Austrian actress Maria Perschy (1938-2004) was the sexy leading lady of many European films of the late 1950’s before she made a short career in Hollywood in films by John Huston and Howard Hawks. In the 1970’s she appeared in Spanish and Italian low-budget horror films and she became a cult figure.
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Thursday
Petula Clark
French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, nr. 1107. Photo: Ektachrome Kasparian.
Singer, actress and composer Petula Clark (1932) is the most successful British female solo recording artist. She began as as Britain's Shirley Temple, and appeared in over 30 films. During the 1960’s she became internationally known for her upbeat hits, including the evergreen Downtown.
Gustav Fröhlich played Freder Fredersen in the classic Metropolis 1927
Smart German actor Gustav Fröhlich (1902-1987) played Freder Fredersen in the classic Metropolis (1927) and became a popular star in light comedies. After the war he tried to escape from the standard roles of a charming gentleman with the part of a doomed painter in Die Sünderin (1951), but the effort went down in a scandal.
Gallery for vintage German actor Gustav Fröhlich
Silvia Sorente
German postcard by Krüger, nr. 902/232. Photo: Gérard Decaux.
French starlet Silvia Sorente (1941) appeared as a sensual leading lady in a dozen French, Spanish and Italian B-films of the 1960’s.
Silvia Sorente was born in 1941 in Paris, France. In her films she is sometimes credited as Sylvia Sor(r)ent(e) or Jane Fleming. She made her first film appearances in French films like the actioner Hold-up à Saint-Trop' (1960, Louis Félix) and the rather sordid drama L'Eternite Pour Nous/Sin on the Beach (1961, Jose Benazeraf). According to the IMDb reviewer “the main raison d'etre of this minor films is to show off the magnificent body of Sylvia Sorrente, which it does to great effect in teasing states of semi-undress and wetness. The film reflects the zeitgeist of the early 60's before outright nudity, panting and grappling took charge.” More interesting is her next film, Taras Bulba, il cosacco/Plains of Battle (1963, Ferdinando Baldi). This Italian production had the same title, plot and release date as its famous Hollywood treatment Taras Bulba (1962), but no stars nor budget. However, in the opinion of the IMDb reviewer, it is a superior film to the Hollywood version. She then appeared as the dancer-informant Lolita in the Euro-western El Llanero/The Jaguar (1963, Jess Franco) starring Jose Suarez and Roberto Camardiel. This was cult director Franco’s only foray into the genre of the Western. It tells the story of the civil war in Venezuela in the 1860’s. On his blog I’m in a Jess Franco State of Mind Robert Monell calls it “a beautifully composed (by Emilio Foriscot) period adventure/melodrama which looks and plays like a classical US western with its Fordian images of silhouetted riders seen on distance ridges, while also providing a glimpse of the coming Sergio Leone Euro-western style”. And according to Robert Firsching (All Movie Guide) “Sylvia Sorente's steamy performance is the highlight of this entertaining curio”.
Silvia Sorente created a stir by going topless in the Italian haunted house production Danza Macabra/Castle of Blood (1964, Antonio Margheriti). Danza Macabra is an early horror film from genre director Antonio Margheriti (aka Anthony M. Dawson) in which a cast including horror icon Barbara Steele is terrorized in a haunted castle. According to Robert Girsching it is “one of the best Italian horror films of the decade” and “one of the handful of definitive Italian gothics”. Later Margheriti would remake the film in widescreen color as Nella Stretta Morsa del Ragno/Web of the Spider (1971). In the British sex comedy Mission to Paradise/Bikini Paradise (1965, Gregg G. Tallas) two military officers are shipwrecked on an island. The island is populated by beautiful young and nearly naked girls who want to use them for marriage and mating purposes. Silvia is of course one of the virgins. Shen then worked in France and appeared in Ne nous fachons pas/Let's Not Get Angry (1966, Georges Lautner). Lino Ventura stars in this crime comedy as a former gangster who comes out of retirement to help a petty thief. Silvia played Ventura’s girlfriend.
Silvia Sorrente played a small part in The Poppy Is Also a Flower (1966, Terence Young). This spy adventure provides a look into the manufacture and trafficking of opium and heroin. The original story, set in Iran, was written by James Bond creator Ian Fleming who died shortly before he was to pen the screenplay. The film was originally made for tv and starred Senta Berger and Yul Brynner. Funded in part by a grant from Xerox, it was the last of four television films commissioned by the United Nations, to publicise its missions and roles in world peace and diplomacy. The film was narrated by Grace Kelly (as Princess Grace of Monaco) and also contains several cameos from stars like Angie Dickinson, Rita Hayworth and Marcello Mastroianni. The stars worked for a salary of $1 to support the anti-drug message. In 1967 a theatrical version was released into American theaters. One of her last films was the espionage thriller Le vicomte règle ses comptes/The Viscount s (1967, Maurice Cloche). She starred opposite Hollywood star Kerwin Mathews, who plays a smooth-talking insurance investigator who looks into a bank robbery and ends up breaking up two famous gangs involved in a drug war. The story was based on one of the popular OSS 117 spy books by Jean Bruce. When The Viscount was shown in the US in May 1967 Silvia’s name was dubbed into Jane Fleming. The American distributors felt that her alliterative name was not appealing enough to American audiences, while alliterative names used to be so popular (Brigitte Bardot, Claudia Cardinale, Diana Dors, Marilyn Monroe …..). And then her career stopped. Where did Silvia Sorente stay? Sadly I could not find more webinformation about her.
Sources: Robert Monell (I’m in a Jess Franco State of Mind), Robert Firsching (All Movie Guide), Answers.com, Boxoffice, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
Rosanna Schiaffino
German postcard by Krüger, nr. 902/59.
Glamorous, Italian film actress Rosanna Schiaffino (1938) was a show business icon of the 1960’s. She appeared frequently in sword-and-sandal films, and on covers of European and American magazines.
Marion Michael
German postcard by Ufa, Berlin, nr. CK 72, retail price 30 Pfg. Photo: Stempha/Arca Film.
Sunday
Dorthe
German postcard by Krüger, nr. 902/377. Photo: Lothar Winkler.
Danish-German singer Dorthe Kollo or just Dorthe (1947) was a popular schlager singer in the 1960’s. She appeared often on tv in both Denmark and Germany.
Dorthe Kollo was born Dorthe Larsen in 1947 in Frederiksberg (Copenhagen), Denmark, and she grew up in Copenhagen. Her father was the director of the symphonical orchestra of Århus and he gave her musical lessons. She also attended acting, dance and pantomime classes.When she was eight, she recorded her first single in Denmark, Min Piphans. In the early 1960’s she went to Germany. In 1965 she sang Eine Menge Verehrer at the Deutschen Schlager-Festspielen in Baden-Baden, but didn’t reach the finals. This song and also the B-side, Deiner Nase seh’ ich’s an, were received well. The following year she had her first hit with Junger Mann mit roten Rosen, that became fifth at the Schlager-Festspielen 1964. In 1965 she reached the 4th place with Blondes Haar am Paletot and Eine Schwalbe macht noch keinen Sommer.
In 1968 Dorthe Kollo had her first mass success with Sind Sie der Graf von Luxemburg?. That same year she had another hit with Wärst du doch in Düsseldorf geblieben, with which she became second at the Deutschen Schlager-Wettbewerb 1968 and for which she got a golden record. Both songs are now evergreens of the German schlager music. Other hits were Jeder Schotte (1969) and Seine Hoheit, der Herr Kronprinz (1969). In the early 1970’s she continued making records, but with less success. She often appeared on television. She acted in tv films like the comedy Paris ist eine Reise wert (1966) with Gus Backus and Fernandel and the musical comedy Guten Rutsch! (1969, Harry Engel, Ferry Olsen). She was a tv host for seven years for the German regional broadcaster NDR and had her own program Bi uns to Huus for four years. Although she did not have new hits, her songs continued to be popular on the radio in the 1980’s and 1990’s. She now still regularly appears on both Danish and German tv. Dorthe Kollo was married to opera singer René Kollo from 1967 till 1977. They have a daughter, Nathalie (1967). In 1983 she married prop master Bernd Klinkert, with whom she has a daughter, Jil (1983). They divorced in 1988. From 1996 till 2000 she was married to film producer Just Betzer. Today she lives together with shipowner Heiner Dettmer in Bremen, Germany.
Elke Sommer
German postcard by Krüger, nr. 902/169. Photo: Fried Agency.
In the late 1950’s blonde, German Elke Sommer (1940) was a European sex symbol before conquering Hollywood in the early 1960’s. With her trademark pouty lips, high cheek bones and sky-high bouffant hair-dos, Sommer made 99 film and television appearances between 1959 and 2005. The gorgeous film star was also one of the most popular pin-up girls of the sixties, and posed twice for Playboy.
Edwige Feuillere was during the 1940s the First Lady of the French cinema
Charming and elegant Edwige Feuillère (1907-1998) was during the 1940’s the ‘First Lady’ of the French cinema. She was known for the ease in which she could switch from playing sophisticated sexy ladies and cruel, self-centered seductresses. For more than sixty years she stayed a beloved ‘vedette’ of the French stage and cinema.
Edwige Feuillère was born Edwige Louise Caroline Cunati in 1907 in Vesoul, in the Haute-Saône in eastern France. Her father was Italian and, because he was drafted by the Italian army in World War I, Edwige spent much of her childhood in Italy. After the war, the family moved to Dijon in France . Edwige attended the lyceum in Dijon where she acted in plays including Racine's Esther and Athalie. At the Dijon Conservatoire she studied diction, interpretation of character and singing, and easily passed the entrance exam for the Paris Conservatoire in 1928. Two years later, she won the first prize for comedy, and married an older fellow student, Pierre Feuillere, a suicidal drug addict who used to play suicidal games with her. She made her theatrical debut under the stage name Cora Lynn, playing small roles in 1930. In 1931 she became a member of the Comédie Française, and made her debut in Le Mariage de Figaro. She left both the troupe and her husband in 1933, but kept his surname. During the 1930’s and 1940’s the stunningly beautiful actress became one of the leading ladies of the French stage. A success was her role in Edouard Bourdet's La Prisonniere in 1935 at the Theatre Heberthot. The play had a long run and was frequently revived. Among her most popular roles was Marguerite Gautier in La Dame aux camélias (Camille) by Alexandre Dumas fils (1939-1942). For the next two decades she often appeared in revivals of La Dame aux camélias in France and Britain. Another triumph was Sodome et Gomorrhe (Sodom and Gomorrah) by modern author Jean Giraudoux (1943), for which she helped to discover Gerard Philip(p)e.
Edwige Feuillères first film appearance was in the short La Fine combine (1931, André Chotin) opposite Fernandel; and her feature debut was in Le Cordon bleu/The Champion Cook (1931, Alberto Cavalcanti, Karl Anton). For both films she still used the name Cora Lynn. Louis Gasnier cast her in the first film version of the farce Topaze (1933), based on the play by Marcel Pagnol. Her charm and elegance opposite Louis Jouvet were widely appreciated. In the strait-laced Europe of 1935 she scandalised the public with a brief nude scene in the historical drama Lucrèce Borgia/Lucrezia Borgia (1935, Abel Gance). This historical drama in which she played her first leading role, solidified her popularity. That year she also appeared in the epic Golgotha/Behold the Man (1935, Julien Duvivier) starring Harry Baur and Jean Gabin, and in the Ufa production Barcarolle (1935, Gerhard Lamprecht and Roger Le Bon), the French-language version of Lamprecht's Barcarole (1935). Her roles as elegant and often heartless women were displayed in Mister Flow/Compliments of Mr. Flow (1936, Robert Siodmak), Marthe Richard au service de la France/Marthe Richard (1937, Raymond Bernard) as a charming spy opposite Erich von Stroheim, La Dame de Malacca/Woman of Malacca (1937, Marc Allégret) and J'étais une aventurière/I Was an Adventuress (1938, Raymond Bernard). She went on work with famous director Max Ophüls in the melodrama Sans lendemain/Without Tomorrow (1939) in which she gives a wonderful performance as a jaded woman abandoned by a shady husband with a lot of debts, who is sacrified, and De Mayerling à Sarajévo/Mayerling to Sarajevo (1940) about the liaison between Archduke Franz Ferdinand - unwilling heir to the Habsburg throne - and his morganatic wife, Countess Sophie Chotek. The film ends with the couple's assassination by a Serb terrorist in 1914, thus starting WW 1. Work on this film began in 1939 and was interrupted by the war. It was finished in the spring of 1940, only to be banned by the Germans. The first ‘official’ premiere was 18 May 1945. Feuillères next film, Mam'zelle Bonaparte (1941, Maurice Tourneur) became a popular success, although the IMDb calls the film a ‘dud’. Another popular success was her role as a coquette caught by a great love for Pierre Richard-Willm in La Duchesse de Langeais/Wicked Duchess (1941, Jacques de Baroncelli) based on a novel by Honoré de Balzac with dialogues by Jean Giraudoux. Worth watching is also the romantic screwball comedy L'Honorable Catherine/The Honorable Catherine (1943, Marcel L’Herbier) with Feuillère as a high society blackmailer whose latest blackmail attempt is interrupted, and she then has to pose as her victim’s lover.
By the mid-1940’s Edwige Feuillère had become a distinguished, highly respected actress with a powerful well-modulated voice, expressive eyes and a magnetic presence. She was frequently acclaimed for her interpretation of classical stage roles. She turned down a seven-year Hollywood contract offered by Louis B. Mayer in 1945 and tended to make fewer films after the war, but her stage performances made her even more appreciated in films when she made them. With Gérard Philip(p)e she appeared in the Fyodor Dostoyevsky –film adaptation L’Idiot/The Idiot (1946, Georges Lampin). Her successful stage role of the widowed queen who falls in love with a political fugitive (Jean Marais) in L'Aigle à deux têtes/The Eagle with Two Heads (written for her by Cocteau) was translated to the screen: L'Aigle à deux têtes (1947, Jean Cocteau). Her role was especially written for her by Cocteau, and she appeared in 200 performances. Other great screen roles were the title character in Julie de Carneilhan (1949, Jacques Manuel) and Mme Camille Dalleray, the lady in white in Le Blé en herbe/The Game of Love (1954, Claude Autant-Lara), based on Colette's novel. Her role as the older woman introducing an adolescent to love in this film was a scandal, even though Feuillère was brilliant in the role and the writer kept out any suggestion of prurience. Other great films of this decade were Olivia/The Pit of Loneliness (1950, Jacqueline Audry) - nominated with a BAFTA Film Award, Adorables Créatures/Adorable Creatures (1952, Christian-Jaque) in which she played an eccentric bourgeoise who discovers the arcane delights of a banal sandwich, and the crime drama En cas de malheur/Love Is My Profession (1958, Claude Autant-Lara) with Jean Gabin and Brigitte Bardot. Another major stage role, which she would also perform again and again, was the femme fatale Yse opposite Jean-Louis Barrault in Paul Claudel's Partage de midi. In 1951 she made her first - and reportedly unforgettable - London stage appearance in this long and difficult role with the Renaud-Barrault company. She returned to London in 1955 for a season with La Dame aux Camélias and other plays. In 1968, when she appeared again in London in Partage de midi, the British theater critic Harold Hobson described her as the greatest actress he had ever seen.
In the 1960’s and 1970’s Edwige Feuillère appeared often on stage, such as in 1965 in La folle de Chaillot (The Madwoman of Chaillot) by Jean Giraudoux. She later reprised this role on television in La folle de Chaillot (1976, Gérard Vergez). According to IMDb her nickname was ‘Edwige 1ère’ (Edwige the 1st) for her cool and rather imposing acting style. She was equally at home playing in dramas and comedies. She also continued to be a popular film and television actress and worked with directors of the next generations like Michel Boisrond in an episode of Amours célèbres/Famous Love Affairs (1961) and Roman Polanski, who wrote the script for the dark cannibal comedy Aimez-vous les Femmes/ A Taste for Women (1963, Jean Léon). She showed little interest in a glamorous life style. Modest and humorous in private, she was also self-deprecating about her talent in her 1977 autobiography, 'Les Feux de la Memoire. 'One of the best of her later films was La chair de l'orchidée/The Flesh of the Orchid (1975, Patrice Chéreau – his film debut) starring Charlotte Rampling. In this crime drama, based on James Hadley Chase's No Orchids for Miss Blandish, Edwige Feuillère appeared disturbingly out of character. Another interesting film was the tv film Le tueur triste/The Sad Killer (1984, Nicolas Gessner), in which she appeared as the grandmother. In 1984 she was awarded a honorary César. She continued to act onstage and in the occasional film until her official retirement in 1992. Her last stage performance was Edwige Feuillère en Scène, in which she replayed scenes from her most famous roles and told about her long career. Tv broadcaster ARTE made a documentary of it, Edwige Feuillère en scène (1993, Serge Moati). In 1993 she was named Commandeur des Arts et Lettres; Grand Officier de la Légion d'Honneur. That same year she was also awarded the Molière prize for her stage work. The gracefully elegant grand dame played her last role in the tv film La Duchesse de Langeais (1995, Jean-Daniel Verhaeghe). Edwige Feuillère died of natural causes in 1998 in Boulogne-Billancourt, Île-de-France. She was 91. After her death Le Monde wrote: ''Edwige Feuillere was our Marlene Dietrich, our Irene Dunne and our Greta Garbo, all in one.''
Sources: Karel Tabery (Filmreference.com), Sandra Brennan (All Movie), Alan Riding (The New York Times), John Calder (The Independent), Wikipedia, Hollywood.com and IMDb.
Gallery for french vintage actress Edwige Feuillère
Danielle Darrieux
Dutch postcard.
French actress and singer Danielle Darrieux (1917) is an enduringly beautiful, international leading lady. From her film debut in 1931 on she progressed from playing pouty teens to worldy sophisticates. In the early 1950’s she starred in three classic films by Max Ophüls, and she played the mother of Catherine Deneuve in five films!
Paul Richter was best known as Siegfried the hero of the classic fantasy film Die Nibelungen
Austrian actor Paul Richter (1895-1961) was best known as Siegfried, the hero of the classic fantasy film Die Nibelungen, one of the masterpieces of the German silent cinema directed by Fritz Lang. He also appeared in Doctor Mabuse (1922), Der Ochsenkrieg (1942), Eskimo (1930) and numerous other films made in Germany, Austria and Europe until his last film Der Schäfer vom Trutzberg in 1957
Gallery for vintage Austrian actor Paul Richter
Paul Wegener known for his pioneering role in German expressionist cinema
Paul Wegener 11 December 1874 – 13 September 1948, was a German actor, writer and film director known for his pioneering role in German expressionist cinema. At the age of 20, Wegener decided to end his law studies and concentrate on acting, touring the provinces before joining Max Reinhardt's acting troupe in 1906. In 1912, he turned to the new medium of motion pictures and appeared in the 1913 version of The Student of Prague. It was while making this film that he first heard the old Jewish legend of the Golem and proceeded to adapt the story to film, co-directing and co-writing the script with Henrik Galeen. His first version of the tale The Golem (1915, now lost) was a success and firmly established Wegener's reputation. In 1917, he made a parody of the story called Der Golem und die Tänzerin, but it was his reworking of the tale, The Golem: How He Came into the World (1920) which stands as one of the classics of German cinema and helped to cement Wegener's place in cinematic history. Another of his early films was Der Yoghi (1916), in which he played the role of a yogi and young inventor, and which provided him with the opportunity to accommodate three of his interests, trick photography (it was one of the first films to feature invisibility), the supernatural and Eastern mysticism.
Gallery for vintage German actor Paul Wegener
Thursday
Christine Norden Britains first postwar sex symbol
Christine Norden 28 December 1924 - 21 September 1988 was a British actress. Born Mary Lydia Thornton in Mowbray Terrace, Sunderland, she was the daughter of a bus driver. Her childhood home was in Chester Road, Sunderland, and she was educated at Chester Road Primary School and Havelock School. Norden gained experience of singing and dancing while performing in wartime ENSA concerts and variety shows as a teenager. One claim to fame was that she was the first entertainer to land on Normandy beaches after D-Day. At the age of 20 she was "discovered" in a cinema queue and given a screen test by Sir Alexander Korda. Her screen debut was as a nightclub singer in the 1947 film Night Beat. In an interview with the Sunderland Echo on June 3, 1952, she said: "Please don't refer to me as the girl who was discovered in a cinema queue. I'm so tired of that tag. You see, nobody believes it, and it aggravates me so much because it happens to be true." Her best-known appearances were in An Ideal Husband, Mine Own Executioner and the 1949 film Saints and Sinners. She won a British National Film Award in 1949 for that performance. After appearing in ten films within five years, Norden left Britain for America in 1952, where she settled in New York and married her third husband, US Air Force sergeant Mitchell Dodge. She went on to become an American citizen in 1960, starring on Broadway in the musical Tenderloin at around the same time. She also caused a sensation in 1967, when she became the first actress to appear topless on Broadway, in the comedy Scuba Duba. The actress returned to London in the 1970s, to work on stage, screen, and television, but retained an apartment in New York - where she held several exhibitions of her paintings in Manhattan. Norden married five times, the first to bandleader Norman Cole, by whom she had a son, Michael. Her other husbands included British film director Jack Clayton and musician Herbert Hect. Her 1977 biography, The Champagne Days Are Over, also detailed other romantic links. She died in Middlesex, aged 63, from pneumonia following heart bypass surgery. Her widower was George Heselden, a retired mathematician who used to work for the Ministry of Defence. Actress June Mitchell (1933–2009) was Norden's sister. Following her death, part of the planet Venus was named after her in 1988, as a tribute to her reputation of Britain's first postwar sex symbol
Gallery for British vintage actress Christine Norden
Deborah Kerr
Belgian card by Kwatta, Bois D'Haine, nr. C 252.
British film star Deborah Kerr (1921-2007) was nicknamed The English Rose for her fresh natural beauty. In many films the stage, television and film actress played 'classic' English ladies, but during the 1950’s she became known for her versatile roles in major Hollywood productions.
Wednesday
Vivian Gibson was a British-born Austrian actress of the silent era
British actress Vivian Gibson (1898-1981) was a star of the German and Austrian silent cinema. After the arrival of sound her film career ended.
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Peter Kraus
German postcard by Krüger, nr. 902/84.
Photo: Polydor-Archiv (Polydor Archive).
German singer and actor Peter Kraus (1939) was a teen idol in the 1950’s. He was nicknamed ‘the German Elvis’.
Ted Herold
German postcard by Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft (Ufa), Berlin-Tempelhof, nr. CK 429, the price was 30 Pfg. Photo: Erwin Schneider/Ufa.
German singer and film actor Ted Herold (1942) was billed as 'The German Elvis' (as the successor of Peter Kraus) in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. With his Rock ‘n Roll covers he appeared in several Schlagerfilms between 1959 and 1963. In 1977 he made a surprise come-back.
Angelo Ferrari started his career in Italian silent films and later German cinema
Italian actor Angelo Ferrari (1897-1954) appeared in nearly 200 films. He started his career in Italian silent films and later got a strong foothold in the German cinema.
Walter Slezak began his film career in silent films
Austrian actor Walter Slezak (1902-1983) began his film career as a thin leading man in silent films. Unable to keep his weight under control, Slezak decided around 1930 to become a character actor. When the Nazis came into power he moved to Broadway and Hollywood, where he usually portrayed a villain or thug, but also played lighter, kindlier roles.
Gallery for vintage Austrian actor Walter Slezak
Raquel Welch
