German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 65/3. Photo: Aafa-Film. Mady Christians and Viktor Janson in Die geschiedene Frau/The Divorcée (Viktor Janson, 1926).
Austrian-born stage actress Mady Christians (1892-1951) was also a star of the German silent cinema and appeared in Austrian, French, British, and Hollywood films too.
Victor Janson aka Viktor Janson (1884-1960) was a German actor and director. He played in almost 140 silent and sound films.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
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German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 1655/2, 1927-1928. Photo: Phoebus-Film. Elisabeth Bergner in Liebe/Love (Paul Czinner, 1927). Collection: Marlene Pilaete. While the novel was published in 1834, Bergner's costume and hairdo rather reminds of the 1860s.
The profoundly sensitive acting of Austrian-British actress Elisabeth Bergner (1897-1986) influenced the German cinema of the 1920s and 1930s. She specialized in a bisexual type that she portrayed in Der Geiger von Florenz and in other film and stage roles. Nazism forced her to go in exile, but she worked successfully in the West End and on Broadway.
Elisabeth Bergner was born Elisabeth Ettel in 1897 in Drohobycz, Austria-Hungary (now Drogobych, Ukraine). She was the daughter of a merchant, Emil Ettel, and his wife Anna Rosa Wagner. Soon after her birth, the family, whose surname had been changed to the more German-sounding Bergner, moved to Vienna. In 1911 she was enrolled at a private acting school and from 1912 to 1915 she attended the Academy for Music and the Performing Arts. She started acting in Innsbruck in 1915. By the end of that year, she had already appeared in the major role of Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. In 1916 she moved to Zürich, where she performed at the highly-regarded Stadttheater (Municipal Theatre). She also worked as an artist's model. She posed for the expressionist sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck, who apparently committed suicide in 1919 because Bergner rejected his advances. She eventually moved to Munich, and in 1921 to Berlin. On stage as Rosalind in William Shakespeare's As You Like It (a role in which she played a record 566 consecutive performances), she took Berlin by storm and won plaudits not only from theatregoers but also from such critics as Kurt Tucholsky. She made her film debut in Der Evangelimann/The Evangelist (Holger-Madsen, 1924) with Paul Hartmann. Under Max Reinhardt's direction, she reached international fame in the stage production of Saint Joan (1924) by George Bernard Shaw. She specialised in playing Hosenrollen (women in trousers with childlike or boyish traits), and captivated spectators and critics in such stage productions as Romeo and Juliet, Queen Christine, and Camille. Elfi Pracht-Jörns describes the 'Bergner Phenomenon' beautifully: "Seemingly contradictory elements created an inimitable aura, the magic she projected: she was at one and the same time both a tender, fragile child-woman and a 'femme fatale'. Behind her dreamy manner and engrossed concentration, one could detect intellect, vitality, tenderness, a strong will, humour and wit. With her androgynous appearance, nervous gestures and capacity for total selflessness, Bergner embodied a new, erotic ideal, a complex, fastidious type of female." Hungarian director Paul Czinner, who had come to Germany from Budapest via Vienna, gave Elisabeth Bergner a role in Nju - Eine unverstandene Frau/Husbands or Lovers (Paul Czinner, 1924). The film was an instant success, and Czinner became both her artistic and private partner. Their successful collaboration also included films like Der Geiger von Florenz/The Violinist of Florence (1926), Liebe/Love (1927), Doña Juana (1928), and the Arthur Schnitzler adaptation Fräulein Else/Miss Else (1929). Among her co-stars were the great film actors Emil Jannings, Conrad Veidt, and Albert Bassermann.
With the coming of sound, Elisabeth Bergner began to portray a more sentimental and delicate woman. Soon critics labelled her characters as fragile, emotional, or nervous. Bergner acted her roles in such a manner as to charm her audience in an almost hypnotic way. Czinner allowed her to play the whole gamut of emotional experiences in a series of films. The peak of her career is represented by her work in two films. In the first, Ariane (Paul Czinner, 1931), an adaptation of a novel by the French author Claude Anet, Bergner played a girl who plunges into adventure with an older, more experienced man (Rudolf Foster). The second is the drama Der träumende Mund (Paul Czinner, 1932), an adaptation of a play by Henri Bernstein. Here, Bergner played a sensitive, pure woman who cannot escape her passion for a musical virtuoso, but does not want to hurt her loving husband. This film was remade by Czinner in 1937 as Dreaming Lips, with Bergner again in the leading role. When the National Socialists came to power in 1933, Bergner, who was in England working on a new film, did not return to Berlin. Bergner and Czinner, who were both Jews, went in exile in London, where they had married in 1931. She particularly infuriated the Hitler regime by encouraging other famous actors to leave Germany, even sending them money to help them escape. Rapidly learning English, she was soon able to resume her former stage and screen career. Her stage debut as Gemma Jones in Escape Me Never (1933) was met with great enthusiasm, and she repeated the role in New York (1935) and again for the film version, Escape Me Never (Paul Czinner, 1935), which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Another film The Rise of Catherine the Great (Paul Czinner, 1934) was banned in Germany because of the government's racial policies, reported Time magazine (26 March 1934). Her stage work in London included The Boy David (1936) by J.M. Barrie, his last play which he wrote especially for her. She repeated her stage role of Rosalind, opposite Laurence Olivier's Orlando, in As You Like It (1936), the first sound film version of William Shakespeare's play, and the first sound film of any Shakespeare play filmed in Great Britain. Bergner had previously only played the role on the German stage, and several critics found that her accent got in the way of their enjoyment of the film, which was not a success. In 1938 she became a citizen of Great Britain.
In 1940, Elisabeth Bergner and her husband emigrated to the United States. There, Bergner had to begin her career anew. While Czinner had no difficulty finding work in Hollywood, it was only at the end of 1941 that she herself received a major role in the anti-Nazi film Paris Calling (Edwin L. Marin, 1941) with Randolph Scott, which was not a success. She returned to the stage and scored a Broadway triumph in The Two Mrs. Carrolls, which was performed more than three hundred times in 1943–1944 and earned her the Delia Austrian Medal of the Drama League of New York. An incident with a fan/aspiring actress, while Bergner was performing in The Two Mrs. Carrolls on Broadway, inspired Mary Orr to write her short story The Wisdom of Eve. The story was ultimately filmed as All About Eve (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1950). In the story, Eve does not get a comeuppance - as was required by the Hollywood Production Code for the film - but gets away with everything and is last seen heading to Hollywood with a thousand-dollar-a-week contract in her pocketbook. After the war, Bergner worked in New York, for instance in the title role of John Webster's The Duchess of Malfi in 1946. In 1950 she returned to England, and in 1954 temporarily to Germany. For nearly two decades she performed intermittently in German and Austrian theatres, and in 1970 she made her debut as a director. In 1961, after a 20-year absence, she made a come-back for the cinema. The child-woman had been transformed into a charming, though occasionally unfathomable, old lady. Among her later film appearances were Die glücklichen Jahre der Thorwalds/The Happy Years of the Thorwalds (John Olden, Wolfgang Staudte, 1962) with Hansjörg Felmy, Cry of the Banshee (Gordon Hessler, 1970) starring Vincent Price, Strogoff (Eriprando Visconti, 1970), Der Fussgänger/The Pedestrian (Maximilian Schell, 1973), and Der Pfingstausflug/The Pentecost Outing (Michael Günther, 1978) with Martin Held. Elisabeth Bergner won awards at the Berlin Film festivals of 1963 and 1965. She became the first actress to win the Schiller Prize (1963) for contributions to German cultural life. She also received the Ernst Lubitsch Prize in 1979, and the Eleonora Duse Prize of the city of Venice in 1982. In the Berlin district of Steglitz, a city park was named after her. Her Husband Paul Czinner died in 1972. Her last TV performance was the lead role in Wenn ich dich nicht hätte/When I Wouldn't Have You (Konrad Sabrautzky, 1984) with Rudolph Platte. Elisabeth Bergner passed away in 1986 in her London home, aged 88. A year later her memoirs, 'Bewundert viel und viel gescholten' (Greatly admired and often cursed), were published. The book received favourable reviews.
Sources: Elfi Pracht-Jörns (Jewish Women's Archive), Karel Tabery (Filmreference.com), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Encyclopaedia Brittanica, Androom (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
On 5 February 2022, we will learn you how to wear a monocle. So check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
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German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2769. Photo: Freddy Wingardh. Asta Nielsen in the stage pantomime 'Der verlorene Sohn' (The Lost Son, 1918). Collection: Marlene Pilaete.
Danish silent film actress Asta Nielsen (1881-1972), was one of the most popular leading ladies of the 1910s and one of the first international film stars. Of her 74 films between 1910 and 1932, seventy were made in Germany where she was known simply as 'Die Asta'. Noted for her large dark eyes, mask-like face, and boyish figure, Nielsen most often portrayed strong-willed passionate women trapped by tragic consequences.
Asta Sofie Amalie Nielsen was born in the Copenhagen suburb of Vesterbro, Denmark, in 1881. She was the daughter of an often unemployed blacksmith and a washerwoman. Nielsen's family moved several times during her childhood while her father sought employment. When she was fourteen years old, her father died. Asta's stage debut came as a child in the chorus of the Kongelige Teater's production of Boito's opera 'Mephistopheles'. At the age of eighteen, Nielsen was accepted into the drama school of the Royal Danish Theatre. During her time there, she studied with the Royal Danish actor Peter Jerndorff. In 1901, twenty years old, she became pregnant and gave birth to her daughter, Jesta. Nielsen never revealed the identity of the father, and chose to raise her child alone with the help of her mother and older sister. In 1902, she graduated from drama school. For the next three years, she worked at the Dagmar Theatre, then toured in Norway and Sweden from 1905 to 1907 with De Otte and the Peter Fjelstrup companies. Returning to Denmark, she was employed at Det Ny Theater (The New Theatre) from 1907 to 1910. Although she worked steadily as a stage actress, her performances remained unremarkable. Danish historian Robert Neiiedam wrote that Nielsen's unique physical attraction, which was of great value on the screen, was limited on stage by her deep and uneven speaking voice.
In 1909, set designer and director Urban Gad encouraged Asta Nielsen to become a film actress and she starred in his Danish silent film Afgrunden/The Abyss (Urban Gad, 1910). Gary Morris observes in Bright Lights Film Journal: "this film established from the beginning key components of her legend: scandalous eroticism and a uniquely minimalist acting style." Asta plays a music teacher lured away from her stolid fiancee (Robert Dinesen) by a sexy but faithless circus cowboy (Poul Reumert). In a startling sequence of sexual intensity, she lassos her boyfriend and does a lewd dance, bumping and grinding against him. Morris: "This vulgar ‘gaucho-dance’ was what most viewers remembered, but critics of the time also applauded Asta's naturalistic acting." The film was a huge success so she was encouraged to continue. The following year Balletdanserinden/The Ballet Dancer (August Blom, 1911) proved to be another success. Nielsen and Gad soon married. A German distributor, Paul Davidson, invited Nielsen to Germany, where he was building a new studio. Eventually, this would become Europe's largest film studio - the Universum Film Union A.-G. (or Ufa). Asta signed a contract for $80,000 a year, then the highest salary for a film actress. In 1911, she moved to Berlin with Urban Gad. In a Russian popularity poll of that year, she was voted world's top female film star, behind French comedian Max Linder and ahead of her Danish compatriot Valdemar Psilander.
In the next six years, Asta Nielsen played every conceivable kind of character in both tragedies and comedies. In Die Suffragette/The Militant Suffragette (Urban Gad, 1913), she is an English female liberationist whose beliefs force her to become violent, placing a bomb in Parliament. In Zapatas Bande/Zapata's Gang (Urban Gad, 1916), she plays a highway robber. In the comedy Das Liebes-ABC/The ABCs of Love (Magnus Stifter, 1916), she pretends to be a man and takes her wimpy boyfriend out on the town in order to "bring out the man in him." Nielsen was so famous that the name Asta became a trademark for cigarettes and perfumes. In the Dutch city The Hague, a cinema was named after her. Her beauty was praised by the poet Guillaume Apollinaire as "the drunkard's vision and the lonely man's dream". One of Asta's most interesting productions was Hamlet (Sven Gade, Heinz Schall, 1921). Gary Morris: "Asta brings a subtle twist to her version not by playing a man, but by playing a woman disguised as a man, adding another level of gender complexity. Hamlet was based less on William Shakespeare than on a popular book of the time that said Hamlet was actually a girl forcibly raised as a boy in order to provide an heir to the Danish throne. At first, the effect is more puzzling than effective, but the actress's strategy becomes evident in sexually charged scenes between Asta/Hamlet and Horatio, who caress and coddle each other in what surely appeared to viewers of the time (as it does to modern audiences) as a gay tryst. Asta brilliantly imparts the gender-unstable nature of the character in these scenes with Horatio and others with Fortinbras, whose encounters with Hamlet are also clearly coded as gay. The actress's effortless creation of these subtle, sympathetic homosexual tableaux gives a tremendous vitality to this production. The fact that the film was truly hers — being the first film she made with her own production company — shows just how daring and modern she was."
Nowadays Asta Nielsen is best known for Die Freudlose Gasse/The Joyless Street (G.W. Pabst, 1925). Asta plays in this film an impoverished woman who resorts to prostitution and murder. In the original prints there were two equal-time female leads: Nielsen and a young actress from Sweden, Greta Garbo. Ruthlessly cut for American release, the film suddenly became a Garbo vehicle. Fortunately, the print has been restored recently and Asta triumphs in it as the increasingly unbalanced Marie. Nielsen continued to be a screen legend in Germany, and appeared in films like Dirnentragödie/Tragedy of the Street (Bruno Rahn, 1927) and in her only sound film Unmögliche Liebe/Crown of Thorns (Erich Waschneck, 1932). After the Nazis came to power she was rumoured to be offered her own studio by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Understanding the implications well, she left Germany for good in 1936, settling in Denmark where she returned to stage acting and became a private figure. In her later years, Asta Nielsen wrote articles on art and politics and a two-volume autobiography, 'Den tiende Muse' (The Silent Muse) in 1946. She also became an acclaimed collage artist. In 1964, Nielsen had to come to terms with the most severe blow of her life: her daughter Jesta committed suicide following the death of her husband. At 86, Asta directed her first film. Luise F. Pusch writes in FemBio: "After a film about her life did not meet with her approval, she set to work on the project herself. The result was a work of art." At 88, Asta Nielsen married her third husband, Christian Theede, an art dealer 18 years her junior and the great love of her life. The two enjoyed their travels together so much that they decided to leave their fortune to a foundation to fund trips for the elderly. In 1972, Asta Nielsen died in Copenhagen after a leg fracture. She was 90.
NB according to Danish Nielsen expert Ib Monty, in 1915, during a trip to South America, Nielsen met Freddy Wingårdh, Swedish fleet lieutenant and son of a shipbuilder. They soon fell in love. In the same year Nielsen separated from Urban Gad and in 1918 they officially divorced. Nielsen married Wingardh in 1919, but divorced him again in 1923. Apparently, during WWI, Wingardh made several photos of Nielsen, which were used for postcards issued by the German Photochemie company in Berlin. Wingårdh would also act in one of Nielsen's films: Das Eskimobaby ( Walter Schmidthässler, 1918). Together with Wingårdh, Nielsen founded the company Art-Film , with which she would produce three films: Hamlet, Fräulein Julie, and Der Absturz. In the latter film played with Russian actor Grigori Chmara, who became her film partner for some seven films, and from 1923 also her partner in private life.
Sources: Gary Morris (Bright Lights Film Journal), Luise F. Pusch (FemBio), Jim Beaver (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
On 5 February 2022, we will learn you how to wear a monocle. So check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
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French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 528. Photo: Paramount.
Louis-Jacques Boucot aka Boucot (1882-1949) was a French stage and screen actor, famous for his comic characters of Pénard and Babylas.
Just like the more famous Dranem, Boucot was a comical actor known for his vivacity and grimaces who knew a career from music-hall to cinema. Boucot started acting at Pathé Frères in 1910, first in Une petite femme bien douce (Georges Denola, 1910), scripted and performed by Mistinguett. By 1911 he had his own comedies such as Ami trop entreprenant (1911) and La dame de compagnie (1911), while in the same year he also developed the popular comic character of Babylas in various shorts directed by Alfred Machin in 1911-1912. Sometimes, Machin's pet panther Mimir acted in these films too, such as Babylas vient d'hériter d'une panthère (1911). In 1912 Boucot also developed another character, Pénard, with whom he made even more short comedies (16 films in 1912-13), all for Pathé. During the First World War Boucot was only visible in one Babylas comedy, Babylas marraine (1917). After the war, he acted in only one film in the 1920s, La première idylle de Boucot (Robert Saidreau, 1920). He only returned to the screen when the sound film had set in and would act in 14 films between 1930 and 1938, such as the drama Une femme a menti (Charles de Rochefort, 1930), the musical comedy Arthur (Léonce Perret, 1931) with Boucot in the lead, Le costaud des PTT (Jean Bertin, 1931) in which he sang several songs, La bonne aventure (Henri Diamant-Berger, 1932) with again Boucot in the lead, Brevet 95-75 (Pierre Miquel, 1934), and Le puritain (Jeff Musso, 1938).
Les Films Osso was a French production and distribution company, founded in 1930 by the Jewish entrepreneur Adolphe Osso (1894-1961), who after having worked in the US at Paramount and Pathé Exchange, had been manager of the French branch of Paramount until 1930. Les Films Osso was mainly active in the decade of the 1930s, even if Adolphe Osso produced various postwar films. Especially in the years, 1931-1932 Osso produced between 7 and 12 films per year. After the war that was only about 1 film per year.
Sources: Wikipedia (French), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
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German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 3708/1, 1928-1929. Photo: Ufa.
Julius Falkenstein (1879-1933) was a bald, often monocle-wearing German character actor. He was known for such films as Zopf und Schwert - Eine tolle Prinzessin (1926), Der Meister von Nürnberg (1927) and Ich und die Kaiserin (1933).
Julius Falkenstein was born in 1879 in Berlin, Germany. He was on stage from 1906 at the Residenztheater in Berlin. He was prolific in silent films from 1914, essaying diverse eccentric characters. He had his first film appearance in 1914 in the films Die geheimnisvolle Villa and Eine Nacht im Mädchenpensionat. He did his best work for the famous directors Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau and Ernst Lubitsch. Julius Falkenstein belonged to the most popular film comedians of the German silent cinema.
The transition to the sound film didn't cause him any trouble. In the 1930s he made more films than he did in the 1920s. In the last four years of his life, he played in almost twenty films a year. Falkenstein was Jewish but he secured a special permit to continue making films following the Nazi rise to power in 1933. IMDb quotes Falkenstein: "It is my wish to play good tragic-comical roles under good directors - roles where the audience has to laugh and to cry at the same time". Julius Falkenstein died of meningitis in 1933 in Berlin, Germany. He was married to Helene Julie Zillinger.
Sources: IMDb and Wikipedia.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
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