Lilli Palmer was a sophisticated German actress who made many Hollywood and international films from the 1930’s up to the 1980’s. Her first major breakthrough came in British films and she went with her husband Rex Harrison to Hollywood in 1945. Notable films she made there included “Clock and Dagger” with Gary Cooper , “Body and Soul” with John Garfield and “But Not for Me” with Clark Gable. In Britain in 1959 she made “Consipracy of Hearts” as the mother superior of an Italian convent hiding Jewish children from the Nazi. She published her autobiography “Change Lobsters and Dance”. Lilli Palmer died in Los Angeles in 1986. Interesting blog on Lilli Palmer can be found here.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
A charming, elegant and exceedingly popular international film star with a gentle, understated beauty, actress Lilli Palmer was born on May 24, 1914, as Lillie Marie Peiser, the daughter of a German-Jewish surgeon and Austrian-Jewish actress. In addition to her native German, she grew up becoming fluent in French and English as well. Of her two sisters, older sister Irene Prador became an actress and singer in her own right. Lillie studied drama in Berlin and made her theatrical debut there in 1932 at age 18. Within a short time, however, the family was forced to flee their native homeland with the rise of Hitler and settled in Paris. Eventually Lilli moved to England to rebuild the career she had started on stage and film.
She made her British movie debut co-starring in the “B” mystery drama Crime Unlimited(1935), playing the distaff member of a syndicate of jewel thieves who becomes a romantic pawn for a policeman (Esmond Knight) who has infiltrated the crime ring as a plant. Throughout the rest of the decade she upped the value of her name in both “A” and “B” material, notably Alfred Hitchcock‘s Secret Agent (1936), Silent Barriers (1937) and The Man with 100 Faces (1938) where she provided the usual element of feminine mystery.
Lillie’s career took a major upswing during the early to mid 1940s. Several of her pictures centered around the omnipresent war, particularly Thunder Rock (1942), her film career-maker), which starred Michael Redgrave as an anti-fascist journalist who retreats to Canada, and Notorious Gentleman (1945), with Rex Harrison as a idle bounder who sees the error of his ways and becomes a war sacrifice. This was Lilli’s first movie with husband Harrison; they married in 1943 and she bore him a son, Carey Harrison, the following year. Carey grew up to became a writer and director.
EVT5775999 THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY, poster art, l-r: Fred Astaire, Lilli Palmer, Debbie Reynolds, Tab Hunter; (add.info.: THE PLEASURE OF HIS COMPANY, poster art, l-r: Fred Astaire, Lilli Palmer, Debbie Reynolds, Tab Hunter); Everett Collection.Torpedo Bay, poster, l-r: James Mason, Lilli Palmer on poster art, 1963. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
The family moved to America in 1945 to further their careers. Rex and Lilli became a prominent acting couple, appearing together on the early 50s Broadway stage with “Bell, Book and Candle” (1950), “Venus Observed” (1952) and “The Love of Four Colonels” (1953), the last mentioned directed by Harrison. In movies, they co-starred in the murky crimer The Long Dark Hall (1951) and the vastly superior The Four Poster (1952), which later gave rise to the musical adaptation “I Do! I Do!”. Lilli was award the Venice Film Festival Award for this performance and represented herself well with other handsome male acting partners, notably Gary Cooper in her debut American film Cloak and Dagger(1946) and John Garfield in the classic boxing film Body and Soul (1947), leaving audiences enthralled with one of its newer foreign imports. At one point, she was given her own own (short-lived) TV show to host, The Lilli Palmer Show (1953).
Somewhat typecast by this time as heartless cads and opportunists on film, “Sexy Rexy”, as husband Harrison was known in the tabloids, developed quite a reputation off-camera as well. A particularly disastrous romance with actress Carole Landis led to that actress’s tragic suicide in 1948. Lilli took the high road and came off the better for it in the public’s eye. She eventually called it quits, however, with both Harrison and Hollywood and returned to Europe in 1954. In 1956 Lilli filmed Between Time and Eternity (1956) [Between Time and Eternity] and fell in love with handsome Argentine co-star Carlos Thompson, who had developed matinée idol status in Germany. They married in September of 1957, several months after her divorce from Harrison became final. This marriage endured.
Lilli matured gracefully in films, the epitome of poise and class, but she lost any potential for top stardom after leaving Hollywood. She made international productions for the rest of her career, primarily German and French, but they did not live up to her early successes and were not seen all that much outside of Europe. She managed to work, however, opposite a “Who’s Who” of European male stars of the time, including Curd Jürgens, James Mason, Louis Jourdan, Jean Gabin, Jean Marais, Jean Sorel, Gérard Philipeand Klaus Kinski. Of those few movies she made in Hollywood, she played the prickly wife of Clark Gable, who has a May-December affair with young Carroll Baker in But Not for Me (1959); was a sparkling and witty standout in the ensemble cast of The Pleasure of His Company (1961); and proved quite moving in the William Holden spy thriller The Counterfeit Traitor (1962). On TV here, she was touchingly effective as Mrs. Frank in a production of The Diary of Anne Frank (1967) with Max von Sydow, and enjoyed one of her last roles in the acclaimed miniseries Peter the Great (1986).
Lilli Palmer
The final decade and a half played out rather routinely with supporting roles in such films as diverse as Oedipus the King (1968), De Sade (1969), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). She demonstrated her writing talents with her popular bestselling biography “Change Lobsters and Dance” in 1975, and later published a novel “The Red Raven” in 1978. Dying of cancer in 1986 at age 71 in Los Angeles, Lilli’s surviving second husband Thompson, who had abandoned acting in the late 60s and turned to turned TV writing/producing, committed suicide four years later back in his native Argentina.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Jean-Pierre Aumont obituary in “The Guardian” in 2001.
In 1934, the tall, handsome, muscular, blond-haired and blue-eyed Jean-Pierre Aumont, who has died aged 92, auditioned for the lead in Marc Allégret’s Lac aux Dames. As the role was that of a swimming instructor at a mountain lake resort, the director and his lover, André Gide, felt justified in asking the young French actor to strip. Aumont was immediately offered the part that made him a star. In the film, he is involved with three women; a former girlfriend, a rich socialite and a mysterious child of nature, Simone Simon. It reflected Aumont’s own life, in which he had the reputation as a ladies’ man. While in Hollywood, he had brief flings with Joan Crawford, Grace Kelly and Barbara Stanwyck, and was engaged to Hedy Lamarr. His three marriages were to actresses Blanche Montel, Maria Montez and Marisa Pavan.
Born Jean-Pierre Salomons into a wealthy Parisian French family – his father owned a chain of department stores – Aumont followed his actress mother’s calling at the age of 16, studying drama at the Paris Conservatory and making his stage debut at 21. His first film, a year later, was Jean de la Lune (1931), and his career took off in 1934 with Lac aux Dames, and as Oedipus in the first production of Jean Cocteau’s La Machine Infernale.
In the next few years, Aumont worked with some of the great names of French cinema: Madeleine Renaud and Jean Gabin in Julien Duvivier’s Maria Chapdelaine (1934), Harry Baur in Taras Bulba (1936), and Michel Simon and Louis Jouvet in Marcel Carné’s Drôle de Drame (1937), set in Edwardian London, in which he played an amorous milkman. Carné cast him again in Hotel Du Nord (1938), where he and Annabella were immensely touching as a young couple in a suicide pact.
Just as he was becoming established, war broke out. Aumont served with the Free French forces in Tunisia, Italy and France, earning the Légion d’Honneur and the Croix de Guerre for his bravery. By 1943, he had moved to Hollywood, where he got a series of unchallenging roles as archetypal Frenchman. His first was in Assignment In Brittany (1943), as a pilot sent to occupied France to pose as a Nazi agent of which Variety magazine commented: “Aumont is good looking enough to suit the femmes, and he underplays agreeably.” In the same year, he appeared in The Cross of Lorraine, playing a French soldier in a German prisoner-of-war camp.
In 1946, Aumont married Montez, with whom he had a daughter, Tina Aumont, who became an actress. Aumont himself starred in an outrageously camp biopic, Song Of Sheherazade (1947), in which he played mariner Rimsky-Korsakov, writing melodies for a dancer (Yvonne de Carlo) in a Moroccan nightclub. “Me, oh, my, sounds like the buz- zing of a bee,” she says of one of his numbers. A year later, he and Montez co-starred for the only time in Siren of Atlantis. Aumont played a legionnaire who falls hopelessly in love with Montez as the cruel ruler of a legendary lost city. After the tragically premature death of Montez at the age of 31, Aumont retired from acting for two years. He returned in Lili (1953), as the dashing magician who infatuates waif Leslie Caron. From then on, he became an international star, moving easily between Europe and America. He was in two of Sacha Guitry’s all-star historical comedies, Si Versailles m’était Conté (1954) and Napoléon (1955), in the epic John Paul Jones (1959) with his third wife, Marisa Pavan, and supported Spencer Tracy and Frank Sinatra in The Devil at 4 O’Clock (1961).
Digital Camera
In 1962, Aumont played opposite Vivien Leigh in the Broadway musical, Tovarich. Though neither was a skilled dancer or singer, they got by on sheer personality in the roles of Russian royals exiled in Paris. Leigh was in one of her blackest periods, and Aumont helped her through until the run ended because of her mental breakdown.
Few of Aumont’s films were particularly distinguished over the next decades, some exceptions being Sidney Pollack’s Castle Keep (1969), in which he played an impotent aristocrat, and François Truffaut’s Day For Night (1973), where he was the charismatic male lead who dies during the shooting. He also dies halfway through Claude Lelouche’s Cat And Mouse (1975), playing Michèle Morgan’s philandering husband.
Jean-Pierre Aumont
Aumont continued to work through the 1990s, appearing in James Ivory’s Jefferson In Paris (1995) and in Ismail Merchant’s The Proprietor (1996), still exuding the dignity and charm for which he was known in real life.
Jean-Pierre Aumont, actor, born January 5 1909; died January 30 2001.
Ronald Bergan’s obituary in “The Guardian” can be accessed here.
Oliver Tobias has an international film and television career. He was born in Switzerland and came to live in Britain at the age of eight. In 1968 he starred in the London production of “Hair”. His first film role was in “Romance of a Horse Thief” with Yul Brynner. He scored a big success as King Arthur in 1972 in “Arthur of the Britons”. He made “Luke’s Kingdom” in Australia directed by Peter Weir. Another successful series was “Smuggler” set in Cornwall.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
A remote and rather prevailing sullenness has only enhanced the mystique and charisma found in dashingly handsome Oliver Tobias, who has enjoyed over a three decade-long career on stage, screen and TV. Born Oliver Tobias Freitag in Zurich, Switzerland on August 6, 1947, he was the son of Swiss actor Robert Freitag and German actress Maria Becker, who subsequently divorced when he was young. Living in England from age 8, he was sent to boarding school and was later encouraged by his mother to study at the East 15 Acting School (1965-1968) which coincided with dance training at the Ecole de Dance in Zurich. In 1968 he appeared in the original London production of “Hair” playing the prime rebel role of Berger. The following year he starred, staged and choreographed the rock opera in Amsterdam and again helmed a production in 1970 in Tel Aviv. Oliver continued his shaggy-haired, counterculture musical career with the role of Judas in a German touring company of “Jesus Christ Superstar.”
Around this time he started making an impression in films with the international productions of Romance of a Horsethief (1971), _Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1971)_, which co-starred Charlotte Rampling, and The God King (1974) in a Mephistophelean-styled role. On TV he enhanced a number of classic, age-old stories from Sherlock Holmes to Robin Hood. He earned TV stardom as King Arthur in the series Arthur of the Britons(1972), then again played the youthful ruler of Camelot in King Arthur, the Young Warlord (1975) on film. From there he graced a number of colorful costumers, includingArabian Adventure (1979) and on TV portrayed composer Johann Strauss in an equally colorful outing. Despite this attention he did not give up his musical roots, showing his prowess in the title role of the rock opera “Peer Gynt” in Zurich, and in the role of The Pirate King in “The Pirates of Penzance” at London’s Drury Lane Theatre.
As a stretch he also appeared as Bassa Selim in the Mozart opera “The Abduction from the Seraglio” in 1988 and 1989, then appeared in a non-musical, the powerful AIDS drama “The Normal Heart,” shortly after. Oliver’s taste in movies have been eclectic to say the least, and not always tasteful. He appeared in Joan Collins‘ scurrilous, soft-core flick The Stud (1978) as an amorous waiter who sleeps his way to the top, and was part of the cast in the costumed romp Mata Hari (1985) which focused more on the disrobing of its star Sylvia Kristel than anything else.
For variety he portrayed a Vietnam veteran in Operation Nam(1986), a galactic dictator in Nexus 2.431 (1994), and a U-boat captain in The Brylcreem Boys (1998). In 1999 he again returned to musical limelight, this time in London as King Roderick in “La Cava,” based on the Dana Broccoli novel. He returned to the role a second time in 2001. In 2003 he was Percival Brown in the 50th anniversary production of “The Boyfriend” and the very next year toured in the rock musical “Footloose.”
Divorced from Camilla Ravenshear, he has two daughters, Angelika and Celeste. In 2001 he married Polish-born Arabella Zamoyska. The rugged charmer is in the process of writing a tell-all autobiography.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Hardy Kruger first came to international notice with his leading role in the British film “The One that Got Away” in 1957. This was the story of the only German prisioner-of-war to escape from Britain and return to Germany during World War Two. He went to Hollywood in 1965 to make “The Flight of the Phoenix”. He has featured in several major films including “Barry Lyndon”, “A Bridge Too Far” and “The Wild Geese”. His daughter and son are both actors.
Hardy Kruger
TCM Overview:
Rugged, blond and blue-eyed, Hardy Kruger ideally reflected the archetypal German revered in the Third Reich and frequently portrayed German soldiers over the course of his long international acting career.
As a teenager in Berlin in 1944, Kruger appeared in the film “Young Eagles” at the age of 15 before being drafted into military service the following year.
In 1949, Kruger returned to film and worked steadily in West Germany in a variety of films including the 1952 drama “Illusion in Moll,” with Hildegard Knef, and in the 1953 Otto Preminger comedy, “Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach.” Proficiency in English and French made Kruger extremely marketable and in 1957 he broke out onto the world stage in the first of three notable British productions, “The One That Got Away,” as an arrogant German flight officer shot down over England.
Hardy Kruger
After the equally successful romantic comedy “Bachelor of Hearts” in 1958, Krugerâ¿¿s popularity spread to America with his co-starring role with John Wayne in “Hatari!,” directed by Howard Hawks. Kruger then appeared in the French dark romance “Sundays and Cybele” and “Le Gros Coup” in 1964, before returning to Hollywood in 1965 with “The Flight of the Phoenix,” co-starring alongside Jimmy Stewart in 1965. Kruger worked in Germany, France and the U.S. throughout the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in “Barry Lyndon” in 1975 and the American 1989 television series “War and Remebrance.”
Hardy Kruger
At the age of 82, Kruger appeared in the 2011 German television series “Libe, Shuld und Tod.”
2555606 Jugement a Nuremberg: JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, top l-r: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, bottom l-r: Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, 1961.; (add.info.: l Affiche du film Jugement a Nuremberg JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG de StanleyKramer avec top l-r: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, bottom l-r: Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, 1961.); Everett Collection.
Maximilian Schell was born in Vienna and raised in Switzerland and is the younger brother of the actress Maria Schell. He made his Hollywood debut in 1959 in “The Young Lions” and won surprisingly the Best Actor Oscar in 1961 for his performance in “Judgement at Nuremberg”, arole which he had recreated earlier on U.S. television. He has continued to act on stage and in film both in the U.S. and Europe. He died in 2014.
Chris Maume’s obituary in “The Independent”:
Apart from being a fine actor, Maximilian Schell was a respected director, screenwriter and musician. A fugitive from Hitler, he became a Hollywood favourite and won an Oscar for his role as a defence lawyer in Stanley Kramer’s star-studded film Judgment at Nuremberg. He died in hospital in Innsbruck following a short illness. The German lawyer Hans Rolfe was only his second Hollywood role, but Schell’s impassioned but unsuccessful defence of four Nazi judges on trial for sentencing innocent victims to death – on the grounds that all Germans bore a collective guilt – won him the 1961 Academy Award for best actor.
Based on the third Nuremberg trial, the film had begun life on television in 1959 as an episode of Playhouse 90. An all-star cast, including Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland, was drafted in for the big-screen version – all on nominal wages, such was their desire to see the film made – but Schell’s performance had been so compelling that he was one of only two actors – Werner Klemperer was the other – asked to reprise their roles.
Far from being a straightforward account of Nazi thugs meeting their come-uppance, it was a morally complex piece of work. Three of the four judges defended by Rolfe were clearly culpable, but one of them, Lancaster’s Ernst Janning, was a distinguished legal scholar who had hated the Nazis. Rolfe argued that had he left his post he would have been replaced by a more brutal Nazi apparatchik.
Thanks to his passionate performance, Schell became Hollywood’s go-to man in numerous films dealing with the Nazi era or its legacy – Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron, for example, in which he played an army captain, and Ronald Neame’s The Odessa File, in which he was an SS officer. He earned a best actor Oscar nomination for The Man in the Glass Booth, in which he played a Jewish businessman with a shadowy past in a film inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and a supporting actor nomination for his performance as a man who assists the German underground in Julia, which also starred alongside Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave and Jason Robards.
“There does seem to be a pattern,” he acknowledged of his CV. “I think there’s an area of subject matter here that has to be faced and seriously dealt with.”
He did manage to play some roles without a Nazi element. In 1992 he received a Golden Globe for his supporting role as Lenin alongside Robert Duvall in the 1992 HBO miniseries Stalin. He was an ageing cardinal in the 1996 sequel to The Thorn Birds, and a Swiss master-criminal in Jules Dassin’s Topkapi (1964), about a jewel theft in Turkey; more recently he was in The Freshman, a 1990 Mafia comedy, and the disaster movie Deep Impact (1998).
The son of a Swiss playwright and an Austrian stage actress, he was born in Vienna and raised in Switzerland after his family fled the Anschluss. He followed his older sister Maria and brother Carl into acting, making his stage debut in 1952. He appeared in several German films before moving to Hollywood in 1958. By then, Maria Schell was an international star, having won the best actress award at Cannes in 1954 for The Last Bridge.
Maximilian made his Hollywood debut as a German soldier in Edward Dmytryk’s The Young Lions (1958) a Second World War drama starring Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin. In 1960 he returned to Germany to play Hamlet on television, a role he would later play twice on stage. He recalled that playing Hamlet for the first time, “was like falling in love with a woman … not until I acted the part of Hamlet did I have a moment when I knew I was in love with acting.”
He later worked as a producer, starting with an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Castle, and as a director. Adapted from the Ivan Turgenev novella, First Love, which Schell wrote, produced, directed and starred in, was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film in 1970. Three years later his film The Pedestrian, in which a car crash causes a German businessman to consider his wartime past, was nominated in the same category.
Perhaps Schell’s most significant film as a director was his 1984 documentary about Marlene Dietrich, Marlene, which was nominated for a best documentary Oscar. Dietrich allowed herself to be recorded but refused to be filmed, bringing out the most in Schell’s talent to penetrate images and uncover reality. In a documentary entitled My Sister Maria, Schell portrayed his loving relationship with his sister, who died in 2005.
A man of remarkable all-round talents, Schell was a successful concert pianist and conductor, performing with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and orchestras in Berlin and Vienna. He also directed and produced operas.
In 1985 Schell married the actress Natalya Andrejchenko, who he met when they were making the NBC mini-series Peter the Great, in which he played the Russian Tsar. They divorced in 2005, and last year he married the German-Croatian opera singer Iva Mihanovic.
Maximilian Schell, actor, director, producer, screenwriter, pianist and conductor: born Vienna 8 December 1930; married 1985 Natalya Andrejchenko (divorced 2005; one daughter), 2013 Iva Mihanovic; died 1 February 2014.
This review can be accessed in “The Indpendent” website here.
Annabella was born Suzanne Charpentier in France in 1907. She made her first film in her native country in 1927. In the late 1930’s she came to the UK to make the first British colour film “Wings of the Morning” with Henry Fonda and the Irish tenor Count John McCormack. Annabella then went to Hollywood where she made many fims including “Suez” with her future husband Tyrone Power. In the late 40;s she returned to France to resume her career there after her divorce from Power. She retired from film making in 1962. Annabella died in 1996.
Kevin Brownlow’s Independent newspaper obituary:One of the best-loved stars of French films of the 1930s, Annabella was also celebrated for her work in Hollywood in films like Suez (1938), with Tyrone Power, whom she married.
Born Suzanne Charpentier on 14 July – Bastille Day – 1909 at La Varenne- Saint-Hilaire, near Paris, she grew up with a fascination for the cinema. She was particularly passionate about Lillian Gish. “I always talked about movies. When I was 12, I wrote Studio on the chicken-shed in the back garden and acted scenes from the movies I had seen. I was the director, cameraman, everything. I used to sell my books to buy film magazines!
“My father was the publisher of a magazine. He spent all his time with writers and painters, and he was a keen photographer. I remember two phrases from that time that used to bother me: `Come along, darling, it’s time for your piano lesson’ and `Come along, darling, Daddy wants to take some photos.’ And one day, Daddy, who always had photos of his family in his pocket, went to a painter’s house, and met the famous writer t’Serstevens, a close friend of director Abel Gance. Daddy showed his photos, and t’Serstevens said, `I know that Gance is looking for a girl . . .’ So Daddy came back and said, `You know what? I’ve made a date for you.’ “
Gance was embarking on his monumental Napoleon, production of which began in 1925, when Suzanne was 15. Apart from Josephine, there were few parts for women, but Gance invented a little family which would follow Bonaparte throughout his career. The daughter, Violine, was to represent those young women who worshipped Napoleon as their counterparts later worshipped Valentino. The part had been assigned to the English actress Mabel Poulton, and Suzanne was sent to Corsica to play one of Bonaparte’s sisters. When he saw how beautifully she photographed, Gance dropped Mabel Poulton and gave the role to Suzanne. As an admirer of D.W. Griffith, he regarded Suzanne as his Lillian Gish. He renamed her Annabella, after a poem, “Annabel Lee”, by Edgar Allan Poe.
Gance expanded the part until her screen time rivalled that of Josephine (Gina Manes). But when, after months of work, Annabella attended the Paris Opera for the premiere, she had the experience all actresses dread; virtually all her scenes had been cut. Gance explained that this was a specially shortened version; her scenes would reappear in the full-length version. But Annabella never went near the film again until she attended the restoration in 1983 at the Barbican, when she saw herself as Violine for the first time. (Ironically, when the restoration was presented in America, by Francis Ford Coppola, it was reduced from five to four hours – and all Annabella’s scenes were cut once again.)
After the presentation at the Barbican, and an interview with David Shipman, Annabella wanted to see something of London, and we strolled around the West End. Her energy was extraordinary, as was her enthusiasm and humour; it was impossible to believe she was 73.
“I loved filming,” she said, “not to become a star but to continue playing like when I was little. You know when you see children with an old box – for them it’s a carriage. So, for me, to be in a film of Gance – I was that character. I was no longer me. So it was funny, on growing up, I continued to play as when I was little. It wasn’t serious work. Heartfelt, yet, I had to give my all.”
Her father managed her early career; when sound arrived he had the good fortune to secure her a role in Rene Clair’s Le Million (1931).
“Rene Clair was a strange character. For months he would stay at home working on the scenario. His wife said, `He won’t answer the telephone. He won’t even speak to me.’ But when Rene had written the word FIN at the end of a scenario, for him the work was over and the fun started.”
Practical jokes staged by Clair included a call from Berlin asking for Annabella. Clair said she was not free. A representative from Berlin arrived at the studio. Annabella despatched an assistant to report on what he was like. He was hideous – pock-marked, bearded, enormous. Clair encouraged her to leave the studio by a window to avoid him. “It was an extra he had made up like that. All the studio was in on it. One day, I thought I’d get back at him. Between scenes, Clair would play with a yo-yo. He would even delay us with this yo-yo, doing the same annoying tricks. We hid a camera and we filmed Rene Clair at the back of a set. We said, `Tonight we’ll look at the rushes and we’ll show this – what a laugh.’ As soon as we went into the projection room, there arrived an important producer. We looked at each other: `It can’t be cut. What are we going to do? My God, he’s going to be angry.’ But no, to show you Rene’s personality, he got up and said, `You will have noticed, my friends, that I did it with my left hand?’ “
Her favourite director, however, was the Hungarian Paul Fejos, for whom she made Marie, legende hongroise (1931) in Budapest. “I adored him. He was sincerity personified. I mean, if the scene required me to have tears in my eyes, he’d be behind the camera, with tears in his eyes as well. I thought Marie was a beautiful picture, the way Fejos told the old legend.” For Vieille d’armes, Annabella won the best actress award at Venice in 1934 – the European equivalent of an Oscar. Thanks to such triumphs, she was soon in demand by Europe’s top leading men. She married one of them – Jean Murat. She admired Louis Jouvet, but felt he didn’t enjoy working in films. He was accustomed to directing on the stage, and it was hard for him to accept orders. Jean Gabin she adored, and she had nothing but praise for Henry Fonda, with whom she played in Wings of the Morning in 1937. The first Technicolor feature to be made this side of the Atlantic, it was shot on location in England and in Ireland. Annabella was particularly fond of it because she had what amounted to three parts: Maria, a gipsy who escapes from the war in Spain – she played her both as a girl and in disguise as a boy – and Maria’s grandmother.
Also in England, she made Dinner at the Ritz (1937) with David Niven and Under the Red Robe (1937) with Conrad Veidt. She returned to France to star in Marcel Carne’s classic Hotel du Nord (1938). Under contract to Fox, she went to Hollywood. Annabella had dreamed of Hollywood since childhood. She fell in love with the place. And she fell in love with Tyrone Power. She divorced Jean Murat in 1938 and married Power in 1939. According to her, the head of the studio, Darryl F. Zanuck, was so incensed by the marriage that he put her on a blacklist.
Zanuck was further angered by her refusal to return to Britain to make three films she owed 20th Century-Fox British. “He thought I was a crazy woman who despised success, money, pictures. The last straw was when I did a play with Tyrone.” The play, Liliom, was intended to be a quiet little affair in Westport, where not too much notice would be taken of them. But Elsa Maxwell gave a huge party, the notices were excellent and the couple were hailed as the next sensation for Broadway. Not a prospect that pleased Mr Zanuck. She did one more film for Fox, 13 Rue Madeleine (1943), with James Cagney, but only because the director, Henry Hathaway, insisted on having her.
Her proudest memory as an actress occurred on Broadway in 1944, during her stage career. “It was a very successful play, Jacobovsky and the Colonel, and in the middle of a big scene, the safety curtain dropped. I said to myself, `My God, there’s a fire!’ I went backstage. `Paris has been liberated. Yes, it’s just been on the radio. We’ll take the curtain up – go and tell the audience.’ I thought of my parents, my family, my friends, France, I went back on the stage all by myself and I said to them, `Paris is free.’ And you know the whole audience stood and sang La Marseillaise. It was thrilling.”
Now an American citizen, Annabella toured North Africa and Italy, entertaining the troops with plays like Blithe Spirit. The separation did her marriage no good. Power, who had been in the marines, returned to Hollywood, where his name was linked with other stars. Annabella wrote to him “It is like seeing a beautiful black swan surrounded by geese.”
They separated and Annabella returned to Europe. She had lost her young brother, killed while trying to escape the Nazis, her father had died just after the war and the family’s two houses had been ransacked by the Germans. She worked in Spain and she worked in France. She made Dernier amour, an experience she hated. After a final film in Spain, she decided to end her career. “I finally had freedom. I hadn’t had any since I was a kid; I’d always been famous. And one day I walked out and no one stared at me. I loved it.”
Annabella remained loyal to Tyrone Power. They may have divorced in 1948, but she retained his name for the rest of her life. His portrait held pride of place in her home and they remained friends. “I was with him four days before he died,” she told David Shipman, “making Solomon and Sheba, and he said, `You know, the worst mistake I ever made was letting you go.’ Wasn’t that nice?”
Suzanne Georgette Charpentier (Annabella), actress: born La Varenne- Saint-Hillaire, France 14 July 1909; married 1932 Jean Murat (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1938), 1939 Tyrone Power (marriage dissolved 1948); died Neuilly-sur-Seine, France 18 September 1996.
Born Suzanne Georgette Charpentier, the daughter of a magazine publisher, in La Varenne Saint Hilaire, France, on July 14, 1909 (although sources vary the years from 1904 to 1913), Annabella appeared in Abel Gance‘s legendary silent epic Napoleon(1927). Director René Clair immediately recognized her gamine appeal and photogenic allure, casting her in his classic Le Million (1931). European stardom was hers.
Although only in her 20s, she was already a widow (due to the death of husband Albert Sorre, a writer) with a young daughter, Anne, to support. She pursued her career with ardent dedication and passion. She appeared on the stages of Berlin and Vienna and continued her professional association with director Clair by giving a superb performance in July 14 (1933) [July 14th]. She continued to shine working alongside the likes ofCharles Boyer, Jean Gabin, Albert Préjean and Jean Murat. Her popularity was further heightened by a successful association with writer/director Pál Fejös.
She first arrived in America to shoot a French-language version of a Hollywood film and began mastering English from that point on. Instead of settling in Hollywood, however, she headed to London and away from the Hollywood glitz. She had appeared earlier with Jean Murat in Companion Wanted (1932) and Mademoiselle Josette, ma femme (1933), and the couple married in 1934. She won the Venice Film Festival Award for her glorious performance in Sacrifice d’honneur (1935) [Sacrifice of Honor] and went on to appear with Murat in two other pictures — Anatole Litvak‘s Flight Into Darkness (1935) [Flight Into Darkness] and Anne-Marie (1936).
Hollywood beckoned again, this time courtesy of 20th Century-Fox, but the open-faced, ash-blonde beauty continued to resist. They finally arrived on a settlement of sorts — she would agree to make English-speaking films with the studio but only if they were made in England. Her English-speaking debut was opposite Henry Fonda in Wings of the Morning (1937), which was quite successful. It was the first Technicolor feature ever shot in England and Annabella looked every inch the star.
As her following American movies were given their release, such as Under the Red Robe(1937) with Conrad Veidt and Raymond Massey and Dinner at the Ritz (1937) with Paul Lukas and David Niven, Annabella was drawn into the Hollywood maelstrom despite her desire for privacy. This privacy would be shattered dramatically after the still-married French actress met and fell hard for the studio’s main attraction, Tyrone Power. From that time forward, the soon-to-be-divorced Annabella and Power became prime objects of tabloid frenzy. They finally married on April 23, 1939. Hounded by an ever-curious public, the couple soon began having marital troubles, complicated by their inevitable time apart for filming and his war service. His numerous affairs only compounded their problems. She bravely kept a strong front and continued filming, but her vehicles were not up to par. The Baroness and the Butler (1938) with William Powell, Suez (1938), which she filmed with her husband, and Bridal Suite (1939) with Robert Young did little to bolster her American career. After Tonight We Raid Calais (1943) and Bomber’s Moon (1943), she ended her contract with 13 Rue Madeleine (1947), and then she was gone.
Divorcing Power in January of 1948, she returned to Europe. Her last French film was released in 1952. Her only child Anne would find love and heartbreak married to the Austrian actor Oskar Werner who self-destructed from depression and chronic alcoholism. Annabella’s last years were spent quietly, volunteering at one point in prison welfare. She died of a heart attack at Neuilly sur Seine on September 18, 1996, at the age of 87.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net
Horst Buchholz obituary in “The Guardian” in 2003.
The refusal of German audiences to contemplate subtitled films ensured useful, if obscure, work for their actors, and Horst Buchholz, who has died aged 69, found – as Henry Brookholt – such employment invaluable in the early stages of his career.
Buchholz, who achieved fame as one of The Magnificent Seven (1960), shed his obscurity by winning an acting award at the Cannes film festival for his third film, Sky Without Stars (1955), by the outstanding German director Helmut Käutner. Two years later, he played the title role of Thomas Mann’s The Confessions Of Felix Krull, and began an international career. He appeared in Britain as the fugitive Polish sailor befriended by Hayley Mills, making her mesmerising screen debut, in Tiger Bay (1959).
After the success of that intelligent thriller, there was the inevitable, though temporary, hop to Hollywood, which characteristically failed to make constructive use of Buchholz’s abilitites. His one remarkable role was as the irritating youngster, Chico, in The Magnificent Seven, and it was a tribute to his talent and personality that he successfully recreated the role immortalised by Toshiro Mifune in the Samurai version of the story.
Buchholz, who was born in a poor suburb of Berlin, was evacuated to the countryside during the war. After his father was killed, he fled a children’s camp in Bohemia and returned to the city. He abandoned school to study acting, making his debut – aged 15 – in Emil And The Detectives. He also worked on radio and in dubbing theatres, and, thanks to a facility for languages, became fluent in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian.
That Man In Istanbul, poster, US poster art, Horst Buchholz (bottom left and top right), 1965. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
His brooding good looks led to stage work, including roles in Jean Anouilh’s School For Fathers and Shakespeare’s Richard III, and a screen debut in the fantasy Marianne of My Youth (1955), after its director Julien Duvivier saw him at the Schiller theatre. What made him a star in Germany were his James Dean-style roles as rebellious youngsters, most notably in Die Halbstarke (1956), shown in Britain as Wolfpack.
Buchholz’s international career did not lessen his popularity at home, and he continued to work in films and television throughout Europe, while living principally in Switzerland and maintaining apartments in Paris and Berlin. Hollywood offered him little, and after the lumpen Fanny (1961), his next film after the classic western, he relished his role as the communist lover in Billy Wilder’s satire on American consumerism, One, Two, Three (also 1961).
He then took on Nine Hours To Rama (1963), making a convincing character of Naturam Godse, the Hindu extremist determined that Gandhi should be assassinated. This rather dull film launched a decade in which Buchholz starred mainly in dismal co-productions, including Marco, The Magnificent (1965), Cervantes (1966) and The Great Waltz (1972), in which his portrayal of Johann Strauss Jr was drowned in a welter of melody.
Buchholz returned to Germany to star in But Johnny (1973), and subsequently divided his time between lucrative television movies and films in America. Among his better television work was The Savage Bees (1976), Raid On Entebbe (1977) and Berlin Tunnel 21 (1981), in which he played an engineer helping refugees escape to the west. On the big screen, he was in the spy drama Avalanche Express (1979) and more prestigious films, including Wim Wenders’ Faraway, So Close! (1993), and enjoyed personal success as the cultured Dr Lessing in Robert Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful (1997).
The following year, he provided the voice of the Emperor in the German version of the animated adventure Mulan, estimating that he had worked on the dubbing of more than 1,000 films throughout his career. Among his last screen appearances was a documentary, Guns For Hire; The Making Of The Magnificent Seven (2000) and an old-fashion Europudding thriller, Enemy (2001).
He is survived by his wife Myriam Bru, who gave up acting after their marriage in 1958, and their two children, Beatrice and Christopher, both of whom are actors.
· Horst Buchholz, actor, born December 4 1933; died March 3 2003
To view the “Guardian” Obituary on Horst Buchholz, please click here.
Tribute
Thoughtful looking Horst Buchholz was a renowned German actor who seems to be mainly remembered for one classic western. But this largely forgotten actor had a much more interesting and varied career which covered many genres in many countries.
Born in Berlin on December 4th, 1933, Buchholz began in popular German productions such as ‘Regine’ (’56) and ‘King in the Shadow’ (’57) before impressing in the cult comedy ‘Confessions of Felix Krull’ (’57), where he played a charming scoundrel conning his way to the top. It would be two years later however, with a sympathetic role in an excellent British thriller, that would bring him wider acclaim. In ‘Tiger Bay’ (’59) his first English language movie, Buchholz shone as a Polish seaman being pursued by the police after shooting dead his girlfriend. The movie was also memorable for introducing a 12 year old Hayley Mills to the screen, and she stole the show as the little girl who witnesses the murder.
The following year Buchholz found Hollywood fame when he played the youngest gang member in John Sturges’ classic western ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (’60). As the reckless Chico his character survives the final shootout along with Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner. A change of pace followed with Billy Wilder’s energetic farce ‘One, Two, Three’ (’61), a rapid-fire comedy which had James Cagney as a Coca-Cola executive in Germany, whose pretty young daughter (Pamela Tiffin) falls in love with Buchholz’s radical communist, leading to the usual complications. Although the movie was a misfire it has since gained a sizable following over the years. Also that year Buchholz romanced Leslie Caron in ‘Fanny’, playing the son of Charles Boyer’s bar owner who falls in love with Caron’s pretty French maiden, whilst longing for his own freedom. It was a lovely film with the superb cast (including Maurice Chevalier) on top form.
Now a popular young actor, Horst had to turn down Omar Sharif’s role in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, as he had already signed on to Wilder’s ‘One, Two, Three’. In Italy he was Bette Davis’ wannabe artist son in the drama ‘The Empty Canvas’ (’63), and then a club owner in the energetic spy spoof ‘That Man in Istanbul’ (’65) with Sylva Koscina and Klaus Kinski. That same year saw Buchholz take on the role of Marco Polo in the visually impressive but rather tedious adventure ‘Marco the Magnificent’ (’65) alongside Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif. After playing the title role in the biopic ‘Cervantes’ (’67) about the poet and writer who penned “Don Quixote”, he was reunited with Sylva Koscina for the dull actioner ‘The Dove Must Not Fly’ (’70). Another biopic followed, this time of composer Johann Strauss, in Andrew L. Stone’s musical ‘The Great Waltz’ (’72). He gave a good performance and aged convincingly, and even though the production was overblown, at least the music was good.
With film offers now diminishing, Buchholz made a run of television movies, including the pretty good horror ‘The Savage Bees’, and the star-laden hostage drama ‘Raid on Entebbe’ (both ’76) with Peter Finch and Charles Bronson. Some duds followed, including the troubled Lee Marvin production ‘Avalanche Express’ (’79) and Umberto Lenzi’s war flick ‘From Hell to Victory’ (’79) with George’s Peppard and Hamilton. Following some forgettable parts in the Erotic French drama ‘Aphrodite’ (’82) and the 1983 Brooke Shields’ adventure ‘Sahara’, one good movie at this time was the 1988 drama ‘And the Violins Stopped Playing’, a true story about a small band of gypsies escaping the German army during World War II. Slumming it once again, he then hammed it up as a menacing baddie called Thor in the Italian Post-Apocalypse sci-fi flick ‘Escape from Paradise’ (’90).
After a small role as a devious tycoon in Wim Wender’s acclaimed fantasy-drama ‘Faraway, So Close! (’93), Buchholz scored a big hit later on with one of his final movies, the Oscar-winning crowd-pleaser ‘Life Is Beautiful’ (’97), playing a kindly doctor befriending Roberto Begnini’s upbeat concentration camp prisoner. Apart from a supporting role in the forgettable Luke Perry actioner ‘The Enemy’ (2001), Buchholz’s final appearances were confined to German productions, though mainly in television movies.
Sadly, while recovering from a broken thighbone, Buchholz died of pneumonia on March 3rd 2003. He was 69. Married for 42 years to former French actress Myriam Bru, Horst Buchholz was a much-loved actor in his own country, but also managed to carve out a successful career all over the world, including Hollywood where (if only briefly) he found fame and a fan-base with a handful of varied and now-classic productions.
Favourite Movie: The Magnificent Seven Favourite Performance: Tiger Bay
Krabbé was born into an artistic family in Amsterdam. Both his father Maarten Krabbéand grandfather Hendrik Maarten Krabbé were well-known painters, while his mother Margreet, née Reiss (1914–2002), was a film translator. His brother Tim is a writer and top level chess player, and his half-brother nl:Mirko Krabbé is an artist. Only later in life did he learn that his mother was Jewish and that her family had been killed in the Holocaust.
One Sheet; Movie Poster; Film Poster; Cinema Poster;Original Cinema Quad Poster – Movie Film Posters
However, it was his roles as villains in a string of international films from the late 1980s and early 1990s which brought him international stardom, with notable roles such as Losado in No Mercy (1986), General Georgi Koskov in the James Bond film The Living Daylights (1987), Gianni Franco in The Punisher (1989), Herbert Woodruff (Lowenstein’s husband) in The Prince of Tides (1991), and Dr. Charles Nichols in The Fugitive (1993). He has also appeared in numerous TV productions, and as Satan in the TV production Jesus.
His television work included playing an uncanny psychic in the Midsomer Murders series 11 episode “Talking to the Dead”. Krabbé also had an exhibition about his paintings in Museum de Fundatie(Zwolle), in 2008.
Giovanna Ralli was born in Rome in 1935. She began making films in Italy in 1951 and by the mid 60’s had achieved an international reputation. She made one movie in 1966 in Hollywood “What Did You Do in the War Daddy” with fellow Italian Sergio Fantoni. Ms Ralli is still acting in movies.
