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- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born in Austria to a French mother and a German father, young Christine Kaufmann conquered the hearts of post-war German movie audiences in movies like Der schweigende Engel (1954), Ein Herz schlägt für Erika (1956) and, most famously, Rosen-Resli (1954). Discovered at the tender age of six, Christine was soon the breadwinner for her family. This quickly changed when puberty destroyed her blooming career as "the sweet innocent child" in West Germany. Her ambitious mother, by now Christine's manager, relocated to Rome with her. In Italy, her Lolita-like qualities were appreciated and used in movies like The Last Days of Pompeii (1959) in which, at age 13, she played the love-interest of "Mr. Universe" Steve Reeves (then 32). Due to her hard work as a child (between 1952 and 1959 she starred in 18 films!), she was never able to attend school; yet, by the age of 14, young Christine was fluent in German, French, Italian, Spanish and English.
In 1959, Christine headed to London to audition for the role of Karen in Exodus (1960). Director Otto Preminger chose Jill Haworth over Kaufmann but was still so impressed with her that he recommended her for a substantial part in Gottfried Reinhardt's courtroom drama Town Without Pity (1961). The movie, which starred Kirk Douglas, E.G. Marshall and Robert Blake, became an international success and earned Kaufmann a Golden Globe as Most Promising Newcomer. After a string of rather forgettable movies in West Germany, France, and Italy, she flew to Argentina to co-star alongside Yul Brynner and Tony Curtis in Taras Bulba (1962). Curtis, who was already 36, fell immediately for the 16-year-old German starlet, left his wife Janet Leigh and his two daughters and started to live with Christine in both Europe and in Los Angeles. (In the US, they had to keep their relationship on the DL because Christine was still underage and therefore jail bait.) Shortly after her 18th birthday, Curtis and Kaufmann got married in Las Vegas. Kirk Douglas was their best man. One of Curtis' demands was that she would retire from acting after the wedding, and Christine gladly acquiesced to his request; actually she had been dreaming of retiring since her success with Rosen-Resli (1954) which had ended her once-peaceful childhood abruptly. She later claimed that she'd never really been interested in becoming an actress in the first place and was more or less forced into it by her parents: "I was an obedient girl and wanted to make my mother happy, so I simply did what I was being told. Unfortunately, once you are famous, there's no way back, and since I didn't have a formal school education, I could not fulfill my dream of studying archaeology and art history."
Her last movie, a droll comedy titled Wild and Wonderful (1964), was released in June 1964 to mixed reviews. In July, she gave birth to her first daughter, Alexandra Curtis. Christine was 19. Two years later, a second daughter, Allegra Curtis, arrived. Her husband, who already had two daughters with his first wife, had wanted a son and was unable to hide his disappointment. By late 1966, Tony Curtis was pretty much spending his time with other women, while Christine, living the life of a 40-year-old Hollywood matron at the age of 20, was slowly growing up. In 1968, she left Curtis and filed for divorce in Mexico, because she didn't want any of his money. She took her daughters and moved back to Europe.
By the early 1970s, Christine worked steadily in theatre, on TV and occasionally in movies: "I worked with discipline, but without any interest." Art house directors like Werner Schroeter, Percy Adlon, and Rainer Werner Fassbinder cast her in sometimes interesting, but mostly forgettable movies. In 1971, she did another American movie (filmed in Madrid), the tepid, too-artsy-for-its-own-good Murders in the Rue Morgue (1971) with Jason Robards and Herbert Lom, and in 1987 she was offered a wonderfully written part in Bagdad Cafe (1987) with Marianne Sägebrecht, CCH Pounder and Jack Palance which became one of the most enchantingly beautiful movies of the decade. But Christine's real passion belonged to the theatre where she acted under maverick directors like Peter Zadek and Michael Bogdanov.
She made a lasting impression on German television with her hilariously witty portrayal of Olga Behrens in Monaco Franze - Der ewige Stenz (1983), written by Patrick Süskind.
In the 1990s, now approaching 50, Christine took up writing, publishing several books on beauty, health, and fame, including three autobiographies. She also became a business woman with her own line of cosmetics which made her a fairly wealthy woman. Generous as she was, she financed (with the help of ex-stepdaughter Jamie Lee Curtis) her grandchildren's education.
After Curtis, Christine Kaufmann re-married three times, all marriages ending in divorce. She lived all over the world, including five years in Morocco. In March 2017, shortly after her 72nd birthday, Christine died of leukemia (like her mother) in Munich. She wanted to be buried next to her mother and grandmother in Vernon, just outside Paris, a wish that was granted by her older brother and her daughters.- Actor
- Director
- Writer
Beaumont began his career in show business by perfoming in theatres, nightclubs, and on the radio in 1931. He attended the University of Chattanooga, but left when his position on the football team was changed. He later attended the University of Southern California, and graduated with a Master of Theology degree in 1946. He was visiting his son Hunter, a Psychology Professor in Munich, at the time of his sudden death.- Writer
- Director
- Actor
Above all, Rainer Werner Fassbinder was a rebel whose life and art was marked by gross contradiction. Openly homosexual, he married twice; one of his wives acted in his films and the other served as his editor. Accused variously by detractors of being anticommunist, male chauvinist, antiSemitic and even antigay, he completed 44 projects between 1966 and 1982, the majority of which can be characterized as highly intelligent social melodramas. His prodigious output was matched by a wild, self-destructive libertinage that earned him a reputation as the enfant terrible of the New German Cinema (as well as its central figure.) Known for his trademark leather jacket and grungy appearance, Fassbinder cruised the bar scene by night, looking for sex and drugs, yet he maintained a flawless work ethic by day. Actors and actresses recount disturbing stories of his brutality toward them, yet his pictures demonstrate his deep sensitivity to social misfits and his hatred of institutionalized violence. Some find his cinema needlessly controversial and avant-garde; others accuse him of surrendering to the Hollywood ethos. It is best said that he drew forth strong emotional reactions from all he encountered, both in his personal and professional lives, and this provocative nature can be experienced posthumously through reviewing his artistic legacy.
Fassbinder was born into a bourgeois Bavarian family in 1945. His father was a doctor and his mother a translator. In order to have time for her work, his mother frequently sent him the movies, a practice that gave birth to his obsession with the medium. Later in life, he would claim that he saw a film nearly every day and sometimes as many as three or four. At the age of 15, Fassbinder defiantly declared his homosexuality, soon after which he left school and took a job. He studied theater in the mid-sixties at the Fridl-Leonhard Studio in Munich and joined the Action Theater (aka, Anti-Theater) in 1967. Unlike the other major auteurs of the New German Cinema (e.g., Schlöndorff, Herzog and Wenders) who started out making movies, Fassbinder acquired an extensive stage background that is evident throughout his work. Additionally, he learned how to handle all phases of production, from writing and acting to direction and theater management. This versatility later surfaced in his films where, in addition to some of the aforementioned responsibilities, Fassbinder served as composer, production designer, cinematographer, producer and editor. [So boundless was his energy, in fact, that he appeared in 30 projects of other directors.] In his theater years, he also developed a repertory company that included his mother, two of his wives and various male and female lovers. Coupled with his ability to serve in nearly any crew capacity, this gave him the ability to produce his films quickly and on extremely low budgets.
Success was not immediate for Fassbinder. His first feature length film, a gangster movie called Love Is Colder Than Death (1969) was greeted by catcalls at the Berlin Film Festival. His next piece, Katzelmacher (1969), was a minor critical success, garnering five prizes after its debut at Mannheim. It featured Jorgos, an emigrant from Greece, who encounters violent xenophobic slackers in moving into an all-German neighborhood. This kind of social criticism, featuring alienated characters unable to escape the forces of oppression, is a constant throughout Fassbinder's diverse oeuvre. In subsequent years, he made such controversial films about human savagery such as Pioneers in Ingolstadt (1971) and Whity (1971) before scoring his first domestic commercial success with The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972). This moving portrait of a street vendor crushed by the betrayal and his own futility is considered a masterpiece, as is his first international success Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974) (Fear Eats the Soul). With a wider audience for his efforts, however, some critics contend that Fassbinder began to sell out with big budget projects such as Despair (1978), Lili Marleen (1981) and Lola (1981). In retrospect, however, it seems that the added fame simply enabled Fassbinder to explore various kinds of filmmaking, including such "private" works as In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) and The Third Generation (1979), two films about individual experience and feelings. His greatest success came with The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979) (The Marriage of Maria Braun), chronicling the rise and fall of a German woman in the wake of World War II. Other notable movies include The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Fox and His Friends (1975), Satan's Brew (1976) and Querelle (1982), all focused on gay and lesbian themes and frequently with a strongly pornographic edge.
His death is a perfect picture of the man and his legend. On the night of June 10, 1982, Fassbinder took an overdose of cocaine and sleeping pills. When he was found, the unfinished script for a version of Rosa Luxemburg was lying next to him. So boundless was his drive and creativity that, throughout his downward spiral and even in the moment of his death, Fassbinder never ceased to be productive.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Born Kätherose Derr in Wiesbaden, Karin Dor studied acting and ballet at school and began in films as an extra. The attractive redhead made an indelible impression on Austrian director Harald Reinl (who became her first husband in 1954) and this paved the way to higher profile roles. Her first significant featured appearance was in Reinl's melodrama Der schweigende Engel (1954). Karin subsequently shared top billing in a classroom drama about wayward matriculation students, Ihre große Prüfung (1954). During the initial segment of her career she played nice girls, mainly wide-eyed ingénues, innocent victims and assorted naive juveniles in war and period dramas (As Long as You Live (1955)), Heimatfilms (Almenrausch und Edelweiß (1957)) and operettas (The White Horse Inn (1960)).
By 1960, a more glamorous, lithe and sensual Karin had graduated to juicer roles as heroines in Edgar Wallace potboilers (beginning with Der grüne Bogenschütze (1961)) and a series of Karl May European westerns, invariably directed by Reinl and co-starring Tarzan actor Lex Barker (a combination which proved equally successful for other crime/sci-fi franchises, including The Invisible Dr. Mabuse (1962)). Many of these pictures enjoyed only limited release and were rarely exhibited outside Germany.
Karin succeeded at last to break her stereotyping by playing a pathological serial killer wielding a cutthroat razor in another Wallace/Reinl outing, Room 13 (1964), and - for a total change of pace -- essayed Brunhilde in a two-part filming of the epic 'Die Nibelungen' (also directed by Reinl). With her international appeal now widening, she appeared in The Face of Fu Manchu (1965), a British-West German co-production, as a scientist's daughter menaced by the titular villain. To follow was arguably her best-known international role as an early 'Bond girl', Helga Brandt (alias Number Eleven), a SPECTRE operative whose failure to eliminate J.B. results in her being dropped into a piranha-infested pool by super villain Blofeld (Donald Pleasence) in You Only Live Twice (1967). She was then engaged by Alfred Hitchcock for the part of Cuban resistance leader Juanita de Cordoba in Topaz (1969) in which her character came to a similarly sticky end. Karin's career never quite recovered from this director's rare box-office aberration. British Times reviewer and Hitchcock specialist John Russell Taylor described the picture as "generally flat, undistinguished, and lacking in any sign of positive interest or involvement on his (Hitchcock's) part". In the wake of Topaz, Karin's screen appearances became infrequent, except for a couple of guest spots on American crime shows, followed by an of unsuccessful feature film comeback attempt in the incongruous thriller Warhead (1977). She was latterly seen on German television in several episodes of Rosamunde Pilcher (1993). Karin's third husband was actor and stuntman George Robotham who predeceased her in 2007.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Tall, portly built German born actor (and talented violinist) who notched up over 100 film appearances, predominantly in German-language productions. He will forever be remembered by Western audiences as the bombastic megalomaniac "Auric Goldfinger" trying to kill Sean Connery and irradiate the vast US gold reserves within Fort Knox in the spectacular "James Bond" film Goldfinger (1964). However, due to Fröbe's thick German accent, his voice was actually dubbed by English actor, Michael Collins.
While commonly perceived as cold hearted & humourless from his Goldfinger (1964) portrayal, quite to the contrary, Fröbe was a jovial man and a wonderful comedic performer. His light hearted talents can be best viewed in The Ballad of Berlin (1948), Der Tag vor der Hochzeit (1952), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), and Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines or How I Flew from London to Paris in 25 Hours 11 Minutes (1965). Fröbe also portrayed dogged detective Kriminalkommissar Kras/Lohmann pursuing the evil Dr. Mabuse in The 1,000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960), The Return of Dr. Mabuse (1961) and The Terror of Doctor Mabuse (1962).- Actor
- Additional Crew
Max Schreck was born in Berlin. He worked in an apprenticeship until his father's death before enrolling into a school for acting. He toured the country with his peers and was a member of several theaters until he became a part of Max Reinhardt's group of innovative German actors. He played mostly out of the norm characters, the elderly and the grotesque, because of his talent and passion for make-up and costume fabrication. Although film was a challenge in which he excitedly and hopefully participated, he had small roles in films that are scarcely available, and his real career was in German theatre. He played hundreds of roles in his lifetime. He was married to Fanny Normann, a fellow performer whom he met a short time after his actor's education and shared many times with on stage. They had no children. He died on the morning of February 20th, 1936 from a heart attack.- Robert Graf was born on 18 November 1923 in Witten, Germany. He was an actor, known for The Great Escape (1963), Aren't We Wonderful? (1958) and Jonas (1957). He was married to Selma Urfer. He died on 4 February 1966 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany.
- Actress
- Soundtrack
Barbara Valentin was born on 15 December 1940 in Vienna, Austria. She was an actress, known for World on a Wire (1973), Our Man in Jamaica (1965) and Horrors of Spider Island (1960). She was married to Helmut Dietl, Rald Lüders and Ernst Reichardt. She died on 22 February 2002 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Actress
- Soundtrack
A prominent German film actress born on 30 September 1887 at Madiven, Java, the daughter of a forest ranger in the service of the Dutch authorities. Sent at the age of ten to Baden-Baden to study, she later entered the cinema thanks to her marriage in 1917 to the actor Fritz Dagover who was 25 years her senior. They divorced in 1919 but not before he had introduced her to director Robert Wiene and other notables of German cinema. She made her screen debut in Fritz Lang's Harakiri (1919). Immediately after she appeared in Wiene's classic expressionist film, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (aka The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)). Apart from three trips -- one to Sweden in 1927, another to France in 1928-9 and one to Hollywood in 1931 -- most of Lil Dagover's career and fate was linked to that of the German cinema, where her role was usually that of the frail, menaced heroine. She continued to star in a great number of films during the Nazi era. Among her best performances were her roles in Congress Dances (1931), in Gerhard Lamprecht's The Higher Command (1935) and in Veit Harlan's The Kreutzer Sonata (1937). She also acted in the Deutsches Theatre Berlin, the Salzburg Festival, at forces shows and at war theaters. At one time, she was reported to have been a close friend of Adolf Hitler. In 1944, she received the War Merits Cross. Dagover continued her career in post-war Germany, playing many supporting parts until the late 1970s.- Helmut Griem was born on 6 April 1932 in Hamburg, Germany. He was an actor, known for Cabaret (1972), The Damned (1969) and Fabrik der Offiziere (1960). He was married to Helga Koehler. He died on 19 November 2004 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
- Ulrike Butz, daughter of television presenter Hermann Butz, grew up in the Bavarian district of Miesbach. At the age of 17, she left her parents' home to go to Southern Europe, but only made it as far as Munich, where she was shooting nudes as a 17-year-old. It was during this time that she first came into contact with drugs.
In 1972 she started working as an actress in the German soft sex film industry, which was just flourishing. Between 1972 and 1974, Ulrike starred in 28 films, including film series such as The School Girls (1970) (parts four through seven), The Miner' Wife ... Takes Her Pick (1972) (parts one, three and four), Wide Open Marriage (1973) and other pseudo-documentary report films such as Nurses Report (1972), Sex-Träume-Report (1973), Swedish Lessons in Love (1973) and 14 and Under (1973). She played her most demanding role in The Devil's Plaything (1973), a horror film directed by Joseph W. Sarno.
With nearly 30 film roles, Ulrike was one of the busiest actresses of the genre. As one of the few actresses in the industry, her acting talent was witnessed. In February 1974, the chubby, busty actress was featured in a photo spread for Playboy magazine. During this time she came into contact with the wrong friends, who again associated her with drugs. Her father tried several times to get his daughter out of this milieu. He financed several rehabs, a luxury apartment and a mannequin apprenticeship, which she dropped out of. In 1976, she spent some time in prison for a theft offense.
After her father died in 1976, Butz slipped back into the drug milieu. In 1979, she had to serve another prison sentence in Aichach for drug possession. After successful rehab, she worked as a waitress, began a relationship and had a son. In 1981, Butz went into business for herself with money from her father's inheritance and opened a costume shop in Munich's Neuhausen district, but it went bankrupt after a few years. Franz Marischka cast her again in two productions of the sex film industry, which was by now coming to an end: Laß laufen, Kumpel (1981) and Die unglaublichen Abenteuer des Guru Jakob (1983) with Zachi Noy, Thomas Ohrner and Sibylle Rauch.
She died at the age of 46 in Munich, the urn grave is located at the Waldfriedhof. - Actor
- Additional Crew
- Writer
Klaus Löwitsch was born on 8 April 1936 in Berlin, Germany. He was an actor and writer, known for World on a Wire (1973), Firefox (1982) and Cross of Iron (1977). He was married to Helga Heinrich. He died on 3 December 2002 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Hans Reiser was born on 3 June 1919 in Munich, Germany. He was an actor, known for The Great Escape (1963), Zwei Münchner in Hamburg (1989) and Der Wittiber (1962). He died on 14 June 1992 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Actor
- Director
- Soundtrack
Born on 26 May 1923 in Wuppertal, he served with the Nazi German Waffen-SS in World War II. After attending acting lessons at the theater in Stendal, where he also made his stage debut, he performed on several important stages in Germany, but became widely popular as cinema and television actor in the late 1950s and 1960s, probably best known as gentleman gangster in The Great British Train Robbery (1966). Nevertheless, the role of his role was the character of "Stephan Derrick", a Munich Chief Inspector, who became a cult figure all over the world. He played the role from 1974 to 1998 and received several awards such as the Golden Camera, Bambi and the Italian Telegatto.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Til Kiwe did in real life what several actors played in The Great Escape. Kiwe was a German paratrooper officer, captured in North Africa in 1943, who made several escape attempts from an American POW camp in Colorado. Once, having dyed his uniform with brown vegetable juice, he made it as far as St Louis by train before being recaptured. After the war he became a German actor in movies and TV. He was also an anthropologist who made several expeditions to Polynesia and SouthAmerica.- Actress
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
One of the pre-eminent divas of post-war German cinema, Hannelore Elsner (born 'Elstner') was the consummate actress: a gifted and versatile performer with a penchant for intense roles, often as emancipated, strong-willed women. A Bavarian engineer's daughter (her father died of tuberculosis when she was eight), 'Hanni' first took acting classes in Munich where she also debuted on stage at the Kammerspiele and the Kleine Komödie. She appeared on screen from 1959, initially in teenage melodramas and 'Paukerfilms', later featuring as a regular guest star on TV in procedural crime dramas like Isar 12 (1961) and Stahlnetz (1958) . From the late 60's, Elsner alternated 'sexy roles' (such as her native American maiden in Christoph Kolumbus oder Die Entdeckung Amerikas (1969) ) with more demanding fare. Under the direction of such prominent film makers as Wolfgang Staudte, Edgar Reitz and Alf Brustellin, she proved her diverse range, headlining, respectively, in the satirical caper comedy Die Herren mit der weissen Weste (1970), the period biopic Der Schneider von Ulm (1978) and the hard-luck drama Der Sturz (1979). Among many other notable big screen credits were the romantic drama Der grüne Vogel (1980) (directed by István Szabó) and the delightful Otto Sander farce Wer spinnt denn da, Herr Doktor? (1982). Elsner's powerful tour-de-force acting showcase Die Unberührbare (2000) won her the first of two German film awards as Best Actress, as well as a Silver Hugo at the Chicago International Film Festival. A patrician beauty well into middle age, she captured a large fan base on the small screen as star of Lady Cop (1994), a role which developed from two previous guest spots as a Chief Inspector in the long-running police series Tatort (1970).
She was married and divorced twice. Her subsequent life partner (from 1999) was Günter Blamberger, a professor of German philology. Her memoirs, entitled "Im Überschwang - Aus meinem Leben", appeared in 2011. Hannelore Elsner died after a long battle with cancer on April 21 2019 at the age of 76.- Alistair MacLean was born on 28 April 1922 in Daviot, Scotland, UK. He was a writer, known for The Guns of Navarone (1961), Where Eagles Dare (1968) and Puppet on a Chain (1970). He was married to Mary Marcelle Georgius and Gisela Heinrichsen. He died on 2 February 1987 in Munich, Germany.
- Actor
- Writer
- Additional Crew
Peter Capell was born on 3 September 1912 in Berlin, Germany. He was an actor and writer, known for Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971), One, Two, Three (1961) and Paths of Glory (1957). He died on 3 March 1986 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany.- Actor
- Director
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Robert Freitag was born on 7 April 1916 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. He was an actor and director, known for The Great Escape (1963), Decision Before Dawn (1951) and Ein Monat auf dem Lande (1960). He was married to Maria Sebaldt and Maria Becker. He died on 8 July 2010 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Hans Christian Blech was born on 20 February 1915 in Darmstadt, Germany. He was an actor, known for The Longest Day (1962), Battle of the Bulge (1965) and Wer zu spät kommt - Das Politbüro erlebt die deutsche Revolution (1990). He was married to Erni Wilhelmi. He died on 5 March 1993 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Actor
- Director
- Additional Crew
Ulrich Beiger was born on 26 August 1918 in Munich, Germany. He was an actor and director, known for The Great Escape (1963), Im Weissen Rössl (1952) and Driving Me Crazy (1991). He was married to Hannelore Schützler. He died on 18 September 1996 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Actress
- Director
- Writer
Dana Vávrová was born on 9 August 1967 in Prague, Czechoslovakia [now Czech Republic]. She was an actress and director, known for Herbstmilch (1989), Amadeus (1984) and Der letzte Zug (2006). She was married to Joseph Vilsmaier. She died on 5 February 2009 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Director
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
Ernst Hofbauer was born on 22 August 1925 in Vienna, Austria. He was a director and assistant director. He died on 24 February 1984 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany.- Actress
- Soundtrack
New trends in post-war German cinema saw a shift away from the glamorous divas or idealised motherhood figures of the 1930s and 40s towards uncomplicated, wholesome, vivacious, perhaps tomboyish girl-next-door types. Germanic features were no longer strictly required. Dimple-cheeked, dark-haired Sonja Ziemann with her grey/green eyes and Bardot mouth became the paragon of the new fun-loving heroine for undemanding romantic fare or the ever popular 'Heimatfilm'.
Sonja Alice Selma Toni Ziemann was born in Eichenwalde, near Berlin, the daughter of a tax advisor. She learned ballet under Hilde Altmann-Vogt and Tatjana Gsovsky and began her career as a showgirl in revues and operettas, singing and dancing at the Metropol Theater. There, the director Peter Paul Brauer 'discovered' her for the screen. Sonia made her movie debut in a 1942 musical comedy and was thereafter groomed by Germany's pre-eminent film company Ufa (headquartered in Babelsberg) as an up-and-coming starlet. She appeared in a few undemanding supporting roles and made a brief return to the stage in the immediate aftermath of World War II. After toiling for several more years in assorted musicals and comedies without making too much of a ripple, she hit the big time with The Black Forest Girl (1950). The first motion picture to be shot in colour after the war, it ended up topping the popular charts and became the highest grossing picture of the year. Sonja garnered the first of two Bambi Awards but found herself effectively typecast. Further Heimatfilms and operettas followed which built on her pairing with Austrian matinee idol Rudolf Prack , lauded as Germany's most popular screen couple. Grün ist die Heide (1951) was the biggest of the Ziemann-Prack blockbusters, scoring an audience of 16 million viewers nationwide.
"All my roles were kitsch" she declared in a 1961 American interview. Indeed, many of those roles had relied on her camera-proof looks and patented profile. Eventually, Sonja took steps to shed her "snow white and marzipan" image and moved on to dramatic character roles. Her first was a Polish-West German co-production, The Eighth Day of the Week (1958), based on a story and screenplay by Polish author Marek Hlasko (who became her second husband in 1962). The rest of the decade completed her breakout from typecasting through a variety of roles and genres, some filmed at home, others in England or the U.S.. She now had leading roles in realistic wartime dramas based on factual events (Stalingrad: Dogs, Do You Want to Live Forever? (1959), Strafbataillon 999 (1960), The Bridge at Remagen (1969)), thrillers (Rebel Flight to Cuba (1959), Journey Into Nowhere (1962), Frühstück mit dem Tod (1964)) and crime dramas (Das Messer (1971)). There was even a comedy (of sorts) with Sonja billed second in the cast behind Terry-Thomas (as a 'germ detective') in A Matter of WHO (1961), shot by MGM at Elstree.
Sonja's screen acting took a backseat during the 70s with a return to the stage at theatres in Berlin, Frankfurt and Munich. Having moved to Switzerland, she became an honorary member of the Zurich Schauspielhaus in 1981. Three years after the death of Hlasko in 1969 she married the actor Charles Regnier. Sonja Ziemann died on February 17 2020 in Munich at the age of 94.- Actress
- Soundtrack
The enigmatic actress remains one of the most interesting figures in German film. Although she achieved stardom early in her career, the tragic Sybille Schmitz could never fit in with her surroundings. Too "alien looking" for Hollywood, Schmitz never migrated to America like her more glamorous peers and began losing roles in her native Germany as well due to her vaguely Semitic appearance and ties to the Jewish community. After the war, like many former UFA stars, Sybille was seen as a painful reminder of the Third Reich and she was once more displaced by the optimistic "new look" actresses. With acting being her sole reason to thrive, Sybille Schmitz began to drink heavily and rely on drugs as her career sank lower and lower. She finally committed suicide under mysterious circumstances on April 13, 1955, while being "cared for" by a corrupt lesbian doctor she was living with at the time of her death.- Actress
- Producer
- Director
Olga Chekhova (also Olga Tschechova in German), one of the most popular stars of the silent film era, remained a mysterious person throughout her life and was accused of being a Russian agent in Nazi Germany.
She was born Olga Konstantinovna von Knipper on April 26, 1897, in Aleksandropol, Transcaucasia, Russian Empire (now Gyumri, Armenia). She was the second of 3 children in a bilingual Russian-German family. Her father, Konstantin Leonardovich Knipper, a Lutheran of German descent. He made a military career in Russia as a railroad engineer. Young Olga studied art and literature at an art school in St. Petersburg. Later as an immigrant in Germany she claimed friendship with the family of Tsar Nicholas II--who also was of German origin--and that she had encountered the notorious Russian mystic and monk, Grigory Rasputin. In reality, she was sent from St. Petersburg to Moscow to her aunt, actress Olga Knipper-Chekhova, to study acting at Moscow Art Theatre. In 1914, at age 17, she eloped with Russian-Jewish actor Michael Chekhov, nephew of Anton Chekhov.
Olga adored her husband, Michael Chekhov, a rising star of stage and film. But he met another beauty, Xenia Zimmer, and became involved in extramarital affair while Olga was pregnant with their child. Their daughter, Ada Tschechowa, was born in 1916. Olga separated from Michael Chekhov during the tragic time of the Russian Revolution in 1917. That same year she made her film debut in a Russian silent film, Anya Kraeva (1918).
Olga claimed that she fled Russia disguised as a peasant woman and posed as a mute while carrying a diamond ring in her mouth. In reality she married an officer in the Austro-Hungarian army, Friedrich Jaroshi, and took a train from the Moscow Belorussky station to Vienna, Austria, having travel documents from the Russian Commissar of Culture (and she was also helped by the Russian intelligence agency in exchange for her cooperation). She was later invited to the Soviet Embassy in Berlin for meetings with Soviet officials. In Germany she was introduced to film producer Erich Pommer and renowned director F.W. Murnau, who gave her a leading role in his film, The Haunted Castle (1921). She quickly became a huge star in Europe and played in more than 40 silent films during the decade. Olga was joined by ex-husband Michael Chekhov in several films, including Der Narr seiner Liebe (1929) (aka "The Fool of Love"), which she also directed.
Future Nazi leader Adolf Hitler reportedly fell for Olga upon seeing her cold and beautiful face in several films in the 1920s. She was famous for her movie image as a baroness and was courted in the 1930s by Luftwaffe boss Hermann Göring and by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. Some wives of high-ranking Nazi officials were jealous of and hated the beautiful Olga. Goebbels was known to have visited her home on several occasions when he wanted to be away from his Nazi "activities". He invited Olga to several Nazi receptions and introduced her to Adolf Hitler in April 1933. Olga became a personal friend of Hitler and was photographed sitting next to "Der Fuhrer" at official events of the Nazi Party. She also received valuable Christmas gifts from Hitler, and regular birthday presents and other tokens of his attention.
In 1936 Olga was honored with the title of "State Actress" of the Third Reich and was made a German citizen. She married a wealthy Belgian businessman, Marcel Robyns. One day prior to the wedding she had a private reception with Hitler, who gave her permission to retain her German citizenship. Two years later she divorced Robyns and returned to her high-society life in Berlin. Her famous 1939 photo-op with Hitler was thoroughly analyzed in Moscow.
She was invited by Soviet officials to join Hermann Göring and Joachim von Ribbentrop at the meeting with Vyacheslav Molotov and Gen. V. N. Merkulov at the Soviet Embassy in Berlin in 1940. At that time Olga was associated with her agent-brother Lev Knipper, who was sent from Moscow to Germany on a secret mission to assassinate Adolf Hitler. The plan was to use one of Olga's visits with Hitler for a suicide attack on the Fuhrer. Olga was kept oblivious of the plan, which was aborted by an order from Joseph Stalin, who became paranoid about the possibility of Germany's alliance with Britain if Hitler was killed. Interestingly, Stalin and Hitler were both amateur film directors in the 1920s, but as dictators they now directed the course of history.
Olga was invited by Josef Goebbels to the official reception in Berlin in July of 1941, only a month after the Nazis invaded Russia and Luftwaffe bombings caused massive devastation to Russian cities. Goebbels announced the planned occupation of Moscow.
She was being investigated by the SS on orders from SS leader Heinrich Himmler. She was constantly under surveillance by both Nazi and Soviet agents in her Berlin home. As the war progressed and conditions got progressively worse for the Nazi regime, party bosses became increasingly paranoid. Himmler was planning to arrest her in January of 1945. One early morning she was informed of Himmler's move. She immediately called him directly with a request for a favor--to let her finish her morning cup of coffee comfortably. When SS commandos surrounded her home Himmler opened her door and was met by an angry Adolf Hitler, who in no uncertain terms informed Himmler that he had made a mistake.
Olga was a beautiful pawn in a dangerous game between the two most destructive powers in the Second World War. She survived through acting, cheating, lying and disguise. She protected her daughter Ada from Nazi anti-Semitism by hiding the fact that her ex-husband, Michael Chekhov, was Jewish. Her brother Lev Knipper was held in a Nazi concentration camp and managed to survive because of his perfect German (and probably with her help). During the savage battle for Berlin just before the war's end, Olga hid in a bomb shelter and was eventually taken prisoner by the Red Army. She was flown to Moscow in April of 1945, for debriefing at the offices of Soviet secret police officials Viktor Abakumov and Lavrenti Beria. She discreetly attended the Moscow Art Theatre performance of "The Cherry Orchard" starring her aunt Olga Knipper-Chekhova in May of 1945. They were not allowed to talk and her aunt Olga fainted backstage.
After two months of interrogations in Moscow, on June 26, 1945, Olga was flown back to Berlin, where she was assisted by the Soviet Army. She was given money and moved in to a Soviet-supervised house on Spree Strasse in the Soviet sector of East Berlin. Several articles in the French and British presses stated that she was a clandestine agent and secretly decorated by the Soviet government. She praised the Russian victory over the Nazis in a private letter to her aunt Olga Knipper-Chekhova. Meanwhile, the film she made in Hollywood turned out to be a flop in the US market, mainly because of her heavy Russian accent.
She continued a film career in Europe and ran her own film production company, Venus-Film Olga Tschechowa. In 1950 she moved to Munich and starred in several films. In 1955 she used her star power to launch a successful cosmetics company, "Olga Tscheschowa Kosmetik Geselschaft." Her remarkable acting career, spanning almost 60 years, ended in 1978, with a small film role as a grandmother.
Her personal file was temporarily available for viewing at the KGB archives in Moscow. One report on her was prepared and signed by the notoriously brutal KGB chief Viktor S. Abakumov. On that report a handwritten question was left by a reader in Kremlin: "What do you suggest to be done with Ms. Chekhova?", the handwriting was by Joseph Stalin. Stalin was quoted as having said, "The actress Olga Chekhova will be very useful in the post-war years", and she probably was. One of her films was titled Der Mann, der zweimal leben wollte (1950), or "The Man Who Wanted to Live Two Lives"--and that was exactly what she did.
In 1955, Olga was saddened by the death of Michael Chekhov. In 1966, Olga suffered from another tragedy: her only daughter Ada died in an airplane crash. Devastated by the painful loss, Olga suffered from bouts of depression and turned to alcohol, but she survived thanks to her strong will and lust for life. She lived for another fifteen years, played a few more roles in the movies, and saw her great-grandchildren grow. Moments before she died, sensing the end was near, she ordered a glass of champagne from her granddaughter Vera Tschechowa. That was March 9, 1980, in Munich, Germany.
Her last words were, "Life is beautiful!"- Actor
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Bernhard Wicki was born on 28 October 1919 in St. Pölten, Lower Austria, Austria. He was an actor and director, known for The Longest Day (1962), The Bridge (1959) and The Miracle of Father Malachia (1961). He was married to Elisabeth Endriss and Agnes Fink. He died on 5 January 2000 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Silvia Seidel was born on 23 September 1969 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany. She was an actress, known for Anna (1987), Halfway Across the Galaxy and Turn Left (1993) and Storm of Love (2005). She died on 31 July 2012 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
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Elisabeth Volkmann was born on 16 March 1936 in Essen, Germany. She was an actress, known for Kein Pardon (1993), Veronika Voss (1982) and Oh, diese Geister (1966). She was married to Eberhard Radisch and Walter Hass. She died on 25 July 2006 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Actor
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Ralf Wolter was born on 26 November 1926 in Berlin, Germany. He was an actor, known for Cabaret (1972), One, Two, Three (1961) and Hannibal Brooks (1969). He was married to Edith. He died on 14 October 2022 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Siegfried Lowitz was born on 22 September 1914 in Berlin, Germany. He was an actor, known for The Old Fox (1977), The Vengeance of Doctor Mabuse (1972) and Biedermann und die Brandstifter (1967). He was married to Marianne Probst and Elisabeth Felber. He died on 27 June 1999 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
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She went to school in Munich during the Weimar Republic and at the beginning of National Socialist rule. As a naive young woman, she allowed herself to be blinded by the power of the new regime. Humps soon wanted to move to the center of power of National Socialism, Berlin. So in 1942 she applied to work as an office worker in the "Adjutancy of the Führer." She was selected from several competitors. Then, at the end of January 1943, Adolf Hitler offered her the position of one of his private secretaries, which she immediately accepted. In the Reich capital, the Führer's new secretary met SS officer Hans Hermann Junge, whom she married in July 1943.
A little later her husband joined the Waffen-SS and was killed in Normandy in 1944. The new secretary was a witness to the failed bomb attack against Hitler, which was carried out on July 20, 1944 by Count Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg at the Führer's headquarters in the "Wolf's Lair." Junge also experienced the collapse of the so-called Third Reich in the spring of 1945 in the immediate vicinity of Hitler in Berlin, which was surrounded by Soviet troops. In April she moved with his closest colleagues into the Führerbunker under the New Reich Chancellery. In the seclusion of the bunker, Junge experienced the internal disintegration of Hitler, who was, however, willing to drag the whole of Germany into his downfall.
The secretary was shocked to learn that the war had been lost and the once impressive "leader" had become powerless. Nevertheless, Junge initially remained in the Führerbunker, even though Hitler had ordered her to be taken out of Berlin. The dictator's 56th birthday was celebrated there on April 20, 1945. On the night of April 29th, Hitler dictated his political will to his secretary, and Junge was disappointed by his arrogance and megalomania. Then she witnessed the marriage between the dictator and his long-time partner, Eva Braun. A little later, on April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide in the Führerbunker.
Immediately afterwards, Junge fled the bunker with other victims. After a four-week, 300km odyssey, Junge returned to Berlin in early June 1945, where she was imprisoned by the Soviet occupation. A year later, Junge managed to escape to his parents on Ammersee in Bavaria. After temporary imprisonment by the American occupation authorities, she was denazified in 1947. At that time (1947/48) Junge began to write down her experiences in the Third Reich. For her, recording these memories meant an act of coming to terms with the past, as she only now understood the criminal nature of the Hitler regime in all its dimensions.
Hitler's former secretary suffered throughout her life from her former naive enthusiasm for the National Socialist leadership cult and power behavior. Junge's memoirs were not published until more than half a century later. The journalist Melissa Müller edited the manuscript and published it together with Junge in 2002 under the title "Until the last hour. Hitler's secretary tells her life". The book, which illustrates the banality of everyday life at the center of National Socialist power, but also makes Hitler's personal charisma and power understandable, caused a great stir among the German and international public.
In 2001, based on Junge's memoirs, André Heller and Othmar Schmiderer made the documentary film "Im dead Winkel. Hitler's Secretary". The film is based on interviews with the 81-year-old Junge and expresses the hermetic isolation and surprising isolation in which the secretary lived from 1942 to 1945, despite being at the center of power. Shortly after the publication of her book and immediately after the film's premiere at the Berlinale, Traudl Junge died of cancer in Munich on February 11, 2002.
In 2004, a wider international cinema audience experienced the impressive eyewitness testimony of Hitler's private secretary in Oliver Hirschbiegel's Hitler adaptation "Downfall".- Actor
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Michael Habeck was born on 23 April 1944 in Grönenbach, Germany. He was an actor, known for The Name of the Rose (1986), Asterix and Obelix vs. Caesar (1999) and The Bourne Identity (1988). He died on 4 February 2011 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Actor
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Ekkehardt Belle was born on 18 May 1954 in Glehn, Grevenbroich, Germany. He was an actor, known for Underworld (2003), Summer Storm (2004) and Kidnapped (1978). He was married to Marlene Deiffel. He died on 31 January 2022 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.- Actor
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Rudolf Schündler was born on 17 April 1906 in Leipzig, Germany. He was an actor and director, known for Suspiria (1977), The Exorcist (1973) and The Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1933). He was married to Christine Laszar. He died on 12 December 1988 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany.- Actor
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Dieter Schidor was born on 6 March 1948 in Bienrode [now Brunswick], Lower Saxony, Germany. He was an actor and producer, known for Cross of Iron (1977), Kurze Kindheit, langer Abschied (1987) and Group Portrait with a Lady (1977). He was married to Michael McLernon. He died on 17 September 1987 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany.- Judith Armbrüster was born on 19 November 1950 in Bad Kreuznach, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany. She was an actress, known for Alpenglühn im Dirndlrock (1974), Bohr weiter, Kumpel (1974) and Teenage Intimacies (1973). She died on 22 June 2013 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
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Heinz Weiss was born on 12 June 1921 in Stuttgart, Germany. He was an actor, known for The Great Escape (1963), Death and Diamonds (1968) and The Violin Case Murders (1965). He was married to Elfriede Willer. He died on 20 November 2010 in Grünwald, Munich, Germany.- Sepp Gneissl was born on 23 October 1935 in Munich, Germany. He was an actor. He died on 24 October 2014 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
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Claudia Butenuth was born on 20 September 1946 in Göttingen, Lower Saxony, Germany. She was an actress and director, known for Brass Target (1978), What Have You Done to Solange? (1972) and Wenn mein Schätzchen auf die Pauke haut (1971). She was married to Patrick Neville Booth. She died on 1 September 2016 in Munich, Germany.- Amadeus August was born on 6 May 1942 in Breslau, Silesia, Germany [now Wroclaw, Dolnoslaskie, Poland]. He was an actor, known for Quentin Durward (1971), Bloody Friday (1972) and La conquête du ciel (1980). He died on 6 July 1992 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany.
- Armin Meier was born in 1943. He was an actor, known for Flaming Hearts (1978), Satan's Brew (1976) and Despair (1978). He died on 31 May 1978 in Munich, Germany.
- Hannelore Schroth was born on 10 January 1922 in Berlin, Germany. She was an actress, known for The Captain from Köpenick (1956), Emil of Lonneberga (1971) and A Glass of Water (1958). She was married to Peter Köster, Hans Hass and Carl Raddatz. She died on 7 July 1987 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany.
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Iván Petrovich was born on 1 January 1896 in Novi Sad, Austria-Hungary [now Serbia]. He was an actor, known for Elevator to the Gallows (1958), Mädchen in Weiß (1936) and Der Günstling von Schönbrunn (1929). He was married to Lilian Hübner and Friedel Schuster. He died on 18 October 1962 in Munich, West Germany.- Often called the First Lady of German cinema, Ruth Leuwerik was at the peak of her popularity during the 1950's when partnered on screen by the leading male stars of the post-war era: Dieter Borsche, Hannes Messemer, Curd Jürgens and O.W. Fischer. She proved her range by alternating between glamorous damsels and emancipated, resilient heroines in quality productions, invariably directed by master film makers like Wolfgang Liebeneiner, Robert Siodmak or Helmut Käutner.
Young Ruth first became enamoured with acting after watching a movie with Greta Garbo at the age of ten. Julius Martin Leeuwerik, a merchant, was sufficiently prosperous to afford his daughter private acting tuition after she was initially rejected by Berlin's premier acting academy. Undeterred, Leuwerik made her theatrical debut in 1943. The war, however, proved decidedly limiting to further career prospects. Between 1947 and 1949, she was able to gain steady theatrical engagements in Bremen and Lübeck. The following year, she came to the attention of film audiences in the vacation comedy, Dreizehn unter einem Hut (1950). Success was almost immediate and work on the stage henceforth took a back seat to the celluloid medium.
Between 1950 and 1963, Ruth Leuwerik starred in 28 pictures, nearly all of them box-office gold. These ranged from creaky melodramas like Die große Versuchung (1952) and Geliebte Feindin (1955) to prestige pictures like Rosen im Herbst (1955) (as Effie Briest, based on the novel by Theodor Fontane) and Ludwig II: Glanz und Ende eines Königs (1955) (as Empress Elisabeth of Austria). Her varied roles encompassed not only the standard Mittel-European aristocratic heroines of the period, but also hardy bourgeois mothers, victims of circumstance and dedicated professional women. She played Maria von Trapp in The Trapp Family (1956) -- long before the musical version with Julie Andrews was conceived -- and showcased her abilities as a serious dramatic actress in the role of a priest's daughter, on trial for murdering her husband, in the title role of A Matter of Minutes (1959). Another moving and sympathetic portrayal was that of the physician Hanna Dietrich, tending to 300 German POW's inside a Siberian concentration camp, in the gritty post-war drama Taiga (1958). This particular performance won her the Golden Gate Award at the San Francisco Film Festival. Arguably the culmination of her career was Liebling der Götter (1960), a biopic of the tragic actress Renate Müller. Voted Germany's most popular actress by Bravo, "the magazine for film and television", Leuwerik also picked up four prestigious Bambi Awards in 1953, 1960, 1961 and 1962. She was the first German actress to participate in a Royal Performance in London in 1960.
From 1964 -- having rejected an offer from Hollywood -- Leuwerik began to withdraw from public life and restrict her appearances to occasional guest spots on television. Unlike other screen divas, her personal life was remarkably devoid of scandal and controversy. Her second husband was the famous German opera singer Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Ruth Leuwerik died in Munich in January 2016 at the age of 91. - Actor
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Fritz Kortner was born on 12 May 1892 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary [now Austria]. He was an actor and director, known for Pandora's Box (1929), Somewhere in the Night (1946) and The Hands of Orlac (1924). He was married to Johanna Hofer. He died on 22 July 1970 in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany.- Actress
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Born in Königsberg in 1935, Renate Ewert and her family had to leave their home and relocate to Hamburg during WWII. As she was determined to become an actress, she applied for the "Hamburger Kammerspiele" but was rejected. By doing synchronising jobs for foreign movies she finally got her first role in the third part of 08/15 - In der Heimat (1955). After that one, she appeared in a number of movies as the seductive, mysterious girl but never got the dramatic parts she was eager to play.
She had affairs with some famous actors of the time but these didn't help her career. At the middle of the 60s she didn't get many offers anymore and turned to tablets and alcohol. At the 10th of December of 1966, she was found dead by a friend, actress Susanne Cramer, who wanted to visit her in her apartment: she had died three weeks previously, probably by starvation.
Her parents couldn't deal with Renate Ewert's untimely death: They poisoned themselves not long after their daughter died.- Actress
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A gracious and sympathetic doyenne of stage and screen, latterly often in poignant maternal or insightful roles, Maria Sebaldt's career spanned almost six decades. She was born in Berlin, the daughter of a one-time portrait painter, who, by 1930, had achieved a senior position as a department head within the German branch of Paramount (this was at a time when Hollywood money underpinned cash-strapped German film studios, such as Ufa). Sebaldt began training as an actress from the age of sixteen, beginning with private tuition and progressing from there to a Stanislavsky Academy in Weimar from where she graduated in 1950. She spent her early performing years on the stage and soon became renowned as a sophisticated boulevardier and cabaret artist with notable engagements at the Komödie am Kurfürstendamm in Berlin (founded by Max Reinhardt in 1924) and at the Kleine Komödie in Munich.
Following her screen debut in 1953, Sebaldt appeared in supporting roles or second leads in anything from operetta (The Gypsy Baron (1954)), comedy (The Captain from Köpenick (1956)) and romantic melodrama (Liebe ohne Illusion (1955)) to thrillers (Der Greifer (1958)) and literary adaptations from the classics (The Buddenbrooks (1959)). She received top billing as the heroine in the crime satire Hoppla, jetzt kommt Eddie (1958) (as travel companion to the eponymous hero), in Das schwarze Schaf (1960), a murder mystery headlining Heinz Rühmann as G.K. Chesterton's famous detective Father Brown (she would later co-star with Rühmann in another crime comedy, Vorsicht Mister Dodd (1964)) and in the swinging sixties romp Bekenntnisse eines möblierten Herrn (1963) (as the free-spirited Daniela, who turns the tables on a womanizing lothario played by Karl Michael Vogler). Yet another of Sebaldt's noted roles on the screen was as the beautiful heiress Carlotta Ramirez in an Austrian adaptation of the classic farce Charley's Aunt (opposite Peter Alexander). In stark contrast, she also essayed a lady rancher among an international cast in the hard-boiled Italo western Five Thousand Dollars on One Ace (1965).
In later years, Sebaldt maintained her popularity with audiences as a character actress on television, particularly compelling as the caring family matriarch in Die Wicherts von nebenan (1986). Her many guest appearances on prime time series have included episodes of Tatort (1970), Derrick (1974) and Das Traumschiff (1981). She also made occasional forays into voice-overs, dubbing for, among others, Joan Greenwood, Joanne Woodward and Eva Marie Saint. Maria Sebaldt died in Munich on April 4 2023, aged 92. She was predeceased in 2010 by her husband of 45 years, the actor Robert Freitag, with whom she had a daughter.- Actress
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Constanze started into the movies at an early age: as the German voice of "Jeff" from "Lassie." After "Gymnasium" (high school) the daughter of actress Alice Franz studied singing at the Richard-Strauss-Konservatorium in Munich, Germany, at Guildhall School in London, GB, and at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. Actress Rosemarie Fendel gave her acting lesssons. Constanze's career took place in all areas, she worked on stage, in movies and on TV. In 1998 she was diagnosed with breast cancer, followed by a mastectomy. The cancer spread to the liver. After going through 20 chemotherapy treatments, she suffered a backlash in March 2000 when doctors found a brain tumor with 11 metastases spreading through her brain. She is survived by her 16-year old daughter Julie and her husband François Nocher, who had stayed with her on an extra bed in her hospital room for the last days of her life.- Actress
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Beautiful, smoky-voiced platinum blonde Mady Rahl was the 'Sportsmädel' of the German cinema in the 1930's and 40's. During the war years, she was touted in Nazi propaganda as an ideal of Germanic femininity. Her association with members of the regime, including the ever roving-eyed Joseph Goebbels, damaged her career in the aftermath of World War II. Nonetheless, she would reemerge in the 1950's as a more versatile actress, if not a bigger star.
Mady Rahl was strong-willed and had a commanding, almost aristocratic air about her. Most of all, she possessed that quality called pizzazz. From her early teens, Mady was determined to seek a career in the performing arts. In the process, she financed her expensive acting (at the Ilka Grüning School) and dance classes by doing secretarial work (being an adept typist and stenographer). Rumour has it, that she got her start on the stage (in Leipzig) without having to sit for an audition. Her looks and comportment seemed entirely sufficient. Film work came in due course, after she met a young director named Detlef Sierck (who later found fame and fortune in Hollywood as Douglas Sirk). He starred her in his first film (a short comedy) as, perhaps unsurprisingly, a secretary. Having signed a four-year contract with Ufa, she found herself in yet another clerical role for The Mysterious Mister X (1936). Her first critical acclaim arrived courtesy of a role in the lavish circus drama Truxa (1937), in which she co-starred alongside the dancer La Jana. Then followed a succession of small roles in big Ufa productions like To New Shores (1937) and Hallo Janine (1939) and leads in lightweight romantic comedies (notably Fräulein (1939) and Die lustigen Vagabunden (1940), opposite Johannes Heesters). By the mid-1940's, Mady had become one of the most celebrated stars of German films.
After a post-war hiatus, her screen career was reinvigorated with a handful of dramatic character roles as mysterious or genteel women in prestige pictures like Die Dame in Schwarz (1951), Haie und kleine Fische (1957) and Der Greifer (1958). In the early 1960's, Mady returned to the theatre, going on tour with the Munich-based 'Kleine Komödie'. She also became a popular TV guest star, seemingly omnipresent in prime time cop shows. She was also busily doing voice-overs for diverse American actresses, from Gillian Anderson to Arlene Francis. By the mid-1990's, the thrice-married actress had wound down her performing career to concentrate on her other vocation as a successful painter and exhibitor of water colours. Almost blind and afflicted by dementia, Mady Rahl died in August 2009 at the respectable age of 94.