Senta Berger was born in 1941 in Vienna. In 1958 she joined the Josefstadt Theatre in Vienna.
She had a small part in “The Journey” with Yul Brynner and Deborah Kerr. She travelled to Hollywood in 1962 and made several films there including “Major Dundee” with Charlton Heston and Richard Harris and “The Glory Guys” with Tom Tryon. By the late sixties she was back in Europe where she made several films over the years and has also acted frequently on the stage.
Senta Berger was born in 1941 in Vienna, Austria to her father Josef Berger who was a musician and her mother Therese Berger, a school teacher. Senta and her father performed together when she was just four years old. She sang and her dad played the piano.
At five years old, she took ballet lessons and at 14, Berger turned to acting taking private lessons. She left her private school education at 16. 1957 Berger was discovered by famous director Willi Forst and played a small role in a film. She was accepted to the Max Reinhardt Seminar.
1958 Berger was the youngest member at the Vienna Theater in Josefstadt. Director Bernhard Wicki and producer Artur Brauner sought after Senta producing the film The Good Soldier, by Heinz Rühmann. It succeeded and Brauner used her in several films.
1962 Berger moved to Hollywood and starred with Charlton Heston, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Richard Harris, George Hamilton, Kirk Douglas, John Wayne and Yul Brynner. In 1969 she returned to Europe and was seen during the 1970’s in Italian productions of various genres.
In 1967, she returned to the silver screen with an Alain Delon film. 1968 Berger played in the three-part thriller Babeck by Herbert Reinecker. 1970 was her debut as Producer of her own company.
As director she put her husband’s film before the camera. Further, international successful of films of her production company have included The White Rose, The Nasty Girl and Mother Courage.
In addition, Berger expanded her European career in France and Italy. The birth of her two sons, Simon (* 1972) and Luca (b. 1979) prompted Berger to turn back to the theater.
1985/86 she managed her TV comeback in front of the German-speaking audience in the television series Kir Royal co-starring with Franz Xaver Kroetz , Dieter Hildebrandt and Billie Zöckler. Many TV series guest appearances followed.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Geoff Bridgedale
Her IMDB mini biography can also be accessed online here.
Renato Salvatori was born in 1934 in Italy. He worked with the great Italian directors including Visconti, Rossellini and De Sica. While making “Rocco and his Brothers” in 1962 he met the French actress Annie Girardot whom he married.He died in 1988 at the age of 54. His MDB page can be accessed here.
Micheline Presle was born in Paris in 1922. She made her film debut in 1937 in “La Fessee”. She went to Hollywood in 1950 when she signed a contract with 20th Century Fox”. The U.S, films she made were “Under My Skin” with John Garfield and “An American Guerrilla in the Phillipines” with Tyrone Power. She was back in France in 1954 and quicly resestablished her position in French film making. In 1962 she returned to Hollywood to make “If A Man Answers” as Sandra Dee’s mother. She continues to act on film and her most recent appearance was in “Venus Beauty Institute”.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Dark-haired, Paris-born Micheline Presle (better known in the States as Micheline Prelle) was the daughter of a businessman and took acting classes as a teen. She was discovered by Georg Wilhelm Pabst and cast in Young Girls in Trouble (1939) (Young Girls in Distress) and Four Flights to Love (1940) in which she played a dual role.
Under My Skin, poster, John Garfield, Micheline Presle, 1950. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
She proceeded to make films during the Occupation, and by 1947, was deemed an important young French star, with Devil in the Flesh (1947) (Devil in the Flesh) gaining her world-wide attention. Her marriage to American actor-turned-producer William Marshall in 1950 led her to attempt Hollywood pictures. None of her pictures, which included Under My Skin (1950), American Guerrilla in the Philippines (1950) and Adventures of Captain Fabian (1951), the last one produced and directed by husband Marshall, endeared her to American audiences; however, despite co-starring opposite top Hollywood stars John Garfield, Tyrone Power and Errol Flynn. Divorced by 1954, she never adjusted to the Hollywood way of life and returned willingly to Paris with her daughter, actress/directorTonie Marshall.
Lilo Pulver was born in Bern, Switzerland in 1929. She undertook acting classes at the Bern conservatory.
She made her film debut in 1951 and by the end of that decade was starring in international films like “A Time to Love and a Time to Die” with John Gavin, “One, Two, Three” with James Cagney and Horst Buchholz and “A Global Affair” in 1963 with Bob Hope. Her final acting role was in 1986 in the mini-series “Le Tiroir secret”. Her “Wikipedia” page can be accessed here.
Article from Swiss Community:
That contagious laugh! No report about Liselotte (“Lilo”) Pulver is ever complete without reference to the ever-popular Swiss actress’s trademark laughter. Pulver’s 90th birthday in October was no exception. Although Pulver has now withdrawn from public life and lives in a retirement home in Berne, her city of birth, she marked her big birthday with the publication of “Was vergeht, ist nicht verloren” (What passes is not lost) – a book containing personal memoirs based on old photos, letters and notes. Having kept all her mementos, Pulver – born in 1929 to middle-class parents – has now decided to tell the story of a long life that few could have expected. It was not until after visiting commercial college that the young Pulver was allowed to take acting lessons. She would go on to have a glittering international career. It was especially in post-war Germany where the smiling Swiss belle became a star of the silver screen, thanks to films like “I Often Think of Piroschka”. The Swiss public took her to their hearts in the 1950s, when she played the wholesome maid Vreneli in the Gotthelf adaptations “Uli the Farmhand” and “Uli the Tenant”. She later proved how talented and versatile an actress she was in the French New Wave film “The Nun” – and in American director Billy Wilder’s comedy “One, Two, Three”, in which she pulls off a dancing tabletop parody of Marilyn Monroe. In her private life, Pulver took some hard blows, with her daughter committing suicide and her husband dying of a heart attack. However, the 90-year-old recently denied press reports claiming that she was very lonely. “I am very satisfied with my life overall,” she said, adding that she still has plenty of reasons to burst into that legendary laughter every day
Nadia Gray was born in 1923 in Bucharest, Romania. Her film debut came with “L’inconniu d’un soir” in 1949. “The Spider and the Fly” was her breakthrough film and she went on to an international career. “Maniac” in 1963 with Kerwin Mathews was an intriguing mystery set in the Camargue in France. “Two for the Road” also set in France starred Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney. Gray was a sophiscated woman that Hepburn and Finney meet on their travels. In the late 60’s she met her husband an American lawyer and settled with him in New York. Nadia Gray died in 1994 at the age of seventy.
Gary Brumburgh’s entry:
Born Nadia Kujnir-Herescu in Bucharest, Romania, on November 23, 1923, to a Russian father and a Bessarabian mother, the future actress Nadia Gray was raised there. She met first husband Constantin Cantacuzino (1905-1958), a Romanian aviator and noted WWII fighter ace, while she was a passenger on one of his commercial air flights. She couple fled the country during the Communist takeover of Romania in the late 1940s and emigrated to Paris. There Nadia enjoyed a vast international career as a Cosmopolitan lead and second lead on stage and in films. The couple eventually settled in Spain.
She made her film debut in a leading role as a young waitress who yearns to be a star in the French-Austrian co-production of L’inconnu d’un soir (1949) and went on to essay a number of more mature, sophisticated, glamorous patricians in European films, often a continental jetsetter or bourgeoisie type. Earlier roles that led to European stardom included her countess in Monsignor (1949), the woman in love with a thief in The Spider and the Fly (1949), and the role of Cristina Versini in the Italian technicolor biopic of the composer _Puccini (1952)_. Her roster of continental male co-stars went on to include such legendary stalwarts as Marcello Mastroianni, ‘Vittorio de Sica’, Rossano Brazzi, Errol Flynn, Maurice Ronet and Gabriele Ferzetti. Among her scattered appearances in English-speaking productions were a mixture of adventures, dramas, comedies and horrors including Valley of the Eagles (1951) with John McCallum and Jack Warner, Night Without Stars (1951) opposite David Farrar, The Captain’s Table (1959) starring John Gregson andDonald Sinden, I Like Money (1961) starring Peter Sellers, Maniac (1963) co-starringKerwin Mathews, The Naked Runner (1967) starring Frank Sinatra and a supporting role in the classic Albert Finney/Audrey Hepburn romance Two for the Road (1967). Nadia is most famous, however, for her cameo role toward the end of Federico Fellini‘s masterpiece La Dolce Vita (1960) as a bored and wealthy socialite who celebrates her divorce by performing a memorable mink-coated striptease during a jaded party sequence in her home.
Following the death of her first husband in Spain in 1958 (he was only 52), Nadia continued to film and settled permanently in America in the late 60s after meeting and marrying second husband Herbert Silverman, a New York lawyer. She retired from films completely in 1976 and began headlining as a singing cabaret star. The trend-setting Russian-Romanian beauty died of a stroke in Manhattan on June 13, 1994 at age 70 and was survived by her second husband and two stepchildren.
– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.ne
Lil Dagover was born in Java in the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) in 1887. At the age of ten, she was sent back to Europe to continue her education in Germany and Switzerland. She made her silent screen debut in 1913. By the early 1920’s she was one of the most prominent actresses of the Weimar Republic. In 1932 she went to Hollywood to make “The Woman from Monte Cristo” with Walter Huston. She returned to Germany and made films there through the 30’s and right through World War Two. Towards the end of her career she made two films directed by the Austrian actor Maximillian Schell. “The Pedestrian” also starred such venerable actresses as Peggy Ashcroft, Elisabeth Bergner and Francoise Rosay. “The End of the Game” starred Jon Voight, Donald Sutherland and Jacqueline Bisset. She died in 1980 in Munich at the age of 92. Her “Wikipedia” page is here.
Laya Raki was born in 1927 in Hamburg, Germany. Her parents were circus performers. Her first film in her native country was “Council of the Gods”. In 1954 she was given a contact in Britain by J. Arthur Rank and made “The Seekers” with Jack Hawkins and Glynis Johns in New Zealand. She starred in the television series “Crane ” opposite Patrick Allen in the title role. She was long married to the Australian actor Ron Randall. “Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen” page is here.
“Wikipedia” entry:
Laya Raki was born in Hamburg, Germany,[1] to acrobat Maria Althoff, and her partner, acrobat and clown Wilhelm Jörns. As she was an admirer of the famous dancer La Jana and liked to drink raki, she assumed the stage name Laya Raki.
The film company DEFA engaged her for a small role as a dancer in the film The Council of the Gods, which won two awards. One newspaper, the Berliner Morgenpost, wrote that she was a great dancer with an expressive face rich in nuances. In the same year the press department of Realfilm presented her as a new discovery in Die Dritte von rechts (“The Third from the Right”), a rather boring dance film, the highlight of which was the scene in which the scantily clad dancer Laya Raki (with only two white stars on her nipples) exposes herself to the lustful gazes of the male cinema audience. In 1953, she danced in the film Ehe für eine Nacht (“Marriage for One Night”). Her next film was Die Rose von Stambul (“The Rose of Stamboul”), in which the Austrian actor Paul Hörbiger wants to marry her upon seeing her dancing. In Roter Mohn (“Red Poppy”) she played the gypsy girl Ilonka who also conducted refreshing dialogues with the famous Viennese comic actor Hans Moser.he attracted attention for the first time in 1947–1950 as a dancer in Frankfurt and other German cities.
In 1954, she was lured to London by empty promises of film roles in the United Kingdom and in Hollywood. There she found herself unemployed, but her situation made headlines that opened opportunities. The J. Arthur Rank Film Company, which needed a slightly exotic type for a film in New Zealand, received her with open arms. She was given the role of the Māori chieftain’s seductive wife in “The Seekers” and created a worldwide stir by baring her breasts, 10 years before Rudi Gernreich‘s topless swimsuit. After having taken acting lessons in Hollywood, she appeared in several UK TV productions, including 39 episodes of the popular series Crane (1962–1965), which made her a well known actress. In it Laya Raki starred as Halima, a Moroccan dancer and bartender, who is the partner of the title character, the bar owner and smuggler Richard Crane, played by Patrick Allen.
She appeared in revealing outfits in film and photographs, and captured men’s attention like no other German showgirl in the 1950s. She modeled for postcards, pin-up photographs and magazines all over the world. The Broadway columnist Earl Wilson noted her preference for scanty clothing: “You should have seen Laya Raki. Even if she is dressed, she looks like, as if she only wears the zipper and has forgotten the material”. Of course he placed some photos of her in “Earl Wilson’s Album of Showgirls (1st Issue! 1956)”.
The above “Wikipedia” entry can also be accessed online here.
Actress Laya Raki with husband Ron Randell attend the world premiere of Zulu, which was held at the Plaza Theatre in London. The premiere was in aid of the Benevolent Funds of the Regiments of Wales and the Army Benevolent Fund. (Photo by PA Images via Getty Images)
2018
Laya Raki Randell-Wood passed away peacefully in the evening of December 21, 2018, in Hollywood, California.
She was born Brunhilde Marie Jorns in Hamburg, Germany on July 27, 1927. Her mother left when Laya was only five years old. Her father remarried soon thereafter. He worked with the circus, where Laya learned acrobatics at a very young age, and performed in several circus acts. In her late teens, she partnered with fellow acrobat, Ricardo U. Partnerin, performing a 2-person dance/acrobatic act.
From there, she learned ballet and other forms of dance. She developed a passion for dance, and was best known for her exotic dances. She performed throughout NW Europe and Italy in the 1940’s to 1950. She adopted the screen name, ‘Laya Raki’, at the suggestion of her manager. In 1954, she got a major part in the movie, ‘The Seekers’, (released in the U.S. as, ‘Land of Fury’), as the exotic Moari dancer, longside actor Jack Hawkins. It was shot in New Zealand, and was a big hit, bringing Laya into the spotlight.
In 1955 Laya went to London to continue her acting career. Her roles in British films and TV productions made her an international star. She gained fame and recognition for her role in the popular British TV series, ‘Crane’. In order to appear more exotic to her viewing public, she invented a story that her mother was of Indonesian/French descent. While working in London, she met a handsome Australian actor, Ron Randell. It was love at first sight. They married in September, 1957 in London. Ron was doing films in both Australia and the United States. They decided to move to the U.S. in the 1960’s, working between New York City and Los Angeles. Laya appeared in the popular TV series, ‘I Spy’, and other shows over the years in Los Angeles.
Ron, died from Alzheimer’s related problems in June of 2005. In April of 2009, Laya married Duane Wood, retired Vice President of Lockheed Aircraft International. Laya is preceded in death by her father, Wilhelm Jorns in 1963, and her brother Alvin, her first husband, Ron Randell, and second husband Duane Wood in July of 2018. She is survived by her step-daughter, Cathy, and her step-grandchildren, Tyler and Shannon.
She will be laid to rest beside her first husband, Ronald Randell, at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park.
Sonja Henie was born in 1912 in Oslo, Norway to a very wealthy family. From an early age she practiced ice skating and she was a competitor in the 1924 Winter Olympics at the age of eleven. She won her third Olympic title at he 1936 Games. After the Games she became a professional ice skater. While performing in Los Angeles she was signed to a contract by 20th Century Fox. Her first film was “One in a Million”. The peak of her cinema career was between 1936 and 1943 and her films included “Thin Ice”, “Happy Landings”, “Sun Valley Serenade”, “Iceland” and “Wintertime”. She was a hugely popular star and made ice skating also popular. Ten years later Esther Williams was to do the same thing with swimming. Sonja Henie concentrated on ice skating revues after her film career waned. She retired from ice skating in 1956. She invested wisely and was a very wealthy woman when she died while en route by place to Oslo in 1969 at the age of 57.
TCM Overview:
Winner of the Olympic Gold medal in figure skating an impressive three times in a row (1928, 1932, 1936), Henie came to Twentieth Century-Fox shortly after her last win and was built up as a popular star. Nearly a dozen light musical comedies offered the blonde and dimpled Henie plenty of opportunities to don her blades and perform in lavish ice ballets while her leading men beamed and a cast of supporting comics clowned around. When her film career petered out in the mid-1940s she turned to performing in live ice shows.
“Vanity Fair” article on Sonja Henie can be accessed here.
Madys Christians was born in Vienna, Austria in 1892. She made her first film “The Black Hussar” in Germany in 1932. In Hollywood four years later she starred in “Come and Get It” with Frances Farmer. On Broadway she had an enourmous success with “I Remember Mama” in 1944. On film she had fine roles in 1948 in “All My Sons” and “A Letter to an Unknown Woman” which was directed by Max Ophuls. She was blacklisted during the McCarthy era and died in 1951.
From All Movie Guide: Primarily an actress of the European and American stage, she also appeared in many German and Hollywood films. Christians came to the U.S. in 1912 to appear with her parents in a German-speaking theater they established in New York. After making one film in the States, Audrey (1916), she returned to Germany to study with Max Reinhardt. In the ’20s she starred in numerous German plays and films, plus a few Broadway productions. With the coming to power of the Nazis in 1933, she returned to America for good, shuttling between Hollywood and Broadway. In films she tended to play supporting character parts, while on stage she continued to find lead roles. Late in her career she was blacklisted after being labeled a communist sympathizer during the McCarthy-era “witch trials.” ~ Rovi
