Wera Engels
Wera Engels was a daughter of a German Admiral and Governor of the then German colony Tsing-tau-China. After successful leading roles in productions of the well-established German UFA-studios in Babelsberg as well as in France, Engels was invited to Hollywood. Producers saw her as a cheap alternative to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. She was contracted with RKO. Engels was given roles under Walter Futter and M.H. Hoffman. She and the silent movie super star Mary Pickford became best friends. By 1935 she returned to Germany, but left soon thereafter, because of the decline of the German movie industry caused by the Nazi propaganda machine. Back in Hollywood, she dated Gary Cooper for a while but married the Lithuanian-born actor/writer Ivan Lebedeff. After Lebedeff's death in 1953 of Angina pectoris, she moved back to Europe, where she stayed with several friends in London and Stockholm before she went back to Germany. She lived the rest of her life with Erna Hoffmann (widow of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's friend and personal photographer) in the Munich area. She died on November 16, 1988 (age 79) in Munich, Germany.
The Great Impersonation
as Princess Stephanie ElderstromThe second of the three film versions of the E. Phillips Oppenheim espionage thriller set...
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Together We Live
as SoniaA ham-handed cautionary fable against communism, the film concerns a group of Civil War veterans...
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Fugitive Road
as Sonya ValinoffAn Austrian officer must face up to the good and evil aspects of his own personality as he...
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Talking About Jacqueline
as Jacqueline TopeliusSince her father died, rich and carefree Jacqueline Topelius makes magazine covers and causes...
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Fighting the White Slave Traffic
as Irene WendtlandA young woman in Berlin is offered a job at a night club in Budapest. There she is abducted and...
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Scent of the Woman in Black
as Edith RanceThe story takes place on the Riviera, where the title character may or may not be involved in...
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The Great Jasper
as Norma McGowdGenerational saga about a failed streetcar conductor, who finds success as an Atlantic City...
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Hong Kong Nights
as Trina VidorCustoms agents track a ring of arms smugglers into Hong Kong.
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