West German autograph card. Photo: Lothar Winkler, Berlin-Dahlem.

Swiss actress Chariklia Baxevanos (1936) appeared in more than sixty films since 1952.

Chariklia Baxevanos was born in 1936 to Greek parents in Zurich. Her father was the operatic tenor Peter Baxevanos, who later sang at the Volksoper in Vienna, and was a theatre director in Athens. Chariklia grew up in Vienna, attending the gymnasium ‘Sacré Coeur’. Helene Thimig, Max Reinhardt's widow, convinced her parents of their daughter's talent and invited her to study acting at the Max Reinhardt Seminar in Vienna. She studied for two years at the Max-Reinhardt Seminar and graduated there with distinction in 1953. She had her first success in the same year with ‘Gigi’ at the Wiesbaden State Theatre. Her ‘Mamsell Nitouche’ at the Munich Kammerspiele was her second major stage success. Since then, several major theatres have taken on this versatile and promising talent. For eight years she played at the Theater in der Josefstadt in Vienna. Among others, she played the title role in Rattigan's ‘The Prince and the Dancer’. She was ‘Leonore’ at the Zurich Schauspielhaus, and played in Ibsen's ‘Wildente’ (the Wild Duck) and Anouilh's ‘Leocadia’. On the German stage (latterly at Berlin's Theater am Kurfürstendamm under the direction of her then-husband Christian Wölffer) she headlined as Eliza Doolittle, Anne Frank, Bernadette of Lourdes, Irma La Douce and Rosalinde in Shakespeare's 'As You Like It'.

At the age of 16, Chariklia Baxevanos made her film debut in a small role in Wir werden das Kind schon schaukeln. She played the younger sister of Mozart's wife Constanze (Gertrüd Kückelmann) in the biopic Mozart (Karl Hartl, 1955), starring Oskar Werner. In the 1950s, she was frequently seen in music and holiday films, such as Musikparade with Georg Thomalla and Peter Alexander (1956) and Ein Stück vom Himmel (1957) with Toni Sailer. She played the leading role alongside Joachim Fuchsberger in Eva kisses only directors (1957). She provided comic relief in her last outing on the big screen, the Edgar Wallace adaptation of Das Ungeheuer von London-City / The Monster of London City (Edwin Zbonek, 1964) with Hans-Jörg Felmy. Better known on television, she starred as the eponymous heroine of the short-lived drama series Wilhelmina (Thomas Engel, 1968) with Brigitte Mira and made guest appearances in several episodes of the Science Fiction series Unterwegs nach Atlantis / On the Way to Atlantis (Thomas Fantl, 1982) in addition to a memorable performance in the all-star, Francis Durbridge-inspired Mini Series Verräter / Traitor (Michael Braun, 1967). As a voice actress, she provided the German dubbing for, among others, Carole Landis, Shirley MacLaine, Madeline Kahn and Virna Lisi. 'Baxi' was married twice. Her first husband was the actor Horst Frank, remembered as one of the great European screen villains of the era. He is the father of their daughter Désirée. They divorced a year later. She then had a ten-year-long relationship with actor Harald Juhnke. They never married and parted ways in 1971, presumably as a consequence of Juhnke's problems with alcoholism. Her second husband was the stage director, writer and actor Christian Wölffer (1942-2015), co-owner, partner and part of the management team of the Berlin Theater am Kurfürstendamm. Her last film with him was the comedy Zwiebeln und Butterplätzchen / Onions and Butter Biscuits (Christian Woelffer, 1990) with Peer Schmidt and Elisabeth Volkmann.

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Munzinger (German), Wikipedia (English and German) and IMDb.

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

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German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 891. Photo: Lothar Winkler. Klaus Kinski in Winnetou - 2. Teil/Last of the Renegades (Harald Reinl, 1964).

Intense and eccentric Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) was one of the most colourful stars of European cinema. In a film career of over 40 years, the German actor appeared in more than 130 films, including numerous parts as a villain in Edgar Wallace thrillers and Spaghetti Westerns. The talented but tempestuous Kinski is probably best known for his riveting star turns in Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and other films directed by Werner Herzog.

Klaus Kinski was born Nikolaus Günther Nakszyński in Zoppot, Danzig, Germany (now Sopot, Poland), in 1926. He was the son of a German father of Polish descent, Bruno Nakszyński, a pharmacist and a failed opera singer, and a German mother, Susanne Nakszyński-Lutze, a nurse and a daughter of a local pastor. He had three older siblings: Inge, Arne and Hans-Joachim. Because of the depression, the poor family was unable to make a living in Danzig and was forced to move to Berlin in 1931. They settled in a flat in the suburb of Schöneberg. From 1936 on, Kinski attended the Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium there. During World War II, the 16-year-old enlisted in the Wehrmacht. Kinski saw no action until the winter of 1944 when his unit was transferred to the Netherlands. His obituary in Variety magazine states that there he was wounded and captured by the British on the second day of combat, but Kinski's autobiography 'Ich bin so wild nach deinem Erdbeermund' (I Am So Wild About Your Strawberry Mouth, 1975) claims he made a conscious decision to desert. However, Kinski was transferred to the Prisoner of War Camp 186 in Colchester, Great Britain. The ship transporting him to England was torpedoed by a German U-Boat but managed to arrive safely at its destination. At the POW camp, Kinski played his first theatre roles in shows staged by fellow prisoners intending to maintain morale. Following the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Kinski was finally allowed in 1946 to return to Germany, after spending a year and four months in captivity. Arriving in Berlin, Kinski learned his father had died during the war and his mother had been killed in an Allied air attack. Without having ever attended any professional training, he started out as an actor, first at a small touring company in Offenburg and already using his new name Klaus Kinski. He was hired by the renowned Schlosspark-Theater in Berlin but was fired by the manager in 1947 due to his unpredictable behaviour. Other companies followed, but his already wild and unconventional behaviour regularly got him into trouble. His first film role was a small part in Morituri (Eugen York, 1948) a drama about refugees from a concentration camp. In 1950, he stayed in a psychiatric hospital for three days; medical records from the period listed a preliminary diagnosis of schizophrenia. He only could find bit roles in films, and in 1955 Kinski twice tried to commit suicide.

Then Klaus Kinski got a supporting part in Ludwig II: Glanz und Ende eines Königs/Ludwig II (Helmut Käutner, 1955) about the frustrated and tragic King Ludwig II of Bavaria played by O.W. Fischer. More supporting parts in German films followed. In March 1956 Kinski made one single guest appearance at Vienna's Burgtheater in Goethe's Torquato Tasso. Although respected by his colleagues, and cheered by the audience, Kinski's hope to get a permanent contract was not fulfilled, as the Burgtheater's management ultimately became aware of the actor's earlier difficulties in Germany. He unsuccessfully tried to sue the company. Living jobless in Vienna, and without any prospects for his future, Kinski reinvented himself as a monologist and spoken word artist. He presented the prose and verse of François Villon, William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde among others. Thus he managed to establish himself as a well-known actor touring Austria, Germany, and Switzerland with his shows. In 1960 he returned to the cinema as a sinister character on the verge between genius and madness in the thriller Der Rächer/The Avenger (Karl Anton, 1960) based on a crime novel by British writer Edgar Wallace. In another Wallace adaptation, Die toten Augen von London/The Dead Eyes of London (Alfred Vohrer, 1961), Kinski’s psychopathic bad guy refused any personal guilt for his evil deeds and claimed to have only followed the orders given to him. During the 1960s, Kinski appeared in several Wallace Krimis, which enjoyed enormous success in Germany and are now considered cult classics. He also appeared in many other European genre films such as the Karl May Western Winnetou - 2. Teil/Last of the Renegades (Harald Reinl, 1964) featuring Pierre Brice. In these films, he built a reputation as an effective screen villain. In 1964, he relocated to Italy and was cast in the international production Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965) as an Anarchist prisoner on his way to the Gulag. That year he also had a small part as a hunchback in the classic Italian western Per qualche dollaro in più/For Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965) starring Clint Eastwood. Roles in numerous other Spaghetti westerns followed, including El chuncho, quien sabe?/A Bullet for the General (Damiano Damiani, 1966) with Gian Maria Volonté, Il grande silenzio/The Great Silence (Sergio Corbucci, 1968) starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Un genio, due compari, un pollo/A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe (Damiano Damiani, 1975) with Terence Hill. When the Spaghetti Western genre was over its top, Kinski started to appear in other exploitation genres. Often these films proved to be brainless trash.

In 1972, in between his countless appearances in genre and exploitation films, Klaus Kinski suddenly found international recognition with the German production Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes/Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972). At AllMovie, Karl Williams writes: “The most famed and well-regarded collaboration between New German Cinema director Werner Herzog and his frequent leading man, Klaus Kinski, this epic historical drama was legendary for the arduousness of its on-location filming and the convincing zealous obsession employed by Kinski in playing the title role. Exhausted and near to admitting failure in its quest for riches, the 1650-51 expedition of Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repulles) bogs down in the impenetrable jungles of Peru. As a last-ditch effort to locate treasure, Pizarro orders a party to scout ahead for signs of El Dorado, the fabled seven cities of gold. In command are a trio of nobles, Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra), Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling), and Lope de Aguirre (Kinski). Travelling by river raft, the explorers are besieged by hostile natives, disease, starvation and treacherous waters. Crazed with greed and mad with power, Aguirre takes over the enterprise, slaughtering any that oppose him.” Kinski delivered a bravura performance that typified his screen image: that of an obsessive, terrifying, and emotionally unpredictable antihero. Kinski and Herzog would make five films together, including Woyzeck (1978), Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht/Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) with Isabelle Adjani, and Fitzcarraldo (1982) with Claudia Cardinale. The volatile love-hate relationship between Kinski and his equally driven and obsessive director Herzog resulted in some of the best work from both men, and both are best known for the films on which they collaborated. Kinski and Herzog pushed each other to extremes over a 15-year working relationship, which finally ended after filming Cobra Verde (Werner Herzog, 1987), a production plagued by volcanic clashes between the star and director, involving violent physical altercations and mutual death threats.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica writes that Klaus Kinski “disdained his chosen profession, once saying, ‘I wish I’d never been an actor. I’d rather have been a streetwalker, selling my body, than selling my tears and my laughter, my grief and my joy’. Numerous offers from prestigious directors—whom Kinski categorised as ‘cretins’ or ‘scum’—were refused; he worked only when the money suited him.” Kinski was also notorious – and in high demand – for his scandalous TV appearances and interviews. The scandals paid off. Although he continued to appear for the money in countless trash films, Kinski also starred in such respectable films as the French melodrama L'important c'est d'aimer/The Main Thing Is to Love (Andrzej Zulawski, 1975) starring a memorable Romy Schneider, and the Oscar-nominated Israeli production Mivtsa Yonatan/Operation Thunderbolt (Menahem Golan, 1977), based on the 1976 hijacking of a Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris Air France flight and the daring rescue of its 104 passengers in Entebbe, Uganda. In the 1980s Kinski appeared prominently in such Hollywood productions as the comedy Buddy Buddy (Billy Wilder, 1981) as a neurotic sex scientist opposite Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and the thriller The Little Drummer Girl (George Roy Hill, 1984) featuring Diane Keaton. Kinski’s last film was Kinski Paganini (Klaus Kinski, 1989), in which he played the 19th-century ‘devil’ violinist Niccolò Paganini. He also wrote and directed the film and his wife Debora and his son Nikolai also starred in the film. The production was marked by chaos and clashes between Kinski and his producers, who accused him of turning their production into a pornographic film and sued him in court. The result was a commercial and critical flop. Kinski reinforced his image as a wild-eyed, sex-crazed maniac in his autobiography 'Ich bin so wild nach deinem Erdbeermund' (1975). In 1988 he updated and rereleased it as 'Ich brauche Liebe' (All I Need Is Love) and in 1997 it was again rereleased as 'Kinski Uncut)'. The book infuriated many, and prompted his daughter Nastassja Kinski to file a libel suit against him. Werner Herzog would later say in his retrospective film Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski/Kinski, My Best Fiend (1999, Werner Herzog) that much of the autobiography was fabricated to generate sales; the two even collaborated on the insults about the director. In 2006 Christian David published the first comprehensive biography based on newly discovered archived material, personal letters and interviews with Kinski's friends and colleagues. Klaus Kinski died of a heart attack in Lagunitas, California, U.S. at age 65. His ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean. He was married four times: to Gislinde Kühbeck (1952-1955), Brigitte Ruth Tocki (1960-1971), Minhoi Geneviève Loanic (1971-1979), and to Debora Caprioglio (1987-1989). His three children Pola Kinski (1952), Nastassja Kinski (1961) and Nikolai Kinski (1976) are all actors.

Sources: Dan Schneider (Alt Film Guide), Michael Brooke (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Karl Williams (AllMovie), Encyclopaedia Britannica, Filmportal.de, Wikipedia and IMDb.

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

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German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 901. Photo: Lothar Winkler. Klaus Kinski and Pierre Brice in Winnetou - 2. Teil/Last of the Renegades (Harald Reinl, 1964).

Intense and eccentric Klaus Kinski (1926–1991) was one of the most colourful stars of European cinema. In a film career of over 40 years, the German actor appeared in more than 130 films, including numerous parts as a villain in Edgar Wallace thrillers and Spaghetti Westerns. The talented but tempestuous Kinski is probably best known for his riveting star turns in Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu (1979), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and other films directed by Werner Herzog.

Klaus Kinski was born Nikolaus Günther Nakszyński in Zoppot, Danzig, Germany (now Sopot, Poland), in 1926. He was the son of a German father of Polish descent, Bruno Nakszyński, a pharmacist and a failed opera singer, and a German mother, Susanne Nakszyński-Lutze, a nurse and a daughter of a local pastor. He had three older siblings: Inge, Arne and Hans-Joachim. Because of the depression, the poor family was unable to make a living in Danzig and was forced to move to Berlin in 1931. They settled in a flat in the suburb of Schöneberg. From 1936 on, Kinski attended the Prinz-Heinrich-Gymnasium there. During World War II, the 16-year-old enlisted in the Wehrmacht. Kinski saw no action until the winter of 1944 when his unit was transferred to the Netherlands. His obituary in Variety magazine states that there he was wounded and captured by the British on the second day of combat, but Kinski's autobiography 'Ich bin so wild nach deinem Erdbeermund' (I Am So Wild About Your Strawberry Mouth, 1975) claims he made a conscious decision to desert. However, Kinski was transferred to the Prisoner of War Camp 186 in Colchester, Great Britain. The ship transporting him to England was torpedoed by a German U-Boat but managed to arrive safely at its destination. At the POW camp, Kinski played his first theatre roles in shows staged by fellow prisoners intending to maintain morale. Following the end of the war in Europe in May 1945, Kinski was finally allowed in 1946 to return to Germany, after spending a year and four months in captivity. Arriving in Berlin, Kinski learned his father had died during the war and his mother had been killed in an Allied air attack. Without having ever attended any professional training, he started out as an actor, first at a small touring company in Offenburg and already using his new name Klaus Kinski. He was hired by the renowned Schlosspark-Theater in Berlin but was fired by the manager in 1947 due to his unpredictable behaviour. Other companies followed, but his already wild and unconventional behaviour regularly got him into trouble. His first film role was a small part in Morituri (Eugen York, 1948) a drama about refugees from a concentration camp. In 1950, he stayed in a psychiatric hospital for three days; medical records from the period listed a preliminary diagnosis of schizophrenia. He only could find bit roles in films, and in 1955 Kinski twice tried to commit suicide.

Then Klaus Kinski got a supporting part in Ludwig II: Glanz und Ende eines Königs/Ludwig II (Helmut Käutner, 1955) about the frustrated and tragic King Ludwig II of Bavaria played by O.W. Fischer. More supporting parts in German films followed. In March 1956 Kinski made one single guest appearance at Vienna's Burgtheater in Goethe's Torquato Tasso. Although respected by his colleagues, and cheered by the audience, Kinski's hope to get a permanent contract was not fulfilled, as the Burgtheater's management ultimately became aware of the actor's earlier difficulties in Germany. He unsuccessfully tried to sue the company. Living jobless in Vienna, and without any prospects for his future, Kinski reinvented himself as a monologist and spoken word artist. He presented the prose and verse of François Villon, William Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde among others. Thus he managed to establish himself as a well-known actor touring Austria, Germany, and Switzerland with his shows. In 1960 he returned to the cinema as a sinister character on the verge between genius and madness in the thriller Der Rächer/The Avenger (Karl Anton, 1960) based on a crime novel by British writer Edgar Wallace. In another Wallace adaptation, Die toten Augen von London/The Dead Eyes of London (Alfred Vohrer, 1961), Kinski’s psychopathic bad guy refused any personal guilt for his evil deeds and claimed to have only followed the orders given to him. During the 1960s, Kinski appeared in several Wallace Krimis, which enjoyed enormous success in Germany and are now considered cult classics. He also appeared in many other European genre films such as the Karl May Western Winnetou - 2. Teil/Last of the Renegades (Harald Reinl, 1964) featuring Pierre Brice. In these films, he built a reputation as an effective screen villain. In 1964, he relocated to Italy and was cast in the international production Doctor Zhivago (David Lean, 1965) as an Anarchist prisoner on his way to the Gulag. That year he also had a small part as a hunchback in the classic Italian western Per qualche dollaro in più/For Few Dollars More (Sergio Leone, 1965) starring Clint Eastwood. Roles in numerous other Spaghetti westerns followed, including El chuncho, quien sabe?/A Bullet for the General (Damiano Damiani, 1966) with Gian Maria Volonté, Il grande silenzio/The Great Silence (Sergio Corbucci, 1968) starring Jean-Louis Trintignant, and Un genio, due compari, un pollo/A Genius, Two Partners and a Dupe (Damiano Damiani, 1975) with Terence Hill. When the Spaghetti Western genre was over its top, Kinski started to appear in other exploitation genres. Often these films proved to be brainless trash.

In 1972, in between his countless appearances in genre and exploitation films, Klaus Kinski suddenly found international recognition with the German production Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes/Aguirre: The Wrath of God (Werner Herzog, 1972). At AllMovie, Karl Williams writes: “The most famed and well-regarded collaboration between New German Cinema director Werner Herzog and his frequent leading man, Klaus Kinski, this epic historical drama was legendary for the arduousness of its on-location filming and the convincing zealous obsession employed by Kinski in playing the title role. Exhausted and near to admitting failure in its quest for riches, the 1650-51 expedition of Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repulles) bogs down in the impenetrable jungles of Peru. As a last-ditch effort to locate treasure, Pizarro orders a party to scout ahead for signs of El Dorado, the fabled seven cities of gold. In command are a trio of nobles, Pedro de Ursua (Ruy Guerra), Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling), and Lope de Aguirre (Kinski). Travelling by river raft, the explorers are besieged by hostile natives, disease, starvation and treacherous waters. Crazed with greed and mad with power, Aguirre takes over the enterprise, slaughtering any that oppose him.” Kinski delivered a bravura performance that typified his screen image: that of an obsessive, terrifying, and emotionally unpredictable antihero. Kinski and Herzog would make five films together, including Woyzeck (1978), Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht/Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979) with Isabelle Adjani, and Fitzcarraldo (1982) with Claudia Cardinale. The volatile love-hate relationship between Kinski and his equally driven and obsessive director Herzog resulted in some of the best work from both men, and both are best known for the films on which they collaborated. Kinski and Herzog pushed each other to extremes over a 15-year working relationship, which finally ended after filming Cobra Verde (Werner Herzog, 1987), a production plagued by volcanic clashes between the star and director, involving violent physical altercations and mutual death threats.

The Encyclopaedia Britannica writes that Klaus Kinski “disdained his chosen profession, once saying, ‘I wish I’d never been an actor. I’d rather have been a streetwalker, selling my body, than selling my tears and my laughter, my grief and my joy’. Numerous offers from prestigious directors—whom Kinski categorised as ‘cretins’ or ‘scum’—were refused; he worked only when the money suited him.” Kinski was also notorious – and in high demand – for his scandalous TV appearances and interviews. The scandals paid off. Although he continued to appear for the money in countless trash films, Kinski also starred in such respectable films as the French melodrama L'important c'est d'aimer/The Main Thing Is to Love (Andrzej Zulawski, 1975) starring a memorable Romy Schneider, and the Oscar-nominated Israeli production Mivtsa Yonatan/Operation Thunderbolt (Menahem Golan, 1977), based on the 1976 hijacking of a Tel Aviv-Athens-Paris Air France flight and the daring rescue of its 104 passengers in Entebbe, Uganda. In the 1980s Kinski appeared prominently in such Hollywood productions as the comedy Buddy Buddy (Billy Wilder, 1981) as a neurotic sex scientist opposite Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau, and the thriller The Little Drummer Girl (George Roy Hill, 1984) featuring Diane Keaton. Kinski’s last film was Kinski Paganini (Klaus Kinski, 1989), in which he played the 19th-century ‘devil’ violinist Niccolò Paganini. He also wrote and directed the film and his wife Debora and his son Nikolai also starred in the film. The production was marked by chaos and clashes between Kinski and his producers, who accused him of turning their production into a pornographic film and sued him in court. The result was a commercial and critical flop. Kinski reinforced his image as a wild-eyed, sex-crazed maniac in his autobiography 'Ich bin so wild nach deinem Erdbeermund' (1975). In 1988 he updated and rereleased it as 'Ich brauche Liebe' (All I Need Is Love) and in 1997 it was again rereleased as 'Kinski Uncut)'. The book infuriated many, and prompted his daughter Nastassja Kinski to file a libel suit against him. Werner Herzog would later say in his retrospective film Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski/Kinski, My Best Fiend (1999, Werner Herzog) that much of the autobiography was fabricated to generate sales; the two even collaborated on the insults about the director. In 2006 Christian David published the first comprehensive biography based on newly discovered archived material, personal letters and interviews with Kinski's friends and colleagues. Klaus Kinski died of a heart attack in Lagunitas, California, U.S. at age 65. His ashes were scattered into the Pacific Ocean. He was married four times: to Gislinde Kühbeck (1952-1955), Brigitte Ruth Tocki (1960-1971), Minhoi Geneviève Loanic (1971-1979), and to Debora Caprioglio (1987-1989). His three children Pola Kinski (1952), Nastassja Kinski (1961) and Nikolai Kinski (1976) are all actors.

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German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 893. Photo: Lothar Winkler.

Italian actress Claudia Cardinale (1938) is one of Europe's iconic and most versatile film stars. The combination of her beauty, dark, flashing eyes, explosive sexuality and genuine acting talent virtually guaranteed her stardom. Her most notable films include 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963), Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) and Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968).

Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale was born in La Goulette in Tunisia in 1938 (some sources claim 1939). Her mother, Yolande Greco, was born in Tunisia to Italian (Sicilian) emigrants from Trapani, Italy. Her father was an Italian (Sicilian) railway worker, born in Gela, Italy. Her native languages were Tunisian Arabic and French. She received a French education and she had to learn Italian once she pursued her acting career. She had her break in films after she was voted the most beautiful Italian girl in Tunisia in 1957. The contest of the Italian embassy had as a prize a trip to the Venice Film Festival. She made her film debut in the French-Tunisian coproduction Goha (Jacques Baratier, 1958) starring Omar Sharif. After attending the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome for two months, she signed a 7-year contract with the Vides studios. The contract forbade her to cut her hair, to marry or to gain weight. Later that year she had a role in the heist comedy I soliti ignoti/Big Deal On Madonna Street (Mario Monicelli, 1958) with Vittorio Gassman and Renato Salvatori. The film was an international success, and her film career was off and running. At this point, the press, noting her initials, announced that CC was the natural successor to BB (Brigitte Bardot), and began beating the drum on her behalf. Dozens of alluring photographs of Claudia Cardinale were displayed in newspapers and magazines throughout the world. According to IMDb, she has appeared on more than 900 magazine covers in over 25 countries. The contrast between these pictures and those of Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield is striking. Cardinale never appeared in a nude or fully topless scene. Her pictures promoted an image of a shy family girl who just happened to have a beautiful face and a sexy body. A photograph of Cardinale was featured in the original gate fold artwork to Bob Dylan's album Blonde on Blonde (1966), but because it was used without Cardinale's permission, the photo was removed from the cover art in later pressings.

Claudia Cardinale's early career was largely managed producer Franco Cristaldi. Because of her film contract, she told everyone that her son Patrizio was her baby brother. He was born out of wedlock when she was 17; the father was a mysterious Frenchman. She did not reveal to the child that he was her son until he was 19 years old. In 1966, she married Cristaldi, who adopted Patrizio. In only three years she made a stream of great films. First she made three successful comedies, Un Maledetto imbroglio/The Facts of Murder (Pietro Germi, 1959), Il Bell'Antonio/Bell'Antonio (Mauro Bolognini, 1960) featuring Marcello Mastroianni, and Audace colpo dei soliti ignoti/Fiasco in Milan (Nanni Loy, 1960). Cardinale had a supporting part in the epic drama Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) in which she played the sister-in-law of Alain Delon and Renato Salvatori. And then followed leading parts in La Ragazza con la valigia/Girl with a Suitcase (Valerio Zurlini, 1961), La Viaccia/The Lovemakers (Mauro Bolognini, 1961) with Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Senilità/Careless (Mauro Bolognini, 1961). Claudia Cardinale had a deep, sultry voice and spoke Italian with a heavy French accent, so her voice was dubbed in her early films. In Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963), she was finally allowed to dub her own dialogue. In the film, she plays a dream woman - a character named Claudia, who is the object of the fantasies of the director in the film, played by Marcello Mastroianni. With Fellini's surrealistic masterpiece she received her widest exposure to date with this film. That same year, she also appeared in another masterpiece of the Italian cinema, the epic Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) with Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon. The combined success of these two classic films made her rise to the front ranks of Italian cinema. And it also piqued Hollywood's interest.

In 1963 Claudia Cardinale played the princess who owned the Pink Panther diamond in The Pink Panther (Blake Edwards, 1963) which was filmed in Italy. It was the first in the series of detective comedies starring Peter Sellers as bumbling French Inspector Jacques Clouseau (the mishap-prone snoop was actually a supporting player in his debut). The film was an enormous success and brought CC to English-speaking audiences. In 1964 she co-starred with John Wayne and Rita Hayworth in her first American production, Circus World (Henry Hathaway, 1964). It was another box-office hit. The following year she appeared with Rock Hudson in Blindfold (Philip Dunne, 1966), an offbeat mixture of espionage and slapstick comedy. The Professionals (Richard Brooks, 1966) is her favourite among her Hollywood films. In this Western, she is a gutsy Mexican woman married against her will to a rich American. The film received Academy Award nominations for Best Direction (Richard Brooks), Best Screenplay (Brooks again), and Best Cinematography (Conrad L. Hall). Cardinale continued dividing her time between Hollywood and Europe for the remainder of the decade. Throughout the 1960s, Claudia Cardinale also appeared in some of the best European films. In France, she appeared in the Swashbuckler Cartouche (Philippe de Broca, 1962) featuring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Back in Italy, she played in I Giorno della civetta/The Day of the Owl (Damiano Damiani, 1968) with Franco Nero, and Nell'anno del Signore/The Conspirators (Luigi Magni, 1969) with Nino Manfredi. Mesmerizing is her performance in Sandra/Vaghe stelle dell'Orsa... (Luchino Visconti, 1965) as a Holocaust survivor with an incestuous relationship with her brother (Jean Sorel). Another highlight in her career is C'era una volta il West/Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968), the ultimate Spaghetti Western. Lucia Bozzola writes in her review at AllMovie: "In Sergio Leone's epic Western, shot partly in Monument Valley, a revenge story becomes an epic contemplation of the Western past. (...) As in his 'Dollars' trilogy, Leone transforms the standard Western plot through the visual impact of widescreen landscapes and the figures therein. At its full length, Once Upon a Time in the West is Leone's operatic masterwork, worthy of its legend-making title."

In the following decades, Claudia Cardinale remained mainly active in European cinema. She played a small part for Visconti in Gruppo di famiglia in un interno/Conversation Piece (Luchino Visconti, 1974) starring Burt Lancaster and Silvana Mangano. She worked with other major Italian directors at Goodbye e amen (Damiano Damiani, 1977), the TV mini-series Jesus of Nazareth (Franco Zeffirelli, 1977) as the adulteress, and La Pelle/The Skin (Liliana Cavani, 1981) starring Marcello Mastroianni and based on the bitter novel by Curzio Malaparte concerning the Allied liberation of Naples. An international arthouse hit was Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, 1982), the story of an obsessed impresario (Klaus Kinski) whose foremost desire in life is to bring both Enrico Caruso and an opera house to the deepest jungles of South America. In his diary of the making of Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog writes: "Claudia Cardinale is great help because she is such a good sport, a real trouper, and has a special radiance before the camera. In her presence, [Klaus Kinski] usually acts like a gentleman." Other interesting films include the Luigi Pirandello adaptation Enrico IV/Henry IV (Marco Bellocchio, 1984) with Marcello Mastroianni, the epic La révolution française/The French Revolution (Robert Enrico, Richard T. Heffron, 1989), the nostalgic drama Mayrig/Mother (Henri Verneuil, 1991), and the romantic thriller And now... Ladies and Gentlemen (Claude Lelouch, 2002) starring Jeremy Irons. On Television she gave another well-received performance in the TV drama La storia/History (Luigi Comencini, 1986), in which she plays a widow raising a son during World War II.

Claudia Cardinale is a liberal with strong political convictions. She is involved in many humanitarian causes, and pro-women and pro-gay issues, and she has frequently stated her pride in her Tunisian and Arab roots - as evidenced by her appearance as herself in the Tunisian film Un été à La Goulette/A Summer at La Goulette (Férid Boughedir, 1996). She has managed to combine her acting work with a role of goodwill ambassador for UNICEF, and advocate for the work of Luchino Visconti with whom she made four films. She wrote an autobiography, 'Moi Claudia, Toi Claudia' (Me Claudia, You Claudia). In 2005, she also published a French-language book, Mes Etoiles (My Stars), about her personal and professional relationships with many of her directors and co-stars through her nearly 50 years in show-business. In 2002, she won an honorary Golden Bear award of the Berlin Film Festival, and previously in 1993 she was awarded an honorary Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival. Cardinale works steadily on and in recent years she has also worked in the theatre. In the cinema, she appeared recently in the French-Tunisian gay drama Le fil/The String (Mehdi Ben Attia, 2009), the Algerian drama Un balcon sur la mer/A View of Love (Nicole Garcia, 2010) in which she played the mother of Jean Dujardin, and the costume drama Effie Gray (Richard Laxton, 2014) with Dakota Fanning. Claudia Cardinale currently lives in Paris. She has made over 135 films in the past 60 years and still does two or three a year.

Sources: Lucia Bozzola (AllMovie), Steve Rose (The Guardian), IMDb, and Wikipedia.

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German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 843. Photo: Lothar Winkler.

Today, 21 April 2021, German actor Thomas Fritsch (1944) passed away. The son of ‘Sunny boy’ Willy Fritsch was a teen idol of the early 1960s who made several light entertainment films and recorded popular Schlagers. He also appeared on stage and TV and as a voice actor, he dubbed many Hollywood blockbusters in German. He was 77.

Thomas Fritsch was born in Dresden, Germany in 1944. He is the son of the legendary Ufa star Willy Fritsch and the dancer and actress Dinah Grace (aka Ilse Schmidt). He had a brother, Michael. When the war ended, the family fled to Hamburg. Actor and director Gustaf Gründgens advised 16-year-old Thomas to become an actor. So after high school, Fritsch studied with Eduard Marks, the head of the drama class of the Hochschule für Musik und Theater (University of Music and Theatre) in Hamburg. He also took singing and ballet lessons. In 1960 he was discovered for the screen and made his debut in Das gibt's doch zweimal/That can be done twice (1960) with Gus Backus and his father Willy Fritsch. He played the son of Lilli Palmer in the Austrian comedy Julia, Du bist zauberhaft/Adorable Julia (Alfred Weidenmann, 1962), which was entered into the 1962 Cannes Film Festival. Other well-known films are Das schwarz-weiß-rote Himmelbett/Black-White-Red Four Poster (Rolf Thiele, 1962) with Daliah Lavi, and Das große Liebesspiel/And So to Bed (Alfred Weidenmann, 1963) with Lilli Palmer. Thomas was also the singer of Schlagers as 'Dreamy Girl'. The teenager idol appeared on many covers of the popular German youth magazine Bravo. Weekly, he received 2.000 letters from his mostly female fans. Together with his famous father, he co-starred in Das hab ich von Papa gelernt/I Learned It from Father (Axel von Ambesser, 1964). But in the following years, his film career went downhill and the dream of a Hollywood career became a deception.

After his days as a teen idol were over, Thomas Fritsch focused on a stage career. In 1964, he already had made his stage debut in G.B. Shaw's Candida at the Stadttheater Heidelberg. In 1965, the Frankfurter Kleinen Theater am Zoo engaged him and later followed engagements at other stage companies in Munich, Berlin, Stuttgart, and Hamburg. On TV, he was seen in many series including episodes of popular Krimi series like Der Kommissar (1970-1975) and Derrick (1974-1989). From the 1990s on, Fritsch was a busy voice actor, who dubbed many American actors for the German versions of their films. Among the films he gave his voice to are such blockbusters as The Three Musketeers (Stephen Herek, 1993), Die Hard with a Vengeance (John McTiernan, 1995), Titanic (James Cameron, 1997), Gladiator (Ridley Scott, 2000), Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Chris Columbus, 2001), Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World (Peter Weir, 2003), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (Peter Jackson, 2003), Kingdom of Heaven (Ridley Scott, 2005) and The Dark Knight (Christopher Nolan, 2008). One of his best-remembered dubs was the voice of Scar in the German version of The Lion King (Roger Allers, Rob Minkoff, 1994). Since then, he voiced many other animated animals in such hits as Ice Age (Chris Wedge, Carlos Saldanha, 2002), Finding Nemo (Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich, 2003), and Ice Age: The Meltdown (Carlos Saldanha, 2006). Fritsch also gave his voice to such hit series as The Nanny (1993–1999) and South Park (2003). He also could be seen in films like the Edgar Wallace satire Der Wixxer/The Trixxer (Tobi Baumann, 2004) as the Earl of Cockwood, and the fantasy Mara und der Feuerbringer/Mara and the fire bringer (Tommy Krappweis, 2014). Thomas Fritsch lived in Munich, Germany, and on the Greek isle of Mykonos. Most of the sources don't have more information about Fritsch's private life than that he was an active animal rights activist and that he loved his mother. For those readers who might think his song 'Schau mich bi' had a deeper meaning: the confirmed bachelor denied in 1991 firmly he was gay. In 1996, he confirmed he was bisexual. Thomas Fritsch died on 21 April 2021 at the age of 77, after having last lived in a retirement home.

Sources: Stephanie D'heil (Steffi-Line)(German), Wikipedia (German and English), and IMDb.

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

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