Paul van Yperen's Blog, page 444
September 14, 2013
Ernst Lubitsch
Ernst Lubitsch (1892-1947) was a German-American actor, screenwriter, producer and film director, who started his career in the silent cinema of the Weimar Republic. During the 1920s, his urbane comedies of manners gave him the reputation of being Hollywood's most elegant and sophisticated director. His films were promoted as having ‘the Lubitsch touch.’
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 1926. Photo: Fritz Richard. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ethnic Jewish Humour
Ernst Lubitsch was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1892. He was the son of Anna (née Lindenstaedt) and Simon Lubitsch, a tailor. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father born in Grodno and his mother from Wriezen (Oder), outside Berlin. Ernst was drawn to the stage while participating in plays staged by his high school, which he quit at 16.
He worked as a bookkeeper at his father's store by day and appeared in cabarets and music halls by night. By 1911, he was a member of Max Reinhardt's renowned Deutsches Theater, where he quickly advanced from bit parts to character leads.
He made his film debut the following year and appeared in approximately thirty films between 1912 and 1920. Lubitsch appeared in a series of very successful film comedies as a character named Meyer in which he emphasized ethnic Jewish humour.
In 1914 he began to write and direct his own films, and made his mark as a serious director with the drama Die Augen der Mumie Ma/The Eyes of the Mummy (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918), starring Pola Negri . He gradually abandoned acting to concentrate on directing and his last film appearance was opposite Pola Negri and Paul Wegener in the drama Sumurun (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920).
With Ossi Oswalda . German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 337/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Zander & Labisch.
Pola Negri . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 407/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt Phot.
Emil Jannings as the British king Henry VIII and Henny Porten as Anna Boleyn, in Anna Boleyn (1920). German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 645/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Union Film.
Grand Master
As a director, Lubitsch alternated between escapist comedies and large-scale historical dramas, enjoying great international success with both. A triumph was Die Austernprinzessin/The Oyster Princess (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919), featuring Ossi Oswalda , a sparkling satire caricaturizing American manners.
His reputation as a grand master of world cinema reached a new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame Du Barry/Passion (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) with Pola Negri , and Anna Boleyn/Deception (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) starring Henny Porten and Emil Jannings . Both of these films found American distributorship by early 1921.
They, along with his Carmen/Gypsy Blood (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921) were selected by The New York Times on its list of the 15 most important movies of 1921. With glowing reviews under his belt, and American money flowing his way, Lubitsch formed his own production company and made the high-budget spectacular Das Weib des Pharao/The Loves of Pharaoh (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921).
Henny Porten as Anna Boleyn, in Anna Boleyn (1920). German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 401/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt Phot. / Messter Film, Berlin.
Henny Porten as Anna Boleyn, in Anna Boleyn (1920). German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 402/4, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt Phot. / Messter Film, Berlin.
Hollywood
Ernst Lubitsch left Germany for Hollywood in 1922. He was contracted by Mary Pickford to direct her in the film Rosita (1922). The result was a critical and commercial success, but director and star clashed during its filming, and it ended up as the only project that they made together.
A free agent after just one American film, Lubitsch was signed to a remarkable three-year, six-picture contract by Warner Brothers that guaranteed the director his choice of both cast and crew, and full editing control over the final cut. Settling in America, Lubitsch established his reputation for sophisticated comedy with such stylish films as The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926).
But his films were only marginally profitable for Warner Brothers, and Lubitsch's contract was eventually dissolved by mutual consent, with MGM-Paramount buying out the remainder. His first film for MGM, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) with Ramon Novarro, was well regarded, but lost money.
Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 98/6. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927).
Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 98/10. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927).
Musicals
Lubitsch seized upon the advent of talkies to direct musicals. With his first sound film, The Love Parade (1929), starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Lubitsch hit his stride as a maker of worldly musical comedies and earned himself another Oscar nomination.
The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) were hailed by critics as masterpieces of the newly emerging musical genre. Lubitsch served on the faculty of the University of Southern California for a time.
His next film was a romantic comedy, written with Samson Raphaelson, Trouble in Paradise (1932). The cynical comedy was popular both with critics and with audiences. But it was a project that could only have been made before the enforcement of the Production Code, and after 1935, Trouble in Paradise was withdrawn from circulation. It was not seen again until 1968.
Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. Dutch postcard. JosPé, no. 402. Photo: Paramount.
Maurice Chevalier and Miriam Hopkins. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5976/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931).
Running Paramount
Ernst Lubitsch continued to specialize in comedy, whether with music, as in MGM's opulent The Merry Widow (1934) and Paramount's One Hour with You (1932), or without, as in Design for Living (1933).
He made only one other dramatic film, the anti-war Broken Lullaby/The Man I Killed (1932).
In 1935, he was appointed Paramount's production manager, thus becoming the only major Hollywood director to run a large studio. But Lubitsch had trouble delegating authority, which was a problem when he was overseeing sixty different films. He was fired after a year on the job, and returned to full-time moviemaking.
Maurice Chevalier . Dutch postcard, no. 196. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931).
Maurice Chevalier . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6709/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount.
Garbo Laughs!
In 1935 he married British actress Vivian Gaye. They had one daughter, Nicola Lubitsch in 1938. And in 1936, he became a naturalized US citizen.
Lubitsch moved to MGM, and directed Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939). The famously serious actress' laughing scene in this satirical comedy was heavily promoted by studio publicists with the tagline "Garbo Laughs!"
In 1940, Lubitsch directed The Shop Around the Corner, an artful comedy of cross purposes. The film reunited Lubitsch with his Merry Widow screenwriter Raphaelson, and starred James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as a pair of bickering co-workers in Budapest, each unaware that the other is their secret romantic correspondent.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6732/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for One Hour with You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932) with Roland Young, Genevieve Tobin, Jeanette MacDonald, and Maurice Chevalier .
Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, no. C 181. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Ninotschka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939) with Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas.
Heaven Can Wait
Lubitsch went independent to direct That Uncertain Feeling (1941, a remake of his 1925 film Kiss Me Again), and the dark anti-Nazi farce To Be or Not to Be (1942). A heart condition curtailed his activity, and he spent much of his time in supervisory capacities.
Heaven Can Wait (1943) was another Raphaelson collaboration. Then, Lubitsch worked with Edwin Justus Mayer on the scripting process of A Royal Scandal (1945), a remake of Lubitsch's silent film A Forbidden Paradise. The script was written and prepared under Lubitsch, and he was the original director of this film, and directed the rehearsals. He became ill during shooting, so hired Otto Preminger to do the rest of the shooting.
After A Royal Scandal, Lubitsch regained his health, and directed Cluny Brown (1946), with Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones. In 1947, he was awarded a Special Academy Award. Ernst Lubitsch died later that year in Hollywood of a heart attack, his sixth. His last film, That Lady in Ermine (1948) with Betty Grable, was completed by Otto Preminger and released posthumously.
Meyer aus Berlin/Meyer from Berlin (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919). Source: Bob Toomey (YouTube)
Trailer for Ninotschka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939). Source: OscarMovieTrailers (You Tube).
Sources: Ephraim Katz (The Film Encyclopedia), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 1926. Photo: Fritz Richard. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ethnic Jewish Humour
Ernst Lubitsch was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1892. He was the son of Anna (née Lindenstaedt) and Simon Lubitsch, a tailor. His family was Ashkenazi Jewish, his father born in Grodno and his mother from Wriezen (Oder), outside Berlin. Ernst was drawn to the stage while participating in plays staged by his high school, which he quit at 16.
He worked as a bookkeeper at his father's store by day and appeared in cabarets and music halls by night. By 1911, he was a member of Max Reinhardt's renowned Deutsches Theater, where he quickly advanced from bit parts to character leads.
He made his film debut the following year and appeared in approximately thirty films between 1912 and 1920. Lubitsch appeared in a series of very successful film comedies as a character named Meyer in which he emphasized ethnic Jewish humour.
In 1914 he began to write and direct his own films, and made his mark as a serious director with the drama Die Augen der Mumie Ma/The Eyes of the Mummy (Ernst Lubitsch, 1918), starring Pola Negri . He gradually abandoned acting to concentrate on directing and his last film appearance was opposite Pola Negri and Paul Wegener in the drama Sumurun (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920).
With Ossi Oswalda . German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 337/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Zander & Labisch.
Pola Negri . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 407/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt Phot.
Emil Jannings as the British king Henry VIII and Henny Porten as Anna Boleyn, in Anna Boleyn (1920). German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 645/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Union Film.
Grand Master
As a director, Lubitsch alternated between escapist comedies and large-scale historical dramas, enjoying great international success with both. A triumph was Die Austernprinzessin/The Oyster Princess (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919), featuring Ossi Oswalda , a sparkling satire caricaturizing American manners.
His reputation as a grand master of world cinema reached a new peak after the release of his spectacles Madame Du Barry/Passion (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919) with Pola Negri , and Anna Boleyn/Deception (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) starring Henny Porten and Emil Jannings . Both of these films found American distributorship by early 1921.
They, along with his Carmen/Gypsy Blood (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921) were selected by The New York Times on its list of the 15 most important movies of 1921. With glowing reviews under his belt, and American money flowing his way, Lubitsch formed his own production company and made the high-budget spectacular Das Weib des Pharao/The Loves of Pharaoh (Ernst Lubitsch, 1921).
Henny Porten as Anna Boleyn, in Anna Boleyn (1920). German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 401/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt Phot. / Messter Film, Berlin.
Henny Porten as Anna Boleyn, in Anna Boleyn (1920). German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 402/4, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt Phot. / Messter Film, Berlin.
Hollywood
Ernst Lubitsch left Germany for Hollywood in 1922. He was contracted by Mary Pickford to direct her in the film Rosita (1922). The result was a critical and commercial success, but director and star clashed during its filming, and it ended up as the only project that they made together.
A free agent after just one American film, Lubitsch was signed to a remarkable three-year, six-picture contract by Warner Brothers that guaranteed the director his choice of both cast and crew, and full editing control over the final cut. Settling in America, Lubitsch established his reputation for sophisticated comedy with such stylish films as The Marriage Circle (1924), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), and So This Is Paris (1926).
But his films were only marginally profitable for Warner Brothers, and Lubitsch's contract was eventually dissolved by mutual consent, with MGM-Paramount buying out the remainder. His first film for MGM, The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927) with Ramon Novarro, was well regarded, but lost money.
Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 98/6. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927).
Ramon Novarro and Norma Shearer. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 98/10. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (Ernst Lubitsch, 1927).
Musicals
Lubitsch seized upon the advent of talkies to direct musicals. With his first sound film, The Love Parade (1929), starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald, Lubitsch hit his stride as a maker of worldly musical comedies and earned himself another Oscar nomination.
The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), and The Smiling Lieutenant (1931) were hailed by critics as masterpieces of the newly emerging musical genre. Lubitsch served on the faculty of the University of Southern California for a time.
His next film was a romantic comedy, written with Samson Raphaelson, Trouble in Paradise (1932). The cynical comedy was popular both with critics and with audiences. But it was a project that could only have been made before the enforcement of the Production Code, and after 1935, Trouble in Paradise was withdrawn from circulation. It was not seen again until 1968.
Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. Dutch postcard. JosPé, no. 402. Photo: Paramount.
Maurice Chevalier and Miriam Hopkins. German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5976/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931).
Running Paramount
Ernst Lubitsch continued to specialize in comedy, whether with music, as in MGM's opulent The Merry Widow (1934) and Paramount's One Hour with You (1932), or without, as in Design for Living (1933).
He made only one other dramatic film, the anti-war Broken Lullaby/The Man I Killed (1932).
In 1935, he was appointed Paramount's production manager, thus becoming the only major Hollywood director to run a large studio. But Lubitsch had trouble delegating authority, which was a problem when he was overseeing sixty different films. He was fired after a year on the job, and returned to full-time moviemaking.
Maurice Chevalier . Dutch postcard, no. 196. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for The Smiling Lieutenant (Ernst Lubitsch, 1931).
Maurice Chevalier . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6709/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount.
Garbo Laughs!
In 1935 he married British actress Vivian Gaye. They had one daughter, Nicola Lubitsch in 1938. And in 1936, he became a naturalized US citizen.
Lubitsch moved to MGM, and directed Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939). The famously serious actress' laughing scene in this satirical comedy was heavily promoted by studio publicists with the tagline "Garbo Laughs!"
In 1940, Lubitsch directed The Shop Around the Corner, an artful comedy of cross purposes. The film reunited Lubitsch with his Merry Widow screenwriter Raphaelson, and starred James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan as a pair of bickering co-workers in Budapest, each unaware that the other is their secret romantic correspondent.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6732/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount. Publicity still for One Hour with You (Ernst Lubitsch, 1932) with Roland Young, Genevieve Tobin, Jeanette MacDonald, and Maurice Chevalier .
Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, no. C 181. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Ninotschka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939) with Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas.
Heaven Can Wait
Lubitsch went independent to direct That Uncertain Feeling (1941, a remake of his 1925 film Kiss Me Again), and the dark anti-Nazi farce To Be or Not to Be (1942). A heart condition curtailed his activity, and he spent much of his time in supervisory capacities.
Heaven Can Wait (1943) was another Raphaelson collaboration. Then, Lubitsch worked with Edwin Justus Mayer on the scripting process of A Royal Scandal (1945), a remake of Lubitsch's silent film A Forbidden Paradise. The script was written and prepared under Lubitsch, and he was the original director of this film, and directed the rehearsals. He became ill during shooting, so hired Otto Preminger to do the rest of the shooting.
After A Royal Scandal, Lubitsch regained his health, and directed Cluny Brown (1946), with Charles Boyer and Jennifer Jones. In 1947, he was awarded a Special Academy Award. Ernst Lubitsch died later that year in Hollywood of a heart attack, his sixth. His last film, That Lady in Ermine (1948) with Betty Grable, was completed by Otto Preminger and released posthumously.
Meyer aus Berlin/Meyer from Berlin (Ernst Lubitsch, 1919). Source: Bob Toomey (YouTube)
Trailer for Ninotschka (Ernst Lubitsch, 1939). Source: OscarMovieTrailers (You Tube).
Sources: Ephraim Katz (The Film Encyclopedia), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
September 13, 2013
Horst Buchholz
Horst ‘Hotte’ Buchholz (1933-2003) was the James Dean of the German Cinema. He was often type casted as a rebellious teenager in the late 1950s. Horst appeared in over sixty films between 1952 and 2002 and is now best remembered as the Mexican gunfighter Chico in The Magnificent Seven (1960).
German postcard by Franz-Josef Rüdel, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1858. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden Westf., no. 2204. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).
Biker-Gang Leader
Horst Werner Buchholz was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1933. His father was a German shoemaker, while his mother was born to Danish parents. At the end of the war he found himself in a foster home in Czechoslovakia.
Back in Berlin he landed his first stage role at 15 in a theatre version of the German children's classic Emil und die Detective (Emil and the Detectives). In the next years he established himself in the theatre and on the radio. After some dubbing work he expanded into film in 1952.
He had a supporting part in Marianne, meine Jugendliebe/Marianne My Teenage Love (Julien Duvivier, 1955) starring Marianne Hold , and he won a Best Actor award at Cannes for his lead in Himmel ohne Sterne/Sky Without Stars (Helmut Käutner, 1955).
His star making role was the biker-gang leader Freddy in Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956) with Karin Baal . Hal Erickson at AllMovie : "With the exception of Buchholz, most of the young toughs in the film are nonprofessionals, exuding a raw energy that many 'pros' could not emulate. Most of Die Halbstarken was lensed on location in genuine gang-ridden urban neighborhoods."
Another major film was Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull/Confessions of Felix Krull (Kurt Hoffmann, 1957) based on the novel by Thomas Mann. The film, and its young star, received international acclaim.
French postcard by St. Anne, Marseille. Photo: Sam Lévin.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/92. Photo: Sam Lévin.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/93. Photo: Sam Lévin.
With Myriam Bru . German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/94. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Gandhi's Assassin
Horst Buchholz began appearing in foreign films from 1959 on. He was a villain in the British thriller Tiger Bay (J. Lee Thompson, 1959).
That same year he made his Broadway debut with Cherie. In Hollywood, he followed that with the western The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960), the dramatic romance Fanny (Joshua Logan, 1961) and the Berlin-set comedy One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder, 1961), but then his star started to fade.
As an international star he played Gandhi's assassin in Nine Hours to Rama (Mark Robson, 1963), and Marco Polo in La fabuleuse aventure de Marco Polo/Marco the Magnificent (Denys de la Patelliere, 1965), but his particular moment was over.
He took the parts as they came and appeared in comedies, horror films and war dramas, in films and on television, both in the US and in Europe.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden Westf., no. 2171. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (1956).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2329. Photo: Interwest / Union / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (1956).
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1941. Photo: NDF / Herzog-Film/ Ringpress - Vogelmann. Publicity still for Robinson soll nicht sterben/The Legend of Robinson Crusoe (Josef von Báky, 1957).
German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 140. Photo: Union Film / Kiehl.
Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. 7468. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for Fanny (1962).
Puzzles
Since 1985, Horst Buchholz mostly appeared in European films such as I skrzypce przestaly grac/And the Violins Stopped Playing (Alexander Ramati, 1988) in which a group of gypsies flee Nazi persecutors, and the fantasy film In weiter Ferne, so nah!/Faraway, So Close! (Wim Wenders, 1993).
His last important role was in the Oscar-winning La vita è bella/Life Is Beautiful (Roberto Begnini, 1997). He played the doctor whose obsession with puzzles blinds him to his ability to help Roberto Benigni in the concentration camp.
Thanks to his gift for languages, Buchholz was able to dub himself in the foreign releases of the film.
With Romy Schneider . German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F 85. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / NDF.
German postcard by W.S.-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F4. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / NDF.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.h., Minden (Westf.), no. F 21. Retail price: 25 Pf. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann.
German postcard by Ufa (Universal-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-147. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Klaus Collignon / Ufa.
German postcard by Ufa (Universal-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-31. Sent by mail in 1963. Photo: Bavaria Film.
Out of the Closet
In 2000, Horst Buchholz came out of the closet in the German magazine Bunte as having 'bisexual tendencies'.
His final feature film was the fantasy Detective Lovelorn und die Rache des Pharao/Detective Lovelorn and the revenge of the pharaoh (Thomas Frick, 2002).
In 2003, Horst Buchholz died in intensive care in Berlin of pneumonia while recovering from a broken thighbone. He was 69.
He was married to French actress Myriam Bru , with whom he had two children, Christoph and Beatrice. His son Christopher Buchholz directed the documentary Horst Buchholz... mein Papa/Horst Buchholz... My Dad (Christoph Buchholz, Sandra Hacker, 2005), which deals with his father's life and their relationship.
German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2912. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Film. Publicity still for Tiger Bay (J. Lee Thompson, 1959).
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg. Photo: Sam Lévin.
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Estambul 65/That Man in Istanbul (Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi, 1965).
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg, no. 4766. Photo: Vogelmann / Constantin. Publicity still for Cervantes (Vincent Sherman, 1967).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie). (IMDb), Wikipedia, Filmreference.com, AllMovie and .
German postcard by Franz-Josef Rüdel, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1858. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden Westf., no. 2204. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956).
Biker-Gang Leader
Horst Werner Buchholz was born in Berlin, Germany, in 1933. His father was a German shoemaker, while his mother was born to Danish parents. At the end of the war he found himself in a foster home in Czechoslovakia.
Back in Berlin he landed his first stage role at 15 in a theatre version of the German children's classic Emil und die Detective (Emil and the Detectives). In the next years he established himself in the theatre and on the radio. After some dubbing work he expanded into film in 1952.
He had a supporting part in Marianne, meine Jugendliebe/Marianne My Teenage Love (Julien Duvivier, 1955) starring Marianne Hold , and he won a Best Actor award at Cannes for his lead in Himmel ohne Sterne/Sky Without Stars (Helmut Käutner, 1955).
His star making role was the biker-gang leader Freddy in Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (Georg Tressler, 1956) with Karin Baal . Hal Erickson at AllMovie : "With the exception of Buchholz, most of the young toughs in the film are nonprofessionals, exuding a raw energy that many 'pros' could not emulate. Most of Die Halbstarken was lensed on location in genuine gang-ridden urban neighborhoods."
Another major film was Bekenntnisse des Hochstaplers Felix Krull/Confessions of Felix Krull (Kurt Hoffmann, 1957) based on the novel by Thomas Mann. The film, and its young star, received international acclaim.
French postcard by St. Anne, Marseille. Photo: Sam Lévin.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/92. Photo: Sam Lévin.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/93. Photo: Sam Lévin.
With Myriam Bru . German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/94. Photo: Sam Lévin.
Gandhi's Assassin
Horst Buchholz began appearing in foreign films from 1959 on. He was a villain in the British thriller Tiger Bay (J. Lee Thompson, 1959).
That same year he made his Broadway debut with Cherie. In Hollywood, he followed that with the western The Magnificent Seven (John Sturges, 1960), the dramatic romance Fanny (Joshua Logan, 1961) and the Berlin-set comedy One, Two, Three (Billy Wilder, 1961), but then his star started to fade.
As an international star he played Gandhi's assassin in Nine Hours to Rama (Mark Robson, 1963), and Marco Polo in La fabuleuse aventure de Marco Polo/Marco the Magnificent (Denys de la Patelliere, 1965), but his particular moment was over.
He took the parts as they came and appeared in comedies, horror films and war dramas, in films and on television, both in the US and in Europe.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden Westf., no. 2171. Photo: Interwest / Union-Film / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (1956).
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2329. Photo: Interwest / Union / Haenchen. Publicity still for Die Halbstarken/Teenage Wolfpack (1956).
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 1941. Photo: NDF / Herzog-Film/ Ringpress - Vogelmann. Publicity still for Robinson soll nicht sterben/The Legend of Robinson Crusoe (Josef von Báky, 1957).
German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 140. Photo: Union Film / Kiehl.
Spanish postcard by Archivo Bermejo, no. 7468. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for Fanny (1962).
Puzzles
Since 1985, Horst Buchholz mostly appeared in European films such as I skrzypce przestaly grac/And the Violins Stopped Playing (Alexander Ramati, 1988) in which a group of gypsies flee Nazi persecutors, and the fantasy film In weiter Ferne, so nah!/Faraway, So Close! (Wim Wenders, 1993).
His last important role was in the Oscar-winning La vita è bella/Life Is Beautiful (Roberto Begnini, 1997). He played the doctor whose obsession with puzzles blinds him to his ability to help Roberto Benigni in the concentration camp.
Thanks to his gift for languages, Buchholz was able to dub himself in the foreign releases of the film.
With Romy Schneider . German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F 85. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / NDF.
German postcard by W.S.-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. F4. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann / NDF.
German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.h., Minden (Westf.), no. F 21. Retail price: 25 Pf. Photo: Ringpress / Vogelmann.
German postcard by Ufa (Universal-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-147. Retail price: 30 Pfg. Photo: Klaus Collignon / Ufa.
German postcard by Ufa (Universal-Film Aktiengesellschaft), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-31. Sent by mail in 1963. Photo: Bavaria Film.
Out of the Closet
In 2000, Horst Buchholz came out of the closet in the German magazine Bunte as having 'bisexual tendencies'.
His final feature film was the fantasy Detective Lovelorn und die Rache des Pharao/Detective Lovelorn and the revenge of the pharaoh (Thomas Frick, 2002).
In 2003, Horst Buchholz died in intensive care in Berlin of pneumonia while recovering from a broken thighbone. He was 69.
He was married to French actress Myriam Bru , with whom he had two children, Christoph and Beatrice. His son Christopher Buchholz directed the documentary Horst Buchholz... mein Papa/Horst Buchholz... My Dad (Christoph Buchholz, Sandra Hacker, 2005), which deals with his father's life and their relationship.
German postcard by Franz Josef Rüdel, Filmpostkartenverlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2912. Photo: J. Arthur Rank Film. Publicity still for Tiger Bay (J. Lee Thompson, 1959).
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg. Photo: Sam Lévin.
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg. Photo: Constantin. Publicity still for Estambul 65/That Man in Istanbul (Antonio Isasi-Isasmendi, 1965).
German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg, no. 4766. Photo: Vogelmann / Constantin. Publicity still for Cervantes (Vincent Sherman, 1967).
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie). (IMDb), Wikipedia, Filmreference.com, AllMovie and .
September 12, 2013
Eve Eden
Popular pin-up model Eve Eden (1940) aka Rosa Dolmai was a starlet in British B-films of the late 1950’s and 1960’s.
Yugoslavian postcard by Grafoplastika DD, Smederova.
Anatomical Marvel
Eve Eden was born as Rosa Dolmai (or Delmai or Delmar) in Bath, UK in 1940 (some sources say 1938) and reportedly, she owed her exotic looks to Portuguese and English ancestry. 17 years later she was a waitress who became ‘One of Britain’s many anatomical marvels (39-22-36) in the figure modeling field”, as TidiousTed writes at his blog RetroRamblings .
Rosa was discovered by an unnamed photographer in the Thames Valley Photographic Club where she became a popular attraction for other camera club photographers who named her 'The West Country Lovely'. As Rosa Dolmai or Rosa Dolmaille, she featured in glamour photographer Harrison Marks’ magazine Solo No.3. Her first appearance in his magazine Kamera followed in issue No.11. After that she became a regular model for several months.
She came under contract to 'leading London agent for glamour’ Bill Watts, who was also the agent for Sabrina and Shirley Ann Field .
Sabrina . British postcard in the Greetings series. Photo: Douglas Burn.
Naked Fury
Between 1957 and 1959, Rosa Dolmai with her seductive dark looks appeared often in the pocket magazines from TOCO, such as Spick & Span, Foto, Model, QT, Hush, Strip Lingerie, Sleek, X For Men, Beautiful Britons, and Fan Fare, usually in white lingerie, corsets, panties and stockings.
While modelling, Rosa also harboured tap dance aspirations. She worked as a compere for stage shows and made her screen debut on TV as one of the presenters of an episode of the Six-Five Special (1958). Rosa gained bit parts in TV commercials and variety shows with Norman Wisdom and Benny Hill.
Parts were to follow on series like Danger Man and Airline Detective. She had an uncredited bit part in the crime film Naked Fury (Charles Saunders, 1959) and played credited as Eve Eden in the war comedy Operation Bullshine (Gilbert Gunn, 1959).
Dutch postcard. Publicity still for the TV series Danger Man (1960-1961) with Patrick McGoohan .
Bondage Scandal
In the following years, pretty Rosa Dolmai continued to appear in glamour magazines. As Eve Eden, she was a dancer in a strip show in the comedy Doctor in Love (Ralph Thomas, 1960), the third sequel to Doctor In The House (Ralph Thomas, 1954). She played small parts on television and in B-films like So Evil, So Young (Godfrey Grayson, 1961) starring Jill Ireland, the crime drama Rag Doll (Lance Comfort, 1961) and The Clue of the Silver Key (Gerard Glaister, 1961).
In Belgium, she appeared in the comedy De ordonnans/At the Drop of a Head (Charles Frank, 1962) with country singer Bobbejaan Schoepen .
After a bondage full-nude layout brought her to public scandal, she dyed her hair blond and reinvented herself as Eve Eden, and landed a bit part as a high priestess in the Beatles ’ film Help! (Richard Lester, 1965).
The Beatles. Dutch postcard by Rembrandt N.V., Amsterdam. Sent by mail in 1964.
An Unverified Rumour
She had another uncredited part in the sixteenth in the series of Carry On films, Carry On... Up the Khyber (Gerald Thomas, 1968), as one of the wives of the The Khasi of Kalabar (Kenneth Williams). Reviewer Shell-26 at IMDb : “Probably the best of the Carry-Ons. Genuinely funny performances from all the actors and a classic script.”
Later she appeared also in When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (Val Guest, 1969). Eve Eden continued to pose until the late 1960's. Her dozens of pictorials included spreads in international magazines like Playboy, Hi-Life, Modern Man, Fling, Beau, and Knave.
There’s an unverified rumour that she then married a wealthy South American and retired from modelling.
And finally a word about Eve from the editor of The 60s Glam Database : “Perhaps the most beautiful model of England's Golden Age and certainly today one of the most highly sought after models. Magazine appearances are becoming increasingly collectable.”
Sources: The 60s Glam Database of British Glamour Models of the 1960’s, RetroRambling and .
Yugoslavian postcard by Grafoplastika DD, Smederova.
Anatomical Marvel
Eve Eden was born as Rosa Dolmai (or Delmai or Delmar) in Bath, UK in 1940 (some sources say 1938) and reportedly, she owed her exotic looks to Portuguese and English ancestry. 17 years later she was a waitress who became ‘One of Britain’s many anatomical marvels (39-22-36) in the figure modeling field”, as TidiousTed writes at his blog RetroRamblings .
Rosa was discovered by an unnamed photographer in the Thames Valley Photographic Club where she became a popular attraction for other camera club photographers who named her 'The West Country Lovely'. As Rosa Dolmai or Rosa Dolmaille, she featured in glamour photographer Harrison Marks’ magazine Solo No.3. Her first appearance in his magazine Kamera followed in issue No.11. After that she became a regular model for several months.
She came under contract to 'leading London agent for glamour’ Bill Watts, who was also the agent for Sabrina and Shirley Ann Field .
Sabrina . British postcard in the Greetings series. Photo: Douglas Burn.
Naked Fury
Between 1957 and 1959, Rosa Dolmai with her seductive dark looks appeared often in the pocket magazines from TOCO, such as Spick & Span, Foto, Model, QT, Hush, Strip Lingerie, Sleek, X For Men, Beautiful Britons, and Fan Fare, usually in white lingerie, corsets, panties and stockings.
While modelling, Rosa also harboured tap dance aspirations. She worked as a compere for stage shows and made her screen debut on TV as one of the presenters of an episode of the Six-Five Special (1958). Rosa gained bit parts in TV commercials and variety shows with Norman Wisdom and Benny Hill.
Parts were to follow on series like Danger Man and Airline Detective. She had an uncredited bit part in the crime film Naked Fury (Charles Saunders, 1959) and played credited as Eve Eden in the war comedy Operation Bullshine (Gilbert Gunn, 1959).
Dutch postcard. Publicity still for the TV series Danger Man (1960-1961) with Patrick McGoohan .
Bondage Scandal
In the following years, pretty Rosa Dolmai continued to appear in glamour magazines. As Eve Eden, she was a dancer in a strip show in the comedy Doctor in Love (Ralph Thomas, 1960), the third sequel to Doctor In The House (Ralph Thomas, 1954). She played small parts on television and in B-films like So Evil, So Young (Godfrey Grayson, 1961) starring Jill Ireland, the crime drama Rag Doll (Lance Comfort, 1961) and The Clue of the Silver Key (Gerard Glaister, 1961).
In Belgium, she appeared in the comedy De ordonnans/At the Drop of a Head (Charles Frank, 1962) with country singer Bobbejaan Schoepen .
After a bondage full-nude layout brought her to public scandal, she dyed her hair blond and reinvented herself as Eve Eden, and landed a bit part as a high priestess in the Beatles ’ film Help! (Richard Lester, 1965).
The Beatles. Dutch postcard by Rembrandt N.V., Amsterdam. Sent by mail in 1964.
An Unverified Rumour
She had another uncredited part in the sixteenth in the series of Carry On films, Carry On... Up the Khyber (Gerald Thomas, 1968), as one of the wives of the The Khasi of Kalabar (Kenneth Williams). Reviewer Shell-26 at IMDb : “Probably the best of the Carry-Ons. Genuinely funny performances from all the actors and a classic script.”
Later she appeared also in When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth (Val Guest, 1969). Eve Eden continued to pose until the late 1960's. Her dozens of pictorials included spreads in international magazines like Playboy, Hi-Life, Modern Man, Fling, Beau, and Knave.
There’s an unverified rumour that she then married a wealthy South American and retired from modelling.
And finally a word about Eve from the editor of The 60s Glam Database : “Perhaps the most beautiful model of England's Golden Age and certainly today one of the most highly sought after models. Magazine appearances are becoming increasingly collectable.”
Sources: The 60s Glam Database of British Glamour Models of the 1960’s, RetroRambling and .
September 11, 2013
Matheson Lang
Tall and good-looking Matheson Lang (1879-1948) was a Canadian-born stage and film actor and playwright in the early 20th century. He is best known for his Shakespearean roles in British productions of Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet and for his role as Mr. Wu. He was one of the first major stars of the British theatre who acted in a silent film and during the 1920s, he became a popular film star in Great Britain.
British postcard by Rotary, no. 1212 F. Photo: Rita Martin.
Imposing Presence
Matheson Alexander Lang was born in Montreal, Canada, the son of Rev. Gavin Lang of Inverness, Scotland in 1879. He was educated at Inverness College and the University of St Andrews.
He began his career as a Shakespearean actor in 1897 in Wolverton, first played in London in 1900, and acted Benedick to the Beatrice of Ellen Terry in 1903.
He became known for his imposing presence, commanding features, and fine voice in plays by William Shakespeare such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. He also appeared in plays by Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw.
British postcard by Davidson Bros., London / New York, no. 3948. Sent by mail in 1908. Photo: D.B. Publicity still for the play Romeo and Juliet (1908).
British postcard by Rotary Photo E.C., no. 1212 R. Photo: Foulsham & Banfield. Matheson Lang as "Pete".
Mr. Wu
Matheson Lang first toured to America in 1902-1903 with Lillie Langtry. In 1903 he married actress Nellie Hutin Britton in London. In 1906 he played Tristram in Joseph Comyns Carr's play Tristram and Iseult at the Adelphi Theatre, with Lily Brayton as Iseult and Oscar Asche as King Mark; Lang's wife played Arganthael.
Lang and his wife subsequently formed their own company, which toured India, South Africa, and Australia from 1910 till 1913 performing Shakespeare. In 1913, Lang returned to England and created one of his most memorable roles, the title character in Mr. Wu. Wu is a Chinese merchant who reluctantly kills his beloved but dishonoured daughter, with the girl's consent. Revengefully, he then kidnaps her seducer, and demands his mother in exchange.
He reprised this part in the silent film Mr. Wu (Maurice Elvey, 1919), which was a big hit. Lang became so identified with the role that he titled his 1940 memoirs Mr. Wu Looks Back. In 1914-1915, he and Ben Greet were the first directors of the Old Vic Theatre in its premiere season. Land and Hutin Britton successfully directed The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet that season.
British postcard by J. Beagles & Co., London, no. 293H.
British postcard by Rotary, no. 1212C. Photo: Ellis & Walery. Publicity still for the play The Devil's Disciple (1907).
Carnival
In 1916, Matheson Lang became one of the first major theatre stars to act in a silent film. He played Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (Walter West, 1916), with his wife as Portia. The film was made by the company Broadwest, which hired the complete stage cast of the play and filmed at Walthamstow Studios using largely natural light.
Next he appeared in The Ware Case (Walter West, 1917) and The House Opposite (Walter West, Frank Wilson, 1917), in both co-starring with Violet Hopson and Ivy Close .
Lang went on to appear in over 30 films and also wrote the plays Carnival (1919) and The Purple Mask (1920), both of which were produced on Broadway. Carnival was also filmed twice. During a production of Shakespeare's Othello in Venice, an Italian actor suspects his wife of having an affair and plans to murder her on stage. Lang played the lead role in the silent version, Carnival (Harley Knoles, 1921), co-starring Ivor Novello , and again in the sound remake Carnival (Herbert Wilcox, 1931), co-starring Joseph Schildkraut.
British postcard by Rotary, no. 2391 P. Photo: Foulsham and Banfield. Publicity still for the play The Taming of the Shrew.
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, no. 87A. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Britain's Leading Screen Actor
Among his other memorable roles were Guy Fawkes (Maurice Elvey, 1923), Matthias in The Wandering Jew (Maurice Elvey, 1923) and Henry IV in Henry, King of Navarre (Maurice Elvey, 1924). By the mid-1920s Matheson Lang was Britain's leading screen actor but he was then eclipsed by Ivor Novello .
His final film was the historical drama The Cardinal (Sinclair Hill, 1936). Hal Erickson at AllMovie : “Set in 15th-century Italy, The Cardinal stars Matheson Lang as one Cardinal de Medici. Bound by the rules of the confessional, the cardinal is unable to disclose the multitude of sins revealed to him by one of his most influential parishioners. De Medici's dilemma is compounded by the fact that the confessor has committed a murder for which the Cardinal's brother has been arrested. The basic plot gimmick was good for another go-round in the 1953 Hitchcock flick I Confess.”
In 1940 the Langs were staying with their old friend Dornford Yates and his wife at their house near Pau in France when France surrendered and they had to escape from the advancing Germans through Spain to Portugal. In 1948, Matheson Lang died in Bridgetown, Barbados, at age 68.
British postcard by Raphael Tuck & Sons (Real Photograph), no. 166. Photo: Gaumont-British.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Encyclopaedia Britannica, British Pictures, AllMovie, Wikipedia and .
British postcard by Rotary, no. 1212 F. Photo: Rita Martin.
Imposing Presence
Matheson Alexander Lang was born in Montreal, Canada, the son of Rev. Gavin Lang of Inverness, Scotland in 1879. He was educated at Inverness College and the University of St Andrews.
He began his career as a Shakespearean actor in 1897 in Wolverton, first played in London in 1900, and acted Benedick to the Beatrice of Ellen Terry in 1903.
He became known for his imposing presence, commanding features, and fine voice in plays by William Shakespeare such as Hamlet, Macbeth, and Romeo and Juliet. He also appeared in plays by Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw.
British postcard by Davidson Bros., London / New York, no. 3948. Sent by mail in 1908. Photo: D.B. Publicity still for the play Romeo and Juliet (1908).
British postcard by Rotary Photo E.C., no. 1212 R. Photo: Foulsham & Banfield. Matheson Lang as "Pete".
Mr. Wu
Matheson Lang first toured to America in 1902-1903 with Lillie Langtry. In 1903 he married actress Nellie Hutin Britton in London. In 1906 he played Tristram in Joseph Comyns Carr's play Tristram and Iseult at the Adelphi Theatre, with Lily Brayton as Iseult and Oscar Asche as King Mark; Lang's wife played Arganthael.
Lang and his wife subsequently formed their own company, which toured India, South Africa, and Australia from 1910 till 1913 performing Shakespeare. In 1913, Lang returned to England and created one of his most memorable roles, the title character in Mr. Wu. Wu is a Chinese merchant who reluctantly kills his beloved but dishonoured daughter, with the girl's consent. Revengefully, he then kidnaps her seducer, and demands his mother in exchange.
He reprised this part in the silent film Mr. Wu (Maurice Elvey, 1919), which was a big hit. Lang became so identified with the role that he titled his 1940 memoirs Mr. Wu Looks Back. In 1914-1915, he and Ben Greet were the first directors of the Old Vic Theatre in its premiere season. Land and Hutin Britton successfully directed The Taming of the Shrew, The Merchant of Venice, and Hamlet that season.
British postcard by J. Beagles & Co., London, no. 293H.
British postcard by Rotary, no. 1212C. Photo: Ellis & Walery. Publicity still for the play The Devil's Disciple (1907).
Carnival
In 1916, Matheson Lang became one of the first major theatre stars to act in a silent film. He played Shylock in The Merchant of Venice (Walter West, 1916), with his wife as Portia. The film was made by the company Broadwest, which hired the complete stage cast of the play and filmed at Walthamstow Studios using largely natural light.
Next he appeared in The Ware Case (Walter West, 1917) and The House Opposite (Walter West, Frank Wilson, 1917), in both co-starring with Violet Hopson and Ivy Close .
Lang went on to appear in over 30 films and also wrote the plays Carnival (1919) and The Purple Mask (1920), both of which were produced on Broadway. Carnival was also filmed twice. During a production of Shakespeare's Othello in Venice, an Italian actor suspects his wife of having an affair and plans to murder her on stage. Lang played the lead role in the silent version, Carnival (Harley Knoles, 1921), co-starring Ivor Novello , and again in the sound remake Carnival (Herbert Wilcox, 1931), co-starring Joseph Schildkraut.
British postcard by Rotary, no. 2391 P. Photo: Foulsham and Banfield. Publicity still for the play The Taming of the Shrew.
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, no. 87A. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Britain's Leading Screen Actor
Among his other memorable roles were Guy Fawkes (Maurice Elvey, 1923), Matthias in The Wandering Jew (Maurice Elvey, 1923) and Henry IV in Henry, King of Navarre (Maurice Elvey, 1924). By the mid-1920s Matheson Lang was Britain's leading screen actor but he was then eclipsed by Ivor Novello .
His final film was the historical drama The Cardinal (Sinclair Hill, 1936). Hal Erickson at AllMovie : “Set in 15th-century Italy, The Cardinal stars Matheson Lang as one Cardinal de Medici. Bound by the rules of the confessional, the cardinal is unable to disclose the multitude of sins revealed to him by one of his most influential parishioners. De Medici's dilemma is compounded by the fact that the confessor has committed a murder for which the Cardinal's brother has been arrested. The basic plot gimmick was good for another go-round in the 1953 Hitchcock flick I Confess.”
In 1940 the Langs were staying with their old friend Dornford Yates and his wife at their house near Pau in France when France surrendered and they had to escape from the advancing Germans through Spain to Portugal. In 1948, Matheson Lang died in Bridgetown, Barbados, at age 68.
British postcard by Raphael Tuck & Sons (Real Photograph), no. 166. Photo: Gaumont-British.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Encyclopaedia Britannica, British Pictures, AllMovie, Wikipedia and .
September 10, 2013
Jacques Charrier
French actor and film producer Jacques Charrier (1936) played leading roles in the late 1950s and 1960s, but gained notoriety when he married Brigitte Bardot. Their brief, tumultuous marriage was punctuated by his personal problems.
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-264. Photo: UFA.
Diary of Anne Frank
Jacques Charrier was born into a family of military men in Metz, France, in 1936. He broke with the family tradition to become an artist. At the age of 17 he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg where he tried ceramics.
In 1956 a teacher at the Conservatoire de Montpellier offered him a role in a film, L'Arlésienne based on a novel by Alphonse Daudet. This local film success stimulated him to try his luck in Paris.
As a 20-year old he entered the ENSATT (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre), where he studied with the actress Berthe Bovy.
In 1958, after some odd jobs, he became an extra at the famous Comédie-Française. Then Marguerite Chamois chose him to play one of the leading roles in the play Le Journal d'Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank) with Pascale Audret at the Théâtre Montparnasse.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4519. Photo: Paul Apoteker / Unifrance Film / Ufa.
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 4072. Photo: NV Standaardfilms. Publicity still for Les Tricheurs (1958).
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 4071. Photo: NV Standaardfilms. Publicity still for Les Tricheurs (1958).
The Cheaters
There the famous film director Marcel Carné saw Jacques Charrier and offered him his first film role, Bob in Les Tricheurs/The Cheaters (Marcel Carné, 1958) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Pascale Petit .
The film, a study of disaffected youth, was a smash hit, and overnight Jacques had become a star.
His next films included Les dragueurs/The Chasers (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1959) with Charles Aznavour , La main chaude/The Itchy Palm (Gérard Oury, 1960), and the thriller L'oeil du malin/The Third Lover (Claude Chabrol, 1961) with Stéphane Audran .
French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 27. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 71. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 66. Photo: Sam Lévin.
BB
Brigitte Bardot chose Jacques Charrier as her leading man in the comedy Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jacque, 1959).
During the shooting of the film Brigitte and Jacques fell madly in love. Immediately after the production was finished they married under massive media attention.
At the time, Jacques was just 23 years old, and a year later he became father of their son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier. BB’s baby was again a media event.
Charrier made headlines when he did several suicide attempts and when he withdrew from National Service on health grounds. In 1962 Jacques and Brigitte divorced and from then on he took care of their son.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4518. Photo: Paul Apoteker / Unifrance Film / Ufa. Publicity still for Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (1959) with Brigitte Bardot .
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb. Collection: Didier Hanson.
German postcard by Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2.625. Retail price: 0,20 MDN. Photo: Progress. Still from La Vie Conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage (1963) with Marie-José Nat .
Anatomy Of A Marriage
Jacques Charrier continued acting in films like the comedy À cause, à cause d'une femme/Because of a Woman (Michel Deville, 1962) opposite Mylène Demongeot , and Carmen 63/Carmen di Trastevere (Carmine Gallone, 1963).
Unique was the experiment Françoise ou la vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Françoise and Jean-Marc ou La vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Jean-Marc (André Cayatte, both 1964). The two films tell the same story, but the first one was made from the wife's point of view, and the second from the husband's.
In 1969 Jacques founded the film company Les Films Marquise to produce low budget films. He produced and starred in films like Sirokkó/Winter Wind (Miklos Jancso, 1969) with Marina Vlady , Eglantine (Jean-Claude Brialy, 1971), and Les volets clos/Closed Shutters (Jean-Claude Brialy, 1973) with Marie Bell .
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 960. Presented by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.
German Postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2744. Photo: Silver / Cinetel / Gloria-Film. Publicity still for Les tricheurs/The Cheaters (1958).
German Postcard by Kolibri-Verlag no. 824. Photo: Deutsche Cosmopol Film. Publicity still for Les dragueurs/The Dredgers (1959).
A Damning Riposte
In the 1980’s he returned to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study painting. His work would be exhibited in Paris, Genève and San Francisco.
In 1996 he found himself back in the media spotlights once more when Brigitte Bardot published her memoirs, Initiales BB/Initials BB in which she excoriated him.
In 1997 he answered with his own publication, Ma réponse à Brigitte Bardot/My Answer to Brigitte Bardot, a damning riposte to his ex-wife who once referred to her pregnancy as a 'tumour' growing inside her.
Nicolas Charrier won damages for hurt feelings.
French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 25. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French postcard by Editions P.I., no. FK 120A, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Ufa.
Scene from Les Tricheurs (1958). Source: Le canard en rut (Daily Motion)
Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia (French) and .
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (UFA), Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-264. Photo: UFA.
Diary of Anne Frank
Jacques Charrier was born into a family of military men in Metz, France, in 1936. He broke with the family tradition to become an artist. At the age of 17 he entered the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Strasbourg where he tried ceramics.
In 1956 a teacher at the Conservatoire de Montpellier offered him a role in a film, L'Arlésienne based on a novel by Alphonse Daudet. This local film success stimulated him to try his luck in Paris.
As a 20-year old he entered the ENSATT (École Nationale Supérieure des Arts et Techniques du Théâtre), where he studied with the actress Berthe Bovy.
In 1958, after some odd jobs, he became an extra at the famous Comédie-Française. Then Marguerite Chamois chose him to play one of the leading roles in the play Le Journal d'Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank) with Pascale Audret at the Théâtre Montparnasse.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4519. Photo: Paul Apoteker / Unifrance Film / Ufa.
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 4072. Photo: NV Standaardfilms. Publicity still for Les Tricheurs (1958).
Dutch postcard by Uitg. Takken, Utrecht, no. AX 4071. Photo: NV Standaardfilms. Publicity still for Les Tricheurs (1958).
The Cheaters
There the famous film director Marcel Carné saw Jacques Charrier and offered him his first film role, Bob in Les Tricheurs/The Cheaters (Marcel Carné, 1958) with Jean-Paul Belmondo and Pascale Petit .
The film, a study of disaffected youth, was a smash hit, and overnight Jacques had become a star.
His next films included Les dragueurs/The Chasers (Jean-Pierre Mocky, 1959) with Charles Aznavour , La main chaude/The Itchy Palm (Gérard Oury, 1960), and the thriller L'oeil du malin/The Third Lover (Claude Chabrol, 1961) with Stéphane Audran .
French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 27. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 71. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 66. Photo: Sam Lévin.
BB
Brigitte Bardot chose Jacques Charrier as her leading man in the comedy Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (Christian-Jacque, 1959).
During the shooting of the film Brigitte and Jacques fell madly in love. Immediately after the production was finished they married under massive media attention.
At the time, Jacques was just 23 years old, and a year later he became father of their son Nicolas-Jacques Charrier. BB’s baby was again a media event.
Charrier made headlines when he did several suicide attempts and when he withdrew from National Service on health grounds. In 1962 Jacques and Brigitte divorced and from then on he took care of their son.
Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4518. Photo: Paul Apoteker / Unifrance Film / Ufa. Publicity still for Babette s'en va-t-en guerre/Babette Goes to War (1959) with Brigitte Bardot .
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb. Collection: Didier Hanson.
German postcard by Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2.625. Retail price: 0,20 MDN. Photo: Progress. Still from La Vie Conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage (1963) with Marie-José Nat .
Anatomy Of A Marriage
Jacques Charrier continued acting in films like the comedy À cause, à cause d'une femme/Because of a Woman (Michel Deville, 1962) opposite Mylène Demongeot , and Carmen 63/Carmen di Trastevere (Carmine Gallone, 1963).
Unique was the experiment Françoise ou la vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Françoise and Jean-Marc ou La vie conjugale/Anatomy of a Marriage: My Days with Jean-Marc (André Cayatte, both 1964). The two films tell the same story, but the first one was made from the wife's point of view, and the second from the husband's.
In 1969 Jacques founded the film company Les Films Marquise to produce low budget films. He produced and starred in films like Sirokkó/Winter Wind (Miklos Jancso, 1969) with Marina Vlady , Eglantine (Jean-Claude Brialy, 1971), and Les volets clos/Closed Shutters (Jean-Claude Brialy, 1973) with Marie Bell .
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 960. Presented by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Lucienne Chevert.
German Postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 2744. Photo: Silver / Cinetel / Gloria-Film. Publicity still for Les tricheurs/The Cheaters (1958).
German Postcard by Kolibri-Verlag no. 824. Photo: Deutsche Cosmopol Film. Publicity still for Les dragueurs/The Dredgers (1959).
A Damning Riposte
In the 1980’s he returned to the Ecole des Beaux-Arts to study painting. His work would be exhibited in Paris, Genève and San Francisco.
In 1996 he found himself back in the media spotlights once more when Brigitte Bardot published her memoirs, Initiales BB/Initials BB in which she excoriated him.
In 1997 he answered with his own publication, Ma réponse à Brigitte Bardot/My Answer to Brigitte Bardot, a damning riposte to his ex-wife who once referred to her pregnancy as a 'tumour' growing inside her.
Nicolas Charrier won damages for hurt feelings.
French Postcard by E.D.U.G. (Editions du Globe), no. 25. Photo: Sam Lévin.
French postcard by Editions P.I., no. FK 120A, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane'. Photo: Ufa.
Scene from Les Tricheurs (1958). Source: Le canard en rut (Daily Motion)
Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Wikipedia (French) and .
September 9, 2013
Imported from the USA: Anna May Wong
Stunning Anna May Wong (1905-1961) was the first Chinese American movie star, and the first Asian American actress to gain international recognition. Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles she reluctantly played in Hollywood, Wong left for Europe, where she starred in such classics as Piccadilly (1929).
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5477/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Manassé, Wien (Vienna).
A Vibrant, Erotic Star Quality
Anna May Wong (Chinese: 黃柳霜; pinyin: Huáng Liǔshuāng) was born Wong Liu Tsong (Frosted Yellow Willows) near the Chinatown neighbourhood of Los Angeles in 1905. She was the second of seven children born to Wong Sam Sing, owner of the Sam Kee Laundry in Los Angeles, and his second wife Lee Gon Toy.
Wong had a passion for the movies. By the age of 11, she had come up with her stage name of Anna May Wong, formed by joining both her English and family names.
Wong was working at Hollywood's Ville de Paris department store when Metro Pictures needed 300 girl extras to appear in The Red Lantern (Albert Capellani, 1919) starring Nazimova as a Eurasian woman who falls in love with an American missionary. The film included scenes shot in Chinatown. Without her father's knowledge, a friend of his with movie connections helped Anna May land an uncredited role as an extra carrying a lantern.
In 1921 she dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue a full-time acting career. Wong received her first screen credit for Bits of Life (Marshall Neilan, 1921), the first anthology film, in which she played the abused wife of Lon Chaney, playing a Chinaman.
At 17, she played her first leading part, Lotus Flower, in The Toll of the Sea (Chester M. Franklin, 1922), the first Technicolor production. The story by Hollywood's most famous scenarist at the time, Frances Marion, was loosely based on the opera Madame Butterfly but moved the action from Japan to China.
Wong also played a concubine in Drifting (Tod Browning, 1923) and a scheming but eye-catching Mongol slave girl running around with Douglas Fairbanks Jr in the super-production The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh, 1924).
Richard Corliss in Time : “Wong is a luminous presence, fanning her arms in right-angle gestures that seem both Oriental and flapperish. Her best scenes are with Fairbanks, as they connive against each other and radiate contrasting and combined sexiness — a vibrant, erotic star quality.”
Wong began cultivating a flapper image and became a fashion icon.
In Peter Pan (Herbert Brenon, 1924), shot by her cousin cinematographer James Wong Howe, she played Princess Tiger Lily who shares a long kiss with Betty Bronson as Peter. Peter Pan was the hit of the Christmas season.
She appeared again with Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (William Nigh, 1927) at MGM and with Warner Oland and Dolores Costello in Old San Francisco (Alan Crosland, 1927) at Warner Brothers.
Wong starred in The Silk Bouquet/The Dragon Horse (Harry Revier, 1927), one of the first US films to be produced with Chinese backing, provided by San Francisco's Chinese Six Companies. The story was set in China during the Ming Dynasty, and featured Asian actors playing the Asian roles.
Hollywood studios didn't know what to do with Wong. Her ethnicity prevented US filmmakers from seeing her as a leading lady.
Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles as the naïve and self-sacrificing ‘Butterfly’ and the evil ‘Dragon Lady’, Anna May Wong left for Europe in 1928.
Heinrich George . Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 6305. Photo: Verleih W. Luschinsky.
A Sensation In Europe
In Germany, Anna May Wong became a sensation in Schmutziges Geld/Show Life (Richard Eichberg, 1928) with Heinrich George .
The New York Times reported that Wong was "acclaimed not only as an actress of transcendent talent but as a great beauty (...) Berlin critics, who were unanimous in praise of both the star and the production, neglect to mention that Anna May is of American birth. They mention only her Chinese origins."
Other film parts were a circus artist on the run from a murder charge in Großstadtschmetterling/City Butterfly (Richard Eichberg, 1929), and a dancer in pre-Revolutionary Russia in Hai-Tang (Richard Eichberg, Jean Kemm, 1930).
In Vienna, she played the title role in the stage operetta Tschun Tschi in fluent German.
Wong became an inseparable friend of the director Leni Riefenstahl.
According to Wikipedia , her close friendships with several women throughout her life, including Marlene Dietrich , led to rumours of lesbianism which damaged her public reputation.
London producer Basil Dean bought the play A Circle of Chalk for Wong to appear in with the young Laurence Olivier , her first stage performance in the UK.
Her final silent film, Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont, 1929), caused a sensation in the UK.
Gilda Gray was the top-billed actress, but Variety commented that Wong "outshines the star", and that "from the moment Miss Wong dances in the kitchen's rear, she steals Piccadilly from Miss Gray."
It would be the first of five English films in which she had a starring role, including her first sound film The Flame of Love (Richard Eichberg, Walter Summers, 1930).
American studios were looking for fresh European talent. Ironically, Wong caught their eye and she was offered a contract with Paramount Studios in 1930.
She was featured in Daughter of the Dragon (Lloyd Corrigan, 1931) as the vengeful daughter of Fu Manchu (Warner Oland), and with Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932).
Wong spent the first half of the 1930s travelling between the United States and Europe for film and stage work.
She repeatedly turned to the stage and cabaret for a creative outlet. On Broadway, she starred in the drama On the Spot, that ran for 167 performances and which she would later film as Dangerous to Know (Robert Florey, 1938).
Marlene Dietrich . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5582/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Paramount.
Too Chinese To Play A Chinese
Anna May Wong became more outspoken in her advocacy for Chinese American causes and for better film roles.
Because of the Hays Code's anti-miscegenation rules, she was passed over for the leading female role in The Son-Daughter (Clarence Brown, 1932) in favour of Helen Hayes.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer deemed her ‘too Chinese to play a Chinese’ in the film, and the Hays Office would not have allowed her to perform romantic scenes since the film's male lead, Ramón Novarro, was not Asian.
Wong was scheduled to play the role of a mistress to a corrupt Chinese general in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1933), but the role went instead to Toshia Mori.
Her British film Java Head (Thorold Dickinson, J. Walter Ruben, 1934) was the only film in which Wong kissed the lead male character, her white husband in the film.
In 1935 she was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role of the Chinese character O-Lan in the film version of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937).
Paul Muni, an actor of European descent, was to play O-lan's husband, Wang Lung, and MGM chose German actress Luise Rainer for the leading role. Rainer won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance.
Wong spent the next year touring China, visiting her father and her younger brothers and sister in her family's ancestral village Taishan and studying Chinese culture.
To complete her contract with Paramount Pictures, she starred in several B movies, including Daughter of Shanghai (Robert Florey, 1937), Dangerous to Know (Robert Florey, 1938), and King of Chinatown (Nick Grinde, 1939) with Akim Tamiroff.
These smaller-budgeted films could be bolder than the higher-profile releases, and Wong used this to her advantage to portray successful, professional, Chinese-American characters.
Wong's cabaret act, which included songs in Cantonese, French, English, German, Danish, Swedish, and other languages, took her from the US to Europe and Australia through the 1930s and 1940s.
She paid less attention to her film career during World War II, but devoted her time and money to helping the Chinese cause against Japan.
Wong starred in Lady from Chungking (William Nigh, 1942) and Bombs over Burma (Joseph H. Lewis, 1943), both anti-Japanese propaganda made by the poverty row studio Producers Releasing Corporation. She donated her salary for both films to United China Relief.
She invested in real estate and owned a number of properties in Hollywood.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6887/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount.
Rumoured Mistress Of Several Prominent Film Men
Anna May Wong returned to the public eye in the 1950s in several television appearances as well as her own detective series The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951-1952), the first US television show starring an Asian-American series lead.
After the completion of the series, Wong's health began to deteriorate. In late 1953 she suffered an internal hemorrhage, which her brother attributed to the onset of menopause, her continued heavy drinking, and financial worries.
In the following years, she did guest spots on television series.
In 1960, she returned to film playing housekeeper to Lana Turner in the thriller Portrait in Black (Michael Gordon, 1960).
She was scheduled to play the role of Madame Liang in the film production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song (Henry Koster, 1961), when she died of a heart attack at home in Santa Monica in 1961.
Anna May Wong was 56. For decades after her death, Wong was remembered principally for the stereotypical sly ‘Dragon Lady’ and demure ‘Butterfly’ roles that she was often given.
Matthew Sweet in The Guardian : “And this is the trouble with Anna May Wong. We disapprove of the stereotypes she fleshed out - the treacherous, tragic daughters of the dragon - but her performances still seduce, for the same reason they did in the 1920s and 30s.”
Her life and career were re-evaluated by three new biographies, a meticulous filmography, and a British documentary about her life, called Frosted Yellow Willows.
Wikipedia : “Through her films, public appearances and prominent magazine features, she helped to ‘humanize’ Asian Americans to white audiences during a period of overt racism and discrimination. Asian Americans, especially the Chinese, had been viewed as perpetually foreign in U.S. society but Wong's films and public image established her as an Asian-American citizen at a time when laws discriminated against Asian immigration and citizenship.”
Anna May Wong never married, but over the years, she was the rumoured mistress of several prominent film men: Marshall Neilan (14 years older, supposedly Wong's lover when she was 15), director Tod Browning (23 years older, when she was 16) and Charles Rosher (Mary Pickford's favourite cinematographer, who was nearly 20 years older, when Wong was 20).
But no biographer can say for sure that any of these affairs occurred.
This was the fourth episode of 'Imported from the USA'. The first three episodes were dedicated to Jayne Mansfield , Josephine Baker , and Lex Barker.
Anna May Wong in a clip of Piccadilly (1929). Source: Myos336 (YouTube).
Trailer Frosted Yellow Willows. Source: Cliplockbox (YouTube).
Sources: Richard Corliss (Time), Matthew Sweet (The Guardian), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5477/1, 1930-1931. Photo: Atelier Manassé, Wien (Vienna).
A Vibrant, Erotic Star Quality
Anna May Wong (Chinese: 黃柳霜; pinyin: Huáng Liǔshuāng) was born Wong Liu Tsong (Frosted Yellow Willows) near the Chinatown neighbourhood of Los Angeles in 1905. She was the second of seven children born to Wong Sam Sing, owner of the Sam Kee Laundry in Los Angeles, and his second wife Lee Gon Toy.
Wong had a passion for the movies. By the age of 11, she had come up with her stage name of Anna May Wong, formed by joining both her English and family names.
Wong was working at Hollywood's Ville de Paris department store when Metro Pictures needed 300 girl extras to appear in The Red Lantern (Albert Capellani, 1919) starring Nazimova as a Eurasian woman who falls in love with an American missionary. The film included scenes shot in Chinatown. Without her father's knowledge, a friend of his with movie connections helped Anna May land an uncredited role as an extra carrying a lantern.
In 1921 she dropped out of Los Angeles High School to pursue a full-time acting career. Wong received her first screen credit for Bits of Life (Marshall Neilan, 1921), the first anthology film, in which she played the abused wife of Lon Chaney, playing a Chinaman.
At 17, she played her first leading part, Lotus Flower, in The Toll of the Sea (Chester M. Franklin, 1922), the first Technicolor production. The story by Hollywood's most famous scenarist at the time, Frances Marion, was loosely based on the opera Madame Butterfly but moved the action from Japan to China.
Wong also played a concubine in Drifting (Tod Browning, 1923) and a scheming but eye-catching Mongol slave girl running around with Douglas Fairbanks Jr in the super-production The Thief of Bagdad (Raoul Walsh, 1924).
Richard Corliss in Time : “Wong is a luminous presence, fanning her arms in right-angle gestures that seem both Oriental and flapperish. Her best scenes are with Fairbanks, as they connive against each other and radiate contrasting and combined sexiness — a vibrant, erotic star quality.”
Wong began cultivating a flapper image and became a fashion icon.
In Peter Pan (Herbert Brenon, 1924), shot by her cousin cinematographer James Wong Howe, she played Princess Tiger Lily who shares a long kiss with Betty Bronson as Peter. Peter Pan was the hit of the Christmas season.
She appeared again with Lon Chaney in Mr. Wu (William Nigh, 1927) at MGM and with Warner Oland and Dolores Costello in Old San Francisco (Alan Crosland, 1927) at Warner Brothers.
Wong starred in The Silk Bouquet/The Dragon Horse (Harry Revier, 1927), one of the first US films to be produced with Chinese backing, provided by San Francisco's Chinese Six Companies. The story was set in China during the Ming Dynasty, and featured Asian actors playing the Asian roles.
Hollywood studios didn't know what to do with Wong. Her ethnicity prevented US filmmakers from seeing her as a leading lady.
Frustrated by the stereotypical supporting roles as the naïve and self-sacrificing ‘Butterfly’ and the evil ‘Dragon Lady’, Anna May Wong left for Europe in 1928.
Heinrich George . Austrian postcard by Iris-Verlag, no. 6305. Photo: Verleih W. Luschinsky.
A Sensation In Europe
In Germany, Anna May Wong became a sensation in Schmutziges Geld/Show Life (Richard Eichberg, 1928) with Heinrich George .
The New York Times reported that Wong was "acclaimed not only as an actress of transcendent talent but as a great beauty (...) Berlin critics, who were unanimous in praise of both the star and the production, neglect to mention that Anna May is of American birth. They mention only her Chinese origins."
Other film parts were a circus artist on the run from a murder charge in Großstadtschmetterling/City Butterfly (Richard Eichberg, 1929), and a dancer in pre-Revolutionary Russia in Hai-Tang (Richard Eichberg, Jean Kemm, 1930).
In Vienna, she played the title role in the stage operetta Tschun Tschi in fluent German.
Wong became an inseparable friend of the director Leni Riefenstahl.
According to Wikipedia , her close friendships with several women throughout her life, including Marlene Dietrich , led to rumours of lesbianism which damaged her public reputation.
London producer Basil Dean bought the play A Circle of Chalk for Wong to appear in with the young Laurence Olivier , her first stage performance in the UK.
Her final silent film, Piccadilly (Ewald André Dupont, 1929), caused a sensation in the UK.
Gilda Gray was the top-billed actress, but Variety commented that Wong "outshines the star", and that "from the moment Miss Wong dances in the kitchen's rear, she steals Piccadilly from Miss Gray."
It would be the first of five English films in which she had a starring role, including her first sound film The Flame of Love (Richard Eichberg, Walter Summers, 1930).
American studios were looking for fresh European talent. Ironically, Wong caught their eye and she was offered a contract with Paramount Studios in 1930.
She was featured in Daughter of the Dragon (Lloyd Corrigan, 1931) as the vengeful daughter of Fu Manchu (Warner Oland), and with Marlene Dietrich in Shanghai Express (Josef von Sternberg, 1932).
Wong spent the first half of the 1930s travelling between the United States and Europe for film and stage work.
She repeatedly turned to the stage and cabaret for a creative outlet. On Broadway, she starred in the drama On the Spot, that ran for 167 performances and which she would later film as Dangerous to Know (Robert Florey, 1938).
Marlene Dietrich . German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 5582/2, 1930-1931. Photo: Paramount.
Too Chinese To Play A Chinese
Anna May Wong became more outspoken in her advocacy for Chinese American causes and for better film roles.
Because of the Hays Code's anti-miscegenation rules, she was passed over for the leading female role in The Son-Daughter (Clarence Brown, 1932) in favour of Helen Hayes.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer deemed her ‘too Chinese to play a Chinese’ in the film, and the Hays Office would not have allowed her to perform romantic scenes since the film's male lead, Ramón Novarro, was not Asian.
Wong was scheduled to play the role of a mistress to a corrupt Chinese general in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (Frank Capra, 1933), but the role went instead to Toshia Mori.
Her British film Java Head (Thorold Dickinson, J. Walter Ruben, 1934) was the only film in which Wong kissed the lead male character, her white husband in the film.
In 1935 she was dealt the most severe disappointment of her career, when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer refused to consider her for the leading role of the Chinese character O-Lan in the film version of Pearl S. Buck's The Good Earth (Sidney Franklin, 1937).
Paul Muni, an actor of European descent, was to play O-lan's husband, Wang Lung, and MGM chose German actress Luise Rainer for the leading role. Rainer won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance.
Wong spent the next year touring China, visiting her father and her younger brothers and sister in her family's ancestral village Taishan and studying Chinese culture.
To complete her contract with Paramount Pictures, she starred in several B movies, including Daughter of Shanghai (Robert Florey, 1937), Dangerous to Know (Robert Florey, 1938), and King of Chinatown (Nick Grinde, 1939) with Akim Tamiroff.
These smaller-budgeted films could be bolder than the higher-profile releases, and Wong used this to her advantage to portray successful, professional, Chinese-American characters.
Wong's cabaret act, which included songs in Cantonese, French, English, German, Danish, Swedish, and other languages, took her from the US to Europe and Australia through the 1930s and 1940s.
She paid less attention to her film career during World War II, but devoted her time and money to helping the Chinese cause against Japan.
Wong starred in Lady from Chungking (William Nigh, 1942) and Bombs over Burma (Joseph H. Lewis, 1943), both anti-Japanese propaganda made by the poverty row studio Producers Releasing Corporation. She donated her salary for both films to United China Relief.
She invested in real estate and owned a number of properties in Hollywood.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6887/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Paramount.
Rumoured Mistress Of Several Prominent Film Men
Anna May Wong returned to the public eye in the 1950s in several television appearances as well as her own detective series The Gallery of Madame Liu-Tsong (1951-1952), the first US television show starring an Asian-American series lead.
After the completion of the series, Wong's health began to deteriorate. In late 1953 she suffered an internal hemorrhage, which her brother attributed to the onset of menopause, her continued heavy drinking, and financial worries.
In the following years, she did guest spots on television series.
In 1960, she returned to film playing housekeeper to Lana Turner in the thriller Portrait in Black (Michael Gordon, 1960).
She was scheduled to play the role of Madame Liang in the film production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song (Henry Koster, 1961), when she died of a heart attack at home in Santa Monica in 1961.
Anna May Wong was 56. For decades after her death, Wong was remembered principally for the stereotypical sly ‘Dragon Lady’ and demure ‘Butterfly’ roles that she was often given.
Matthew Sweet in The Guardian : “And this is the trouble with Anna May Wong. We disapprove of the stereotypes she fleshed out - the treacherous, tragic daughters of the dragon - but her performances still seduce, for the same reason they did in the 1920s and 30s.”
Her life and career were re-evaluated by three new biographies, a meticulous filmography, and a British documentary about her life, called Frosted Yellow Willows.
Wikipedia : “Through her films, public appearances and prominent magazine features, she helped to ‘humanize’ Asian Americans to white audiences during a period of overt racism and discrimination. Asian Americans, especially the Chinese, had been viewed as perpetually foreign in U.S. society but Wong's films and public image established her as an Asian-American citizen at a time when laws discriminated against Asian immigration and citizenship.”
Anna May Wong never married, but over the years, she was the rumoured mistress of several prominent film men: Marshall Neilan (14 years older, supposedly Wong's lover when she was 15), director Tod Browning (23 years older, when she was 16) and Charles Rosher (Mary Pickford's favourite cinematographer, who was nearly 20 years older, when Wong was 20).
But no biographer can say for sure that any of these affairs occurred.
This was the fourth episode of 'Imported from the USA'. The first three episodes were dedicated to Jayne Mansfield , Josephine Baker , and Lex Barker.
Anna May Wong in a clip of Piccadilly (1929). Source: Myos336 (YouTube).
Trailer Frosted Yellow Willows. Source: Cliplockbox (YouTube).
Sources: Richard Corliss (Time), Matthew Sweet (The Guardian), (IMDb), Wikipedia and .
September 8, 2013
Hedy Lamarr
Glamorous, seductive film star and engineer Hedy Lamarr (1913–2000) was born in Austria. The notorious Czechoslovak film Ekstase/Ecstasy (1933) made her an international sensation, and Louis B. Mayer invited her to Hollywood where she became ‘the most beautiful woman in films’. She also co-invented an early technique for spread spectrum communications, a key to many forms of wireless communication.
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. W 200. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
Hedwig Kiesler
Hedy Lamarr was born as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria), in 1913. She was Jewish. Her mother, Gertrud Lichtwitz, was a pianist, and her father, Emil Kiesler, a successful bank director. She studied ballet and piano. She had very dark hair, her eyes were pools where weak men drowned, and her breasts were apparently in order when she was just 18, auditioning for Max Reinhardt in Berlin. He called her the ‘most beautiful woman in Europe’. Yet he failed to detect enough evidence of an actor's energy or need, and so, Hedwig drifted into pictures.
Her first film role had been a bit part in the German film Das Geld liegt auf der Straße/Money on the Street (Georg Jacoby, 1930). Soon, the attractive teenager played major roles alongside stars like Heinz Rühmann and Hans Moser in the German films Die Frau von Lindenau/Storm in a Water Glass (Georg Jacoby, 1931), Die Abenteuer des Herrn O. F./The Trunks of Mr. O. F. (Alexis Granowsky, 1931), and Man braucht kein Geld/We Don't Need Money (Carl Boese, 1932).
But it would be her fifth film that catapulted her to worldwide fame. In early 1933, she starred in Gustav Machatý's Ekstase/Symphonie der Liebe/Ecstasy (1933), a Czechoslovak film made in Prague. It's the story of a young girl who has an indifferent old husband and falls in love with a young soldier. Close-ups of her face in orgasm, and long shots of her running nude through the woods, created a sensation all over the world. The Pope denounced the film. The scenes, tame by today's standards, caused the film to be banned by the US government.
Shortly before the film's release, Hedwig married Viennese millionaire, Fritz Mandl, a munitions manufacturer, 13 years her senior, and eager to have a trophy wife. Her new husband bought up as many copies of Ekstase as he could possibly find, as he objected to her nudity and ‘the expression on her face’. (She later claimed the looks of passion were the result of the director poking her in the bottom with a safety pin.) Mandl prevented her from pursuing her acting career, and instead took her to meetings with technicians and business partners. In these meetings, the mathematically-talented Lamarr learned about military technology. Otherwise, she had to stay home at castle Schwarzenau.
Hedy later related in her autobiography Ecstasy and Me that even though Mandl was part-Jewish, he was consorting with Nazi industrialists which infuriated her, and dictators Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler both attended Mandl's grand parties.
American postcard. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
French postcard by Editions Chantal, no. 10. Photo: MGM.
Dutch postcard. Photo: United Artists.
Mathematics Talent
In 1937, Hedy Kiesler was finally successful in escaping when she hired a new maid who resembled her. She convinced Mandl to allow her to attend a party wearing all her expensive jewellery. She drugged the maid and used her uniform as a disguise to escape out of the country. First she fled to Paris, where she obtained a divorce, and then she moved on to London.
At Claridge's hotel she encountered Louis B. Mayer, the mogul of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who hired her. At his insistence, Hedwig changed her name to Hedy Lamarr. She choose the surname in homage to beautiful silent film star Barbara LaMarr, who had died from a drug overdose in 1926.
Her American debut was as the love interest of Charles Boyer in Algiers (John Cromwell, 1938), the re-make of the very successful French film, Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937). In Hollywood, Hedy was usually cast as elegant and mysterious. Between 1940 and 1949 she made 18 films, even though she had two children during that time: Denise Loder (1945) and Anthony Loder (1947).
Her MGM films include Boom Town (Jack Conway, 1940) with Clark Gable, the musical extravaganza Ziegfeld Girl (Robert Z. Leonard, 1941) with James Stewart, and opposite John Garfield in Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942), based on the novel by John Steinbeck.
White Cargo (Richard Thorpe, 1942) was one of Lamarr's biggest hits at MGM. She appeared as the native girl Tondelayo, who seduces most of the men at a British trading post in Africa. The film contains arguably her most famous film quote, "I am Tondelayo".
Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 106. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940).
Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 166. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940) with Clark Gable.
Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 166. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942) with John Garfield.
Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 154 Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942) with John Garfield.
Strong and Independent
Jan Christopher Horak described her star persona in a 2002 article in CineAction : "Lamarr consistently played strong, independent women who knew what their value was in the marketplace of erotic exchange, and were not afraid to bargain. Seldom did she go down on her knees before a man without already having an eye on the prize, rarely did she put her own desire behind that of a male partner. Lamarr broke taboos (on the screen and in the gossip columns) and many women in the audience had their secret pleasure watching her, while the boys gawked."
She was having nearly as many husbands as movies a year. In 1939-1940, she was married for 14 months to producer Gene Markey; there were affairs with Burgess Meredith and Reginald Gardiner, and a brief engagement to actor George Montgomery before she married another actor, Englishman John Loder - it lasted only four years.
In June 1941, Hedy Lamarr submitted the idea of a secret communication system, together with her neighbour and lover, noted modernist composer George Antheil (he did the music for the classic avant-garde film Ballet Mécanique (Fernand Leger, 1924)). On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and 'Hedy Kiesler Markey', her married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies.
The original idea, meant to solve the problem of enemies blocking signals from radio-controlled missiles during World War II, involved changing radio frequencies simultaneously to prevent enemies from being able to detect the messages. The idea was ahead of its time, and not feasible owing to the state of mechanical technology in 1942. It was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by US military ships during a blockade of Cuba after the patent had expired.
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 1208a. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
British postcard by Real Photograph in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 1208. Photo: Walter Wanger.
Dutch postcard. Photo: R.K.O. Radio Films.
The Shoplifter
Hedy Lamarr left MGM in 1945. For Paramount she starred as Delilah opposite Victor Mature's Samson in Cecil B. DeMille's epic Samson and Delilah (1949). This proved to be Paramount's most profitable movie to date, bringing in $12 million in rental from theatres.
However, following her comedic turn opposite Bob Hope in My Favorite Spy (Norman Z. MacLeod, 1951), her career went into decline. She was to make only six more films between 1949 and 1957, the last being The Female Animal (Harry Keller, 1958). In 1953 she had become a naturalized US citizen.
In 1965 she was accused of shoplifting, and a year later followed Andy Warhol's short film Hedy/The Shoplifter (1966). The controversy surrounding the shoplifting charges coincided with an aborted return to the screen in Picture Mommy Dead (Bert I. Gordon, 1966). The role was ultimately filled by Zsa Zsa Gabor.
She wrote about it in her so-called memoirs Ecstasy and Me (1967). She later sued the publisher claiming that many of the anecdotes in the book, which was described by a judge as "filthy, nauseating, and revolting", were fabricated by its ghost writers, Leo Guild and Sy Rice.
Dutch postcard by J. Sleding N.V., Amsterdam, no. S 63. Photo: MGM.
French postcard by Editions P.I, no. 24D, presented by Les Carbones Korès. Photo: Paramount, 1953.
Disastrous Plastic Surgery Experiments
In the ensuing years, she retreated from public life, and settled in Florida. There were three more husbands: Teddy Stauffer, a band leader who had worked in Acapulco; Howard Lee, a Texas oil man (he married Gene Tierney after Hedy); and a lawyer named Lewis Boles. All her marriages ended in divorce.
In 1991, she returned to the headlines when the 78 year old former actress was arrested a couple of times on minor shop-lifting charges (cosmetics and clothes), but the charges were settled.
In 2000, she was eventually found dead in a small home in Altamonte Springs, Florida, where she lived alone. She was 86, and she had experimented disastrously with plastic surgery. Her son Anthony Loder took her ashes to Vienna and spread them in the Wienerwald, according to her wishes.
Today, Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as COFDM used in Wi-Fi network connections and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Hedy Lamarr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6247 Hollywood Blvd.
Italian postcard by C.C.M., no. 11, distributed in Belgium by Victoria, Bruxelles. Photo: RKO Radio Films.
Sources: Jan Christopher Horak (CineAction), David Thomson (The Independent), HedyLamarr.com, Wikipedia and .
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. W 200. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM).
Hedwig Kiesler
Hedy Lamarr was born as Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria), in 1913. She was Jewish. Her mother, Gertrud Lichtwitz, was a pianist, and her father, Emil Kiesler, a successful bank director. She studied ballet and piano. She had very dark hair, her eyes were pools where weak men drowned, and her breasts were apparently in order when she was just 18, auditioning for Max Reinhardt in Berlin. He called her the ‘most beautiful woman in Europe’. Yet he failed to detect enough evidence of an actor's energy or need, and so, Hedwig drifted into pictures.
Her first film role had been a bit part in the German film Das Geld liegt auf der Straße/Money on the Street (Georg Jacoby, 1930). Soon, the attractive teenager played major roles alongside stars like Heinz Rühmann and Hans Moser in the German films Die Frau von Lindenau/Storm in a Water Glass (Georg Jacoby, 1931), Die Abenteuer des Herrn O. F./The Trunks of Mr. O. F. (Alexis Granowsky, 1931), and Man braucht kein Geld/We Don't Need Money (Carl Boese, 1932).
But it would be her fifth film that catapulted her to worldwide fame. In early 1933, she starred in Gustav Machatý's Ekstase/Symphonie der Liebe/Ecstasy (1933), a Czechoslovak film made in Prague. It's the story of a young girl who has an indifferent old husband and falls in love with a young soldier. Close-ups of her face in orgasm, and long shots of her running nude through the woods, created a sensation all over the world. The Pope denounced the film. The scenes, tame by today's standards, caused the film to be banned by the US government.
Shortly before the film's release, Hedwig married Viennese millionaire, Fritz Mandl, a munitions manufacturer, 13 years her senior, and eager to have a trophy wife. Her new husband bought up as many copies of Ekstase as he could possibly find, as he objected to her nudity and ‘the expression on her face’. (She later claimed the looks of passion were the result of the director poking her in the bottom with a safety pin.) Mandl prevented her from pursuing her acting career, and instead took her to meetings with technicians and business partners. In these meetings, the mathematically-talented Lamarr learned about military technology. Otherwise, she had to stay home at castle Schwarzenau.
Hedy later related in her autobiography Ecstasy and Me that even though Mandl was part-Jewish, he was consorting with Nazi industrialists which infuriated her, and dictators Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler both attended Mandl's grand parties.
American postcard. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
French postcard by Editions Chantal, no. 10. Photo: MGM.
Dutch postcard. Photo: United Artists.
Mathematics Talent
In 1937, Hedy Kiesler was finally successful in escaping when she hired a new maid who resembled her. She convinced Mandl to allow her to attend a party wearing all her expensive jewellery. She drugged the maid and used her uniform as a disguise to escape out of the country. First she fled to Paris, where she obtained a divorce, and then she moved on to London.
At Claridge's hotel she encountered Louis B. Mayer, the mogul of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, who hired her. At his insistence, Hedwig changed her name to Hedy Lamarr. She choose the surname in homage to beautiful silent film star Barbara LaMarr, who had died from a drug overdose in 1926.
Her American debut was as the love interest of Charles Boyer in Algiers (John Cromwell, 1938), the re-make of the very successful French film, Pépé le Moko (Julien Duvivier, 1937). In Hollywood, Hedy was usually cast as elegant and mysterious. Between 1940 and 1949 she made 18 films, even though she had two children during that time: Denise Loder (1945) and Anthony Loder (1947).
Her MGM films include Boom Town (Jack Conway, 1940) with Clark Gable, the musical extravaganza Ziegfeld Girl (Robert Z. Leonard, 1941) with James Stewart, and opposite John Garfield in Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942), based on the novel by John Steinbeck.
White Cargo (Richard Thorpe, 1942) was one of Lamarr's biggest hits at MGM. She appeared as the native girl Tondelayo, who seduces most of the men at a British trading post in Africa. The film contains arguably her most famous film quote, "I am Tondelayo".
Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 106. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940).
Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 166. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Comrade X (King Vidor, 1940) with Clark Gable.
Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 166. Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942) with John Garfield.
Belgian collector's card by Kwatta, Series C, no. 154 Photo: MGM. Publicity still for Tortilla Flat (Victor Fleming, 1942) with John Garfield.
Strong and Independent
Jan Christopher Horak described her star persona in a 2002 article in CineAction : "Lamarr consistently played strong, independent women who knew what their value was in the marketplace of erotic exchange, and were not afraid to bargain. Seldom did she go down on her knees before a man without already having an eye on the prize, rarely did she put her own desire behind that of a male partner. Lamarr broke taboos (on the screen and in the gossip columns) and many women in the audience had their secret pleasure watching her, while the boys gawked."
She was having nearly as many husbands as movies a year. In 1939-1940, she was married for 14 months to producer Gene Markey; there were affairs with Burgess Meredith and Reginald Gardiner, and a brief engagement to actor George Montgomery before she married another actor, Englishman John Loder - it lasted only four years.
In June 1941, Hedy Lamarr submitted the idea of a secret communication system, together with her neighbour and lover, noted modernist composer George Antheil (he did the music for the classic avant-garde film Ballet Mécanique (Fernand Leger, 1924)). On August 11, 1942, U.S. Patent 2,292,387 was granted to Antheil and 'Hedy Kiesler Markey', her married name at the time. This early version of frequency hopping used a piano roll to change between 88 frequencies.
The original idea, meant to solve the problem of enemies blocking signals from radio-controlled missiles during World War II, involved changing radio frequencies simultaneously to prevent enemies from being able to detect the messages. The idea was ahead of its time, and not feasible owing to the state of mechanical technology in 1942. It was not implemented in the USA until 1962, when it was used by US military ships during a blockade of Cuba after the patent had expired.
British postcard in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 1208a. Photo: Metro Goldwyn Mayer.
British postcard by Real Photograph in the Picturegoer series, London, no. 1208. Photo: Walter Wanger.
Dutch postcard. Photo: R.K.O. Radio Films.
The Shoplifter
Hedy Lamarr left MGM in 1945. For Paramount she starred as Delilah opposite Victor Mature's Samson in Cecil B. DeMille's epic Samson and Delilah (1949). This proved to be Paramount's most profitable movie to date, bringing in $12 million in rental from theatres.
However, following her comedic turn opposite Bob Hope in My Favorite Spy (Norman Z. MacLeod, 1951), her career went into decline. She was to make only six more films between 1949 and 1957, the last being The Female Animal (Harry Keller, 1958). In 1953 she had become a naturalized US citizen.
In 1965 she was accused of shoplifting, and a year later followed Andy Warhol's short film Hedy/The Shoplifter (1966). The controversy surrounding the shoplifting charges coincided with an aborted return to the screen in Picture Mommy Dead (Bert I. Gordon, 1966). The role was ultimately filled by Zsa Zsa Gabor.
She wrote about it in her so-called memoirs Ecstasy and Me (1967). She later sued the publisher claiming that many of the anecdotes in the book, which was described by a judge as "filthy, nauseating, and revolting", were fabricated by its ghost writers, Leo Guild and Sy Rice.
Dutch postcard by J. Sleding N.V., Amsterdam, no. S 63. Photo: MGM.
French postcard by Editions P.I, no. 24D, presented by Les Carbones Korès. Photo: Paramount, 1953.
Disastrous Plastic Surgery Experiments
In the ensuing years, she retreated from public life, and settled in Florida. There were three more husbands: Teddy Stauffer, a band leader who had worked in Acapulco; Howard Lee, a Texas oil man (he married Gene Tierney after Hedy); and a lawyer named Lewis Boles. All her marriages ended in divorce.
In 1991, she returned to the headlines when the 78 year old former actress was arrested a couple of times on minor shop-lifting charges (cosmetics and clothes), but the charges were settled.
In 2000, she was eventually found dead in a small home in Altamonte Springs, Florida, where she lived alone. She was 86, and she had experimented disastrously with plastic surgery. Her son Anthony Loder took her ashes to Vienna and spread them in the Wienerwald, according to her wishes.
Today, Lamarr's and Antheil's frequency-hopping idea serves as a basis for modern spread-spectrum communication technology, such as COFDM used in Wi-Fi network connections and CDMA used in some cordless and wireless telephones. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, Hedy Lamarr has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6247 Hollywood Blvd.
Italian postcard by C.C.M., no. 11, distributed in Belgium by Victoria, Bruxelles. Photo: RKO Radio Films.
Sources: Jan Christopher Horak (CineAction), David Thomson (The Independent), HedyLamarr.com, Wikipedia and .
September 7, 2013
Veit Harlan
Film director and actor Veit Harlan (1899-1964) was one of Nazi Germany’s most notorious filmmakers. His most perfidious film was the treacherous anti-Semitic propaganda film Jud Süß/Jew Süss (1940) filled with vicious stereotypes of Jews.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7753/1, 1935. Photo: Robertson, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Propaganda
Veit Harlan was born in Berlin in 1899. His father was a novelist and two of his brothers were musicians. After studying under Max Reinhardt, he first appeared on the stage in 1915 and, after World War I, worked at the Berlin State Theatre for eleven years.
In 1922 he married Jewish actress and cabaret singer Dora Gerson; the couple divorced in 1924. In 1943, Gerson was killed in Auschwitz, with her family.
Harlan made his film debut in 1925. He played roles in films like the historical comedy Der Meister von Nürnberg/The Master of Nuremberg (Ludwig Berger, 1927), and the comedy Die Hose/The Trousers (Hans Behrendt, 1927) starring Werner Krauss .
Till 1935 he played in some 30 films. Harlan married in 1929 actress Hilde Körber, having three children with her. They divorced in 1938 ‘for political reasons related to the influence of National Socialism’, according to Wikipedia . One of their children, Thomas Harlan, became a writer and director in his own right.
His first direction was the romantic comedy Krach im Hinterhaus/Trouble Backstairs (1934) starring silent film star Henny Porten . It was a success and in the following years Harlan specialized in romantic idylls like Die Kreutzersonate/The Kreutzer Sonata (1937) and Die Reise nach Tilsit/The Trip to Tilsit (1939), a remake of F. W. Murnau’s silent classic Sunrise (1926).
In 1939, Harlan married the star of his film, Swedish actress Kristina Söderbaum . Since 1933, Harlan was a supporter of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). After many of the country's best filmmakers had fled the country, Joseph Goebbels had appointed Harlan in 1937 as one of his leading propaganda directors.
His most notorious film was Jud Süß/Jew Süss (1940), which was made for anti-Semitic propaganda purposes in Germany and Austria. The film was required viewing for all SS members. Set in the 18th century, it claims to be a dramatization of the true story of how a sinister, cunning Jewish financier, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer ( Ferdinand Marian ), took control of the duchy of Wurttemberg while preying sexually on a pure Aryan maiden ( Kristina Söderbaum ). The film was a hit and seen by more than 20 million people. In 1943 it received Ufa's highest awards.
Werner Krauss . German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. A 3264/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Quick / Ufa.
The First Major European Colour Film
Harlan made the Reich's loudest, most colourful and expensive films. In 1942 he directed the first major European colour film, Die goldene Stadt/The Golden City.
Next he directed the melodramas Immensee (1943) and Opfergang/The Great Sacrifice (1944) which included some very dramatic suicide scenes, further increasing Harlan and Söderbaum’s popularity with the German cinema audience.
Harlan’s megalomaniac epic Kolberg (1945) was the basis for Inglourious Basterds’ pivotal film-within-a-film Stolz Der Nation. One of the last films of the Third Reich, Kolberg was intended as a Nazi propaganda piece to shore up the will of the German population to resist the Allies.
The film is based on the autobiography of Joachim Nettelbeck, mayor of Kolberg in western Pomerania. It tells the story of the successful defence of the besieged fortress town of Kolberg against French troops between April and July 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars.
Kristina Söderbaum . German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3321/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Haenchen / Tobis.
Charged With Crimes Against Humanity
After the war Veit Harlan was charged with participating in the anti-Semitic movement and aiding the Nazis. But he successfully defended himself by arguing that the Nazis controlled his work and that he should not be held personally responsible for its content. However, many former crew members and colleagues contradicted him. In 1949, Harlan was charged with crimes against humanity for his role as director of Jud Süß. The Hamburg Criminal Chamber of the Regional Court (Schwurgericht) acquitted Harlan of the charges; however, the court of the British occupation zone nullified the acquittal.
In 1951, Harlan sued for an injunction against Hamburg politician Erich Lüth for publicly calling for a boycott of Unsterbliche Geliebte/Immortal Beloved (1950). The District Court in Hamburg granted Harlan's suit and ordered that Lüth forbear from making such public appeals. However, the lower court decision was ultimately overturned in 1958 by the Federal Constitutional Court because it infringed on Lüth's right to freedom of expression. This was a landmark decision because it clarified the importance of the constitutional civil rights in disputes between individuals.
Harlan made a total of nine films between 1950 and 1958, including Anders als du und ich/Different from You and Me (1957), with Christian Wolff , a feature film on homosexuality, a topic which was still highly taboo at this time.
In 1958, Veit Harlan's niece, Christiane Susanne Harlan, married filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who was Jewish. She is credited by her stage name Susanne Christian in Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957). They remained married until Kubrick's death in 1999.
Veit Harlan died in 1964 while on vacation in Capri. He was 64. Two months before his death he had become Catholic. Susanne Körber, one of his daughters from his second wife Hilde Körber, converted to Judaism and married the son of Holocaust victims. She committed suicide in 1989.
In 2001, Horst Konigstein made a film titled Jud Suss - Ein Film als Verbrechen?/Jud Suss - A Film As a Crime?. The documentary Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss (Felix Moeller, 2008) explores Harlan's motivations and the post-war reaction of his children and grandchildren to his notoriety.
Christian Wolff . Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4268. Photo: Arca / Cinepress.
Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), John Simkin (Spartacus Educational), New York Times, Wikipedia and .
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7753/1, 1935. Photo: Robertson, Berlin. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Propaganda
Veit Harlan was born in Berlin in 1899. His father was a novelist and two of his brothers were musicians. After studying under Max Reinhardt, he first appeared on the stage in 1915 and, after World War I, worked at the Berlin State Theatre for eleven years.
In 1922 he married Jewish actress and cabaret singer Dora Gerson; the couple divorced in 1924. In 1943, Gerson was killed in Auschwitz, with her family.
Harlan made his film debut in 1925. He played roles in films like the historical comedy Der Meister von Nürnberg/The Master of Nuremberg (Ludwig Berger, 1927), and the comedy Die Hose/The Trousers (Hans Behrendt, 1927) starring Werner Krauss .
Till 1935 he played in some 30 films. Harlan married in 1929 actress Hilde Körber, having three children with her. They divorced in 1938 ‘for political reasons related to the influence of National Socialism’, according to Wikipedia . One of their children, Thomas Harlan, became a writer and director in his own right.
His first direction was the romantic comedy Krach im Hinterhaus/Trouble Backstairs (1934) starring silent film star Henny Porten . It was a success and in the following years Harlan specialized in romantic idylls like Die Kreutzersonate/The Kreutzer Sonata (1937) and Die Reise nach Tilsit/The Trip to Tilsit (1939), a remake of F. W. Murnau’s silent classic Sunrise (1926).
In 1939, Harlan married the star of his film, Swedish actress Kristina Söderbaum . Since 1933, Harlan was a supporter of Adolf Hitler and the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP). After many of the country's best filmmakers had fled the country, Joseph Goebbels had appointed Harlan in 1937 as one of his leading propaganda directors.
His most notorious film was Jud Süß/Jew Süss (1940), which was made for anti-Semitic propaganda purposes in Germany and Austria. The film was required viewing for all SS members. Set in the 18th century, it claims to be a dramatization of the true story of how a sinister, cunning Jewish financier, Joseph Süss Oppenheimer ( Ferdinand Marian ), took control of the duchy of Wurttemberg while preying sexually on a pure Aryan maiden ( Kristina Söderbaum ). The film was a hit and seen by more than 20 million people. In 1943 it received Ufa's highest awards.
Werner Krauss . German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. A 3264/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Foto Quick / Ufa.
The First Major European Colour Film
Harlan made the Reich's loudest, most colourful and expensive films. In 1942 he directed the first major European colour film, Die goldene Stadt/The Golden City.
Next he directed the melodramas Immensee (1943) and Opfergang/The Great Sacrifice (1944) which included some very dramatic suicide scenes, further increasing Harlan and Söderbaum’s popularity with the German cinema audience.
Harlan’s megalomaniac epic Kolberg (1945) was the basis for Inglourious Basterds’ pivotal film-within-a-film Stolz Der Nation. One of the last films of the Third Reich, Kolberg was intended as a Nazi propaganda piece to shore up the will of the German population to resist the Allies.
The film is based on the autobiography of Joachim Nettelbeck, mayor of Kolberg in western Pomerania. It tells the story of the successful defence of the besieged fortress town of Kolberg against French troops between April and July 1807, during the Napoleonic Wars.
Kristina Söderbaum . German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3321/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Haenchen / Tobis.
Charged With Crimes Against Humanity
After the war Veit Harlan was charged with participating in the anti-Semitic movement and aiding the Nazis. But he successfully defended himself by arguing that the Nazis controlled his work and that he should not be held personally responsible for its content. However, many former crew members and colleagues contradicted him. In 1949, Harlan was charged with crimes against humanity for his role as director of Jud Süß. The Hamburg Criminal Chamber of the Regional Court (Schwurgericht) acquitted Harlan of the charges; however, the court of the British occupation zone nullified the acquittal.
In 1951, Harlan sued for an injunction against Hamburg politician Erich Lüth for publicly calling for a boycott of Unsterbliche Geliebte/Immortal Beloved (1950). The District Court in Hamburg granted Harlan's suit and ordered that Lüth forbear from making such public appeals. However, the lower court decision was ultimately overturned in 1958 by the Federal Constitutional Court because it infringed on Lüth's right to freedom of expression. This was a landmark decision because it clarified the importance of the constitutional civil rights in disputes between individuals.
Harlan made a total of nine films between 1950 and 1958, including Anders als du und ich/Different from You and Me (1957), with Christian Wolff , a feature film on homosexuality, a topic which was still highly taboo at this time.
In 1958, Veit Harlan's niece, Christiane Susanne Harlan, married filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who was Jewish. She is credited by her stage name Susanne Christian in Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957). They remained married until Kubrick's death in 1999.
Veit Harlan died in 1964 while on vacation in Capri. He was 64. Two months before his death he had become Catholic. Susanne Körber, one of his daughters from his second wife Hilde Körber, converted to Judaism and married the son of Holocaust victims. She committed suicide in 1989.
In 2001, Horst Konigstein made a film titled Jud Suss - Ein Film als Verbrechen?/Jud Suss - A Film As a Crime?. The documentary Harlan: In the Shadow of Jew Süss (Felix Moeller, 2008) explores Harlan's motivations and the post-war reaction of his children and grandchildren to his notoriety.
Christian Wolff . Dutch postcard by Gebr. Spanjersberg N.V., Rotterdam, no. 4268. Photo: Arca / Cinepress.
Sources: Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), John Simkin (Spartacus Educational), New York Times, Wikipedia and .
September 6, 2013
Serge Lifar
Serge Lifar (1905-1986) was a French dancer, choreographer and ballet master of Ukrainian origin. He was one of the greatest male ballet dancers of the 20th century and considered the successor to Nijinsky in the Ballet Russes. From 1930 on, he was immensely successful, essentially in his own ballet creations. During three decades he lead the Paris Opéra Ballet and enriched its repertoire, re-established its reputation as a leading ballet company, and enhanced the position of male dancers in a company long dominated by ballerinas.
French postcard no. 148. Photo: Studio Harcourt. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ballets Russes
Serge Lifar (Сергій Лифар) was born Serhіy Mуkhailovуch Lуfar in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) in 1905. His year of birth is officially shown as 1904 (as on a 2004 Ukrainian stamp commemorating his centenary), but other sources say 1905. He was the son of a civil servant. Lifar had a late start as a dancer. He was introduced to dance in 1920 by Bronislava Nijinska, under whom he began to study.
In 1921 he left the Soviet Union to join Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Diaghilev sent him to Turin in order to improve his technique with the eminent teacher Enrico Cecchetti. Lifar made his debut at the Ballets Russes in 1923, and became premier danseur of the company in 1925. The company revolutionized ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracized by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.
Lifar was very handsome, had an athletic body, and a great desire to be liked. He was clearly the impresario's favourite and was considered as the successor to Nijinsky. At the age of 21, he was cast in Nijinska’s Roméo et Juliette (1926) opposite Tamara Karsavina, who was twice his age. In George Balanchine’s comic ballet Barabau (1925), Lifar was a police sergeant chasing an Italian peasant.
He originated leading roles in three ballets by Balanchine for the Ballet Russes, La Chatte (1927) with a score by French composer Henri Sauguet and based on an Aesop fable, which featured Lifar’s famous entrance in a ‘chariot’ formed by his male companions, Apollon Musagète (1928) with a score by Stravinsky depicting the birth of the Greek God, Apollo and his encounter with the three muses, Callipe, Polyhymnia, and Terpsichore, and Le Fils prodigue (The Prodigal Son) (1929) with a score by Prokofiev, the last great ballet of the Diaghilev era.
Anna Kisselgoff in The New York Times about his charisma: “His dark exotic looks and athletic body gave him an animal intensity. A child's-eye view is unreliable, but in 1949, on a trip to Paris, I saw his portly but still-dramatic presence dominate the stage in Icare. The image remains.“
French postcard no. 257. Photo: Studio Harcourt. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Paris Opéra Ballet
At the death of Diaghilev in 1929, Serge Lifar was invited by Jacques Rouché to take over the directorship of the Paris Opéra Ballet. Lifar was 24 at the time. The Paris Opéra Ballet had fallen into decline in the late 19th century. He gave the company a new strength and purpose initiating the re-birth of ballet in France and began to create the first of many ballets for that company. In 1932 he was awarded the title of 'professeur de danse' and began reforms of the Opéra’s school to enable its dancers to perform the more modern ballets.
Lifar was immensely successful, essentially in his own ballet creations, notably with Les Créatures de Prométhée ('The Creatures of Prometheus) (1929), a personal version of Le Spectre de la rose (1931) and L'Après-midi d'un faune (1935), Icare (Icarus) (1935) with costumes and décor by Pablo Picasso, Istar (1941) or Suite en Blanc (1943), which he qualified as neoclassical, all created for the Paris Opera.
He also worked as a choreographer for some films. Examples are Nuits de feu/Nights of Fire (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937), starring Gaby Morlay , and La Mort du Cygne/The Death of the Swan (Jean Benoît-Lévy, 1937), the first feature film set entirely in the ballet world.
As ballet master of the Paris Opéra from 1930 to 1944 and from 1947 to 1958, Lifar devoted himself to the restoration of the technical level of the Paris Opera Ballet to return it to its place as one of the best companies in the world. During those three decades as director of the Paris Opéra Ballet, he lead the company through turbulent times during World War II and the German occupation of France. In 1958, he was forced to resign from the Paris Opéra Ballet. In 1945, charges of had caused him the first time to leave and become director of the Nouveau Ballet de Monte Carlo. Lifar, cleared of the charges and given a year's suspension, returned as director of the Paris Opera Ballet in 1947.
Gaby Morlay . French postcard, no. 69. Photo: Film Pathé-Natan.
Icarus
During his career, Serge Lifar made an effort to revitalize dance and thought the basic principles of ballet and the five positions of the feet denied mobility for the dancer and invented sixth and seventh positions with the feet turned in not out like the first five positions. In 1935 he published his confessio fidei titled Le manifesto du chorégraphe, proposing laws about the independence of choreography. He proclaimed that dance, as an independent art, could exist without music.
He also wrote a biography of Diaghilev titled Serge Diaghilev, His Life, His Work, His Legend: An Intimate Biography published by Putnam, London, 1940. He brought the Paris Opéra Ballet to America and performed to full houses at the New York City Center. Audiences where enthusiastic and had great admiration for the company of dancers. According to Wikipedia , he undoubtedly influenced Yvette Chauviré, Janine Charrat and Roland Petit.
During his life he also appeared in a few films. The best known is Jean Cocteau’s Le testament d'Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi!/Testament of Orpheus (1960), in which he played Orphée's Friend. Two years later he could be seen in a segment of Le crime ne paie pas/Crime Does Not Pay (Gérard Oury, 1962) with Rosanna Schiaffino .
In 1977 the Paris Opéra Ballet devoted a full evening to his choreography. In 1983 he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (1983). Serge Lifar died in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1986, aged 81 and was buried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery. Editions Sauret published his memoirs titled Les Mémoires d’Icare posthumously in 1993. The title references one of his greatest roles in the ballet Icare, “the story of the ballet is based on the ancient Greek myth of Icarus whose father Daedalus builds him a pair of artificial wings. Disobeying his father’s orders, Icarus flies too close to the sun, which melts the wax in his wings and causes him to plunge to his death.”
The Serge Lifar Foundation was set up in 1989 by Lifar's devoted companion, glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt-Laurvig. In 2012, jewels from the Countess' estate were auctioned at Sotheby's, with the proceeds going to the Foundation.
Sources: Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times), Colin Gleadell (The Telegraph), Michael Minn (Andros on Ballet), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and .
French postcard no. 148. Photo: Studio Harcourt. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Ballets Russes
Serge Lifar (Сергій Лифар) was born Serhіy Mуkhailovуch Lуfar in Kiev, Russian Empire (now Ukraine) in 1905. His year of birth is officially shown as 1904 (as on a 2004 Ukrainian stamp commemorating his centenary), but other sources say 1905. He was the son of a civil servant. Lifar had a late start as a dancer. He was introduced to dance in 1920 by Bronislava Nijinska, under whom he began to study.
In 1921 he left the Soviet Union to join Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Diaghilev sent him to Turin in order to improve his technique with the eminent teacher Enrico Cecchetti. Lifar made his debut at the Ballets Russes in 1923, and became premier danseur of the company in 1925. The company revolutionized ballet by merging modern dance, music and art into a dynamic whole. At first a vehicle for bringing Russian art to the West, it was ostracized by the Revolutionary Soviet government, and became a platform for collaboration between Russian and Western artists.
Lifar was very handsome, had an athletic body, and a great desire to be liked. He was clearly the impresario's favourite and was considered as the successor to Nijinsky. At the age of 21, he was cast in Nijinska’s Roméo et Juliette (1926) opposite Tamara Karsavina, who was twice his age. In George Balanchine’s comic ballet Barabau (1925), Lifar was a police sergeant chasing an Italian peasant.
He originated leading roles in three ballets by Balanchine for the Ballet Russes, La Chatte (1927) with a score by French composer Henri Sauguet and based on an Aesop fable, which featured Lifar’s famous entrance in a ‘chariot’ formed by his male companions, Apollon Musagète (1928) with a score by Stravinsky depicting the birth of the Greek God, Apollo and his encounter with the three muses, Callipe, Polyhymnia, and Terpsichore, and Le Fils prodigue (The Prodigal Son) (1929) with a score by Prokofiev, the last great ballet of the Diaghilev era.
Anna Kisselgoff in The New York Times about his charisma: “His dark exotic looks and athletic body gave him an animal intensity. A child's-eye view is unreliable, but in 1949, on a trip to Paris, I saw his portly but still-dramatic presence dominate the stage in Icare. The image remains.“
French postcard no. 257. Photo: Studio Harcourt. Collection: Didier Hanson.
Paris Opéra Ballet
At the death of Diaghilev in 1929, Serge Lifar was invited by Jacques Rouché to take over the directorship of the Paris Opéra Ballet. Lifar was 24 at the time. The Paris Opéra Ballet had fallen into decline in the late 19th century. He gave the company a new strength and purpose initiating the re-birth of ballet in France and began to create the first of many ballets for that company. In 1932 he was awarded the title of 'professeur de danse' and began reforms of the Opéra’s school to enable its dancers to perform the more modern ballets.
Lifar was immensely successful, essentially in his own ballet creations, notably with Les Créatures de Prométhée ('The Creatures of Prometheus) (1929), a personal version of Le Spectre de la rose (1931) and L'Après-midi d'un faune (1935), Icare (Icarus) (1935) with costumes and décor by Pablo Picasso, Istar (1941) or Suite en Blanc (1943), which he qualified as neoclassical, all created for the Paris Opera.
He also worked as a choreographer for some films. Examples are Nuits de feu/Nights of Fire (Marcel L'Herbier, 1937), starring Gaby Morlay , and La Mort du Cygne/The Death of the Swan (Jean Benoît-Lévy, 1937), the first feature film set entirely in the ballet world.
As ballet master of the Paris Opéra from 1930 to 1944 and from 1947 to 1958, Lifar devoted himself to the restoration of the technical level of the Paris Opera Ballet to return it to its place as one of the best companies in the world. During those three decades as director of the Paris Opéra Ballet, he lead the company through turbulent times during World War II and the German occupation of France. In 1958, he was forced to resign from the Paris Opéra Ballet. In 1945, charges of had caused him the first time to leave and become director of the Nouveau Ballet de Monte Carlo. Lifar, cleared of the charges and given a year's suspension, returned as director of the Paris Opera Ballet in 1947.
Gaby Morlay . French postcard, no. 69. Photo: Film Pathé-Natan.
Icarus
During his career, Serge Lifar made an effort to revitalize dance and thought the basic principles of ballet and the five positions of the feet denied mobility for the dancer and invented sixth and seventh positions with the feet turned in not out like the first five positions. In 1935 he published his confessio fidei titled Le manifesto du chorégraphe, proposing laws about the independence of choreography. He proclaimed that dance, as an independent art, could exist without music.
He also wrote a biography of Diaghilev titled Serge Diaghilev, His Life, His Work, His Legend: An Intimate Biography published by Putnam, London, 1940. He brought the Paris Opéra Ballet to America and performed to full houses at the New York City Center. Audiences where enthusiastic and had great admiration for the company of dancers. According to Wikipedia , he undoubtedly influenced Yvette Chauviré, Janine Charrat and Roland Petit.
During his life he also appeared in a few films. The best known is Jean Cocteau’s Le testament d'Orphée, ou ne me demandez pas pourquoi!/Testament of Orpheus (1960), in which he played Orphée's Friend. Two years later he could be seen in a segment of Le crime ne paie pas/Crime Does Not Pay (Gérard Oury, 1962) with Rosanna Schiaffino .
In 1977 the Paris Opéra Ballet devoted a full evening to his choreography. In 1983 he was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'honneur (1983). Serge Lifar died in Lausanne, Switzerland in 1986, aged 81 and was buried in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois Russian Cemetery. Editions Sauret published his memoirs titled Les Mémoires d’Icare posthumously in 1993. The title references one of his greatest roles in the ballet Icare, “the story of the ballet is based on the ancient Greek myth of Icarus whose father Daedalus builds him a pair of artificial wings. Disobeying his father’s orders, Icarus flies too close to the sun, which melts the wax in his wings and causes him to plunge to his death.”
The Serge Lifar Foundation was set up in 1989 by Lifar's devoted companion, glamorous blonde Swedish countess Lillian Ahlefeldt-Laurvig. In 2012, jewels from the Countess' estate were auctioned at Sotheby's, with the proceeds going to the Foundation.
Sources: Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times), Colin Gleadell (The Telegraph), Michael Minn (Andros on Ballet), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Wikipedia, and .
September 5, 2013
Ilse Werner
Dutch-born actress and singer Ilse Werner (1921-2005) was one of the most popular stars of the German screen during the Nazi years. After the war she became a successful Schlager singer. Her nickname, Ein Frau mit Pfiff, translates as A Woman of Distinction, but also refers to her trademark, whistling.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3732/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick / Ufa.
The Biggest German Film Studio
Ilse Werner was born Ilse Charlotte Still in Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia), in 1921. Her father was a rich Dutch plantation owner and consul, E. O. Still, and her mother, Lilli Still-Werner was German.
After living 10 years on Java, the family returned to Europe and finally settled down in Vienna in 1934. Although Ilse would later have her greatest successes in Germany, she kept her Dutch citizenship until 1955.
In 1936-1937 she followed acting classes at the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar in Vienna, where she changed her name into Ilse Werner.
Her stage debut was at the Viennese Theater in der Josefstadt in the play Glück (Happiness) in 1937, and her film debut was the following year in Finale/Die unruhigen Mädchen/The Restless Girls (Géza von Bolváry, 1938) starring Käthe von Nagy .
The Ufa became interested in the young actress, and the biggest German film studio offered her a contract.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3732/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick / Ufa.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3896/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Terra / Quick.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3477/1. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3224/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.
Propaganda Film
Ilse Werner started to work at the legendary Ufa Studios in Babelsberg near Berlin. She appeared in films like Frau Sixta/Mrs. Sixta (Gustav Ucicky, 1938), Das Leben kann so schön sein/Life Can Be So beautiful (Rolf Hansen, 1938), the classic comedy Bel Ami ( Willi Forst , 1939) and Bal paré (Karl Ritter, 1940) with Paul Hartmann .
Her breakthrough film was the propaganda film Wunschkonzert/Request Concert (Eduard von Borsody, 1940), an incredibly popular home-front comedy-drama centred around a beloved radio program.
She continued to be a top attraction in popular films like Die schwedische Nachtigall/The Swedish Nightingale (Peter Paul Brauer, 1941) as the famous soprano Jenny Lind, and Wir machen Musik/We're Making Music (Helmut Käutner, 1942) with Viktor de Kowa . She starred opposite Hans Albers in the colour spectacle Münchhausen/The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Josef von Báky, 1943), and the in the harbour of Hamburg located love story Grosse Freiheit Nr. 7/Port of Freedom (Helmut Käutner, 1944). In the latter film she played her first serious character role.
During the war she worked for the TV station Paul Nipkow and moderated the weekly TV show Wir senden Frohsinn – wir spenden Freude (We Broadcast Cheerfulness, We Donate Joy).
Ilse Werner also made several very popular records such as Sing ein Lied, wenn du mal traurig bist (Sing A Song If You’re Sad Sometimes), Du und ich im Mondenschein (You and Me in the Moonlight) and especially Wir machen Musik (We Make Music).
She became famous for her inimitable whistling, a skill she had picked up as a child and cultivated throughout her career. She often whistled to melodies composed by Werner Bochmann.
German postcard by Verlag und Druckerei Erwin Preuss, Dresden-Freital, Serie I Die neue farbige Filmstarkarte, no. 15. Photo: Charlott Serda.
German postcard by Ross, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa / Baumann.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3896/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Terra / Quick.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3986/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa.
Barred From Performing
At the end of World War II, Ilse Werner was temporarily barred from performing in films by the Allies. In the meanwhile she worked as a voice actress for the synchronization of American films. In 1948, she relocated to America with her husband, the American journalist John de Forest. Yet she continued appearing in German films like Geheimnisvolle Tiefe/Mysterious Shadows (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1949) and Epilog: Das Geheimnis der Orplid/Epilogue (Helmut Käutner, 1950).
After her 1953 divorce, she returned to Germany and excelled in such dramatic character roles as Queen Marie-Louise in the film operetta Der Vogelhändler/The Bird Seller (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1953) with Wolf Albach-Retty . Other films were the romance Ännchen von Tharau (Wolfgang Schleif, 1954) and Griff nach den Sternen/Reaching for the Stars (Carl-Heinz Schroth, 1955) with Erik Schumann.
However, her biggest post-war successes were the records she released between 1957 and 1964. Her song Baciare was in 1960 a hit all over Europe. In the following decades she was successful on the stage in productions like the musical Der König und ich (The King and I) (1970), and on TV, where she had her own variety show Ein Abend mit Pfiff (An Evening of Distinction) (1967).
In 1981 she published her memoirs, So wird's nie wieder sein …Ein Leben mit Pfiff (It Will Never Be Like That Again, A life of Distinction). That same year she was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Merit) and in 1986 she also received the Filmband in Gold for her work in the German cinema.
Five years later, she won the award again for her self-ironic portrayal of an ageing Schlager Singer in the tragic comedy Die Hallo-Sisters/The Hallo Sisters (Ottokar Runze, 1990) with Gisela May. It was her last film role; her last TV appearance was in the Krimi Tatort (2000). Ilse Werner died in 2005 in a retirement home in Lübeck at the age of 84. She had been suffering from pneumonia. Werner had been married to John de Forest and later to Josef Niessen, the director of the Nurnberg Dance Orchestra of the Bayerischen Rundfunk (the Bavaria radio station). Both marriages ended in a divorce.
French postcard by EPC, no. 190. Photo: ACE / Ufa.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 139. Photo: Quick / Terra. From Tatiana.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3102/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3477/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa / Baumann.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 218. Photo: Quick / Terra.
Scene with Ilse Werner from Wir machen Musik/We're Making Music (1942). Source: Robert S (YouTube).
Sources: Stephanie d’Heil (Steffi-line) (German), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Hans J. Wollstein (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and .
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3732/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick / Ufa.
The Biggest German Film Studio
Ilse Werner was born Ilse Charlotte Still in Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia), in 1921. Her father was a rich Dutch plantation owner and consul, E. O. Still, and her mother, Lilli Still-Werner was German.
After living 10 years on Java, the family returned to Europe and finally settled down in Vienna in 1934. Although Ilse would later have her greatest successes in Germany, she kept her Dutch citizenship until 1955.
In 1936-1937 she followed acting classes at the Max-Reinhardt-Seminar in Vienna, where she changed her name into Ilse Werner.
Her stage debut was at the Viennese Theater in der Josefstadt in the play Glück (Happiness) in 1937, and her film debut was the following year in Finale/Die unruhigen Mädchen/The Restless Girls (Géza von Bolváry, 1938) starring Käthe von Nagy .
The Ufa became interested in the young actress, and the biggest German film studio offered her a contract.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3732/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Quick / Ufa.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3896/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Terra / Quick.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3477/1. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3224/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Terra.
Propaganda Film
Ilse Werner started to work at the legendary Ufa Studios in Babelsberg near Berlin. She appeared in films like Frau Sixta/Mrs. Sixta (Gustav Ucicky, 1938), Das Leben kann so schön sein/Life Can Be So beautiful (Rolf Hansen, 1938), the classic comedy Bel Ami ( Willi Forst , 1939) and Bal paré (Karl Ritter, 1940) with Paul Hartmann .
Her breakthrough film was the propaganda film Wunschkonzert/Request Concert (Eduard von Borsody, 1940), an incredibly popular home-front comedy-drama centred around a beloved radio program.
She continued to be a top attraction in popular films like Die schwedische Nachtigall/The Swedish Nightingale (Peter Paul Brauer, 1941) as the famous soprano Jenny Lind, and Wir machen Musik/We're Making Music (Helmut Käutner, 1942) with Viktor de Kowa . She starred opposite Hans Albers in the colour spectacle Münchhausen/The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (Josef von Báky, 1943), and the in the harbour of Hamburg located love story Grosse Freiheit Nr. 7/Port of Freedom (Helmut Käutner, 1944). In the latter film she played her first serious character role.
During the war she worked for the TV station Paul Nipkow and moderated the weekly TV show Wir senden Frohsinn – wir spenden Freude (We Broadcast Cheerfulness, We Donate Joy).
Ilse Werner also made several very popular records such as Sing ein Lied, wenn du mal traurig bist (Sing A Song If You’re Sad Sometimes), Du und ich im Mondenschein (You and Me in the Moonlight) and especially Wir machen Musik (We Make Music).
She became famous for her inimitable whistling, a skill she had picked up as a child and cultivated throughout her career. She often whistled to melodies composed by Werner Bochmann.
German postcard by Verlag und Druckerei Erwin Preuss, Dresden-Freital, Serie I Die neue farbige Filmstarkarte, no. 15. Photo: Charlott Serda.
German postcard by Ross, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa / Baumann.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3896/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Terra / Quick.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. A 3986/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa.
Barred From Performing
At the end of World War II, Ilse Werner was temporarily barred from performing in films by the Allies. In the meanwhile she worked as a voice actress for the synchronization of American films. In 1948, she relocated to America with her husband, the American journalist John de Forest. Yet she continued appearing in German films like Geheimnisvolle Tiefe/Mysterious Shadows (Georg Wilhelm Pabst, 1949) and Epilog: Das Geheimnis der Orplid/Epilogue (Helmut Käutner, 1950).
After her 1953 divorce, she returned to Germany and excelled in such dramatic character roles as Queen Marie-Louise in the film operetta Der Vogelhändler/The Bird Seller (Arthur Maria Rabenalt, 1953) with Wolf Albach-Retty . Other films were the romance Ännchen von Tharau (Wolfgang Schleif, 1954) and Griff nach den Sternen/Reaching for the Stars (Carl-Heinz Schroth, 1955) with Erik Schumann.
However, her biggest post-war successes were the records she released between 1957 and 1964. Her song Baciare was in 1960 a hit all over Europe. In the following decades she was successful on the stage in productions like the musical Der König und ich (The King and I) (1970), and on TV, where she had her own variety show Ein Abend mit Pfiff (An Evening of Distinction) (1967).
In 1981 she published her memoirs, So wird's nie wieder sein …Ein Leben mit Pfiff (It Will Never Be Like That Again, A life of Distinction). That same year she was awarded the Bundesverdienstkreuz (Federal Cross of Merit) and in 1986 she also received the Filmband in Gold for her work in the German cinema.
Five years later, she won the award again for her self-ironic portrayal of an ageing Schlager Singer in the tragic comedy Die Hallo-Sisters/The Hallo Sisters (Ottokar Runze, 1990) with Gisela May. It was her last film role; her last TV appearance was in the Krimi Tatort (2000). Ilse Werner died in 2005 in a retirement home in Lübeck at the age of 84. She had been suffering from pneumonia. Werner had been married to John de Forest and later to Josef Niessen, the director of the Nurnberg Dance Orchestra of the Bayerischen Rundfunk (the Bavaria radio station). Both marriages ended in a divorce.
French postcard by EPC, no. 190. Photo: ACE / Ufa.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 139. Photo: Quick / Terra. From Tatiana.
German postcard by Ross-Verlag, no. A 3102/1, 1941-1944. Photo: Baumann / Ufa.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. 3477/2, 1941-1944. Photo: Ufa / Baumann.
German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 218. Photo: Quick / Terra.
Scene with Ilse Werner from Wir machen Musik/We're Making Music (1942). Source: Robert S (YouTube).
Sources: Stephanie d’Heil (Steffi-line) (German), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Hans J. Wollstein (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and .
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