Small German collectors card in the 'Film Stars der Welt ' series by Greiling-Sammelbilder, series E, no. 153. Photo: Hamann-Meyerpress.
Swedish actress Signe Hasso (1915-2002) was only 12 when she started to work as a child extra at The Royal Dramatic Theater and was at 16 one of the youngest students to study drama there. She quickly got leading roles in films and received excellent reviews. In 1940 she went to Hollywood and signed a contract with RKO, touted as the "next Garbo". Despite her talent, it didn't lead to any work and she ventured off to New York and the theatre. She signed a contract with MGM and made a dozen films, including Fred Zinnemann's The Seventh Cross (1944), The House on 92nd Street (Henry Hathaway, 1945), and George Cukor's A Double Life (1947). She made a humorous splash in Ernst Lubitsch's comedy Heaven Can Wait (1943) as a lusty French maid. However, she longed to go back to the theatre and worked on Broadway and the West End.
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Small German collectors card in the 'Film Stars der Welt ' series by Greiling-Sammelbilder, series E, no. 150. Photo: Monogram.
Blonde and beautiful Irish actress Peggy Cummins (1925-2017) was unforgettable as the trigger-happy femme fatale who robs banks with her lover in the Film Noir classic Gun Crazy (1949).
Peggy Cummins was born Augusta Margaret Diane Fuller in Prestatyn, Wales in 1925. Her Irish parents happened to be in Wales at the time of her birth and a storm kept them from returning to their home in Dublin. Peggy lived most of her early life in Dublin where she was educated and later in London. Her mother was the actress Margaret Cummins who played the small but effective role of Anna the maid in Smart Woman (1948) and played Emily in the Margaret Ferguson film The Sign of the Ram. In 1938 actor Peter Brock noticed Peggy Cummins at a Dublin tram stop and introduced her to Dublin's Gate Theatre Company. She then appeared on the London stage in the title role of Alice in Wonderland and in the title role of Junior Miss at age 12 at the Saville Theatre. Cummins made her film debut at 13 in the British drama Dr. O'Dowd (Herbert Mason, 1940). The film was received positively by critics, and especially Peggy got good reviews. Her first major film was English Without Tears/Her Man Gilbey (Harold French, 1944) with Michael Wilding and Lilli Palmer. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “ a gentle satire of the temporary relaxation of class barriers in wartime England.’ According to Erickson, as a precocious teenager she ‘stole’ Welcome, Mr. Washington (Leslie Hiscott, 1944), a sometimes amusing, sometimes poignant dramatization of what happened when American troops ‘invaded’ England during WW II.
Amidst a shower of publicity, Peggy Cummins was brought to Hollywood in 1945. Darryl F. Zanuck, head of 20th Century-Fox, wanted her to play Amber in Kathleen Winsor's Forever Amber (Otto Preminger, 1947). However, she was soon replaced by Linda Darnell because she was "too young." As compensation, she went on to make six films in Hollywood. In Hollywood, Cummins had several suitors. She briefly dated both Howard Hughes, and the future American president John F. Kennedy. Meanwhile, she starred with Victor Mature in the Film Noir Moss Rose (Gregory Ratoff, 1947), and with Rex Harrison in the thriller Escape (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1948). The highlight was her part as a psychopathic Bonnie Parker-type criminal in Gun Crazy/Deadly Is the Female (1949) directed by B-movie specialist Joseph H. Lewis. The script about a couple of star-crossed lovers (Cummins and John Dall) shooting their way across the modern west was co-written by MacKinlay Kantor and the blacklisted Dalton Trumbo, who was ‘fronted’ by his friend Millard Kaufman. The stylish and gritty Gun Crazy was made for a measly $400,000 in 30 days. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: “The definitive Joseph H. Lewis-directed melodrama, Gun Crazy is the "Bonnie and Clyde" story retooled for the disillusioned postwar generation. John Dall plays a timorous, emotionally disturbed World War II veteran who has had a lifelong fixation with guns. He meets a kindred spirit in carnival sharpshooter Peggy Cummins, who is equally disturbed - but a lot smarter, and hence a lot more dangerous. Beyond their physical attraction to one another, both Dall and Cummins are obsessed with firearms. They embark on a crime spree, with Cummins as the brains and Dall as the trigger man. As sociopathic a duo as are likely to be found in a 1940s film, Dall and Cummins are also perversely fascinating. As they dance their last dance before dying in a hail of police bullets, the audience is half hoping that somehow they'll escape the Inevitable.”
During a brief stay in Italy in 1948, she filmed That Dangerous Age/If This Be Sin (Gregory Ratoff, 1949) with Myrna Loy and Roger Livesey. She returned to London in 1950 to marry and work in British films. In 1952 she starred in the comedy Who Goes There! (Anthony Kimmins, 1952) with Nigel Patrick, and a year later she appeared in the Ealing comedy Meet Mr. Lucifer (Anthony Pelissier, 1953) with Stanley Holloway. She later starred in the horror film Night of the Demon/Curse of the Demon (Jacques Tourneur, 1957) with Dana Andrews as an American psychologist investigating a satanic cult. Patrick Legare at AllMovie: “a frightening, fast-paced, and unrelenting chiller that only gets better with passing years and repeated viewings. Directed by Jacques Tourneur from the M.R. James story Casting the Runes, Curse stars Dana Andrews as a psychologist out to disprove the black magic of co-star Niall MacGinnis. Peggy Cummings also stars as the daughter of a scientist killed by the title creature during the shocking opening. Tourneur was a master at scaring an audience by the power of suggestion, and Curse accomplished this with one exception: the director didn't care for the studio's decision to show the demon in the beginning.” In the thriller Hell Drivers (Cy Endfield, 1957), her co-stars were Stanley Baker, Patrick McGoohan and Herbert Lom. Cummins's last film was In the Doghouse (Darcy Conyers, 1961) alongside Leslie Phillips. After her film career had ended, she lived in retirement in Hampshire, England. During the 1970s Cummins was very active in a national charity, Stars Organisation for Spastics, raising money and chairing the management committee of a holiday centre for children with disabilities in Sussex. Peggy Cummins was married to London businessman Derek Dunnett from 1950 until his death in 2000. Peggy Cummins passed away in 2017 in London at the age of 92.
Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Patrick Legare (AllMovie), Michael Adams (Movieline), Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Tags: Peggy Cummins Irish British Actress European Film Star Hollywood Movie Star Cinema Film Cine Kino Picture Screen Movie Movies Filmster Star Vintage Collectors Card Cartolina Carte Tarjet Sammelkarte Verzamelkaart Film Stars der Welt Greiling-Sammelbilder Greiling Monogram Peggy Cummins
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Small German collectors card in the 'Film Stars der Welt ' series by Greiling-Sammelbilder, series E, no. 104. Photo: Deutsche Commerz. Leonora Ruffa and Gino Leurini in La regina di Saba/The Queen of Sheba (Pietro Francisci, 1952).
Italian film actress Leonora Ruffo (1935-2007) was active in peplum and adventure films. An exception is her role as the sensible Sandra Rubini in Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni (1954). Ruffo also starred in a number of 'Fotoromanzi'. She retired from acting in the late 1960s.
Italian film, stage and television actor Gino Leurini (1934-2014) made his film debut in the drama Legge di sangue (Luigi Capuano, 1947). One year later, he got the role of Garrone in Vittorio De Sica and Duilio Coletti's Cuore/Heart and Soul (1948). A critical and commercial success was Léonide Moguy's Domani è troppo tardi/Tomorrow Is Too Late (1949), in which Leurini played the young student Franco opposite Pier Angeli. After this success followed some major roles in adventure films and melodramas.
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Tags: Leonora Ruffa Leonora Ruffa Italian Actress Actrice Gino Leurini Gino Leurini Actor Attore Acteur European Film Star Film Cine Kino Cinema Movie Movies Picture Screen Filmster Star Vintage Collectors Card Cartolina Carte Tarjet Sammelkarte Verzamelkaart Film Stars der Welt Greiling-Sammelbilder Greiling Deutsche Commerz La regina di Saba The Queen of Sheba 1952 Antiquity
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Small German collectors card in the 'Film Stars der Welt ' series by Greiling-Sammelbilder, series E, no. 67. Photo: Unionfilm. Max Mairich in O du lieber Fridolin/O you dear Fridolin (Peter Hamel, 1952).
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Tags: Max Mairich Max Mairich German Actor Acteur Darsteller Schauspieler European Film Star Film Cine Kino Cinema Movie Movies Picture Screen Filmster Star Vintage Collectors Card Cartolina Carte Tarjet Sammelkarte Verzamelkaart Film Stars der Welt Greiling-Sammelbilder Greiling Unionfilm O du lieber Fridolin 1952
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Small German collectors card in the 'Film Stars der Welt ' series by Greiling-Sammelbilder, series E, no. 155. Photo: Columbia.
Tall, dark, Swedish-American actress Viveca Lindfors (1920-1995) had a film and stage career in Sweden and Hollywood which spanned more than half a century. Though as talented and beautiful as her compatriots Greta Garbo and Ingrid Bergman, she never achieved their superstar status.
Elsa Viveca Torstensdotter Lindfors was born in Uppsala, Sweden in 1920. Her father, Torsten, was a publisher of art books; her mother, Karen, a painter. Viveca trained at the Royal Dramatic Theatre School, Stockholm, for three years. While still a student she began her career on the Swedish stage, and in 1940 she started to make films. She was featured in such films as The Snurriga Familjen/Spinning Family (Ivar Johansson, 1940), Paradis/In Paradise (Per Lindberg, 1941), Anna Lans/The Sin of Anna Lans (Rune Carlsten, 1943), Appassionata (Olof Molander, 1944), and Svarta rosor/Black Roses (Rune Carlsten, 1945). She also appeared in many plays in Sweden and was considered that country's leading film attraction.
Viveca Lindfors was brought to Hollywood in 1946 by Warner Brothers. Her auburn hair and elegant features led more than one observer to proclaim her an actress of Garboesque beauty. Lindfors played Queen Margaret opposite Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Don Juan (Vincent Sherman, 1948) and went on to co-star with Ronald Reagan in Night Unto Night (Don Siegel, 1949), with Charlton Heston in the Film Noir Dark City (William Dieterle, 1950), and opposite Ralph Meeker in Die Vier im Jeep/Four in a Jeep (Leopold Lindtberg, Elizabeth Montagu, 1951). She became a naturalised U.S. citizen around 1951. Her 1955 Broadway debut in the title role of 'Anastasia', a drama about a woman claiming to be the missing daughter of Czar Nicholas 2d, won her immediate acclaim from critics and an award from the Drama League. Other memorable stage roles include 'Miss Julie' (1955), 'Brecht on Brecht' (1961), and 'I Am Woman' (1973), a one-woman show. Later she appeared with her son Kristoffer Tabori in 'My Mother, My Son'. She also appeared on television including the series Life Goes On (1989) for which she won an Emmy.
Viveca Lindfors won her first Best Actress Award from the Berlin Film Festival in 1951 for Die Vier im Jeep/Four in a Jeep). Her second Berlin Film Festival Best Actress Award was for her role in No Exit (Tad Danielewski, 1962), an adaptation of Jean Paul Sartre’s short drama 'Huis Clos'. She also won the Special Award at the Venice Film Festival for Weddings and Babies (Morris Engel, 1959). Unlike many actresses for whom the aging process marks the death of their careers, Lindfors grew gracefully into her latter years, gaining a dignified beauty and an even more commanding presence in such films as The Way We Were (Sydney Pollack, 1973), Welcome to L.A. (Alan Rudolph, 1976), Tabu/Taboo (Vilgot Sjöman, 1977), A Wedding (Robert Altman, 1978), Girlfriends (Claudia Weill, 1978) and Creepshow (George A. Romero, 1982). In 1987, she made her debut as a screenwriter and director with 'Unfinished Business', a highly personal, autobiographical drama. In 1990 she appeared in the British-Dutch-Spanish co-production Luba (Alejandro Agresti, 1990). Her final film was Henry Jaglom's Last Summer in the Hamptons (1995), a Chekhovian-inspired comedy/drama in which she played a grande dame actress spending time with her family.
In her personal life, Viveca Lindfors was renowned for her numerous romantic liaisons - this in a decade when such behaviour was considered shocking. She was married four times; to Harry Hasso, a Swedish cinematographer; Folke Rogard, a Swedish attorney; Don Siegel, the director; and George Tabori, a Hungarian writer, producer and director. She had three children: two sons (John Tabori with Hasso, and the actor Kristoffer Tabori, with Siegel) and a daughter (Lena Tabori, with Rogard). In 1990, she was attacked by a man who slashed her face with a razor as she walked in Greenwich Village. Her wounds required 28 stitches. She returned to Sweden in August 1995 to tour with the stage play 'In Search of Strindberg'. She died there of complications from rheumatoid arthritis at the age of 74, and was buried in her birthtown Uppsala, in Uppsala län. In New York, a service was held at the Actors Studio where Gene Frankel spoke to an audience about his respect and affection for this talented and unique poetic performer.
Sources: David Stout (The New York Times), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Hollywood.com, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
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