East German postcard by Progress Film-Verleih, Berlin, no. 7/75. Jane Fonda in A Doll's House (Joseph Losey, 1973).

American actress Jane Fonda (1937) is a two-time Academy Award winner for the crime thriller Klute (1971) and the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Roger Vadim's psychedelic Science Fiction spoof Barbarella (1968) made her one of the icons of the European cinema of the 1960s. In 2014, she received the American Film Institute AFI Life Achievement Award.

Jane Fonda was born Lady Jayne Seymour Fonda in New York in 1937. She was the daughter of actor Henry Fonda and the Canadian-born socialite Frances Ford Brokaw, née Seymour. She has a brother, actor Peter Fonda, and a maternal half-sister, Frances. Her mother committed suicide when Jane was 12. The suicide was kept from her as a teenager, and she was told that her mother had died of heart failure. Fonda learned the truth months later while leafing through a movie magazine in art class at Vassar. Although she initially showed little inclination to follow her father's trade, she was prompted by director Joshua Logan to appear with her father in the 1954 Omaha Community Theatre production of The Country Girl. Before starting her acting career, Fonda was a fashion model, gracing the cover of Vogue twice. In 1958, she met Lee Strasberg and she went to study acting in earnest at the Actors Studio. In 1960, she made her Broadway debut in the play There Was a Little Girl, for which she received the first of two Tony Award nominations. Later the same year, she made her screen debut in the romantic comedy Tall Story (Joshua Logan, 1960), in which she recreated one of her Broadway roles as a college cheerleader pursuing a basketball star, played by Anthony Perkins. In Walk on the Wild Side (Edward Dmytryk, 1962), she played a prostitute and earned a Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer. She rose to fame in such films as Period of Adjustment (George Roy Hill, 1962), Sunday in New York (Peter Tewksbury, 1963), Cat Ballou (Elliot Silverstein, 1965) opposite Lee Marvin, and Barefoot in the Park (Gene Saks, 1967), co-starring Robert Redford. Fonda also worked in France. She appeared opposite Alain Delon in the delightful sexy thriller Les félins/Joy House (René Clément, 1964). That same year, she was among the all-star cast of the anthology film La Ronde/Circle of Love (Roger Vadim, 1964), based on the classic Austrian novel Der Reigen by Arthur Schnitzler. Fonda astonished everyone (none as much as her father) by becoming one of the first major American actresses to appear nude in a foreign film. Director Roger Vadim became her first husband in 1965. He featured her as a sex goddess in his next films, La curée/Tears of Rapture (Roger Vadim, 1966) with Michel Piccoli, and a segment of the anthology film Histoires extraordinaires/Spirits of the Dead (Federico Fellini, Louis Malle, Roger Vadim, 1968), an adaptation of three horror stories by Edgar Allan Poe. In Vadim's segment, Metzgernstein, Fonda played a decadent contessa who falls in love with her pure cousin (the role of her brother Peter Fonda). In 1968, Jane featured in the title role in Vadim's psychedelic SF spoof Barbarella, establishing her status as a sex symbol. Despite the striptease-in-vacuum beginning and the kinky costumes, Barbarella is now a rather innocent and campy film. Brian J. Dillard at AllMovie: "Although it often pops up on 'Worst Movies Ever' lists, it's something of a treat if one approaches it with the right attitude. From the eye-popping plasticity of the production design to the gentle grooviness of the Bob Crewe Generation's campy lounge soundtrack, Barbarella is a defiantly trivial film. But Fonda's studied vacuity, Anita Pallenberg's kinky glamour, and John Phillip Law's bronzed pecs and hippie truisms keep things sexy, sweet, and funny. Fonda has spent more than three decades trying to live down the zero-gee peep show that opens the film, but besides a few bare breasts and countless double entendres, nothing here crosses the line between erotic comedy and pornography."A turning point in her career was the American social drama They Shoot Horses, Don't They (Sydney Pollack, 1969). She played one of the contenders in a desperate dance marathon in 1932, during the Great Depression. Fonda herself considers They Shoot Horses, Don't They? as one of her best films. She went on to win the Best Actress Oscar for the crime thriller Klute (Alan J. Pakula, 1971). In France, Fonda next starred as a reporter alongside Yves Montand in Tout Va Bien (Jean-Luc Godard, Jean-Pierre Gorin, 1972). A year later, she divorced from Vadim.

Jane Fonda is a seven-time Academy Award nominee. She won her second Best Actress Oscar for the Vietnam drama Coming Home (1978). Her other nominations were for her portrayal of the playwright Lillian Hellman in Julia (Fred Zinnemann, 1977), The China Syndrome (James Bridges, 1979) opposite Michael Douglas, On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981) with Katherine Hepburn and her father Henry Fonda, and The Morning After (Sidney Lumet, 1986) with Jeff Bridges. In 1982, Jane Fonda released her first exercise video, Jane Fonda's Workout, which became the highest-selling video of the time. It would be the first of the 22 workout videos she released over the next 13 years, selling over 17 million copies. Divorced from her second husband, the politician Tom Hayden in 1990, she married media mogul Ted Turner in 1991 and retired from acting. Divorced from Turner in 2001, she returned to acting with her first film in 15 years with the comedy Monster in Law (Robert Luketic, 2005) opposite Jennifer Lopez. Subsequent films have included Georgia Rule (Garry Marshall, 2007) with Lindsay Lohan, the French drama Et si on vivait tous ensemble?/All Together (Stéphane Robelin, 2011), The Butler (Lee Daniels, 2013) as First Lady Nancy Reagan, and This Is Where I Leave You (Shawn Levy, 2014). In 2009, she returned to Broadway after a 45-year absence, in the play '33 Variations', which earned her a Tony Award nomination, while her recurring role in the HBO drama series The Newsroom (2012-2014), earned her two Emmy Award nominations. She also released another five exercise videos between 2010 and 2012. Jane Fonda has been an activist for many political causes. Her counterculture-era opposition to the Vietnam War included her being photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery on a 1972 visit to Hanoi, which was very controversial. She has also protested the Iraq War and violence against women and describes herself as a feminist. In 2005, she, Robin Morgan and Gloria Steinem co-founded the Women's Media Center, an organization that works to amplify the voices of women in the media through advocacy, media and leadership training, and the creation of original content. Fonda currently serves on the board of the organisation. Jane Fonda published the autobiography My Life So Far in 2005. In 2011, she published a second memoir, Prime Time. She has two children, daughter Vanessa Vadim (1968) with Roger Vadim, and Troy O'Donovan Hayden (aka Troy Garity) (1973) with Tom Hayden. In the past decade, Jane Fonda appeared in several new films and series. A highlight was Youth (2015), directed by Paolo Sorrentino and starring Michael Caine and Harvey Keitel.

Sources: Brian J. Dillard (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Laurence Dang (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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French postcard by La Roue Tourne, Paris. Photo: Alan Bates in The Go-Between (Joseph Losey, 1971).

British actor Alan Bates (1934-2003) forged his name on the West End stage in John Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger' in 1956. He also appeared in 50 films and 33 television productions, and for each role, he created a three-dimensional, unique person. With few exceptions, the talented and versatile Bates performed in premium works, guided by a pure love of acting rather than by box office.

Alan Arthur Bates was born in Allestree, England in 1934. He was the eldest of three sons of Florence Mary (née Wheatcroft), a homemaker and a pianist, and Harold Arthur Bates, an insurance broker and a cellist. Both of his parents were amateur musicians and encouraged him to pursue music, but at age 11, Alan decided to be an actor. After grammar school in Derbyshire, he earned a scholarship to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. Following two years in the Royal Air Force, he made his professional theatre debut with the Midland Theater Company in central England in 1955. He joined the new English Stage Company at the Royal Court Theatre, and at 22, he made his West End debut in 'The Mulberry Bush' (1956), which was also the company's first production. In the same year, Bates appeared in John Osborne's 'Look Back in Anger', a play that gave a name to a generation of postwar ‘angry young men’. Along with Albert Finney, Richard Harris, Peter O'Toole and Tom Courtenay, Bates was one of the pioneers in the ‘kitchen sink’ drama revolution that overtook the London theatre in the 1950s: angry young men - writers, actors, directors and their creations - rebelling against postwar England's middle-class values. 'Look Back in Anger' made Bates a star and launched a lifetime of his performing in works written by great modern playwrights - Harold Pinter, Simon Gray, Storey, Bennett, Peter Shaffer and Tom Stoppard as well as such classic playwrights as Anton Chekhov, Henrik Ibsen, August Strindberg and William Shakespeare. His film debut was playing one of Laurence Olivier’s sons in The Entertainer (Tony Richardson, 1960). Bates played his first lead two years later in A Kind of Loving (John Schlesinger, 1962), in which he and June Ritchie played a couple trapped in their working-class life in Manchester. He starred alongside Anthony Quinn as the young English writer, Basil, in the film for which he will always be remembered, Alexis Zorbas/Zorba the Greek (Michael Cacoyannis, 1964). Another popular success was the 'Swinging London' comedy-drama Georgy Girl (1966) with Lynn Redgrave. Throughout the 1960s he starred in several major films including as a fugitive in Whistle Down the Wind (Bryan Forbes, 1961), as a suburban social climber who doesn't stop at murder to secure Nothing But the Best (Clive Donner, 1964), in Le roi de coeur/King of Hearts (Phillipe de Broca, 1966), and in Far From the Madding Crowd (John Schlesinger, 1967). His role opposite Dirk Bogarde in The Fixer (John Frankenheimer, 1968), based on a novel by Bernard Malamud, earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In 1969, he became the first actor to do frontal nudity in a major studio film during an infamous wrestling session with Oliver Reed in Women in Love (Ken Russell, 1969).

Alan Bates began the subsequent decade on a very positive note, cast alongside Julie Christie as illicit lovers in The Go-Between (Joseph Losey, 1971). He was handpicked by director John Schlesinger to star in the film Sunday Bloody Sunday (1971) in the role of Dr. Daniel Hirsh. Bates was held up from filming The Go-Between and had also become a father around that time, and so he had to pass on the project. The part then went first to Ian Bannen, who balked at kissing and simulating sex with another man, and then to Peter Finch, who earned an Academy Award nomination for the role. His versatility was again shown as the lead in Simon Gray's 'Butley,' a stage comedy about the emotional and psychic disintegration of an English literature professor. Bates originated the character on a London stage in 1971, did a reprise on Broadway in 1972, winning his first Tony Award, and played it again in a 1973 film. On stage, Bates had a particular association with the plays of Gray, also appearing in 'Otherwise Engaged', 'Stage Struck, Melon, Life Support and Simply Disconnected. In Otherwise Engaged, Bates' co-star was Ian Charleson, who became a good friend, and Bates later contributed a chapter to the 1990 book, 'For Ian Charleson: A Tribute'.

Alan Bates would never attain the stardom of far lesser performers because of his preference for challenging and interesting work and avoidance of being type-cast. He continued to work in film and television throughout the 1970s and 1980s and starred in such international films as the dreamy fantasy The Shout (1978), as an intriguing but self-absorbed artist, Jill Clayburgh's bearded and ultimately spurned lover in An Unmarried Woman (1978, Paul Mazursky), as Bette Midler's ruthless business manager The Rose (1979, Mark Rydell), Nijinsky (1980), Britannia Hospital (1984, Lindsay Anderson) and as Claudius in Hamlet (1990, Franco Zeffirelli), which starred Mel Gibson. Bryan McFarlane writes in Encyclopedia of British Cinema that „Bates went from strength to strength, even in films given the brush-off by the public: for example, the transferred stage successes, Butley (1973, Harold Pinter) and In Celebration (1974, Lindsay Anderson), or the undervalued Return of the Soldier (1982, Alan Bridges).“ On television, his parts ranged from classic roles such as 1978's The Mayor of Casterbridge (his favourite role he said), A Voyage Around My Father (1982), An Englishman Abroad (1983, John Schlesinger) witty and painful as Guy Burgess and Pack of Lies (1987) in which he played a Russian spy. He continued working in film and television in the 1990s, though most of his roles in this era were low-key.

In 2001, Alan Bates joined an all-star cast in Robert Altman's critically acclaimed period drama and murder mystery Gosford Park, in which he played the butler Jennings bordering on breakdown; a fascist who plots to bomb a Super Bowl game in the thriller The Sum of All Fears (2002); and a mad scientist who foretells disaster in The Mothman Prophecies (2002).T he rumpled charm of his youth had weathered into a softer but still attractive (and still rumpled) maturity. He later played Antonius Agrippa in the 2004 TV film Spartacus but died before it debuted. The film was dedicated to his memory and that of writer Howard Fast, who wrote the original novel that inspired the film Spartacus by Stanley Kubrick. Bates was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1996 and was knighted in 2003. He was an Associate Member of RADA and was a patron of The Actors Centre, Covent Garden, London from 1994 until his death in 2003. He won several theatre awards, including twice the Tony for Best Actor: in 1972 for Butley and in 2002 for Fortune's Fool,' Ivan Turgenev's examination of 19th-century country life in Russia. Bates was married to actress and model Victoria Ward from 1970 until her death from a wasting disease in 1992. They had twin sons born in November 1970, the actors Benedick Bates and Tristan Bates. Tristan died following an asthma attack in 1990. In the later years of his life, Bates' companion was his lifelong friend, actress Joanna Pettet, his co-star in the 1964 Broadway play 'Poor Richard'. They divided their time between New York and London. Bates had many relationships with men, including those with actors Nickolas Grace and Peter Wyngarde, and Olympic skater John Curry. These were detailed in his posthumous biography, 'Otherwise Engaged' by Donald Spoto. Alan Bates died of pancreatic cancer in London in 2003. Sir Alan and his family set up the Tristan Bates Theatre at the Actors' Centre in Covent Garden, in memory of his son, Tristan, who died at the age of 19. Tristan's twin brother, Benedick, is a vice director.

Sources: Brian McFarlane (Encyclopedia of British Cinema), Robert D. McFadden (The New York Times), Karen Rappaport (IMDb), David Claydon (IMDb), BritMovie, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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Dutch collectors card in the series 'Filmsterren: een Portret' by Edito-Service, 1992. Photo: Collection Christophe L. Monica Vitti in Modesty Blaise (Jospeh Losey, 1966).

Today, 2 February 2022, legendary Italian actress Monica Vitti passed away in Rome, Italy. She was most widely noted in the early 1960s for her starring roles in four classic avant-garde films directed by Michelangelo Antonioni. Later the glamorous blonde became the queen of the 'Commedia all’Italiana', a film genre previously restricted to men. Monica Vitti was 90.

Monica Vitti was born Maria Luisa Ceciarelli in Rome, in 1931. She studied at Pittman's College, where she played as a teen in a charity performance of Dario Niccodemi's La nemica (The Enemy). She then trained as an actor at the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica (Rome's National Academy of Dramatic Arts) where she graduated in 1953. She toured Germany with an Italian acting troupe and her first stage appearance in Rome was for a production of Niccolò Machiavelli's La Mandragola (The Mandragola). Vitti's film debut was an uncredited bit part in the comedy Ridere! Ridere! Ridere!/Laugh! Laugh! Laugh! (Edoardo Anton, 1954) with Tino Scotti and Ugo Tognazzi. Her first widely noted performance was at the age of 26 in the comedy Le dritte/Smart Girls (Mario Amendola, 1958) starring Franco Fabrizi. A turning point in her career came in 1957 when she joined Michelangelo Antonioni's Teatro Nuovo di Milano. Three years later she played a leading role in his internationally praised and award winning film L'avventura/The Adventure (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1960). In L’avventura a group of rich Italians head out on a yachting trip to a deserted volcanic island in the Mediterranean. When they are about to leave the island, they find Anna (Lea Massari), the main character up to this point, has gone missing. Sandro, Anna's boyfriend (Gabriele Ferzetti), and Claudia (Monica Vitti), Anna's friend, try without success to find her. While looking for Anna, Claudia and Sandro develop an attraction for each other. They proceed to become lovers, and all but forget about the missing Anna. Vitti as the detached and cool Claudia gave a stunning screen presence. She also helped Antonioni raise money for the production and stuck with him through daunting location shooting. L'avventura made Vitti an international star and one of Italy's most famous actresses of the 20th century. Her image later even appeared on an Italian postage stamp commemorating the film.

Monica Vitti received more critical praise for her starring roles in the next three Antonioni films La notte/The Night (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1961), L'eclisse/The Eclipse (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1962) and Il deserto rosso/The Red Desert (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1964), which are often cited with L'avventura as a series. In the four films, Antonioni explores modernist consciousness in the 1960s. In her portrayal of deeply troubled middle-class women, unable to establish satisfying relationships and incapable of connecting with their environment, the beautiful Vitti came to embody the modernist dilemma in all its complexity and angst. Hal Erickson at AllMovie even calls her ‘The high priestess of frosty sensuality’. In La notte she plays the daughter of a wealthy industrialist who tries to inaugurate an empty affair with a married author, played by Marcello Mastroianni. In L’eclisse she plays Vittoria, a young translator who meets the vital broker Piero (Alain Delon) during a crash in the Stock Market but the love affair is doomed because of Piero’s materialistic nature. In Il deserto rosso she was Giuliana, a housewife married to a factory manager. She is mentally ill, but hides it from her husband as best she can. She meets the engineer Zeller (Richard Harris) who takes advantage of her distress, and then she is again alone and ill. She also starred in films by other directors, such as Château en Suède/Nutty Naughty Chateau (Roger Vadim, 1963) with Jean-Claude Brialy, and the comedy Il disco volante/The Flying Saucer (Tinto Brass, 1964) with Alberto Sordi and Silvana Mangano. Vitti appeared in only two English language films. She starred in the title role of Joseph Losey's Modesty Blaise (1966), a mod James Bond spy spoof with Terence Stamp and Dirk Bogarde which had only mixed success and received harsh critical reviews. Her second English language film was An Almost Perfect Affair (Michael Ritchie, 1979) with Keith Carradine, which takes place during the Cannes Film Festival.

In the mid-1960s Monica Vitti decided to switch genre and returned to the light comedy that was clearly her forte. After a few uncertain performances, she gained enormous public recognition with La ragazza con la pistola/The Girl with a Pistol (Mario Monicelli, 1968), in which she plays the unlikely role of a Sicilian woman seeking revenge in London. She achieved ever greater success in Amore mio, aiutami/Help Me My Love (Alberto Sordi, 1969), on the theme of marital infidelity, and Scola's romantic comedy Dramma della gelosia/The Pizza Triangle (Ettore Scola, 1970) about a working-class love triangle with Marcello Mastroianni and Giancarlo Giannini. Throughout the 1970s Monica Vitti appeared mostly in Italian films which did not have international distribution. There were a few exceptions. She starred in Buñuel's innovative Le Fantôme de la liberté/The Phantom of Liberty (Luis Buñuel, 1974) and the political thriller La raison d'état/State Reasons (André Cayatte, 1978) with Jean Yanne. In 1974 she won the David di Donatello award for Best Actress in Polvere di stelle/Stardust (Alberto Sordi, 1973), an emotional recreation of the world of variety. She won this Italian award five times. In 1980 after 15 years she reunited with Antonioni for his Il mistero di Oberwald/The Mystery of Oberwald (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1980) which was one of the first major international feature films to be shot on video. Based on a screenplay by Jean Cocteau it tells the story of fugitive Sebastian (Franco Branciaroli), who breaks into the castle at Oberwald to kill the Queen (Monica Vitti), but faints before doing so. He is the spitting image of the King who was assassinated on his wedding day. The Queen discovers that Sebastian once wrote a subversive poem that she liked, even though it was attacking her. The Queen dares Sebastian to kill her, otherwise, she vows to kill him. During the 1980s Monica Vitti did much less screen work. By 1986 she had returned to the theatre as an actress and teacher. In 1989, Vitti wrote, directed, and starred in Scandalo Segreto/Secret Scandal (1989) with Elliot Gould. The film was well-received critically but met with limited box-office success. She then retired from the cinema. During the 1990s she did television work, both acting and directing. In 1993 she was awarded the Festival Tribute at the Créteil International Women's Film Festival in France. In 1995 Monica Vitti married photographer Roberto Russo, with whom she had lived since 1975. Alzheimer's disease has removed her from the public gaze for the last 15 years.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), MonicaVitti.com, Rodney Farnsworth (Film Reference), Lenin Imports, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Starfoto, no. 1467. Photo: Hardy Krüger in the German-British film Alles spricht gegen van Rooyen/Blind Date (Joseph Losey, 1959).

German actor and writer Hardy Krüger (1928) passed away on 19 January 2022. The blond heartthrob acted in numerous European films of the 1950s and 1960s and also in several classic American films. He played friendly soldiers and adventurers in numerous German, British and French films and also in some Hollywood classics. Although he often was typecasted as the Aryan Nazi, he hated wearing the brown uniform. Krüger was 93.

Franz Eberhard August Krüger was born in 1928 in Berlin. He was the son of engineer Max Krüger. From 1941 on Hardy attended the Adolf-Hitler-Schule at Burg Sonthofen, an elite Nazi boarding school. Here the blonde and handsome 15-year-old was cast for the film Junge Adler/Young Eagles (Alfred Weidenmann, 1944) starring Willy Fritsch. This propaganda film for the Wehrmacht was filmed in the huge Ufa studio in Babelsberg. After his successful performance as the apprentice Bäumchen, director Wolfgang Liebeneiner tried to persuade him to continue his film career. In March 1945 the young Krüger was drafted into the SS Division 'Nibelungen', where he was drawn into heavy fighting before being captured by US forces in Tirol. After his release, he began to write but did not publish. Instead, he started to perform in German theatres. In 1949 he made his first post-war film, the comedy Diese Nacht vergess Ich nie/I'll Never Forget That Night (Johannes Meyer, 1949), with Gustav Fröhlich and Winnie Markus. In the following years, his film career took off.

Hardy Krüger became known as a handsome young man with an effortlessly natural attitude in such films as Illusion in Moll/Illusion in a Minor Key (Rudolf Jugert, 1952) starring Hildegard Knef, the drama Solange Du da bist/As Long as You're Near Me (Harald Braun, 1953) with O.W. Fischer, and the comedy Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach/The Girl on the Roof (Otto Preminger, 1953) with Johannes Heesters. The latter was the German version of the Hollywood production The Moon is Blue (Otto Preminger, 1953) starring William Holden and Maggie McNamara. Hardy Krüger and co-star Johanna Matz also appeared uncredited as tourists at the Empire State Building sequence in the American version. The quality of some of his next films did not match his talents. And although the jungle fantasy Liane, das Mädchen aus dem Urwald/Liane, Jungle Goddess (Eduard von Borsody, 1956) with a briefly topless Marion Michael was one of the biggest German box office hits of the 1950s, he declined to star in further Liane films for 'artistic reasons'.

Hardy Krüger is fluent in English, French, and German, and found himself in demand by British, French, American, and German producers. J. Arthur Rank cast him in three British pictures practically filmed back-to-back. The first one was The One That Got Away (Roy Ward Baker, 1957), the story of the positive and unpolitical lieutenant Franz von Werra, the only German prisoner of war to successfully escape from numerous British POW camps during the Second World War and return to Germany. The second was the comedy Bachelor of Hearts (Wolf Rilla, 1958), and the third was the thriller Blind Date (Joseph Losey, 1959) with Stanley Baker and Micheline Presle. In reviews, Hardy was described as 'ruggedly handsome' and a 'blond heartthrob'. Despite anti-German sentiment still prevailing in postwar Europe, he became an international favorite. He appeared in the German Shakespeare update Der Rest ist Schweigen/The Rest Is Silence (Helmut Käutner, 1959), and in the French WW II adventure Un taxi pour Tobrouk/Taxi for Tobruk (Denys de La Patellière, 1960). A highlight was the French drama Les dimanches de Ville d'Avray/Sundays and Cybele (Serge Bourguignon, 1962). This hauntingly beautiful film about a platonic relationship between a former bomber pilot with war trauma and amnesia, and a 12-year-old orphan girl (Patricia Gozzi), was awarded the 1962 Best Foreign Film Academy Award. It paved Krüger's way to Hollywood.

In the USA, Hardy Krüger started in the African adventure Hatari! (Howard Hawks, 1962), at the side of John Wayne and Elsa Martinelli. His later films included Hollywood productions like the original version of The Flight of the Phoenix (Robert Aldrich, 1965) about the survivors of a plane crash in the middle of the Sahara desert, and the war comedy-drama The Secret of Santa Vittoria (Stanley Kramer, 1969) with Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani. In the star-studded war epic A Bridge Too Far (Richard Attenborough, 1977), he portrayed a Nazi General. Hardy Krüger related during the shooting how he hated to wear a Nazi uniform. Between takes, he wore a topcoat over his SS uniform so as "not to remind myself of my childhood in Germany during WW II." Although he often played German soldiers, his characters were mostly positive, he personified the 'good German'. Krüger also appeared in many European productions like Le Chant du monde/Song of the World (Marcel Camus, 1965) with Catherine Deneuve, the controversial box office hit La Monaca di Monza/The Nun of Monza (Eriprando Visconti, 1969) about a 17th-century Italian nun's long-repressed sexual passion, the Italian-Russian coproduction Krasnaya palatka/The Red Tent (Mikhail Kalatozov, 1969) starring Sean Connery, and the murder mystery À chacun son enfer/To Each His Hell (André Cayatte, 1977) with Annie Girardot. During that period, he made his sole appearance in a film of the New German Cinema in Peter Schamoni's comedy-western Potato Fritz/Montana Trap (Peter Schamoni, 1976). Most memorable is his role as the Prussian Captain Potzdorf in the Oscar winner Barry Lyndon (Stanley Kubrick, 1975) featuring Ryan O'Neal. His last film appearance was in the Swedish-British thriller Slagskämpen/The Inside Man (Tom Clegg, 1984) starring Dennis Hopper.

In the 1970s Hardy Krüger had taken up writing fiction and non-fiction, and he started a new career as a globe trotter for TV. In 1983, after several novels, story collections, and a children's book he published the novel Junge Unrast, an only slightly disguised autobiographic account of his life. On television, he played the role of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel in the popular American TV series War and Remembrance (Dan Curtis, 1989) starring Robert Mitchum. In 2011 appeared as the pater familias in the TV film Die Familie/The Family (Carlo Rola, 2011) with Gila von Weitershausen as his wife. Hardy Krüger married three times. His marriages with actress Renate Densow and Italian painter Francesca Marazzi ended in a divorce. He married his current wife the American Anita Park in 1978. He has three children. His daughter by Renate Densow, Christiane Krüger (born in 1945, when he was only 17), and his son by Francesca Marazzi, Hardy Jr. Krüger are both actors too. Hardy Krüger was awarded many times for his work. In 2001 he was made Officier de la Légion d’Honneur in France, and in 2009, Germany honoured him with the Großes Verdienstkreuz (Great Cross of Merit). Since then, Hardy and Anita Krüger lived in California, and in Hamburg. Krüger died at his home in Palm Springs, California, on 19 January 2022, at the age of 93.

Sources: Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Stephanie D'heil (Steffi-line - German), Tom Hernandez (IMDb), Filmportal.de, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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