreri, which won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1991 (the last Italian film to win in Berlin before Cesare deve morire/Caesar Must Die by the Taviani brothers).
Other cameo appearances Mercader had in Claretta (1984) by Pasquale Squitieri, Il conte Max/Count Max (1991) by Christian De Sica - a remake of his father’s comedy Il signor Max/Mister Max (Mario Camerini, 1937), and Al lupo, al lupo/Wolf! Wolf! (1992) by Carlo Verdone.
All in all she acted in some 40 films between 1923 and 1992. In 1959 Mercader and De Sica married in Mexico, after his divorce of Rissone, but Italian law did not recognize the divorce nor the marriage, so once obtained French citizenship in 1968, Mercader married De Sica again in Paris.
She became the mother of composer Manuel De Sica (1949) and actor and director Christian De Sica (1951).
While De Sica died in Neuily near Paris in 1974, Maria Mercader died in Rome in 2011, at the age of almost 93 years.
In 1978 her autobiography La mia vita con Vittorio De Sica (My Life with Vittorio De Sica) appeared, which was also distributed in Spanish (1980) and French (1981).
Italian or Romanian postcard. Maria Mercader and Michel Simon in Il re si diverte (Mario Bonnard, 1941).
Romanian postcard. Foto: Criterion Romanesc. Maria Mercader and Leonardo Cortese in probably Un garibaldino al convento (Vittorio De Sica, 1942).
Sources: Wikipedia (French, Italian, Spanish, German and English) and .
Spanish Collectors Card by Cifesa / I.G. Viladot Sil, Barcelona.
Italian Films
María Mercader Forcada was born in Barcelona, Spain in 1918. Her brother or her cousin (sources conflict) was Ramón Mercader, the murderer of Leon Trotsky in 1940, in Mexico.
As a young girl Mercader already had a minor part in the Spanish silent film La bruja/The witch (Maximilano Thous, 1923), but her film career really set off in 1939 when she acted in the Spanish musical Molinos de viento/Windmills (Rosario Pi, 1939).
This was followed by her acting in the French crime film L’étrange nuit de Noël/The strange Christmas night (Yvan Noë, 1939), starring Pierre Alcover and Sylvia Bataille .
In the same year she started to act in Italian films, probably first in Il segreto inviolabile/The unbreakable secret (1939), shot at the Titanus studios in Rome but directed by her Spanish compatriot Julio (de) Fleischner, and with another compatriot, José Nieto, as the male star of the film. It was the alternate-language version of the Spanish film Su mayor aventura/His greatest adventure (Julio de Fleischner, 1940)
This set off a huge string of Italian films during the war years, directed by ‘routiniers’ such as Mario Bonnard (La gerla di papa Martin/Disillusion, 1941; Il re si diverte/The King's Jester, 1941) and Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia (La forza bruta/Brute Force, 1941; Il prigioniero di Santa Cruz/The prisoner of Santa Cruz, 1941; Una famiglia impossibile/An impossible family, 1941; Due cuori di sequestro/Two hearts under seizure, 1941; Se io fossi onesto/If I were really honest, 1942), but also films directed by Giacomo Gentilomo (Brivido/Thrill, 1941) and Luigi Zampa (L’attore scomparso/The Actor Died, 1941).
In Il prigioniero di Santa Cruz, Mercader played opposite her compatriot Juan De Landa, who later played Bragana in Luchino Visconti’s Ossessione (1943). With Michel Simon and Rossano Brazzi , the stars of Tosca (Jean Renoir, Carl Koch, 1941), she acted in the Rigoletto adaptation Il re si diverte/The King's Jester (Mario Bonnard).
Her co-actors in those years were generally established actors such as Ruggero Ruggeri and Armando Falconi , but also such young, upcoming stars as Massimo Serato , Roberto Villa and Leonardo Cortese, and female stars such as Vivi Gioi and Doris Duranti .
María Mercader occasionally acted in Spanish films as well.
Italian postcard by A. Scarmiglia Edizioni, Roma (ASER), no. 105. Photo: Bragaglia, Atlas Film.
Madly In Love
In 1942, on the set of the comedy Un garibaldino al convent/A Garibaldian in the Convent, María Mercader met the director of the film, Vittorio De Sica. He fell madly in love with her, though De Sica was married to actress Giuditta Rissone.
Mercader and De Sica immediately after this production acted together in the comedy Se io fossi onesto/If I were really honest (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1942).
They were paired again in Non sono superstizioso...ma!/I'm not superstitious ... but! (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1943) and I nostri sogni/Our dreams (Vittorio Cottafavi, 1943).
Nevertheless, in those war years Mercader acted in much more films without than with De Sica. These included Finalmente soli!/Finally alone (Giacomo Gentilomo, 1942) with Enrico Viarisio, Musica proibita/Forbidden Music (Carlo Campogalliani, 1942) with singer Tito Gobbi, Il treno crociato/The Red Cross Train (Carlo Campogalliani, 1943) with Rossano Brazzi , La vita è bella/Life is beautiful (Carlo Campogalliani, 1943) with singer Alberto Rabagliati and rising star Anna Magnani, and La primadonna (Ivo Perilli, 1943) with Anneliese Uhlig .
She also was one of the female all-star cast of Nessuno torna indietro/Responsibility Comes Back (Alessandro Blasetti, 1943), co-starring Elisa Cegani, Valentina Cortese , María Denis , Doris Duranti and Mariella Lotti.
During the German occupation of Rome and the Repubblica sociale di Salò, Mercader didn’t join the fascist industry in Venice, so her film acting stopped.
Italian postcard by Ballerini & Fratini Editori, Firenze, no. 4351. Photo: Pesce / ENIC.
Leading Pair
After the Liberation of Rome, María Mercader renewed her film acting career, and became a leading pair again with Vittorio De Sica in L’ippocampo/The hippocampus (Gian Paolo Rosmino, 1945).
She also had a supporting part in De Sica’s own film La porta del cielo/The Gate of Heaven (Vittorio De Sica, 1945) starring Marina Berti and Massimo Girotti .
After Il canto della vita/The song of life (Carmine Gallone, 1945), starring Alida Valli , she played a minor part in Natale in campo 119/Christmas at Camp 119 (Pietro Francisci, 1947).
Mercader played Clotilda Serra opposite De Sica and the upcoming actor Giorgio De Lullo in the Edmondo De Amicis adaptation Cuore/Heart and Soul (1948), which De Sica co-directed with Duilio Coletti.
After a lead in the period piece Il cavaliere misterioso/The Mysterious Cavalier (Riccardo Freda, 1948), with Vittorio Gassman as Casanova, Mercader stayed away from the screen until 1952, when she was paired with De Sica again in Buongiorno elefante!/Hello Elephant (Gianni Franciolini, 1952), scripted by Suso Cecchi D’Amico and Cesare Zavattini.
After that, only incidental performances followed, such as Christian De Sica’s mother in Giovannino (Paolo Nuzzi, 1976).
In 1988 she acted in La casa del sorriso/The House of Smiles by Marco Ferreri, which won the Golden Bear in Berlin in 1991 (the last Italian film to win in Berlin before Cesare deve morire/Caesar Must Die by the Taviani brothers).
Other cameo appearances Mercader had in Claretta (1984) by Pasquale Squitieri, Il conte Max/Count Max (1991) by Christian De Sica - a remake of his father’s comedy Il signor Max/Mister Max (Mario Camerini, 1937), and Al lupo, al lupo/Wolf! Wolf! (1992) by Carlo Verdone.
All in all she acted in some 40 films between 1923 and 1992. In 1959 Mercader and De Sica married in Mexico, after his divorce of Rissone, but Italian law did not recognize the divorce nor the marriage, so once obtained French citizenship in 1968, Mercader married De Sica again in Paris.
She became the mother of composer Manuel De Sica (1949) and actor and director Christian De Sica (1951).
While De Sica died in Neuily near Paris in 1974, Maria Mercader died in Rome in 2011, at the age of almost 93 years.
In 1978 her autobiography La mia vita con Vittorio De Sica (My Life with Vittorio De Sica) appeared, which was also distributed in Spanish (1980) and French (1981).
Italian or Romanian postcard. Maria Mercader and Michel Simon in Il re si diverte (Mario Bonnard, 1941).
Romanian postcard. Foto: Criterion Romanesc. Maria Mercader and Leonardo Cortese in probably Un garibaldino al convento (Vittorio De Sica, 1942).
Sources: Wikipedia (French, Italian, Spanish, German and English) and .
January 21, 2014
Evi Eva
German actress Evi Eva (1899-1985) was a popular star of the silent cinema. Later, the once-famous actress lived in very poor conditions.
Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 938. Photo: Lux Film Verleih. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Successful New Generation of Actresses
Evi Eva was born Elly Giese in Berlin, Germany, in 1899.
She worked in the cigarette industry when the 19-year-old was discovered for the film. Her first film was Mulle, der Frechdachs (William Wauer, 1919).
Evi belonged to the successful new generation of actresses who conquered the film business, and she was immediately given leading roles such as in the six part series Nirvana (Fritz Bernhardt. 1920).
To her well-known silent films belong Der Eid des Stephan Huller/The Oath of Stephan Huller (Reinhard Bruck, 1921) with Hanni Weisse , Am Rande der Grossstadt/On the Outskirts of the Big City (Hanns Kobe, 1922), Der Mönch von Santarem/The Monk from Santarem (Lothar Mendes, 1924) with Vivian Gibson , Mister Radio (Nunzio Malasomma, 1924) with Luciano Albertini , Athleten/Athletes ( Friedrich Zelnik , 1925) with Hans Albers , Der Veilchenfresser/The Violet Eater (Friedrich Zelnik, 1926) starring Lil Dagover , and Venus im Frack/Venus in Tails (Robert Land, 1927) staring Carmen Boni .
In 1922, she had married Paul Oppenand they had a child, but they divorced in 1930.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 939. Photo: Lux Film Verleih.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5125. Photo: Ernst Sandau, Berlin.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 938. Photo: Lux Film Verleih.
Berlin Brats
Evi Eva often embodied Berliner Gören (Berlin brats) in film comedies, she rarely appeared in films with a dramatic content.
In addition to her film work, she also appeared on the Berlin stage.
Already in the late 1920s, Evi Eva had to be content with less important film roles. She played small supporting parts in films like Morgenröte/Dawn (Wolfgang Neff, Burton George, 1929) with Paul Henckels .
When the sound era began, she hardly received any offers. She played roles in Die lustigen Weiber von Wien/The Merry Wives of Vienna (Géza von Bolváry, 1931) with Willi Forst , and the Marika Rökk musical Und du mein Schatz fährst mit/And You My Dear Comes Along (Georg Jacoby, 1937).
Her final film was Urlaub auf Ehrenwort/Furlough on Word of Honour (Karl Ritter, 1937).
Later, the once-famous actress lived in very poor conditions. In 1962 she moved to Munich, but later she returned to Berlin.
Evi Eva died in 1985 in her hometown Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1790/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3317/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Suse Byk, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3518/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Balázs, Berlin.
Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia (German) and .
Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 938. Photo: Lux Film Verleih. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Successful New Generation of Actresses
Evi Eva was born Elly Giese in Berlin, Germany, in 1899.
She worked in the cigarette industry when the 19-year-old was discovered for the film. Her first film was Mulle, der Frechdachs (William Wauer, 1919).
Evi belonged to the successful new generation of actresses who conquered the film business, and she was immediately given leading roles such as in the six part series Nirvana (Fritz Bernhardt. 1920).
To her well-known silent films belong Der Eid des Stephan Huller/The Oath of Stephan Huller (Reinhard Bruck, 1921) with Hanni Weisse , Am Rande der Grossstadt/On the Outskirts of the Big City (Hanns Kobe, 1922), Der Mönch von Santarem/The Monk from Santarem (Lothar Mendes, 1924) with Vivian Gibson , Mister Radio (Nunzio Malasomma, 1924) with Luciano Albertini , Athleten/Athletes ( Friedrich Zelnik , 1925) with Hans Albers , Der Veilchenfresser/The Violet Eater (Friedrich Zelnik, 1926) starring Lil Dagover , and Venus im Frack/Venus in Tails (Robert Land, 1927) staring Carmen Boni .
In 1922, she had married Paul Oppenand they had a child, but they divorced in 1930.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 939. Photo: Lux Film Verleih.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5125. Photo: Ernst Sandau, Berlin.
Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 938. Photo: Lux Film Verleih.
Berlin Brats
Evi Eva often embodied Berliner Gören (Berlin brats) in film comedies, she rarely appeared in films with a dramatic content.
In addition to her film work, she also appeared on the Berlin stage.
Already in the late 1920s, Evi Eva had to be content with less important film roles. She played small supporting parts in films like Morgenröte/Dawn (Wolfgang Neff, Burton George, 1929) with Paul Henckels .
When the sound era began, she hardly received any offers. She played roles in Die lustigen Weiber von Wien/The Merry Wives of Vienna (Géza von Bolváry, 1931) with Willi Forst , and the Marika Rökk musical Und du mein Schatz fährst mit/And You My Dear Comes Along (Georg Jacoby, 1937).
Her final film was Urlaub auf Ehrenwort/Furlough on Word of Honour (Karl Ritter, 1937).
Later, the once-famous actress lived in very poor conditions. In 1962 she moved to Munich, but later she returned to Berlin.
Evi Eva died in 1985 in her hometown Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1790/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3317/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Suse Byk, Berlin.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3518/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Atelier Balázs, Berlin.
Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Wikipedia (German) and .
January 20, 2014
Hansjörg Felmy
Hansjörg Felmy (1931-2007) was a German film and stage actor. The ‘charming cad’ played in some classics of the German cinema of the 1950s, and later became well known for his role on TV as Kommissar Heinz Haferkamp in the Krimi series Tatort.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 110. Photo: Real Film / Gabriele. Publicity still for Herz ohne Gnade/Heart without pity (Viktor Tourjansky, 1958).
German postcard by Kolobri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 2798. Photo: Zeyn Film / Deutsche Film Hansa / Lilo. Publicity still for Haie und kleine Fische/Sharks and Little Fish (Frank Wisbar, 1957).
German postcard by Kolobri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 2684. Photo: Zeyn Film / Deutsche Film Hansa / Lilo. Publicity still for Haie und kleine Fische/Sharks and Little Fish (Frank Wisbar, 1957).
Flegel mit Charme
Hansjörg Felmy was born as Hans-Jörg Hellmuth Felmy in Berlin in 1931. His parents were air force general Hellmuth Felmy and his wife Helene Felmy-Boettcher.
Hansjörg grew up in Braunschweig. He studied at the local Gymnasium, but had to leave the school prematurely after a quarrel with a teacher. After working as a locksmith and a typographer, Felmy followed acting classes from 1947 to 1949 at Hella Kaiser's.
In 1949 he had his first engagement at the Staatstheater Braunschweig. He made his stage debut in Carl Zuckmayers Des Teufels General (The Devil's General). In 1953 he moved on to the Stadttheater Aachen, and later to the Ensemble der Bühnen der Stadt Köln.
His first film appearance was as fighter pilot Robert Franke in Der Stern von Afrika/The Star from Africa (Alfred Weidenmann, 1956) starring Joachim Hansen . This is a biographic film of a once famous German Lufwaffe flyer, who was killed in a plane crash after over 150 kills in North Africa during WWII.
Next Felmy played in some of the classics of the German cinema: the anti-war film Haie und kleine Fische/Sharks and Little Fish (Frank Wisbar, 1957) with Horst Frank, the comedy Der Maulkorb/The Muzzle (Wolfgang Staudte, 1958) with O. E. Hasse , the satire Wir Wunderkinder/Aren't We Wonderful? (Kurt Hoffmann, 1958) with Johanna von Koczian , Der Greifer/The Copper (Eugen York, 1958) with Hans Albers , the two-part Thomas Mann adaptation Buddenbrooks (Alfred Weidenmann, 1959) with Liselotte Pulver , and the rural drama Und ewig singen die Wälder/Beyond Sing the Woods (Paul May, 1959) with Gert Frobe.
The Germans called him lovingly a 'Flegel mit Charme' (a charming cad). In the early 1960s he appeared in films like Die Botschafterin/The Ambassadress (Harald Braun, 1960) with Nadja Tiller , in the Friedrich Dürrenmatt adaptation Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi/The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi (Kurt Hoffmann, 1961), and he starred in the Wilhelminian family chronicles Die glücklichen Jahre der Thorwalds/The Happy Years of the Thorwalds (John Olden, Wolfgang Staudte, 1962).
He also appeared in international productions like Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller Torn Curtain (1966) with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews .
German postcard by Kolobri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 2869. Photo: Real Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Das Herz von St. Pauli/The Heart of St. Pauli (Eugen York, 1957).
German postcard by Kolobri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 138. Photo: Real Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Herz ohne Gnade/Heart without pity (Viktor Tourjansky, 1958).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 1322. Photo: Cine Custodia / Gloria / Czerwonski. Publicity still for An heiligen Wassern/Sacred Waters (Alfred Weidenmann, 1960).
Krimi
When the German cinema declined in the 1960s Hansjörg Felmy first kept busy in the popular Edgar Wallace series, in such mystery films as Der Henker von London/The Mad Executioners (Edwin Zbonek, 1963).
Later he changed his focus to stage and television. TV would make him again a popular star, especially with his role as the commissioner from the city of Essen, Heinz Haferkamp, in the Krimi (crime series) Tatort. Between 1974 and 1980 he played this role 20 times in feature length TV films.
He would play more leads in other TV series, including In Unternehmen Köpenick/Köpenick Adventure (1985), Die Wilsheimer (1987) and Hagedorns Tochter/The Daughters of Hagendorn (1994).
He was also the German dubbing voice of Jack Nicholson (in Chinatown, Terms of Endearment, and Heartburn), Steve McQueen (in The Getaway) and Roy Scheider (in Jaws).
His last films were the Edgar Wallace thriller Die Tote aus der Themse/Angels of Terror (Harald Philipp, 1971) and Fluchtversuch/Attempted Flight (Vojtech Jasny, 1976).
Hansjörg Felmy was married to actress Elfriede Rückert, and after their divorce he married longtime girlfriend and colleague Claudia Wedekind in 1986.
From the mid 1990s on he suffered from osteoporosis, and had to retire.
During his career he was twice awarded the Bambi award (1959, 1977) and also twice the Goldene Kamera (1961, 1980), the award from media magazine Hörzu.
Hansjörg Felmy died in 2007 in his house in Eching near Landshut.
German postcard by ISV, no. M 17. Photo: Real / Europa-Film / Teampress / Weisse.
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 275. Photo: Real / NF / Gabriele.
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 445. Photo: Bavaria.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 5338. Sent by mail in the Netherlands in 1960. Photo: HAFBO-film. Publicity still for Wir Wunderkinder/Aren't We Wonderful? (1958) with Johanna von Koczian and Wera Frydtberg.
Scene from Wir Wunderkinder/Aren't We Wonderful? (1958). Source: Liebhaberalterfilme (YouTube).
British trailer of Die Tote aus der Themse/Angels of Terror (1971). Source: Modcinema (YouTube).
Sources: Stephanie D'Heil (Steffi-line) (German), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (German and English), and .
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 110. Photo: Real Film / Gabriele. Publicity still for Herz ohne Gnade/Heart without pity (Viktor Tourjansky, 1958).
German postcard by Kolobri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 2798. Photo: Zeyn Film / Deutsche Film Hansa / Lilo. Publicity still for Haie und kleine Fische/Sharks and Little Fish (Frank Wisbar, 1957).
German postcard by Kolobri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 2684. Photo: Zeyn Film / Deutsche Film Hansa / Lilo. Publicity still for Haie und kleine Fische/Sharks and Little Fish (Frank Wisbar, 1957).
Flegel mit Charme
Hansjörg Felmy was born as Hans-Jörg Hellmuth Felmy in Berlin in 1931. His parents were air force general Hellmuth Felmy and his wife Helene Felmy-Boettcher.
Hansjörg grew up in Braunschweig. He studied at the local Gymnasium, but had to leave the school prematurely after a quarrel with a teacher. After working as a locksmith and a typographer, Felmy followed acting classes from 1947 to 1949 at Hella Kaiser's.
In 1949 he had his first engagement at the Staatstheater Braunschweig. He made his stage debut in Carl Zuckmayers Des Teufels General (The Devil's General). In 1953 he moved on to the Stadttheater Aachen, and later to the Ensemble der Bühnen der Stadt Köln.
His first film appearance was as fighter pilot Robert Franke in Der Stern von Afrika/The Star from Africa (Alfred Weidenmann, 1956) starring Joachim Hansen . This is a biographic film of a once famous German Lufwaffe flyer, who was killed in a plane crash after over 150 kills in North Africa during WWII.
Next Felmy played in some of the classics of the German cinema: the anti-war film Haie und kleine Fische/Sharks and Little Fish (Frank Wisbar, 1957) with Horst Frank, the comedy Der Maulkorb/The Muzzle (Wolfgang Staudte, 1958) with O. E. Hasse , the satire Wir Wunderkinder/Aren't We Wonderful? (Kurt Hoffmann, 1958) with Johanna von Koczian , Der Greifer/The Copper (Eugen York, 1958) with Hans Albers , the two-part Thomas Mann adaptation Buddenbrooks (Alfred Weidenmann, 1959) with Liselotte Pulver , and the rural drama Und ewig singen die Wälder/Beyond Sing the Woods (Paul May, 1959) with Gert Frobe.
The Germans called him lovingly a 'Flegel mit Charme' (a charming cad). In the early 1960s he appeared in films like Die Botschafterin/The Ambassadress (Harald Braun, 1960) with Nadja Tiller , in the Friedrich Dürrenmatt adaptation Die Ehe des Herrn Mississippi/The Marriage of Mr. Mississippi (Kurt Hoffmann, 1961), and he starred in the Wilhelminian family chronicles Die glücklichen Jahre der Thorwalds/The Happy Years of the Thorwalds (John Olden, Wolfgang Staudte, 1962).
He also appeared in international productions like Alfred Hitchcock’s spy thriller Torn Curtain (1966) with Paul Newman and Julie Andrews .
German postcard by Kolobri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 2869. Photo: Real Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Das Herz von St. Pauli/The Heart of St. Pauli (Eugen York, 1957).
German postcard by Kolobri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 138. Photo: Real Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Herz ohne Gnade/Heart without pity (Viktor Tourjansky, 1958).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H, Minden-Westf., no. 1322. Photo: Cine Custodia / Gloria / Czerwonski. Publicity still for An heiligen Wassern/Sacred Waters (Alfred Weidenmann, 1960).
Krimi
When the German cinema declined in the 1960s Hansjörg Felmy first kept busy in the popular Edgar Wallace series, in such mystery films as Der Henker von London/The Mad Executioners (Edwin Zbonek, 1963).
Later he changed his focus to stage and television. TV would make him again a popular star, especially with his role as the commissioner from the city of Essen, Heinz Haferkamp, in the Krimi (crime series) Tatort. Between 1974 and 1980 he played this role 20 times in feature length TV films.
He would play more leads in other TV series, including In Unternehmen Köpenick/Köpenick Adventure (1985), Die Wilsheimer (1987) and Hagedorns Tochter/The Daughters of Hagendorn (1994).
He was also the German dubbing voice of Jack Nicholson (in Chinatown, Terms of Endearment, and Heartburn), Steve McQueen (in The Getaway) and Roy Scheider (in Jaws).
His last films were the Edgar Wallace thriller Die Tote aus der Themse/Angels of Terror (Harald Philipp, 1971) and Fluchtversuch/Attempted Flight (Vojtech Jasny, 1976).
Hansjörg Felmy was married to actress Elfriede Rückert, and after their divorce he married longtime girlfriend and colleague Claudia Wedekind in 1986.
From the mid 1990s on he suffered from osteoporosis, and had to retire.
During his career he was twice awarded the Bambi award (1959, 1977) and also twice the Goldene Kamera (1961, 1980), the award from media magazine Hörzu.
Hansjörg Felmy died in 2007 in his house in Eching near Landshut.
German postcard by ISV, no. M 17. Photo: Real / Europa-Film / Teampress / Weisse.
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 275. Photo: Real / NF / Gabriele.
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 445. Photo: Bavaria.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 5338. Sent by mail in the Netherlands in 1960. Photo: HAFBO-film. Publicity still for Wir Wunderkinder/Aren't We Wonderful? (1958) with Johanna von Koczian and Wera Frydtberg.
Scene from Wir Wunderkinder/Aren't We Wonderful? (1958). Source: Liebhaberalterfilme (YouTube).
British trailer of Die Tote aus der Themse/Angels of Terror (1971). Source: Modcinema (YouTube).
Sources: Stephanie D'Heil (Steffi-line) (German), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia (German and English), and .
January 19, 2014
Bernard Blier
Stocky, balding Bernard Blier (1916-1989) was one of France's most versatile and sought-after character actors. His complete filmography includes 138 titles, both comedies and dramas, in France and in Italy.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, presented by Les carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 189. Photo: Carlet.
French collectors card, no. A 56.
Cuckolded Husbands
Bernard Blier (1916-1989) was born in 1916 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his father, Jules Blier, a biologist at the Pasteur Institute, was posted at the time. Blier hated school and began taking drama lessons when he was 15.
On the fourth attempt, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, a leading drama school, in 1937. That year, he also made one of his first film appearances as a ‘young man on a tandem’ in the comedy Gribouille/Heart of Paris (Marc Allégret, 1937), based on a story by Marcel Achard. The film stars Raimu and Michèle Morgan in her first major film role.
Bigger roles followed in the classics Hôtel du Nord (Marcel Carné, 1938) starring Annabella , and Le Jour se lève/Daybreak (Marcel Carné, 1939) with Jean Gabin , which is considered one of the principal examples of the French poetic realism. His rotund features and premature baldness allowed him to often play cuckolded husbands in his early career.
At the start of the Second World War, Blier enlisted in the French infantry but was captured and interned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Austria, where he lost 27 pounds in weight.
During the war years, his films included the comedy drama Le Pavillon brûle/The Pavilion burns (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1941), starring Pierre Renoir and Jean Marais , and the fantasy film La Nuit fantastique/The Fantastic Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1942), which was one of the most successful films made in France during the German occupation. It starred Micheline Presle and Fernand Gravey .
After the war he returned to the screen in French classics like the drama Dédée d'Anvers (Yves Allégret, 1948), featuring Simone Signoret , and the police procedural drama Quai des Orfèvres/Quay of the Goldsmiths (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947) with Suzy Delair , Louis Jouvet and Simone Renant .
The films were popular with both audiences and critics. James Travers at French Film Guide about Dédée d’Anvers: “Blier, as ever, makes the most of what he is given and works particularly well alongside Signoret - so well in fact that he would star opposite her in Allégret's next film but one, Manèges (1950)."
French postcard by Editions Chantal, Rueil, no. 9. Photo R. Richebé.
French postcard, no. 57. Photo: Pathé.
Versatile And Sought-after
During the 1950s and 1960s, Bernard Blier proved to be one of France's most versatile and sought-after character actors, performing interchangeably in comedies and dramas. His films included Avant le déluge/Before the Deluge (André Cayatte, 1954), the comedy-thriller L'Homme à l'imperméable/The Man in the Raincoat (Julien Duvivier, 1957) starring Fernandel , and he played Javert in Les Misérables (Jean-Paul Le Chanois, 1958) with Jean Gabin as Jean Valjean.
He often appeared in Italian films too. An example is La grande guerra/The Great War (Mario Monicelli, 1959) about an odd couple of army buddies ( Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman ) in World War I, who experience the horrors and grimness of trench warfare. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was an Academy Award nominee as Best Foreign Film.
Also interesting was the Italian drama Il gobbo/The Hunchback of Rome (Carlo Lizzani, 1960), loosely based on the real life events of Giuseppe Albano (played by Gérard Blain ), one of the protagonists of the Roman Resistance against German occupation.
Blier also appeared with Lino Ventura in the crime comedy Les tontons flingueurs/Monsieur Gangster (Georges Lautner, 1963) and opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in the French-Italian adventure film Cent mille dollars au soleil/Greed in the Sun (Henri Verneuil, 1964), which was entered into the 1964 Cannes Film Festival.
A huge popular success was the French comedy thriller The Big Restaurant/Le Grand Restaurant (Jacques Besnard, 1966), starring Louis de Funès and Blier.
More prestigious was Lo straniero/The Stranger (Luchino Visconti, 1967), based on Albert Camus' novel L'Étranger. Hal Erickson at AllMovie : “The Stranger is a literal (but still very cinematic) adaptation of the novel by Albert Camus. Marcello Mastroianni stars as Meursault, a man who feels utterly isolated from everyone and everything around him. This alienation results in sudden, inexplicable bursts of violence, culminating in murder. The subsequent trial of Meursault manages to convey the oppressive heat of its Algerian setting with director Luchino Visconti's usual veneer of elegant decadence.”
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, no. 3247, 1968. Retail price: 0,20 M. Photo: Unifrance.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 369. Offered by Les Carbones Korès. Photo Lucienne Chevert.
Box-office Hits And Major Directors
Bernard Blier also played in the popular comedy Le Grand Blond avec une chaussure noire/The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (Yves Robert, 1972), co-starring with Pierre Richard and Jean Rochefort. The film lead to both a sequel, Le Retour du Grand Blond (Yves Robert, 1974) and the Hollywood remake The Man with One Red Shoe (Stan Dragoti, 1985) starring Tom Hanks.
Another box office hit was the Italian comedy-drama Amici miei/My Friends (Mario Monicelli, 1975). It tells the story of four middle-aged friends (including Ugo Tognazzi and Philippe Noiret) in Florence who organize together idle pranks (called zingarate, gypsy shenanigans) in a continuous attempt to prolong childhood during their adult life. The film made it to number one at the Italian box-office and was followed by two sequels, Amici miei Atto II (Mario Monicelli, 1982), and Amici miei Atto III (Nanni Loy, 1985).
Blier is the father of French screenwriter and film director Bertrand Blier (born 1939). Father and son worked together for the first time on Calmos (Bertrand Blier, 1976). Two men (Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean Rochefort), worn out by their wives, abandon everything to go and live in the back of beyond. There they meet a truculent priest, a boozer, Émile (Bernard Blier) who recalls them to life's simple pleasures.
Their next cooperation, the black comedy Buffet froid (Bertrand Blier, 1979), starring Gérard Depardieu , was not a success at the box office, but later gained a cult status.
During the final years of his life, Blier seemed only to work with major directors. With Luigi Comencini, he worked on the Italian comedy drama Voltati Eugenio/Eugenio (1980), which entered the 37th Venice International Film Festival. With Ettore Scola, he made Passione d'amore/Passion of Love (1981) which was entered into the 1981 Cannes Film Festival.
For Mario Monicelli, he appeared in three films: Le due vite di Mattia Pascal/The Two Lives of Mattia Pascal (1985), Speriamo che sia femmina/Let's Hope It's a Girl (1986) and I picari/The Rogues (1987).
With Andrzej Wajda he made his final film, the French drama Les Possédés/The Possessed (1988), starring Isabelle Huppert . In 1989, a month before he died, he was awarded an Honorary César (the French Oscar).
Bernard Blier died of cancer in 1989 in Saint-Cloud, France. He was married twice. From 1937 till 1965, he was married to Gisèle Brunet, the mother of his son Bertrand. His second wife was Annette Martin, with whom he was married since 1965.
East-German postcard by VEB-Progress Filmverleih, Berlin, no. 605. Photo: Gerhard Puhlmann.
East German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 428, 1957. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Gerhard Puhlmann.
Sources: James Travers (French Film Guide), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and .
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, presented by Les carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. 189. Photo: Carlet.
French collectors card, no. A 56.
Cuckolded Husbands
Bernard Blier (1916-1989) was born in 1916 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where his father, Jules Blier, a biologist at the Pasteur Institute, was posted at the time. Blier hated school and began taking drama lessons when he was 15.
On the fourth attempt, he was admitted to the Paris Conservatoire, a leading drama school, in 1937. That year, he also made one of his first film appearances as a ‘young man on a tandem’ in the comedy Gribouille/Heart of Paris (Marc Allégret, 1937), based on a story by Marcel Achard. The film stars Raimu and Michèle Morgan in her first major film role.
Bigger roles followed in the classics Hôtel du Nord (Marcel Carné, 1938) starring Annabella , and Le Jour se lève/Daybreak (Marcel Carné, 1939) with Jean Gabin , which is considered one of the principal examples of the French poetic realism. His rotund features and premature baldness allowed him to often play cuckolded husbands in his early career.
At the start of the Second World War, Blier enlisted in the French infantry but was captured and interned in a prisoner-of-war camp in Austria, where he lost 27 pounds in weight.
During the war years, his films included the comedy drama Le Pavillon brûle/The Pavilion burns (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1941), starring Pierre Renoir and Jean Marais , and the fantasy film La Nuit fantastique/The Fantastic Night (Marcel L'Herbier, 1942), which was one of the most successful films made in France during the German occupation. It starred Micheline Presle and Fernand Gravey .
After the war he returned to the screen in French classics like the drama Dédée d'Anvers (Yves Allégret, 1948), featuring Simone Signoret , and the police procedural drama Quai des Orfèvres/Quay of the Goldsmiths (Henri-Georges Clouzot, 1947) with Suzy Delair , Louis Jouvet and Simone Renant .
The films were popular with both audiences and critics. James Travers at French Film Guide about Dédée d’Anvers: “Blier, as ever, makes the most of what he is given and works particularly well alongside Signoret - so well in fact that he would star opposite her in Allégret's next film but one, Manèges (1950)."
French postcard by Editions Chantal, Rueil, no. 9. Photo R. Richebé.
French postcard, no. 57. Photo: Pathé.
Versatile And Sought-after
During the 1950s and 1960s, Bernard Blier proved to be one of France's most versatile and sought-after character actors, performing interchangeably in comedies and dramas. His films included Avant le déluge/Before the Deluge (André Cayatte, 1954), the comedy-thriller L'Homme à l'imperméable/The Man in the Raincoat (Julien Duvivier, 1957) starring Fernandel , and he played Javert in Les Misérables (Jean-Paul Le Chanois, 1958) with Jean Gabin as Jean Valjean.
He often appeared in Italian films too. An example is La grande guerra/The Great War (Mario Monicelli, 1959) about an odd couple of army buddies ( Alberto Sordi and Vittorio Gassman ) in World War I, who experience the horrors and grimness of trench warfare. The film won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival and was an Academy Award nominee as Best Foreign Film.
Also interesting was the Italian drama Il gobbo/The Hunchback of Rome (Carlo Lizzani, 1960), loosely based on the real life events of Giuseppe Albano (played by Gérard Blain ), one of the protagonists of the Roman Resistance against German occupation.
Blier also appeared with Lino Ventura in the crime comedy Les tontons flingueurs/Monsieur Gangster (Georges Lautner, 1963) and opposite Jean-Paul Belmondo in the French-Italian adventure film Cent mille dollars au soleil/Greed in the Sun (Henri Verneuil, 1964), which was entered into the 1964 Cannes Film Festival.
A huge popular success was the French comedy thriller The Big Restaurant/Le Grand Restaurant (Jacques Besnard, 1966), starring Louis de Funès and Blier.
More prestigious was Lo straniero/The Stranger (Luchino Visconti, 1967), based on Albert Camus' novel L'Étranger. Hal Erickson at AllMovie : “The Stranger is a literal (but still very cinematic) adaptation of the novel by Albert Camus. Marcello Mastroianni stars as Meursault, a man who feels utterly isolated from everyone and everything around him. This alienation results in sudden, inexplicable bursts of violence, culminating in murder. The subsequent trial of Meursault manages to convey the oppressive heat of its Algerian setting with director Luchino Visconti's usual veneer of elegant decadence.”
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, no. 3247, 1968. Retail price: 0,20 M. Photo: Unifrance.
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 369. Offered by Les Carbones Korès. Photo Lucienne Chevert.
Box-office Hits And Major Directors
Bernard Blier also played in the popular comedy Le Grand Blond avec une chaussure noire/The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe (Yves Robert, 1972), co-starring with Pierre Richard and Jean Rochefort. The film lead to both a sequel, Le Retour du Grand Blond (Yves Robert, 1974) and the Hollywood remake The Man with One Red Shoe (Stan Dragoti, 1985) starring Tom Hanks.
Another box office hit was the Italian comedy-drama Amici miei/My Friends (Mario Monicelli, 1975). It tells the story of four middle-aged friends (including Ugo Tognazzi and Philippe Noiret) in Florence who organize together idle pranks (called zingarate, gypsy shenanigans) in a continuous attempt to prolong childhood during their adult life. The film made it to number one at the Italian box-office and was followed by two sequels, Amici miei Atto II (Mario Monicelli, 1982), and Amici miei Atto III (Nanni Loy, 1985).
Blier is the father of French screenwriter and film director Bertrand Blier (born 1939). Father and son worked together for the first time on Calmos (Bertrand Blier, 1976). Two men (Jean-Pierre Marielle and Jean Rochefort), worn out by their wives, abandon everything to go and live in the back of beyond. There they meet a truculent priest, a boozer, Émile (Bernard Blier) who recalls them to life's simple pleasures.
Their next cooperation, the black comedy Buffet froid (Bertrand Blier, 1979), starring Gérard Depardieu , was not a success at the box office, but later gained a cult status.
During the final years of his life, Blier seemed only to work with major directors. With Luigi Comencini, he worked on the Italian comedy drama Voltati Eugenio/Eugenio (1980), which entered the 37th Venice International Film Festival. With Ettore Scola, he made Passione d'amore/Passion of Love (1981) which was entered into the 1981 Cannes Film Festival.
For Mario Monicelli, he appeared in three films: Le due vite di Mattia Pascal/The Two Lives of Mattia Pascal (1985), Speriamo che sia femmina/Let's Hope It's a Girl (1986) and I picari/The Rogues (1987).
With Andrzej Wajda he made his final film, the French drama Les Possédés/The Possessed (1988), starring Isabelle Huppert . In 1989, a month before he died, he was awarded an Honorary César (the French Oscar).
Bernard Blier died of cancer in 1989 in Saint-Cloud, France. He was married twice. From 1937 till 1965, he was married to Gisèle Brunet, the mother of his son Bertrand. His second wife was Annette Martin, with whom he was married since 1965.
East-German postcard by VEB-Progress Filmverleih, Berlin, no. 605. Photo: Gerhard Puhlmann.
East German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 428, 1957. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Gerhard Puhlmann.
Sources: James Travers (French Film Guide), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and .
January 18, 2014
Gaby Morlay
Gaby Morlay (1893-1964) was a French actress with a long standing career, who played in over 100 films. She compensated her small size (1.53 m.) with passion and enthusiasm.
French postcard by Editions Chantal (EC), no. 45. Photo: Pathé Natan.
French postcard by Editions Chantal (EC), no. 45. Photo: X.
The Liberated Woman
Gaby Morlay was born Blanche Pauline Fumoleau in Angers, France, in 1893. By chance, she was enrolled in playing on stage.
In 1913 she started her cinema career in comic shorts with Max Linder like La vacance de Max/Max's Vacation ( Max Linder , 1913).
Later she had her own comedy shorts with her character Gaby, including Gaby en auto/Gaby in a Car (Charles Burguet, 1917).
In the Roaring Twenties, she became the symbol of the liberated woman, being the first woman to obtain a licence for flying a Zeppelin.
Among Gaby Morlay's features were L'Agonie des aigles/The Death Agony of the Eagles (Dominique Bernard-Deschamps, Julien Duvivier, 1922) opposite Séverin-Mars , Jim la houlette, roi des voleurs/Jim the Cracksman, the King of Thieves (Pierre Colombier, Roger Lion, Nicolas Rimsky , 1926), and Les nouveaux messieurs/The New Gentlemen (Jacques Feyder, 1929) with Albert Préjean .
French postcard by Campari. Photo G.L. Manuel Frères. Caption: "L'esprit léger, le coeur content, Campari donne du montant."
French postcard by CE, no. 969. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères.
Peaking In The Sound Era
While Gaby Morlay already had an active film career in the 1920s, she really peaked in the sound era. If she was not involved in big productions she did five films a year in the 1930s.
Her first sound film was Accusée, levez-vous/Accused, Stand Up (Maurice Tourneur, 1930).
Among her best known films were Après l'amour/When Love Is Over (Léonce Perret, 1931), Nous ne sommes plus des enfants/We Are Not Children (Augusto Genina, 1934), Jeanne (Georges Marret, 1934) - Morlay was coproducer for the latter two - La peur/The Fear (Viktor Tourjansky, 1936) with Charles Vanel , and the romantic comedy Quadrille (Sacha Guitry, 1938).
She was often paired with Victor Francen and played historical figures like Queen Victoria in Entente Cordiale (Marcel L'Herbier, 1939), Giuseppina Strepponi in Giuseppe Verdi (Carmine Gallone, 1939), and Napoleon's Désirée in Le Destin fabuleux de Désirée Clary (Sacha Guitry, 1941).
Having often played on stage in Henry Bernstein's plays, Morlay appeared also in several film adaptations of his plays: Mélo/The Dreamy Mouth (Paul Czinner, 1932), Le bonheur/Happiness (Marcel L'Herbier, 1935), Samson (Maurice Tourneur, 1936), and Le messager/The Messenger (Raymond Rouleau, 1937) with Jean Gabin .
French postcard by PC, no. 153. Photo: Pathé-Natan.
French postcard by PC, no. 69. Photo: Pathé-Natan.
Mother Superior
During the German Occupation of France, Gaby Morlay was the mistress of Max Bonnafous, Minister of Agriculture in the Marshall Pétain government.
Because of her long association with Bonnafous, she had to appear several times in front of the 'purge committees' once France was liberated. Morlay finally could marry Bonnafous in 1961, after his wife, who refused to divorce him, had died.
During the war, Morlay excelled in the popular tearjerker Le Voile bleu/The Blue Veil (Jean Stelli, 1942).
In the postwar era, Louis Jouvet treated her cruelly in Un revenant/A Lover's Return (Christian-Jacque, 1946).
Her favourite film was Les amants du pont Saint-Jean/The Lovers of the St. Jean Bridge (Henri Decoin, 1947), in which she played Michel Simon 's clochard friend.
German postcard by Das Programm von Heute für Film und Theater G.m.b.H., Frankfurt a.M. Photo: Hammer-Tonfilm.
French postcard. Offered by Kwatta chocolate. N Els, Bromurite.
The Wife Of The Masked Man
In the 1950s Gaby Morlay played in some Italian films: she was Aldo Fabrizi's wife in the comedy Prima Communione/Father's Dilemma (Alessandro Blasetti, 1950) and in the melodrama Anna (1951, Alberto Lattuada) she was the Mother Superior opposite Silvana Mangano in the title role.
In 1951 Morlay was also part of the Cannes Jury.
In Le Plaisir/Pleasure (Max Ophüls, 1951), she was the wife of the masked man in the first episode of the film, and in Sacha Guitry's Si Versailles m'était conté/Affairs in Versailles (1954) she was the Countess de la Motte.
She was elected president of the Syndicat national des acteurs (French Screen Actor's Guild) in 1956.
Until her death in 1964, Gaby Morlay continued to play in films.
She also had an active stage career from the 1910s to the 1960s, in plays by Sacha Guitry, Marcel Achard, André Brulé and others. Just as in the cinema, she continued to play on stage until her death; for instance, in 1959-1960 she played for two years in Eugene O'Neill's Long Voyage to the End of the Night.
In 1964 Gaby Morlay died of cancer in Nice, at the age of 71.
French postcard by Editions P.I. Paris, no. 88. Photo: U.F.P.C.
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 859. Photo: Production Pathé.
Vintage postcard by A Stefsky. Photo: Erpé.
French postcard by Editions Chantal, Rueil, no. 45. Photo: C.C.F.C.
Sources: Cinememorial, Wikipedia (French), and .
French postcard by Editions Chantal (EC), no. 45. Photo: Pathé Natan.
French postcard by Editions Chantal (EC), no. 45. Photo: X.
The Liberated Woman
Gaby Morlay was born Blanche Pauline Fumoleau in Angers, France, in 1893. By chance, she was enrolled in playing on stage.
In 1913 she started her cinema career in comic shorts with Max Linder like La vacance de Max/Max's Vacation ( Max Linder , 1913).
Later she had her own comedy shorts with her character Gaby, including Gaby en auto/Gaby in a Car (Charles Burguet, 1917).
In the Roaring Twenties, she became the symbol of the liberated woman, being the first woman to obtain a licence for flying a Zeppelin.
Among Gaby Morlay's features were L'Agonie des aigles/The Death Agony of the Eagles (Dominique Bernard-Deschamps, Julien Duvivier, 1922) opposite Séverin-Mars , Jim la houlette, roi des voleurs/Jim the Cracksman, the King of Thieves (Pierre Colombier, Roger Lion, Nicolas Rimsky , 1926), and Les nouveaux messieurs/The New Gentlemen (Jacques Feyder, 1929) with Albert Préjean .
French postcard by Campari. Photo G.L. Manuel Frères. Caption: "L'esprit léger, le coeur content, Campari donne du montant."
French postcard by CE, no. 969. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères.
Peaking In The Sound Era
While Gaby Morlay already had an active film career in the 1920s, she really peaked in the sound era. If she was not involved in big productions she did five films a year in the 1930s.
Her first sound film was Accusée, levez-vous/Accused, Stand Up (Maurice Tourneur, 1930).
Among her best known films were Après l'amour/When Love Is Over (Léonce Perret, 1931), Nous ne sommes plus des enfants/We Are Not Children (Augusto Genina, 1934), Jeanne (Georges Marret, 1934) - Morlay was coproducer for the latter two - La peur/The Fear (Viktor Tourjansky, 1936) with Charles Vanel , and the romantic comedy Quadrille (Sacha Guitry, 1938).
She was often paired with Victor Francen and played historical figures like Queen Victoria in Entente Cordiale (Marcel L'Herbier, 1939), Giuseppina Strepponi in Giuseppe Verdi (Carmine Gallone, 1939), and Napoleon's Désirée in Le Destin fabuleux de Désirée Clary (Sacha Guitry, 1941).
Having often played on stage in Henry Bernstein's plays, Morlay appeared also in several film adaptations of his plays: Mélo/The Dreamy Mouth (Paul Czinner, 1932), Le bonheur/Happiness (Marcel L'Herbier, 1935), Samson (Maurice Tourneur, 1936), and Le messager/The Messenger (Raymond Rouleau, 1937) with Jean Gabin .
French postcard by PC, no. 153. Photo: Pathé-Natan.
French postcard by PC, no. 69. Photo: Pathé-Natan.
Mother Superior
During the German Occupation of France, Gaby Morlay was the mistress of Max Bonnafous, Minister of Agriculture in the Marshall Pétain government.
Because of her long association with Bonnafous, she had to appear several times in front of the 'purge committees' once France was liberated. Morlay finally could marry Bonnafous in 1961, after his wife, who refused to divorce him, had died.
During the war, Morlay excelled in the popular tearjerker Le Voile bleu/The Blue Veil (Jean Stelli, 1942).
In the postwar era, Louis Jouvet treated her cruelly in Un revenant/A Lover's Return (Christian-Jacque, 1946).
Her favourite film was Les amants du pont Saint-Jean/The Lovers of the St. Jean Bridge (Henri Decoin, 1947), in which she played Michel Simon 's clochard friend.
German postcard by Das Programm von Heute für Film und Theater G.m.b.H., Frankfurt a.M. Photo: Hammer-Tonfilm.
French postcard. Offered by Kwatta chocolate. N Els, Bromurite.
The Wife Of The Masked Man
In the 1950s Gaby Morlay played in some Italian films: she was Aldo Fabrizi's wife in the comedy Prima Communione/Father's Dilemma (Alessandro Blasetti, 1950) and in the melodrama Anna (1951, Alberto Lattuada) she was the Mother Superior opposite Silvana Mangano in the title role.
In 1951 Morlay was also part of the Cannes Jury.
In Le Plaisir/Pleasure (Max Ophüls, 1951), she was the wife of the masked man in the first episode of the film, and in Sacha Guitry's Si Versailles m'était conté/Affairs in Versailles (1954) she was the Countess de la Motte.
She was elected president of the Syndicat national des acteurs (French Screen Actor's Guild) in 1956.
Until her death in 1964, Gaby Morlay continued to play in films.
She also had an active stage career from the 1910s to the 1960s, in plays by Sacha Guitry, Marcel Achard, André Brulé and others. Just as in the cinema, she continued to play on stage until her death; for instance, in 1959-1960 she played for two years in Eugene O'Neill's Long Voyage to the End of the Night.
In 1964 Gaby Morlay died of cancer in Nice, at the age of 71.
French postcard by Editions P.I. Paris, no. 88. Photo: U.F.P.C.
French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 859. Photo: Production Pathé.
Vintage postcard by A Stefsky. Photo: Erpé.
French postcard by Editions Chantal, Rueil, no. 45. Photo: C.C.F.C.
Sources: Cinememorial, Wikipedia (French), and .
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