European Actors Archives

Sylva Koscina

Sylvia Koscina obituary in “The Independent”.

Sylva Koscina was a beautiful Yugoslav actress who was featured in many Italian epics of the late 1950’s onwards. She starred opposite Steve Reeves in “Hercules”. By the mid 1960’s she was making international films including two films in Hollywood, “The Secret War of Harry Frigg” with Paul Newman and “A Lovely Way to Die” with Kirk Douglas. She did not remain in the USA and returned to European filmmaking. She died aged 61 in 1994.

Sweet, smiling, curvaceous Sylva Koscina was a symbol of the Italy of the Sixties, incarnating the optimism of the years of the Italian economic miracle.

Throughout that period, Koscina was Italy’s version of a Hollywood glamour queen, and movie posters never failed to enhance her ample bosom. But she was no maneater. Even at the peak of her success, there was often a touch of sadness in the famous smile.”She had the typical melancholy of the Slavs,” recalled Dino Risi, who directed her in a series of comedy roles. “I never managed,” she herself admitted, “to unite the actress and the woman in a single person.” Most of her friends agreed Koscina’s problem was that she always fell in love with the wrong man. They believed that “She always wanted to redeem them and it isn’t easy to save someone who doesn’t want to be saved.”

Koscina was born in Zagreb and brought to Italy during the Second World War by her sister, who had married an Italian. In Naples, she graduated from high school and studied physics at the local university.

Her film career began by chance, after one of her teachers had persuaded her to be among the girls who greeted the winner of one of the stages of the bicycling Tour of Italy. The photograph of the beautiful young woman kissing the ace cyclist Rik Van Steenbergen ended up in all the Italian papers, attracting the attention of various Italian film-makers.

Pietro Germi, one of Italy’s most famous and most controversial directors, picked Koscina to play opposite himself in his neo-realist masterpiece Il ferroviere (“The Railwayman”, 1956), in which he portrayed a railwayman struggling against poverty and injustice.

In 1957, Koscina starred in The Labours of Hercules, by Pietro Francisci, until then an obscure director, the film that started the revival of a typically Italian genre and made mythological giants such as Hercules, Ursus, Maciste and Samson famous throughout the world. The first of the Hercules series, Le fatiche di Ercole, like many of its followers, grossed a fortune in Italy and in the US, luring many American businessmen into investing in the genre and turning the Cinecitta studios, in Rome, into Hollywood on the Tiber. This film and others of the same genre made Koscina one of Italy’s best-loved stars.

Afterwards, Koscina starred in many, mostly second-rate,comedies that were popular for over a decade, including Dino Risi’s Nonna Sabella (1957) and Luigi Zampa’s Ladro Lui, Ladro Lei (1958), where she starred opposite Alberto Sordi.

Italy’s cinema then centred on the male and, between 1959 and 1968, most starring roles went to a small group of actors including Ugo Tognazzi (62 films), Enrico Maria Salerno (40), Alberto Sordi (34), Vittorio Gassman (33) and Nino Manfredi (32). It is easier to understand Koscina’s popularity if one considers that, with 46 films, she was the only female who starred in as many films as the top men.

In 1965, she played the role of Juliet (Giulietta Masina)’s sister in Federico Fellini’s Giulietta degli Spiriti (“Juliet of the Spirits”), probably the most important of all her films.

Koscina had a brief, largely unsuccessful stint in Hollywood, during which she starred opposite Kirk Douglas in A Lovely Way to Die (1968).

As an actress, Koscina took herself very seriously, and was made fun of by friends for her habit of always referring to herself in the third person. But, by the time she had learnt to act, her career was almost over. Unlike other Italian actresses, including the likes of Sophia Loren and Silvana Mangano, whose careers were boosted by their producer-husbands Carlo Ponti and Dino de Laurentiis, Koscina received no help from her own husband, Raimondo Castelli, who only pushed her to act in as many films as possible.

Koscina had created a major scandal in Italy when she was indicted for bigamy, after a Mexican marriage to Castelli, who was already married. The marriage ended badly, some years later.

“For too long I worked like a madwoman, doing eight to ten films a year, just to make money and then spend it all,” Koscina once said. “I played the role of the vamp without ever believing in it.”

In the 1970s, Koscina became the first Italian actress to appear in the American edition of Playboy magazine. She appeared in various television series in the Seventies and the odd film or two in the Eighties. In recent years, she was a frequent guest ontelevision talk-shows where she was invited as an “ambassadress of beauty and good taste”.

Koscina contracted breast cancer a few years ago. After a first operation, she had always minimised the seriousness of her condition and had not hesitated to talk about her sickness, in order to send a message of hope to other women.

“The Independent” obituary can also be accessed on-line here.

Tribute

2014

Swords, Sandals and Serial Killers – Remembering Sylva Koscina (1933 – 1994)

Sweet looking with a fair degree of talent, Sylva Koscina had a film career I’ve always found interesting. Mixing Hollywood, European and Art-house, for three decades Sylva certainly kept herself busy on both sides of the Atlantic.

Born in Yugoslavia on August 23rd 1933, Sylva moved to Italy during the Second World War, later studying physics at university. She was spotted in a photo by controversial director Pietro Germi, who cast Koscina in his 1956 feature ‘The Railwayman’. With her career taking off, Sylva’s early films were low-brow Italian comedies and sword & sandal pictures, such as ‘Hercules’ (‘58) and its 1959 sequel ‘Hercules Unchained’, both starring Steve Reeves. A couple of cult features followed, with George Franju’s pulp crime pic ‘Judex’ (’63), playing an acrobat aiding the hero at the movie’s climax, and then as Giulietta Masina’s saucy sister, in Fellini’s colourful fantasy ‘Juliet of the Spirits’ (’65).

Sylva ventured to England at this time to co-star in a couple of spy comedies directed by Ralph Thomas. The first; ‘Hot Enough for June’ (’64) starred Dirk Bogarde as writer travelling to Prague, where he is assigned a beautiful tour guide, played by Koscina. The second was the enjoyable Bulldog Drummond adventure ‘Deadlier than the Male’ (’67), alongside Richard Johnson and Elke Sommer. Flirting with Hollywood, Sylva was paired with Kirk Douglas in the watchable 1968 drama ‘A Lovely Way to Die’, in which she played a widow accused of her wealthy husband’s murder. Also that year she starred in Jack Smight’s enjoyable WWII comedy ‘The Secret War of Harry Frigg’, playing an Italian countess romanced by Paul Newman’s US soldier. Back in Italy Sylva bared all in the obscure drama ‘He and She’ (’69) with Laurence Harvey, before being cast as Rock Hudson’s love interest in the WWII drama ‘Hornets’ Nest’ (’70). An ok actioner, Hudson plays an injured American commando rescued by a gang of orphans who, along with Koscina’s reluctant German medic, nurse him back to health in order for him to teach the kids how to shoot, so they can defend their village from the Nazi’s. Also that year, Koscina co-starred with Monica Vitti in the Italian comedy ‘Ninì Tirabusciò’, which saw the pair in a brief but memorable topless duelling scene.

A scandal arose in 1967 when Sylva married her long-term partner Raimondo Castelli (who was already married at the time), although they would later divorce bitterly in 1971. Koscina is largely remembered for her appearances in a handful of early Seventies giallo entries. In 1972’s ‘So Sweet, So Dead’, she co-starred with Farley Granger in a sordid serial killer tale, while also that year she made the excellent ‘Crimes of the Black cat’ (’72), a colourful mystery which reveals Sylva as the killer of various fashion models at her photographic studio. Around this time Koscina had the distinction of being the first Italian actress to appear in the American edition of Playboy, which was probably no big deal to Sylva as she hated wearing bra’s in real life, and would only wear them in movies that required her to.

1975 saw Sylva re-team with Elke Sommer for Mario Bava’s controversial and bizarre horror; ‘Lisa and the Devil’, which had Sylva running over her aristocratic husband’s body with her car. A flesh-baring role came in ‘Casanova & Co.’ (’77), a below-par romp with Tony Curtis and euro-babes Marisa Mell, Olivia Pascal and Britt Ekland. Koscina’s last movie of note was the ambitious international comedy ‘Sunday Lovers’ (’80), after which her film career pretty much stalled, with only a few appearances in the odd TV movie in the 1980’s.

Sadly, having been diagnosed with breast cancer some years prior, Sylva died in Rome on Boxing Day 1994, aged 61. With a fascinating and varied career lasting nearly forty years, the beautiful Sylva Koscina was one of Italy’s most famous screen queens. A kind, caring person who always took her work seriously, Sylva remains to this day, a popular cult figure in Italy and around the world

Hardy Kruger. TCM Overview.

Hardy Kruger first came to international notice with his leading role in the British film “The One that Got Away” in 1957. This was the story of the only German prisioner-of-war to escape from Britain and return to Germany during World War Two. He went to Hollywood in 1965 to make “The Flight of the Phoenix”. He has featured in several major films including “Barry Lyndon”, “A Bridge Too Far” and “The Wild Geese”. His daughter and son are both actors.

TCM Overview:

Rugged, blond and blue-eyed, Hardy Kruger ideally reflected the archetypal German revered in the Third Reich and frequently portrayed German soldiers over the course of his long international acting career.

As a teenager in Berlin in 1944, Kruger appeared in the film “Young Eagles” at the age of 15 before being drafted into military service the following year.

In 1949, Kruger returned to film and worked steadily in West Germany in a variety of films including the 1952 drama “Illusion in Moll,” with Hildegard Knef, and in the 1953 Otto Preminger comedy, “Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach.” Proficiency in English and French made Kruger extremely marketable and in 1957 he broke out onto the world stage in the first of three notable British productions, “The One That Got Away,” as an arrogant German flight officer shot down over England.

After the equally successful romantic comedy “Bachelor of Hearts” in 1958, Krugerâ¿¿s popularity spread to America with his co-starring role with John Wayne in “Hatari!,” directed by Howard Hawks. Kruger then appeared in the French dark romance “Sundays and Cybele” and “Le Gros Coup” in 1964, before returning to Hollywood in 1965 with “The Flight of the Phoenix,” co-starring alongside Jimmy Stewart in 1965. Kruger worked in Germany, France and the U.S. throughout the 1960s and 1970s, appearing in “Barry Lyndon” in 1975 and the American 1989 television series “War and Remebrance.”

At the age of 82, Kruger appeared in the 2011 German television series “Libe, Shuld und Tod.”

To view Hardy Kruger Website, please click here.

Nicole Maurey. (Wikipedia)

Nicole Maurey was born in Paris in 1925. She made movies in France and in 1953 she made “Little Boy Lost” with Bing Crosby on location in Paris. She then went to Hollywood where she made anumber of films including “Secret of the Incas” with Charlton Heston and “The Jayhawkers”.

In the 60’s she made many British films and TV series. Nicole Maurey retired and lived in France until her dath at the age of 90 in 2016.

“Wikipedia” entry:

Nicole Maurey (20 December 1925 – 11 March 2016) was a French actress, who has appeared in 65 film and television productions between 1945 and 1997.

Born in Bois-Colombes, a northwestern suburb of Paris, she was originally a dancer before being cast in her first film role in 1944.

She remains most noted as Charlton Heston‘s leading lady in Secret of the Incas (1954), often cited as the primary inspiration for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981). She starred in films with Alec Guinness, Bette Davis, Bing Crosby, Jeff Chandler, Fess Parker, Rex Harrison, Robert Taylor and Mickey Rooney, among numerous others. She was the leading lady in the original 1962 science fiction cult film The Day of the Triffids.

Later in life, she moved into television, appearing in various made-for-TV movies and mini-series.

Maurey died in March 2016 at the age of 90

The Weapon, US lobbycard, from left: Steve Cochran, Nicole Maurey, 1956. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

Maximilian Schell obituary in “The Independent”.

2555606 Jugement a Nuremberg: JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG, top l-r: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, bottom l-r: Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, 1961.; (add.info.: l Affiche du film Jugement a Nuremberg JUDGMENT AT NUREMBERG de StanleyKramer avec top l-r: Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Richard Widmark, Montgomery Clift, bottom l-r: Maximilian Schell, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, 1961.); Everett Collection.

Maximilian Schell was born in Vienna and raised in Switzerland and is the younger brother of the actress Maria Schell. He made his Hollywood debut in 1959 in “The Young Lions” and won surprisingly the Best Actor Oscar in 1961 for his performance in “Judgement at Nuremberg”, arole which he had recreated earlier on U.S. television. He has continued to act on stage and in film both in the U.S. and Europe. He died in 2014.

Chris Maume’s obituary in “The Independent”:

Apart from being a fine actor, Maximilian Schell was a respected director, screenwriter and musician. A fugitive from Hitler, he became a Hollywood favourite and won an Oscar for his role as a defence lawyer in Stanley Kramer’s star-studded film Judgment at Nuremberg. He died in hospital in Innsbruck following a short illness. The German lawyer Hans Rolfe was only his second Hollywood role, but Schell’s impassioned but unsuccessful defence of four Nazi judges on trial for sentencing innocent victims to death – on the grounds that all Germans bore a collective guilt – won him the 1961 Academy Award for best actor.

Based on the third Nuremberg trial, the film had begun life on television in 1959 as an episode of Playhouse 90. An all-star cast, including Spencer Tracy, Burt Lancaster, Marlene Dietrich and Judy Garland, was drafted in for the big-screen version – all on nominal wages, such was their desire to see the film made – but Schell’s performance had been so compelling that he was one of only two actors – Werner Klemperer was the other – asked to reprise their roles.

Far from being a straightforward account of Nazi thugs meeting their come-uppance, it was a morally complex piece of work. Three of the four judges defended by Rolfe were clearly culpable, but one of them, Lancaster’s Ernst Janning, was a distinguished legal scholar who had hated the Nazis. Rolfe argued that had he left his post he would have been replaced by a more brutal Nazi apparatchik.

Thanks to his passionate performance, Schell became Hollywood’s go-to man in numerous films dealing with the Nazi era or its legacy – Sam Peckinpah’s Cross of Iron, for example, in which he played an army captain, and Ronald Neame’s The Odessa File, in which he was an SS officer. He earned a best actor Oscar nomination for The Man in the Glass Booth, in which he played a Jewish businessman with a shadowy past in a film inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, and a supporting actor nomination for his performance as a man who assists the German underground in Julia, which also starred alongside Jane Fonda, Vanessa Redgrave and Jason Robards.

“There does seem to be a pattern,” he acknowledged of his CV. “I think there’s an area of subject matter here that has to be faced and seriously dealt with.”

He did manage to play some roles without a Nazi element. In 1992 he received a Golden Globe for his supporting role as Lenin alongside Robert Duvall in the 1992 HBO miniseries Stalin. He was an ageing cardinal in the 1996 sequel to The Thorn Birds, and a Swiss master-criminal in Jules Dassin’s Topkapi (1964), about a jewel theft in Turkey; more recently he was in The Freshman, a 1990 Mafia comedy, and the disaster movie Deep Impact (1998).

The son of a Swiss playwright and an Austrian stage actress, he was born in Vienna and raised in Switzerland after his family fled the Anschluss. He followed his older sister Maria and brother Carl into acting, making his stage debut in 1952. He appeared in several German films before moving to Hollywood in 1958. By then, Maria Schell was an international star, having won the best actress award at Cannes in 1954 for The Last Bridge.

Maximilian made his Hollywood debut as a German soldier in Edward Dmytryk’s The Young Lions (1958) a Second World War drama starring Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and Dean Martin. In 1960 he returned to Germany to play Hamlet on television, a role he would later play twice on stage. He recalled that playing Hamlet for the first time, “was like falling in love with a woman … not until I acted the part of Hamlet did I have a moment when I knew I was in love with acting.”

He later worked as a producer, starting with an adaptation of Franz Kafka’s The Castle, and as a director. Adapted from the Ivan Turgenev novella, First Love, which Schell wrote, produced, directed and starred in, was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film in 1970. Three years later his film The Pedestrian, in which a car crash causes a German businessman to consider his wartime past, was nominated in the same category.

Perhaps Schell’s most significant film as a director was his 1984 documentary about Marlene Dietrich, Marlene, which was nominated for a best documentary Oscar. Dietrich allowed herself to be recorded but refused to be filmed, bringing out the most in Schell’s talent to penetrate images and uncover reality. In a documentary entitled My Sister Maria, Schell portrayed his loving relationship with his sister, who died in 2005.

A man of remarkable all-round talents, Schell was a successful concert pianist and conductor, performing with Claudio Abbado and Leonard Bernstein, and orchestras in Berlin and Vienna. He also directed and produced operas.

In 1985 Schell married the actress Natalya Andrejchenko, who he met when they were making the NBC mini-series Peter the Great, in which he played the Russian Tsar. They divorced in 2005, and last year he married the German-Croatian opera singer Iva Mihanovic.

Maximilian Schell, actor, director, producer, screenwriter, pianist and conductor: born Vienna 8 December 1930; married 1985 Natalya Andrejchenko (divorced 2005; one daughter), 2013 Iva Mihanovic; died 1 February 2014.

This review can be accessed in “The Indpendent” website here.

Annabella. Obituary in “The Independent” in 1996.

Annabella was born Suzanne Charpentier in France in 1907. She made her first film in her native country in 1927. In the late 1930’s she came to the UK to make the first British colour film “Wings of the Morning” with Henry Fonda and the Irish tenor Count John McCormack. Annabella then went to Hollywood where she made many fims including “Suez” with her future husband Tyrone Power. In the late 40;s she returned to France to resume her career there after her divorce from Power. She retired from film making in 1962. Annabella died in 1996.

Kevin Brownlow’s Independent newspaper obituary:One of the best-loved stars of French films of the 1930s, Annabella was also celebrated for her work in Hollywood in films like Suez (1938), with Tyrone Power, whom she married.

Born Suzanne Charpentier on 14 July – Bastille Day – 1909 at La Varenne- Saint-Hilaire, near Paris, she grew up with a fascination for the cinema. She was particularly passionate about Lillian Gish. “I always talked about movies. When I was 12, I wrote Studio on the chicken-shed in the back garden and acted scenes from the movies I had seen. I was the director, cameraman, everything. I used to sell my books to buy film magazines!

“My father was the publisher of a magazine. He spent all his time with writers and painters, and he was a keen photographer. I remember two phrases from that time that used to bother me: `Come along, darling, it’s time for your piano lesson’ and `Come along, darling, Daddy wants to take some photos.’ And one day, Daddy, who always had photos of his family in his pocket, went to a painter’s house, and met the famous writer t’Serstevens, a close friend of director Abel Gance. Daddy showed his photos, and t’Serstevens said, `I know that Gance is looking for a girl . . .’ So Daddy came back and said, `You know what? I’ve made a date for you.’ “

Gance was embarking on his monumental Napoleon, production of which began in 1925, when Suzanne was 15. Apart from Josephine, there were few parts for women, but Gance invented a little family which would follow Bonaparte throughout his career. The daughter, Violine, was to represent those young women who worshipped Napoleon as their counterparts later worshipped Valentino. The part had been assigned to the English actress Mabel Poulton, and Suzanne was sent to Corsica to play one of Bonaparte’s sisters. When he saw how beautifully she photographed, Gance dropped Mabel Poulton and gave the role to Suzanne. As an admirer of D.W. Griffith, he regarded Suzanne as his Lillian Gish. He renamed her Annabella, after a poem, “Annabel Lee”, by Edgar Allan Poe.

Gance expanded the part until her screen time rivalled that of Josephine (Gina Manes). But when, after months of work, Annabella attended the Paris Opera for the premiere, she had the experience all actresses dread; virtually all her scenes had been cut. Gance explained that this was a specially shortened version; her scenes would reappear in the full-length version. But Annabella never went near the film again until she attended the restoration in 1983 at the Barbican, when she saw herself as Violine for the first time. (Ironically, when the restoration was presented in America, by Francis Ford Coppola, it was reduced from five to four hours – and all Annabella’s scenes were cut once again.)

After the presentation at the Barbican, and an interview with David Shipman, Annabella wanted to see something of London, and we strolled around the West End. Her energy was extraordinary, as was her enthusiasm and humour; it was impossible to believe she was 73.

“I loved filming,” she said, “not to become a star but to continue playing like when I was little. You know when you see children with an old box – for them it’s a carriage. So, for me, to be in a film of Gance – I was that character. I was no longer me. So it was funny, on growing up, I continued to play as when I was little. It wasn’t serious work. Heartfelt, yet, I had to give my all.”

Her father managed her early career; when sound arrived he had the good fortune to secure her a role in Rene Clair’s Le Million (1931).

“Rene Clair was a strange character. For months he would stay at home working on the scenario. His wife said, `He won’t answer the telephone. He won’t even speak to me.’ But when Rene had written the word FIN at the end of a scenario, for him the work was over and the fun started.”

Practical jokes staged by Clair included a call from Berlin asking for Annabella. Clair said she was not free. A representative from Berlin arrived at the studio. Annabella despatched an assistant to report on what he was like. He was hideous – pock-marked, bearded, enormous. Clair encouraged her to leave the studio by a window to avoid him. “It was an extra he had made up like that. All the studio was in on it. One day, I thought I’d get back at him. Between scenes, Clair would play with a yo-yo. He would even delay us with this yo-yo, doing the same annoying tricks. We hid a camera and we filmed Rene Clair at the back of a set. We said, `Tonight we’ll look at the rushes and we’ll show this – what a laugh.’ As soon as we went into the projection room, there arrived an important producer. We looked at each other: `It can’t be cut. What are we going to do? My God, he’s going to be angry.’ But no, to show you Rene’s personality, he got up and said, `You will have noticed, my friends, that I did it with my left hand?’ “

Her favourite director, however, was the Hungarian Paul Fejos, for whom she made Marie, legende hongroise (1931) in Budapest. “I adored him. He was sincerity personified. I mean, if the scene required me to have tears in my eyes, he’d be behind the camera, with tears in his eyes as well. I thought Marie was a beautiful picture, the way Fejos told the old legend.” For Vieille d’armes, Annabella won the best actress award at Venice in 1934 – the European equivalent of an Oscar. Thanks to such triumphs, she was soon in demand by Europe’s top leading men. She married one of them – Jean Murat. She admired Louis Jouvet, but felt he didn’t enjoy working in films. He was accustomed to directing on the stage, and it was hard for him to accept orders. Jean Gabin she adored, and she had nothing but praise for Henry Fonda, with whom she played in Wings of the Morning in 1937. The first Technicolor feature to be made this side of the Atlantic, it was shot on location in England and in Ireland. Annabella was particularly fond of it because she had what amounted to three parts: Maria, a gipsy who escapes from the war in Spain – she played her both as a girl and in disguise as a boy – and Maria’s grandmother.

Also in England, she made Dinner at the Ritz (1937) with David Niven and Under the Red Robe (1937) with Conrad Veidt. She returned to France to star in Marcel Carne’s classic Hotel du Nord (1938). Under contract to Fox, she went to Hollywood. Annabella had dreamed of Hollywood since childhood. She fell in love with the place. And she fell in love with Tyrone Power. She divorced Jean Murat in 1938 and married Power in 1939. According to her, the head of the studio, Darryl F. Zanuck, was so incensed by the marriage that he put her on a blacklist.

Zanuck was further angered by her refusal to return to Britain to make three films she owed 20th Century-Fox British. “He thought I was a crazy woman who despised success, money, pictures. The last straw was when I did a play with Tyrone.” The play, Liliom, was intended to be a quiet little affair in Westport, where not too much notice would be taken of them. But Elsa Maxwell gave a huge party, the notices were excellent and the couple were hailed as the next sensation for Broadway. Not a prospect that pleased Mr Zanuck. She did one more film for Fox, 13 Rue Madeleine (1943), with James Cagney, but only because the director, Henry Hathaway, insisted on having her.

Her proudest memory as an actress occurred on Broadway in 1944, during her stage career. “It was a very successful play, Jacobovsky and the Colonel, and in the middle of a big scene, the safety curtain dropped. I said to myself, `My God, there’s a fire!’ I went backstage. `Paris has been liberated. Yes, it’s just been on the radio. We’ll take the curtain up – go and tell the audience.’ I thought of my parents, my family, my friends, France, I went back on the stage all by myself and I said to them, `Paris is free.’ And you know the whole audience stood and sang La Marseillaise. It was thrilling.”

Now an American citizen, Annabella toured North Africa and Italy, entertaining the troops with plays like Blithe Spirit. The separation did her marriage no good. Power, who had been in the marines, returned to Hollywood, where his name was linked with other stars. Annabella wrote to him “It is like seeing a beautiful black swan surrounded by geese.”

They separated and Annabella returned to Europe. She had lost her young brother, killed while trying to escape the Nazis, her father had died just after the war and the family’s two houses had been ransacked by the Germans. She worked in Spain and she worked in France. She made Dernier amour, an experience she hated. After a final film in Spain, she decided to end her career. “I finally had freedom. I hadn’t had any since I was a kid; I’d always been famous. And one day I walked out and no one stared at me. I loved it.”

Annabella remained loyal to Tyrone Power. They may have divorced in 1948, but she retained his name for the rest of her life. His portrait held pride of place in her home and they remained friends. “I was with him four days before he died,” she told David Shipman, “making Solomon and Sheba, and he said, `You know, the worst mistake I ever made was letting you go.’ Wasn’t that nice?”

Suzanne Georgette Charpentier (Annabella), actress: born La Varenne- Saint-Hillaire, France 14 July 1909; married 1932 Jean Murat (one daughter; marriage dissolved 1938), 1939 Tyrone Power (marriage dissolved 1948); died Neuilly-sur-Seine, France 18 September 1996.

See Independent obituary here.

Born Suzanne Georgette Charpentier, the daughter of a magazine publisher, in La Varenne Saint Hilaire, France, on July 14, 1909 (although sources vary the years from 1904 to 1913), Annabella appeared in Abel Gance‘s legendary silent epic Napoleon(1927). Director René Clair immediately recognized her gamine appeal and photogenic allure, casting her in his classic Le Million (1931). European stardom was hers.

Although only in her 20s, she was already a widow (due to the death of husband Albert Sorre, a writer) with a young daughter, Anne, to support. She pursued her career with ardent dedication and passion. She appeared on the stages of Berlin and Vienna and continued her professional association with director Clair by giving a superb performance in July 14 (1933) [July 14th]. She continued to shine working alongside the likes ofCharles Boyer, Jean Gabin, Albert Préjean and Jean Murat. Her popularity was further heightened by a successful association with writer/director Pál Fejös.

She first arrived in America to shoot a French-language version of a Hollywood film and began mastering English from that point on. Instead of settling in Hollywood, however, she headed to London and away from the Hollywood glitz. She had appeared earlier with Jean Murat in Companion Wanted (1932) and Mademoiselle Josette, ma femme (1933), and the couple married in 1934. She won the Venice Film Festival Award for her glorious performance in Sacrifice d’honneur (1935) [Sacrifice of Honor] and went on to appear with Murat in two other pictures — Anatole Litvak‘s Flight Into Darkness (1935) [Flight Into Darkness] and Anne-Marie (1936).

1673732 French Actress Annabella, 1938 (b/w photo); (add.info.: French actress Annabella, 1938); Photo © AGIP.

Hollywood beckoned again, this time courtesy of 20th Century-Fox, but the open-faced, ash-blonde beauty continued to resist. They finally arrived on a settlement of sorts — she would agree to make English-speaking films with the studio but only if they were made in England. Her English-speaking debut was opposite Henry Fonda in Wings of the Morning (1937), which was quite successful. It was the first Technicolor feature ever shot in England and Annabella looked every inch the star.

As her following American movies were given their release, such as Under the Red Robe(1937) with Conrad Veidt and Raymond Massey and Dinner at the Ritz (1937) with Paul Lukas and David Niven, Annabella was drawn into the Hollywood maelstrom despite her desire for privacy. This privacy would be shattered dramatically after the still-married French actress met and fell hard for the studio’s main attraction, Tyrone Power. From that time forward, the soon-to-be-divorced Annabella and Power became prime objects of tabloid frenzy. They finally married on April 23, 1939. Hounded by an ever-curious public, the couple soon began having marital troubles, complicated by their inevitable time apart for filming and his war service. His numerous affairs only compounded their problems. She bravely kept a strong front and continued filming, but her vehicles were not up to par. The Baroness and the Butler (1938) with William Powell, Suez (1938), which she filmed with her husband, and Bridal Suite (1939) with Robert Young did little to bolster her American career. After Tonight We Raid Calais (1943) and Bomber’s Moon (1943), she ended her contract with 13 Rue Madeleine (1947), and then she was gone.

Divorcing Power in January of 1948, she returned to Europe. Her last French film was released in 1952. Her only child Anne would find love and heartbreak married to the Austrian actor Oskar Werner who self-destructed from depression and chronic alcoholism. Annabella’s last years were spent quietly, volunteering at one point in prison welfare. She died of a heart attack at Neuilly sur Seine on September 18, 1996, at the age of 87.

– IMDb Mini Biography By: Gary Brumburgh / gr-home@pacbell.net

Her IMDB entry can also be accessed here.

Horst Buchholz obituary in “The Guardian” in 2003.

The refusal of German audiences to contemplate subtitled films ensured useful, if obscure, work for their actors, and Horst Buchholz, who has died aged 69, found – as Henry Brookholt – such employment invaluable in the early stages of his career.

Buchholz, who achieved fame as one of The Magnificent Seven (1960), shed his obscurity by winning an acting award at the Cannes film festival for his third film, Sky Without Stars (1955), by the outstanding German director Helmut Käutner. Two years later, he played the title role of Thomas Mann’s The Confessions Of Felix Krull, and began an international career. He appeared in Britain as the fugitive Polish sailor befriended by Hayley Mills, making her mesmerising screen debut, in Tiger Bay (1959).

After the success of that intelligent thriller, there was the inevitable, though temporary, hop to Hollywood, which characteristically failed to make constructive use of Buchholz’s abilitites. His one remarkable role was as the irritating youngster, Chico, in The Magnificent Seven, and it was a tribute to his talent and personality that he successfully recreated the role immortalised by Toshiro Mifune in the Samurai version of the story.

Buchholz, who was born in a poor suburb of Berlin, was evacuated to the countryside during the war. After his father was killed, he fled a children’s camp in Bohemia and returned to the city. He abandoned school to study acting, making his debut – aged 15 – in Emil And The Detectives. He also worked on radio and in dubbing theatres, and, thanks to a facility for languages, became fluent in English, French, Spanish, Italian and Russian.

That Man In Istanbul, poster, US poster art, Horst Buchholz (bottom left and top right), 1965. (Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)

His brooding good looks led to stage work, including roles in Jean Anouilh’s School For Fathers and Shakespeare’s Richard III, and a screen debut in the fantasy Marianne of My Youth (1955), after its director Julien Duvivier saw him at the Schiller theatre. What made him a star in Germany were his James Dean-style roles as rebellious youngsters, most notably in Die Halbstarke (1956), shown in Britain as Wolfpack.

Buchholz’s international career did not lessen his popularity at home, and he continued to work in films and television throughout Europe, while living principally in Switzerland and maintaining apartments in Paris and Berlin. Hollywood offered him little, and after the lumpen Fanny (1961), his next film after the classic western, he relished his role as the communist lover in Billy Wilder’s satire on American consumerism, One, Two, Three (also 1961).

He then took on Nine Hours To Rama (1963), making a convincing character of Naturam Godse, the Hindu extremist determined that Gandhi should be assassinated. This rather dull film launched a decade in which Buchholz starred mainly in dismal co-productions, including Marco, The Magnificent (1965), Cervantes (1966) and The Great Waltz (1972), in which his portrayal of Johann Strauss Jr was drowned in a welter of melody.

Buchholz returned to Germany to star in But Johnny (1973), and subsequently divided his time between lucrative television movies and films in America. Among his better television work was The Savage Bees (1976), Raid On Entebbe (1977) and Berlin Tunnel 21 (1981), in which he played an engineer helping refugees escape to the west. On the big screen, he was in the spy drama Avalanche Express (1979) and more prestigious films, including Wim Wenders’ Faraway, So Close! (1993), and enjoyed personal success as the cultured Dr Lessing in Robert Benigni’s Life Is Beautiful (1997).

The following year, he provided the voice of the Emperor in the German version of the animated adventure Mulan, estimating that he had worked on the dubbing of more than 1,000 films throughout his career. Among his last screen appearances was a documentary, Guns For Hire; The Making Of The Magnificent Seven (2000) and an old-fashion Europudding thriller, Enemy (2001).

He is survived by his wife Myriam Bru, who gave up acting after their marriage in 1958, and their two children, Beatrice and Christopher, both of whom are actors.

· Horst Buchholz, actor, born December 4 1933; died March 3 2003

To view the “Guardian” Obituary on Horst Buchholz, please click here.

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Thoughtful looking Horst Buchholz was a renowned German actor who seems to be mainly remembered for one classic western. But this largely forgotten actor had a much more interesting and varied career which covered many genres in many countries.

Born in Berlin on December 4th, 1933, Buchholz began in popular German productions such as ‘Regine’ (’56) and ‘King in the Shadow’ (’57) before impressing in the cult comedy ‘Confessions of Felix Krull’ (’57), where he played a charming scoundrel conning his way to the top. It would be two years later however, with a sympathetic role in an excellent British thriller, that would bring him wider acclaim. In ‘Tiger Bay’ (’59) his first English language movie, Buchholz shone as a Polish seaman being pursued by the police after shooting dead his girlfriend. The movie was also memorable for introducing a 12 year old Hayley Mills to the screen, and she stole the show as the little girl who witnesses the murder.

The following year Buchholz found Hollywood fame when he played the youngest gang member in John Sturges’ classic western ‘The Magnificent Seven’ (’60). As the reckless Chico his character survives the final shootout along with Steve McQueen and Yul Brynner. A change of pace followed with Billy Wilder’s energetic farce ‘One, Two, Three’ (’61), a rapid-fire comedy which had James Cagney as a Coca-Cola executive in Germany, whose pretty young daughter (Pamela Tiffin) falls in love with Buchholz’s radical communist, leading to the usual complications. Although the movie was a misfire it has since gained a sizable following over the years. Also that year Buchholz romanced Leslie Caron in ‘Fanny’, playing the son of Charles Boyer’s bar owner who falls in love with Caron’s pretty French maiden, whilst longing for his own freedom. It was a lovely film with the superb cast (including Maurice Chevalier) on top form.

Now a popular young actor, Horst had to turn down Omar Sharif’s role in ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, as he had already signed on to Wilder’s ‘One, Two, Three’. In Italy he was Bette Davis’ wannabe artist son in the drama ‘The Empty Canvas’ (’63), and then a club owner in the energetic spy spoof ‘That Man in Istanbul’ (’65) with Sylva Koscina and Klaus Kinski. That same year saw Buchholz take on the role of Marco Polo in the visually impressive but rather tedious adventure ‘Marco the Magnificent’ (’65) alongside Anthony Quinn and Omar Sharif. After playing the title role in the biopic ‘Cervantes’ (’67) about the poet and writer who penned “Don Quixote”, he was reunited with Sylva Koscina for the dull actioner ‘The Dove Must Not Fly’ (’70). Another biopic followed, this time of composer Johann Strauss, in Andrew L. Stone’s musical ‘The Great Waltz’ (’72). He gave a good performance and aged convincingly, and even though the production was overblown, at least the music was good.

With film offers now diminishing, Buchholz made a run of television movies, including the pretty good horror ‘The Savage Bees’, and the star-laden hostage drama ‘Raid on Entebbe’ (both ’76) with Peter Finch and Charles Bronson. Some duds followed, including the troubled Lee Marvin production ‘Avalanche Express’ (’79) and Umberto Lenzi’s war flick ‘From Hell to Victory’ (’79) with George’s Peppard and Hamilton. Following some forgettable parts in the Erotic French drama ‘Aphrodite’ (’82) and the 1983 Brooke Shields’ adventure ‘Sahara’, one good movie at this time was the 1988 drama ‘And the Violins Stopped Playing’, a true story about a small band of gypsies escaping the German army during World War II. Slumming it once again, he then hammed it up as a menacing baddie called Thor in the Italian Post-Apocalypse sci-fi flick ‘Escape from Paradise’ (’90).

After a small role as a devious tycoon in Wim Wender’s acclaimed fantasy-drama ‘Faraway, So Close! (’93), Buchholz scored a big hit later on with one of his final movies, the Oscar-winning crowd-pleaser ‘Life Is Beautiful’ (’97), playing a kindly doctor befriending Roberto Begnini’s upbeat concentration camp prisoner. Apart from a supporting role in the forgettable Luke Perry actioner ‘The Enemy’ (2001), Buchholz’s final appearances were confined to German productions, though mainly in television movies.

Sadly, while recovering from a broken thighbone, Buchholz died of pneumonia on March 3rd 2003. He was 69. Married for 42 years to former French actress Myriam Bru, Horst Buchholz was a much-loved actor in his own country, but also managed to carve out a successful career all over the world, including Hollywood where (if only briefly) he found fame and a fan-base with a handful of varied and now-classic productions.

Favourite Movie: The Magnificent Seven
Favourite Performance: Tiger Bay

Jeroem Krabbe (Wikipedia)

Jeroem Krabbe is a Dutch actor and film director who has appeared in more than 60 films since 1963, including Soldaat van Oranje (1977), The Fourth Man (1983), The Living Daylights (1987), The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), and Immortal Beloved (1994).

Krabbé was born into an artistic family in Amsterdam. Both his father Maarten Krabbéand grandfather Hendrik Maarten Krabbé were well-known painters, while his mother Margreet, née Reiss (1914–2002), was a film translator. His brother Tim is a writer and top level chess player, and his half-brother nl:Mirko Krabbé is an artist. Only later in life did he learn that his mother was Jewish and that her family had been killed in the Holocaust.

One Sheet; Movie Poster; Film Poster; Cinema Poster;

Internationally, he first came to prominence in fellow Dutchman Paul Verhoeven‘s films Soldier of Orange opposite Rutger Hauer and The Fourth Man with Renée Soutendijk. His first big American film was the Whoopi Goldberg comedy Jumpin’ Jack Flash.

However, it was his roles as villains in a string of international films from the late 1980s and early 1990s which brought him international stardom, with notable roles such as Losado in No Mercy (1986), General Georgi Koskov in the James Bond film The Living Daylights (1987), Gianni Franco in The Punisher (1989), Herbert Woodruff (Lowenstein’s husband) in The Prince of Tides (1991), and Dr. Charles Nichols in The Fugitive (1993). He has also appeared in numerous TV productions, and as Satan in the TV production Jesus.

He was both director and producer of a 1998 film about Orthodox Jews during the 1970s in Antwerp (Belgium) co-starring Isabella Rossellini and Maximilian Schell called Left Luggage, as well as the Harry Mulisch novel adapted into film The Discovery of Heaven. Left Luggage was entered into the 48th Berlin International Film Festival. The following year, he was a member of the jury at the 49th Berlin International Film Festival.

His television work included playing an uncanny psychic in the Midsomer Murders series 11 episode “Talking to the Dead”. Krabbé also had an exhibition about his paintings in Museum de Fundatie(Zwolle), in 2008.

Giovanna Ralli. (Wikipedia)

Giovanna Ralli was born in Rome in 1935. She began making films in Italy in 1951 and by the mid 60’s had achieved an international reputation. She made one movie in 1966 in Hollywood “What Did You Do in the War Daddy” with fellow Italian Sergio Fantoni. Ms Ralli is still acting in movies.

Wikipedia entry:

Born in Rome, Ralli debuted as a child actress at 7; at 13 she made her theatrical debut, entering the stage company of Peppino De Filippo. After appearing in Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada‘s Variety Lights(1950), Ralli had her first film roles of weight in mid-fifties, often in comedy films. In 1959 she had a leading role in Roberto Rossellini‘s General Della Rovere, that won the Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival, while in 1960 her performance in Escape by Night, still directed by Rossellini, was awarded with the Golden Gate Award for Best Actress at the San Francisco International Film Festival.

Ralli later won a Nastro d’Argento award, as best actress, for La fuga (1964). In mid-sixties she had a brief Hollywood career, starting from Blake Edwards‘ What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?. In 1974 she won her second Nastro d’Argento, as best supporting actress, for We All Loved Each Other So Much. Starting from early eighties, Ralli focused her activities on stage. In 1993 she received a Flaiano Prize for her career. In 2003 she was made a Grand Officer of the Italian Republic.

For the above brief biography on wikipedia, please click here.

Cover of the magazine Epoca. Actress Giovanna Ralli. 1957 (Photo by Mario De Biasi\Mondadori Portfolio\Mondadori via Getty Images)

Gerard Depeardau

Gerard Depardieu was born in France in 1948. He made his first film”Maitresse” directed by Barbet Schroeder in 1973. He has made films with most of the renowned French directors of the recent past e.g. Bertrand Blier, Claude Sautet, Bernardo Bertolucci, Alain Resnais, Francois Truffaut and Claude Chabrol. In 1990 he went to the US to make “Green Card” with Andie McDowell. Despite it’s huge success, he choose to return to filmmaking in France. Article on Moviemail, please click here.

Collection of Classic European Actors

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Sylvia Koscina obituary in “The Independent”.

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Hardy Kruger. TCM Overview.

Nicole Maurey

Nicole Maurey. (Wikipedia)

Maximilian Schell

Maximilian Schell obituary in “The Independent”.

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Annabella. Obituary in “The Independent” in 1996.

Horst Buchholz

Horst Buchholz obituary in “The Guardian” in 2003.

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Jeroen Krabbe

Jeroem Krabbe (Wikipedia)

Giovanna Ralli

Giovanna Ralli. (Wikipedia)

Gerard Depardieu

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