German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1050/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Ufa. Ossi Oswalda in the German silent film Blitzzug der Liebe/The Cupid Express (Johannes Guter, 1925).

Ossi Oswalda (1895-1947) was one of the most popular comediennes of German silent cinema.

Ossi Oswalda (1895-1947) was born in Niederschönhausen, Imperial Germany (now part of Berlin), but she was of Prague origin. Her real name was Oswalda Stäglich. Oswalda trained as a ballerina and became a dancer for a theater in Berlin. She made her film debut in Nächte des Grauens/Night of Horrors (Richard Oswald, Arthur Robison, 1916) before being discovered by the actor and screenwriter Hanns Kräly. He recommended her to director Ernst Lubitsch who cast her in their comedy Schuhpalast Pinkus/Shoe Salon Pinkus (1916). Lubitsch became her Pygmalion, who let her play in numerous comedies between 1916 and 1920, which joked with the provincial and stiff petty-bourgeois mentality of Wilhelminian Germany. Examples are Ossis Tagebuch/Ossi's Diary (1917), Ich möchte kein Mann sein/I Don't Want to Be a Man (1918), Meine Frau, die Filmschauspielerin/My Wife the Movie Star (1919), and Die Puppe/The Doll (1919). The best of these was Die Austernprinzessin/The Oyster Princess (1919), in which Ossi is a spoiled daughter of a wealthy American, who is supposed to wed an impoverished German prince (but is marrying his stupid servant instead). The whole film exaggerated all the clichés about Americans who like everything big and make modern, absurdist music, and about Germans who are only interested in food & drinks, but Lubitsch did so in a very witty way.

When Ernst Lubitsch left for America he left Ossi Oswalda in the hands of Victor Janson, who had been her co-star in Die Wohnungsnot/The Housing Shortage (Ernst Lubitsch, 1920) and Kakadu und Kiebitz/Kakadu and Kiebitz (Erich Schönfelder, 1920). Janson was not unworthy for his task but he repeated Oswalda's typology of the unrestrained, wild and witty girl, without adding the spice Lubitsch always had added. In 1921, Oswalda started her own film production company with her husband at the time, Baron Gustav von Koczian. However, during the next four years, they only produced four films, including Amor am Steuer/Love at the Wheel (Victor Janson, 1921) and Das Mädel mit der Maske/The Girl With the Mask (Victor Janson), 1922 with Hermann Thimig.

From 1925 on, Ossi Oswalda was contracted to the Ufa. She starred in comedies like Blitzzug der Liebe/Love Express Train (Johannes Guter, 1925) and Herrn Filip Collins Abenteuer/Mr. Filip Collins Adventure (Johannes Guter, 1926) with Georg Alexander. When Oswalda's name was romantically linked to that of former Crown Prince Wilhelm, while that of Lily Damita with the prince's son Ludwig Ferdinand, insulting caricatures spread, and the Hohenzollern family stopped both affairs short. The affair also influenced Oswalda's career, who continued to make films but she would never reach the top anymore. Her star dwindled down, and her parts became smaller and smaller. She appeared in only two sound films, making her final film appearance in Der Stern von Valencia/The Star of Valencia (Alfred Zeisler, 1933). Later on, she became a stage actor, and in 1943, she wrote the story for the Czechoslovakian film Ctrnáctý u stolu (Oldrich Nový, Antonín Zelenka, 1943). For a short while, Ossi Oswalda was the talk of the town again once more, after she had died in the most miserable conditions in Prague in 1947.

Sources: Vittorio Martinelli (Le dive del silenzio) (Italian), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

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Vintage press photo. Gina Gershon and Elizabeth Berkley in Showgirls (Paul Verhoeven, 1995).

Paul Verhoeven's American erotic drama Showgirls (1995) is a curious phenomenon. The critics dubbed the production one of the worst films of its era. Showgirls "won" at the 1996 Razzie Awards for Worst Picture, Worst Director, Worst Screenplay, Worst Leading Actor (Elizabeth Berkley), Worst Female Newcomer (Berkley), and Worst Picture Couple as well as Worst Original Movie Song. Verhoeven was the first celebrity ever who came to receive his Razzies. In the years after its original release, Showgirls gained cult status, grossed over $100,000,000 on rentals, and made it into MGM's top 20 best-selling titles. And in recent years, the film has been subject to critical re-evaluation, with more and more notable directors and critics considering it a serious satire worthy of praise.

Elizabeth Berkley plays Nomi, a "street-smart" drifter who ventures to Las Vegas. She is determined to make a name as a dancer while putting her unspoken past behind her. Her tough, streetwise veneer is not as infallible as she would like. In Vegas, she becomes more cautious in the way she approaches strangers who seem willing to help her purely out of the goodness of their hearts. Her talent and connections in combination are only able to get her a job at the Cheetah Club, a strip joint. Her first true friend in Vegas, Molly Abrams (Gina Ravera), works as the costumer for Goddess, the topless production at the Stardust. It is through Molly that Nomi catches the eye of Goddess' headliner, Cristal Connors (Gina Gershon). Nomi has a love/hate feeling toward Cristal: she doesn't much like her but wants to become her.

At IMDb, the film's got a 4.9 rating but most of the more recent reviews of Showgirls are remarkably positive about the film. "Read between the lines!", "A Misunderstood Classic", "A really fun movie...despite what the critics say!", "This wonderful film only gets better with each viewing" and "Greatest critique of American culture since CITIZEN KANE" are some of the headlines of the IMDb reviews. Critics such as Jonathan Rosenbaum and Jim Hoberman, as well as filmmakers Jim Jarmusch, Adam McKay, and Jacques Rivette, have also gone on the record defending Showgirls as a serious satire. In a 1998 interview, Rivette called it "one of the great American films of the last few years", though "very unpleasant: it's about surviving in a world populated by assholes, and that's Verhoeven's philosophy". Quentin Tarantino has stated that he enjoyed Showgirls, referring to it in 1996 as the "only ... other time in the last twenty years [that] a major studio made a full-on, gigantic, big-budget exploitation movie", comparing it to Mandingo. Showgirls has been compared to All About Eve (1950) as a remake, update, or rip-off of that film. For Jonathan Rosenbaum, "Showgirls has to be one of the most vitriolic allegories about Hollywood and selling out ever made". "Verhoeven may be the bravest and most assured satirist in Hollywood, insofar as he succeeds in making big genre movies no one knows whether to take seriously or not", Michael Atkinson has written.

In Slant Magazine's four-out-of-four-star review, Eric Henderson rejects the "so-bad-it's-good" interpretation and lauds the film as "one of the most honest satires of recent years", stating that the film targets Hollywood's "morally bankrupt star-is-born tales." Henderson draws from a round-table discussion in Film Quarterly in which others argue its merits. Noël Burch attests that the film "takes mass culture seriously, as a site of both fascination and struggle" and uses melodrama as "an excellent vehicle for social criticism." In the same round-table, Chon Noriega suggests that the film has been misinterpreted and the satire overlooked because "the film lacks the usual coordinates and signposts for a critique of human vice and folly provided by sarcasm, irony, and caustic wit." The Guardian commented in 2020: "With Showgirls, the target was the American dream itself – and the dishonest "star is born” narratives churned out to sustain it. If Showgirls has a message, it’s that the game is rigged for women like Nomi. She thinks she’s climbing the pole but really she’s just spinning round it. The real power lies with the men running the racket. Nobody wanted to hear that at the time; maybe they’re ready to now. In its own messy way, Showgirls is a #MeToo story with a male gaze.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

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Italian postcard. RCA. Alterocca, Terni.

Raffaella Carrà, pseudonym of Raffaella Maria Roberta Pelloni (Bologna, 18 June 1943 - Rome, 5 July 2021), was an Italian showgirl, singer, dancer, actress, television and radio host and television author. From the early 1950s she acted in many films, both modern and historical dramas such as La lunga notte del '43 (Valerio Zurlini, 1960) with Enrico Maria Salerno, I compagni/The Organizer (Mario Monicelli, 1963) with Marcello Mastroianni, and Il terrorista/ The Terrorist (Gianfranco de Bosio, 1963) wth Gian Maria Volonté, as well as peplum films including Maciste l'uomo più forte del mondo/ Mole Men Against the Son of Hercules (Antonio Leonviola, 1961) with Mark Forest, Maciste nella terra dei ciclopi/ Atlas in the Land of the Cyclops (Leonviola, 1961) with Gordon Mitchell, Ulisse contro Ercole/ Ulysses Against the Son of Hercules (Marco Caiano, 1961) with Georges Marchal, Ponzio Pilate/ Pontius Pilate (Renato Callegari, 1962) with Jean Marais, Giulio Cesare, il conquistatore delle Galli/ Caesar the Conqueror (Tanio Boccia, 1962) with Cameron Mitchell, and comedies such as La Celestina P... R... (Carlo Lizzani, 1965). In 1965, she played in the film Von Ryan's Express (dir. Mark Robson) with, among others, Frank Sinatra. Initially she used her own name Raffaella Peloni but by the early sixties she started to use Carrà as her last name.

At the 1969-1970 TV season, Carrà was the first television personality to show her belly button on camera, when performing her debut song Ma che musica maestro. This was met with heavy criticism from the Vatican and from Catholic churches in the countries that watched her show, Canzonissima. Ma che musica maestro was followed by other hit songs like Chissà se va, and Tuca Tuca. Internationally Raffaella Carrà is best known for the song A far l'amore comincia tu (1976). It became Carrà's most popular and best sold single. The song was covered in several European countries while she herself sang it in various languages (Do It Do it Again in English for instance). Described as the queen of Italian television, Carrà was present on television with her own shows from the late 1960s until her death. During her long career she became an icon of Italian music and television, finding great acclaim abroad as well, especially in Spain. Carrà is said to have been the driving force behind Italy's return to the Eurovision Song Contest in 2011, in which year she also passed on Italy's points. Over the course of her career, as she herself stated in an interview in the weekly TV Sorrisi e Canzoni, she has sold over 60 million records and, during an episode of Domenica In hosted by Pippo Baudo in which she was a guest, she claimed to own 22 records including platinum and gold. In autumn 2020, the British newspaper The Guardian crowned Raffaella Carrà as Europe's sex symbol, calling her "the cultural icon who taught Europe the joys of sex".

Raffaella Carrà died in Rome on the afternoon of 5 July 2021, aged 78, after an illness.

Sources: Dutch, Italian and English Wikipedia. See Raffaella Carrà in the Dutch TV show Toppop: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnBs1MuGSAA. For the very campy video of Hay que venir al sur: www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xvUdyVKZg4

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German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3839/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Max Munn Autrey / Fox Film.

Madge Bellamy (1899-1990) was a beautiful and temperamental leading lady of the silent era, known for such classics as John Ford's first Western The Iron Horse (1924). She appeared in about fifty silent films and also in a dozen sound films, including the cult favourite White Zombie (1932). By the late 1930s, her film career had virtually ended, but in 1943 she became again fodder for the press when she was arrested for shooting her former lover.

Madge Bellamy was born Margaret Derden Philpott in Hillsboro in 1899. She was the daughter of William Bledsoe Philpott, a professor of English, and Annie Margaret Derden. She was the cousin of the actor Tom Forman. Raised in Texas, she lived in San Antonio until she was 6 years old. Then the family moved to Brownwood, where her father was teaching in a college. When she turned 10, the Philpotts went to live in Denver, Colorado. Here, Madge began acting. At 17, she went to live in New York, immediately finding work on Broadway as an actress and dancer. In 1918, she was the protagonist of 'Pollyanna', a production that also took her on tour. She appeared on Broadway in 'Dear Brutus', 'Dream Girl', and 'Peg O 'My Heart'. Bellamy made her film debut with The Riddle: Woman (Edward José, 1920), starring Geraldine Farrar. In November 1920, she signed an exclusive contract with Thomas H. Ince, who wanted her for his new production company Triangle. Her first film for Triangle was The Cup of Life (Rowland V. Lee, 1921), starring Hobart Bosworth.

Madge Bellamy's breakthrough came in Lorna Doone (Maurice Tourneur, 1922) - hence she was "the exquisite Madge". When her contract with Ince ended she moved over to Fox, where she acted for John Ford in his first Western The Iron Horse (John Ford, 1924) with George O'Brien, and in the comedy Lightnin' (John Ford, 1925), with Jay Hunt. As Bellamy favoured light comedy only, she got into trouble with the studios, as she refused a role in the mega-epic Ben-Hur (Fred Niblo, 1925). Because of her off-set temperament, she was nicknamed "Miss Firecracker". Madge did not encounter problems when switching from silent to sound. In 1928, Bellamy was cast in Fox's first part-talking film, Mother Knows Best (John G. Blystone, 1928), fictionalising the life of Vaudeville star Elsie Janis. However, in 1929, she left Fox. She walked out on her contract after refusing to star in the planned film adaptation of The Trial of Mary Dugan, a 1927 hit Broadway play that the studio had bought especially for Bellamy. The role was later given to Norma Shearer and The Trial of Mary Dugan (Bayard Veiller, 1929) became one of Shearer's biggest early successes. Bellamy did not work until 1932 when she returned to the set to play in B-movies such as White Zombie (Victor Halperin, 1932) with Bela Lugosi, though unsuccessfully. By the early 1940s, her career fully ended. In 1943 Bellamy was arrested for having shot at her then-lover. She was given a suspended six-month sentence. She was also sentenced to one year of probation. The subsequent divorce trial also was plenty of fodder for the newspapers. In the 1980s Bellamy was rediscovered by film historians and silent film fans. Madge Bellamy died in 1990 in Upland, California, at the age of 90. Her biography, 'A Darling of the Twenties', was published shortly after her death.

Sources: Wikipedia (English and Italian), and IMDb.

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German postcard by Kunst und Bild, Berlin, no. A 1781. Photo: Storypress / J. Clauss.

Dany Mann (1938-2010) was a German singer, actress and showgirl, who appeared in a number of German Heimat- and Schlagerfilms of the late 1950s and early 1960s. In 1965, she married director Herbert Vesely and later appeared in one of his films.

Dany Mann was born as Sybille Danielle Pagel in 1938 in Stettin, Pomerania, Germany, now Szczecin, Poland. She was the younger sister of actor and writer Helli Pagel. She attended the Akademie für Musik und Theater, and started her career as a jazz singer. She was a participant of the song contest Die große Chance, organised in 1955 by record label Electrola and was one of the winners. She recorded such cover songs as 'Sexie Hexy' (Stupid Cupid, 1958) and 'Norman' (1962). Her first film was the Heimatfilm Heimatlos (Herbert B. Fredersdorf, 1958), starring Marianne Hold. She was then still credited as Sybille Pagel, but soon used the name of her first husband, the Brit John Mann, whom she had married in 1956. As Dany or Danny Mann, she was known for playing supporting roles in such entertainment films as the musical La Paloma (Paul Martin, 1959) starring Bibi Johns, Karlheinz Böhm and Louis Armstrong, the musical comedy Mein Schatz komm mit ans blaue Meer/My darling come to the blue sea (Rudolf Schündler, 1959) with Joachim Fuchsberger and Renate Ewert, and Schlagerparade 1960 (Franz Marischka, 1960), starring Renate Ewert and Werner Futterer. In the latter, Mann appeared as a Schlager singer.

In the early 1960s, Dany Mann appeared in a few films of the dwindling German film industry and recorded several Schlagers. For a time she lived with John Mann in Amsterdam and also recorded some songs in Dutch. She had an affair with singer and TV host Chris Howland, and in 1965, she married Austrian director Herbert Vesely. They remained together till his death in 2002. From 1965 on, she focused on her acting career and worked mostly for television and the theatre, till the late 1980s. One of her later films was the interesting drama Der sanfte Lauf/The Soft Course (Haro Senft, 1967) with the young Bruno Ganz in the leading role. She also played a part in her husband's biopic Egon Schiele - Exzesse/Egon Schiele: Excess and Punishment (Herbert Vesely, 1980) with Mathieu Carrière and Jane Birkin. Her last film appearance was in Kies (Douglas Wolfsperger, 1987) with Richard Gandor. At the age of 72, Dany Mann passed away in 2010 in a Munich hospital, suffering from dementia. She had a son with Vesely.

Sources: Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.

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