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1-8 of 8
- Actress
- Producer
Elisabeth Bergner was the daughter of the merchant Emil Ettel and his wife Anna Rosa Wagner. She grew up in Vienna, and she made her theatre debut in Innsbruck in 1915. In 1916 she obtained a contract in Zürich, where she played Ophelia next to the famous Alexander Moissi, who fell in love with her. The next stage in her career was Vienna, where she posed as a model for the talented but deeply unhappy sculptor Wilhelm Lehmbruck. He fell in love with her, but she rejected him; his suicide soon afterwards shocked her. After performing in Vienna and Munich she came to Berlin in 1921. There she played in productions by Max Reinhardt and became a very popular actress.
During her early years as an actress, she was often helped by the poet and critic Albert Ehrenstein, whom she called Xaverl. Ehrenstein was also in love with her. At one time she promised him a child but changed her mind. Ehrenstein wrote numerous poems for her, but often she kept him at a distance. However, their friendship lasted and they continued to exchange letters.
She made her film debut in Der Evangelimann (1924). In 1924, director Paul Czinner gave her a part in Husbands or Lovers (1924). This was the beginning of their successful professional collaboration as well as their personal relationship. Her most successful silent movie was Fräulein Else (1929).
Bergner and Czinner were both Jews, and after the Nazis came to power, they emigrated to Vienna and then London, where they were married. She learned English and was able to continue her career. In London, she became friendly with G.B. Shaw and J.M. Barrie, who after a long hiatus from writing drafted a play for her; the result, The Boy David (1936), unfortunately was not successful. She also appeared as Gemma Jones in the movie version of Escape Me Never (1935) by Margaret Kennedy, which earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress. Her movie The Rise of Catherine the Great (1934) was forbidden in Germany.
During her London years, she sent much of her money to relatives and friends in need, among them Ehrenstein. Bergner's only Hollywood movie, Paris Calling (1941), failed to attract attention. On Broadway, she fared better and was very successful in The Two Mrs. Carrolls. While appearing in it, she encountered a young aspiring actress who stood in the alley outside the theater every night and claimed to have seen every performance; Bergner befriended and later hired her but broke with her after the young actress -- who called herself Martina Lawrence, the name of one of Bergner's twin characters in Stolen Life (1939) -- became over-interested in all aspects of Bergner's life. Bergner later recounted this story to her friend Mary Orr, a writer, who turned it into the short story "The Wisdom of Eve" -- which was the basis for the movie All About Eve (1950).
After the war, Bergner worked in New York for a few years; in 1950, she returned to England. She gave acclaimed Bible readings in Israel in English, German and Hebrew. In Germany, she resumed her stage career, and in 1959 she stunned audiences and critics in Berlin with her performance in Geliebter Lügner, a German version of Jerome Kilty's Dear Liar, a play based on the letters exchanged between G.B. Shaw and actress Stella Campbell. In 1961, she returned to the movies, and in 1970 she made her directorial debut. Her last stage appearance took place in 1973 (Her husband had died in 1972).
In 1978, a volume of her memoirs was published, in which she shared some of her secrets with the public, such as Lehmbruck's obsession with her. In 1979 she received the Ernst Lubitsch Prize and in 1982 the Eleonora Duse Prize. She discussed a possible return to Vienna with Bruno Kreisky, but she died from cancer at her home in London in 1986. In Seglitz (Berlin), a city park was named after her.- Schulz is undoubtedly one of the most remarkable writers in Polish literature of the first half of the 20h Century. He was born in Drohobycz, a small village near Lvov, where he would live until he was shot by the Nazis on the street on November 19th, 1942. By then, Schulz had published two books. They were collections of stories and prose texts of extremely original style and contents. The first collection was published as The Cinnamon Shops in 1933; the second, published as Sanatorium Pod Klepsydra, was published in 1937. Schulz's work has often been compared to Franz Kafka's.
- Aleksander Bednarz was born on 6 January 1941 in Drohobycz, Lwowskie, Poland [now Drohobych, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine]. He was an actor, known for The Hexer (2001), Na dobre i na zle (1999) and The Hexer (2002). He died on 27 January 2013 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland.
- Additional Crew
Leon Selinger was born April 11, 1930 in Drohobycz, Poland. After the Nazi invasion, he escaped deportation for a time by going into temporary hiding places, but was eventually picked up with his father and brother and taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Gleiwitz, and Mauthausen. When he was 11 years old, he was separated from his father and brother at Dachau and sent to a Nazi death camp. Four years later, on April 24 1945, he was liberated near Flossenburg after having lost his mother and his younger brother. He reunited with his father and brother near Regensburg and at the age of 15 years old, not speaking a word of English, he immigrated to the United States in 1947. He served in the United States military and married Shelley Selinger, whom he met at a dance. They had a son named Mark. Leon passed away on June 25, 2012 in Sheepshead Bay, New York after a battle with liver cancer.- Wojciech Alaborski was born on 23 September 1941 in Drohobycz, Lwowskie, Poland [now Drohobych, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine]. He was an actor, known for Pan Tadeusz (1999), Plebania (2000) and Akcja pod Arsenalem (1978). He died on 5 April 2009 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland.
- Alfred Schreyer was born on 8 May 1922 in Drohobycz, Lwów, Poland [now Drohobych, Lviv, Ukraine]. He was married to Ludmilla. He died on 25 April 2015 in Warsaw, Mazowieckie, Poland.
- Production Designer
Jerzy Moskal was born on 8 June 1930 in Drohobycz, Lwowskie, Poland [now Drohobych, Lviv Oblast, Ukraine]. She was a production designer, known for Television Theater (1953). She died on 19 May 2016 in Katowice, Slaskie, Poland.- Mordecai Roshwald was born on 26 May 1921 in Drohobycz, Lwowskie, Poland. He was a writer, known for Out of the Unknown (1965). He was married to Miriam Mindla Wyszynski. He died on 19 March 2015 in Silver Spring, Maryland, USA.