Lil Dagover was actress whose career spanned nearly six decades

Lil Dagover was a German stage, film and television actress whose career spanned nearly six decades, Lil Dagover made her screen debut in a 1913 film by director Louis Held. During her brief marriage to Fritz Daghofer, she was introduced to several notable film directors; among them Robert Wiene and Fritz Lang. Lang would cast Dagover in the role of 'O-Take-San' in the 1919 exotic drama Harakiri which would prove to be Dagover's breakout role. The following year, she would be directed by Robert Wiene in the German Expressionist horror classic Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari, from a script by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz opposite actors Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt.[4] Lang would direct Dagover in three more films: 1919's Die Spinnen (English title: Spiders), 1921's Der Müde Tod (English release titles: Destiny and Behind The Wall), and 1922's Dr. Mabuse der Spieler. Dagover (left) with actors Hans Heinrich von Twardowski (center) and Friedrich Fehér (right) on the German Expressionist set of Robert Wiene's 1920 film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. By the early 1920s, Dagover was one of the most popular and recognized film actresses in the Weimar Republic, appearing in motion pictures by such prominent directors as F. W. Murnau, Lothar Mendes and Carl Froelich. In 1925 she made her stage debut under the direction of Max Reinhardt. In the following years she played in Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater in Berlin and also at the Salzburg Festival.[5] In 1926 she married film producer Georg Witt, who would produce many of Dagover's future films. The couple would remain married until Witt's death in 1972. Lil Dagover's film career in German cinema through the 1920s was prolific, making over forty films and appearing opposite such actors as Emil Jannings, Nils Olaf Chrisander, Aud Egede-Nissen, Lya De Putti, Bruno Kastner and Xenia Desni. She would also make several films in Sweden for directors Olof Molander and Gustaf Molander and appear in several French silent films – her last film appearance of the 1920s was in the 1929 Henri Fescourt-directed French silent film adaptation of the Alexandre Dumas, père novel The Count of Monte Cristo, opposite Jean Angelo and Marie Glory. In 1962, Lil Dagover was awarded the Bundesfilmpreis. In 1964, she was awarded the Bambi annual television and media award from Hubert Burda Media, and the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1967.[7] In 1979, she published her autobiography, Ich war die Dame (English: I Was The Lady). Lil Dagover died at the age of 92, on January 24, 1980, in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, and was buried at the Waldfriedhof Grünwald cemetery, in Munich

 Gallery for vintage actress Lil Dagover