European Actors
Cecile Paoli is a French actress who is well known in Britain and Ireland for her roles in such television series as “Bergerac”, “Sharpe” and “Holby City”. She had made her television debut in 1978. In 1980 she gave an excellent performance in the mini-series “Fair Stood the Wind for France”. Great to see her in “Endeavour” on TV in 201
Peter Van Eyck was born in Germany in 1911. In 1931 he left Germany and came eventually to New York where he worked for Orson Welles’s Mercury Theater. He was in Hollywood by 1943 where he made such films as “The Moon is Down”, “Five Graves to Cairo” and “Action in the North Atlantic”. Among his later films was “The Snorkel” with Betta St John and Many Miller in 1959. He died in Switzerland in 1969.
TCM Overview:
Peter van Eyck, born Götz von Eick (16 July 1911, Steinwehr, Pomerania, Germany (now Kamienny Jaz, Poland) – 15 July 1969, Männedorf bei Zürich, Switzerland), was a German-American actor. After graduating from high school he studied music. In 1931 he left Germany, living in Paris, London, Tunis, Algiers and Cuba, before settling in New York. He earned a living playing the piano in a bar, and wrote and composed for revues and cabarets. He then worked for Irving Berlin as a stage manager and production assistant, and for Orson Welles Mercury Theatre company as an assistant director. Van Eyck went to Hollywood where he found radio work with the help of Billy Wilder, who later gave him small film roles. In 1943 he took US citizenship and was drafted into the army.
The above TCM overview can also be accessed online here.
He gained international recognition with a lead role in the 1953 film The Wages of Fear. He went to appear in episodes of several US TV series including The Adventures of Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In English-language films he was most often typecast as a Nazi or other unsympathetic German type, while in Germany he was a popular leading man in a wider range of films, including several appearances in the Dr. Mabuse thriller series of the 1960s. Van Eyck was married to the American actress Ruth Ford in the 1940s. With his second wife, Inge von Voris, he had two daughters, Kristina, also an actor, and Claudia.
Paula Wessley was born in Vienna in 1907. “Maskarade” in 1934 was her first major film. Her most famous role was in “Homecoming” in 1941. She died in 2000.
IMDB entry:
Wessely trained for acting at the Reinhardt Seminar and made her theatrical debut in 1924 with the Vienna Deutsches Volkstheater in a play by Sudermann. Specialising in sophisticated comedy, she became a prominent actress of the stage, appearing in Prague (1926), Salzburg, Berlin and the Vienna Burgtheater. She was permanently contracted from 1929 to 1945 by the Theater in der Josefstadt. From the 1930’s, she developed into a more serious actress, handling roles like Gretchen in “Faust” (1935) and Joan of Arc in “Die heilige Johanna” (1936), a part which she was associated with for the rest of her career. Wessely was noted for her unaffected, natural manner. She became a screen actress at the height of her theatrical fame.
The above TCM overview can be accessed online here.
Noelle Adam was born in 1933 in La Rochelle, France. She made her film debut in 1957 and then made “Beat Girl” in the UK in 1960. In the U.S. she guest starred in “The Trials of O’Brien” in 1965. She was picked by Richard Rodgers to star in the Broadway musicak “No Strings”.
IMDB entry:
Noëlle Adam was born on December 24, 1933 in La Rochelle, Charente-Maritime, France. She is an actress, known for L’homme orchestre (1970), Wild for Kicks (1960) and Neither Seen Nor Recognized (1958).
O.W. Fischer was born in 1915 in Austria. His career was confined to European films. His one try at Hollywood did not work and he was replaced by David Niven in the film “My Man Godfrey”. In 1955 he made “Ludwig the Second”. He died in Lugano, Switzerland in 2004 at the age of 88.
IMDB Entry:
O.W. Fischer was born on April 1, 1915 in Klosterneuburg, Austria-Hungary as Otto Wilhelm Fischer. He was an actor and director, known for Ludwig II: Glanz und Ende eines Königs (1955), Helden (1958) and Ich suche dich (1956). He was married to Anna Usell. He died on January 29, 2004 in Lugano, Ticino, Switzerland. Began his career with Max Reinhardt‘s stage compais breakthrough in Hollywood failed, although he was signed to star with June Allyson in My Man Godfrey (1957). When he reportedly lost his memory during filming, he was replaced by David NivenBeing one half of German cinema’s dream couple with Maria Schell in the 1950s, he became the best paid actor in Germany at that time. Moved to Vernate, Switzerland with his wife Anna in the 1960s. Ensemble member at the famous Vienna Burgtheater from 1945 to 1952. Retired from acting to lecture and publish books on linguistics and philosophy in the early 1970s. Was a member of the ensemble of the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna from 1938 to 1945, and of the Burgtheater from 1945 to 1952. He was notorious for mumbling in many of his films. It has also been stated that he seemed incapable of suppressing a certain amount of narcissism and arrogance. A popular leading actor of German films and international co-productions in the 1950’s and 60’s. He appeared opposite all the leading female stars of the period, usually as the handsome bon vivant or likeable rogue. O.W. Fischer experienced an enormous popularity jump in the 50’s once more. He played himself to the top of the German actor guild again.From the middle of the 60’s he also made movies in Italy and Spain besides Germany. This was also the time when he retired from the film business gradually. He only appeared occasionally in TV productions from the 70’s. He got first engagements at the Theater in der Josefstadt and at the Münchner Kammerspiele. From 1938 to 1944 he belonged to the company of the Deutsches Volkstheater Wien where he was also convincing in character roles.
“As a world star, Klaus Maria Brandauer has only one problem: his accent. It is not a new one as fas as continental actors are concerned. Only one, Charles Boyer, achieved a long career in Hollywood, though Anton Walbrook was successful in Britain for a while. A more recent outstanding German-speaking actor Maximilian Schell, won an Oscar in Hollywood but had to work in a dozen countries to keep his career going – as have Max Von Sydow and Erland Josephson, both introduced to us in the films of Ingmar Bergman. The pity of it is that Brandeaur is a superb actor – imaginative, electrifying, versatile: the pity of it is that world audiences may have to be content to experience his talent intermittently”. – David Shipman in “The Great Movie Stars – The Independent Years”. (1991).
Klaus Maria Brandaure was born in 1944 in Austria. He came to international notice in “Mephisto” in 1981. He was the villian opposite Sean Connery’s James Bond in “Never Say Never Again”. He starred with Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in “Out of Africa”. Other movies include “The Russia House” and “White Fang”.
Klaus Maria Brandauer was a music student and studied drama at Stuttgarter Hochschule. He was a true stage actor and therefore didn’t like to work in movies except for two small parts in The Salzburg Connection (1972) and A Sunday in October (1979). This changed when Hungarian director István Szabó gave him a leading part in Mephisto(1981). Brandauer received the actors award in Cannes and that opened door to international films. Together with the movies Colonel Redl (1985) and Hanussen (1988), all directed by István Szabó, these three movies formed the ‘German trilogy’ of Brandauer. He received a Golden Globe and Oscar nomination for his role of Bror Blixen inOut of Africa (1985). The first movie he directed himself was Seven Minutes (1989). He also played the leading role in this movie.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Wladimir van Heemst <j.j.w.van.heemst@dv.agro.nl>
IMDB entry:
Nadja Tiller was born in 1929 in Vienna. She won the Miss Austria contect in 1949 he same year she made her movie debut. Other films include “Empress of China” in 1953, “Mozart” and “O Happy Day” in 1970.
Vittorio de Sica, Isabelle Corey & June Laverick
Margit Saad was born in 1929 in Munich, Germany. She made her debut in German films in 1951. Her English films include “The Criminal” with Stanley Baker and “The Rebel” with Tony Hancock both in 1960.
The actress and director Margit Saad is dead. She died in Munich on Monday at the age of 94, as her son, the conductor Pierre-Dominique Ponnelle, told the German Press Agency. The “Süddeutsche Zeitung” had previously reported. Born in Munich, she became known to a wide audience through roles in numerous cinema and television films. You could see her in movies like “Peter Voss, the Thief of Millions” or “Oops, Eddie is coming”. She played the main role in the English crime thriller “The Trail Leads to Nothing” (1960) by Joseph Losey – “one of my most beautiful films”, Margit Saad said on her 70th birthday in 1999 in a dpa interview. She had a great stage success in the title role of the musical “Irma la Douce”. She played alongside Harald Juhnke in the German premiere in Baden-Baden in 1961. Margit Saad had her first engagement after training as an actor at the renowned Otto Falckenberg School in Munich in 1952 in Düsseldorf, where she performed for a good two years as an actress and chansonnette at the “Kom(m)ödchen”. In 1971 she began another artistic career and made a name for herself as a director of sophisticated documentaries and literary adaptations. Her TV film “The Story of the Good Old Man and the Beautiful Girl” based on the novella by Italo Svevo received good reviews. In 1988 she shot the television version of John van Druten’s stage comedy “Song of the Dove”. Margit Saad has also successfully tried her hand as a theater director. “Unfortunately, today’s television is only about the ratings and no longer about demanding films,” Margit Saad criticized back in 1999. This has meant that many of her proposed projects have been rejected in recent years. “I don’t make friends with such statements, but unfortunately that’s how it is.” Saad was married to French director and set designer Jean-Pierre Ponnelle (1932-1988
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INDONEWYORK
Anyone who knows me are aware that I am a bit of a movie buff. Over the past few years I have been collecting signed photographs of my favourite actors. Since I like movies so much there are many actors whose work I like.
