Lotte Neumann

Lotte Neumann (1896-1977) was one of the most successful actresses in the early days of the German silent cinema, and she also worked as a screenwriter and a producer. Neumann was the lovely star in the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Romeo und Julia im Schnee / Romeo and Juliet in the Snow (1920).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 636/1. Photo: Maxim Film. Publicity still for the Ernst Lubitsch comedy Romeo und Julia im Schnee / Romeo and Juliet in the Snow (1920). The man on the left, dressed as an antique hero, is Julius Falkenstein as Paris. The others are Jakob Tiedtke (Herr Capulethofer), Marga Köhler (his wife), Lotte Neumann (Julia) and Gustav von Wangenheim (Romeo Montekugerl).


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-sterne series, no. 94/2. Photo: NBFMB / Karl Schenker.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 340/5, 1919-1924. Photo: Becker & Maass / Maxim Film.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 5694. Photo: Atelier Eberth, Berlin.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin-Wilm., no. 9894. Photo: J. Braae Photokunst, 1917.


German postcard by Rotophot, Berlin, in the Film-Sterne Series, no. 150/1, 1925-1935. Photo: Becker & Maass.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2095. Photo: Lotte Neumann-Film. Lotte Neumann in Die Richterin / The Judge (Paul von Woringen, 1917).

Sherlock Holmes

Lotte Neumann was born as Charlotte Pötler in Berlin, Germany, in 1896.

She attended the Königliche Luisenschule (Royal Louise School) in Berlin, after which the Wagnersche-Klinkhardsche Höhere Mädchenschule (Wagnerian-Klinkhardsche Higher School for Girls).

She began her theatrical career as a 13-year-old choir singer at the Komische Oper (Comic Opera) and at the Komödienhaus (Comedy House) in Berlin.

In 1912, director Max Mack gave her her first film role in Die Launen des Schicksals / Whims of Fate (Max Mack, 1912) with Hanni Weisse.

In the following years, she acted in productions of the German Mutoscope and Biograph GmbH like Ketten der Vergangenheit / Chains of the Past (N.N., 1914), the Sherlock Holmes-film Ein seltsamer Fall / An Unusual Case (Max Mack, 1914), Der eiserne Ring / The Iron Ring (Paul von Woringen, 1915) and In letzter Sekunde / In the Last Second (Walter Schmidthässler, 1916).


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2091. Photo: Lotte Neumann-Film, Berlin. Lotte Neumann in Der Mut zum Glück / The Courage to Happiness (Paul von Woringen, 1917). This was the first film Neumann produced herself with her company, Lotte Neumann-Film.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, K. 2096. Photo: Lotte Neumann-Film, Berlin. Lotte Neumann and Ernst Rückert in Hinter verschlossenen Türen / Behind Closed Doors (Paul von Woringen, 1917).


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2103. Photo: Lotte Neumann-Film, Berlin. Lotte Neumann in Der Geigenspieler / The Violin Player (Paul von Woringen, 1917).


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 2168. Photo: Lotte Neumann-Film, Berlin. Lotte Neumann in Die Ehe der Charlotte von Brakel / The Marriage of Charlotte von Brakel (Paul von Woringen, 1918).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 631/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Maxim Film. Lotte Neumann in Das Schicksal der Carola von Geldern / The Fate of Carola von Geldern (Carl Froelich, 1919).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 620/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Maxim Film. Publicity still for Arme Thea / Poor Thea (Carl Froelich, 1919).

Shadows of the past

Lotte Neumann also appeared as a singer and actress on Berlin stages. Soon, she was so well-known that the studio shot a series of Lotte Neumann films.

In 1916, she founded the Lotte Neumann Film GmbH, which existed until 1919.

To these productions belong Hinter verschlossenen Türen / Behind Closed Doors (Paul von Woringen, 1917), Die Richterin / The Judge (Paul von Woringen, 1917), Das Schweigen im Walde / The Silence in the Forest (Paul von Woringen, 1918), Das Spiel mit dem Feuer / The Play With Fire (Paul von Woringen, 1918) and Schatten der Vergangenheit / Shadows of the Past (Paul von Woringen, 1919) - for which she was also the producer.

In 1918, she wrote her first screenplay, for Die Töchter des Herrn Dornberg / The Daughters of Mr. Dornberg (Paul von Woringen, 1918).

From 1919 on, she was committed to the Ufa.


German postcard by Photochemie, no. 5881. Photo: Willingen. Alice Hechy (here as Alice Scheel-Hechy), Lotte Neumann (here as Lotti Neumann), and Georg Baselt in the stage comedy 'Hochherrschaftliche Wohnungen' (Stately Homes) (1913), performed at the Komödienhaus, and written by Toni Impekoven. Caption: Are there at the Kadewe [department store] only such pretty ladies? Under the pseudonym Peter Panter, Kurt Tucholsky wrote a review of the play in Die Schaubühne (16, 17.04.1913).


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1812.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 339/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Becker & Maass / Maxim Film.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 339/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Becker & Maass / Maxim Film.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 320/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt / Maxim Film. Caption: Lotte Neumann in ihrer garderobe (Lotte Neumann in her wardrobe).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 320/6, 1919-1924. Photo: Rembrandt / Maxim Film. Caption: Lotte Neumann in ihrer garderobe (Lotte Neumann in her wardrobe).

Protracted divorce case

During the 1920s, Lotte Neumann remained a popular film actress who embodied aristocratic young women.

In 1920, she acted under the direction of Ernst Lubitsch in the comedy Romeo und Julia im Schnee / Romeo and Juliet in the Snow (1920), set in a 19th-century Alpine village.

Her biggest successes include the film operetta Die Brigantin von New York / The Brigantine, New York (Hans Werckmeister, 1924), Die Frau für 24 Stunden / The Woman for 24 hours (Reinhold Schünzel, 1925) with Harry Liedtke, and Der gute Ruf / The Good Reputation (Pierre Marodon, 1926).

She had film contracts in Austria, Italy and the Balkan States, for example, with Gaumont-Aubert in Paris and with Maldaria in Prague.

Because of her protracted divorce case, which ran from 1929 to 1932, she had to end her career as an actress. Her last film was Die Liebesfiliale (Carl Heinz Wolff, 1931) before she retired from the screen.


German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 150/4. Photo: Becker & Maass.


German postcard in the Film Sterne series by Rotophot, no. 150/5. Photo: Becker & Maass.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 338/3, 1919-1924. Photo: Maxim Film / Becker & Maass.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1789. Photo: Berliner Illustrierte Ges. [Gesellschaft], Berlin.


German postcard by Photochemie, Berlin, no. K. 1799. Photo: Berlin Illustrierte Ges., Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 276/6, 1919-1924. Photo: Alex Binder.

Screenplays

From 1933, Lotte Neumann worked as a film writer under the pseudonym C.H. Diller. Diller was the maiden name of her mother.

In 1935, she married screenwriter Walter Wassermann and also started a professional partnership with him, which lasted until 1944.

She wrote a total of 25 screenplays, including Kora Terry (Georg Jacobi, 1940) for Ufa; Friedrich Schiller (Herbert Maisch, 1939) for Tobis; together with Walter Wassermann, Die Nacht in Venedig / The Night in Venice (Paul Verhoeven, 1941), and Altes Herz wird wieder jung / Old Heart Young Again (Erich Engel, 1942), both for Tobis.

After the war, she continued her work with two more screenplays for small productions until 1958.

She went to live at the residence of her mother in Gmund am Tegernsee, and later lived in Gaißach. Lotte Neumann died in 1977 in Gaißach, Germany.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 276/1, 1919-1924. Photo: Alex Binder.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 276/2, 1919-1924. Photo: Alex Binder.


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 194/1. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.


German postcard by Rotophot in the Film-Sterne series, no. 150/2. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin.


German postcard by Verlag Ross, Berlin, no. 2001/7. Photo: Becker & Maass. Also on Film Sterne, no. 194/3.


German postcard by MMB, no. 456. Part of the German colour postcards in the Moderne Künstler series by MMB, published in the late 1910s. Photo: F.J. Wesselsky.

Sources: Gabriele Hansch / Gerlinde Waz (Filmpionierinnen in Deutschland - German), Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Philippe Pelletier (Cineartistes - Now defunct), Wikipedia (German) and IMDb.

Luis Buñuel in the Netherlands (1926)

In 1926, Spanish film director Luis Buñuel (1900-1983) started his impressive career in the Netherlands. On 26 and 27 April, a performance of Manuel de Falla's opera 'El retablo de maese Pedro' (Master Peter's Puppet Show) took place in De Hollandsche Schouwburg in Amsterdam. The story was based on an episode from 'Don Quixote' by Miguel de Cervantes. The musical accompaniment was provided by the legendary Dutch conductor Willem Mengelberg and members of his Concertgebouw Orchestra. A group of Spanish artists living in Paris provided the technical expertise. The artistic director was 26-year-old Buñuel, who is now considered one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers of all time. Exactly 100 years ago, he began his artistic career as the art director of the Dutch version of 'El retablo de maese Pedro'.


French postcard by Éditions du Désastre, Paris, no. MR14. Photo: Man Ray. Caption: Luis Buñuel, 1929.


Photo. Luis Buñuel (left), Willem Mengelberg (middle), and the crew of 'El retablo de Maese Pedro' (1926). The roles of Don Quixote and Maese Pedro were performed by the singers from the world premiere: Belgian bass-baritone Hector Dufranne and French tenor Eustase Thomas-Salignac. Source: En torno a Luis Buñuel.


Dutch postcard by Periscoopfilm. Image: still for Buñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas / Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (Salvador Simó, 2018). (A little mistake in the title of the postcard is that the accent on the u should be on the n: Buñuel). On 7 December 2019, at the European Film Awards 2019, the Spanish/Dutch production Buñuel en el laberinto de las tortugas / Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles (Salvador Simó, 2018) was the winner of the Best European Animated Feature Film 2019. The film is based on the graphic novel 'Buñuel in the Labyrinth of the Turtles'. Paris, 1930. Salvador Dalí and Luis Buñuel are already the main figures of the Surrealist movement. Unexpectedly, Buñuel is left moneyless after the scandal surrounding his film L'âge d'or / The Golden Age (1930). In this difficult situation, he cannot even tackle his next project, a documentary about one of the poorest Spanish regions, Las Hurdes. However, his good friend, sculptor Ramón Acín, buys a lottery ticket with the promise that, if he wins, he will pay for the film. Incredibly, luck is on their side.


Spanish postcard by Asociación Filatelica Zaragozana 'Gregorio Sierra', Zaragoza, no. 16.

Very close relationships with Lorca and Dali

Luis Buñuel Portolés was born in 1900 in Calanda, a small town in the Aragon region of Spain. His father was Leonardo Buñuel, also a native of Calanda, who had left home at age 14 to start a hardware business in Havana, Cuba, ultimately amassing a fortune and returning home to Calanda at the age of 43, in 1898. He married the 18-year-old daughter of the only innkeeper in Calanda, María Portolés Cerezuela. The eldest of seven children, Luis had two brothers, Alfonso and Leonardo, and four sisters: Alicia, Concepción, Margarita and María. He later described his birthplace by saying that in Calanda, "the Middle Ages lasted until World War I". When Buñuel was four months old, the family moved to Zaragoza, where they were one of the wealthiest families in town. In Zaragoza, Buñuel received a strict Jesuit education at the private Colegio del Salvador, starting at the age of seven and continuing for the next seven years. After being kicked and insulted by the study hall proctor before a final exam, Buñuel refused to return to the school. He told his mother he had been expelled, which was not true. In fact, he had received the highest marks on his world history exam.

Buñuel finished the last two years of his high school education at the local public school, graduating at the age of 16. Even as a child, Buñuel was something of a cinematic showman. Friends from that period described productions in which Buñuel projected shadows on a screen using a magic lantern and a bedsheet. He also excelled at boxing and playing the violin. In his youth, Buñuel was deeply religious, serving at Mass and taking Communion every day, until, at the age of 16, he grew disgusted with what he perceived as the illogicality of the Church, along with its power and wealth. In 1917, he attended the University of Madrid, first studying agronomy, then industrial engineering, and finally switching to philosophy. He developed very close relationships with painter Salvador Dalí and poet Federico García Lorca, among other important Spanish creative artists living in the Residencia de Estudiantes. The three friends formed the nucleus of the Spanish Surrealist avant-garde and became known as members of 'La Generación del 27'.

In 1925, Buñuel moved to France, where he began work as a secretary in an organisation called the International Society of Intellectual Cooperation. In Paris, Buñuel's interest in films was intensified by a viewing of Fritz Lang's Der müde Tod: "I came out of the Vieux Colombier completely transformed. Images could and did become for me the true means of expression. I decided to devote myself to the cinema". He became actively involved in both cinema and theatre. He met several influential people, including the pianist Ricardo Viñes. He secured Buñuel's selection as artistic director of the Dutch premiere of Manuel de Falla's puppet-opera 'El retablo de maese Pedro' in 1926.

Three years earlier, the world premiere of 'El retablo de maese Pedro' was given as a concert performance on 23 March 1923 at the Teatro San Fernando, Seville. It was conducted by the composer. 'El retablo de maese Pedro' was a great success for Falla, with performances and new productions all over Europe within a few years of the premiere. In 1926, the Opéra-Comique in Paris celebrated Falla's 50th birthday with a program consisting of 'La vida breve', 'El amor brujo', and 'El retablo de maese Pedro'. That performance used new designs by Falla's close friend, the artist Ignacio Zuloaga, and new marionettes carved by Zuloaga's brother-in-law, Maxime Dethomas. Also in 1926, on 26 and 27 April, the opera was performed in Amsterdam. Here, the opera was performed with puppets and marionettes designed based on drawings by Manuel Angeles Ortiz and Hernando Vinez, while actors played Don Quichotte and Sancho Panza. Luis Buñuel was the artistic director.

For this post, we read Dutch newspaper articles of 1926 and the Spanish blog En torno a Luis Buñuel, in which author Mfa quotes Buñuel about this period: "Ricardo Viñes, the pianist, was a friend of Mengelberg's, and there were two famous theatres in Amsterdam for symphonic music. In one of them, he presented Stravinsky's 'The Soldier's Tale' to great acclaim, and Mengelberg wanted to premiere something similar in the other theatre. He commissioned Ricardo Viñes to stage 'El Retablo de Maese Pedro'. Ricardo then asked his nephew Hernando which Spaniards were in Amsterdam or Paris. One day, talking to him... I suggested that the human characters should be actors, hiding their faces with masks, so as to accentuate the difference with the puppets, which would also be played by dolls this time. He thought it was a good idea, and I offered to carry it out. I was appointed director, and that is how I came to be in charge of the staging." (...) “I still can't believe it. And besides, I think it cost two hundred florins. We gave three performances, three. And at the end of the first one, since I knew nothing about theatre, when the audience left, I went down to the stalls to check the lighting, leaving the characters on stage, and from below, you couldn't see anything. We fixed it for the second and third performances. The spotlights were set up properly, the amber light, I don't know what. Even today, I shudder when I remember my audacity and that of my friends. We accepted the commission just to get a free trip to Amsterdam, collaborating with Falla, one of the greatest contemporary musicians, with Mengelberg, the famous conductor, and with professional singers from the Comic Opera... The show ended up being the strangest mixture of music and theatre ever seen. I must say that we didn't do badly and that both my friends and I did our best to make such a crazy undertaking a success. No one in the audience even suspected that the visual part of the show was a pure experiment, which, for once, did not end in catastrophe, the result of typically Spanish improvisation. It should also be said that we had been rehearsing for a month.” (Our translation. Dutch advertisements show that there were only two public performances, not three.)


Chinese postcard. Scene from El ángel exterminador / The Exterminating Angel (Luis Buñuel, 1962) with Silvia Pinal.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 445. Photo: Daniel Ivernel and Jeanne Moreau in Le journal d'une femme de chambre / The Diary of a Chambermaid (Luis Buñuel, 1964).


Swiss poster postcard by CVB Publishers, no. 57136. Affiche: René Ferracci / Collection Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne. Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour / Beauty of the Day (Luis Buñuel, 1966).


French poster postcard in the Encyclopédie du Cinéma series by Carterie Artistique et Cinématographique, Pont du Casse, no. EDC 1197 VIS. 3 US. American poster of Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour / Beauty of the Day (Luis Buñuel, 1966).

Eliminating all logical associations

Back in Paris after his Amsterdam job, Luis Buñuel enrolled in a private film school run by celebrated filmmaker Jean Epstein and some associates. Soon, Buñuel was working for Epstein as an assistant director on Mauprat (1926) and La chute de la maison Usher / The Fall of the House of Usher (1928), and also for Mario Nalpas on La Sirène des Tropiques / Siren of the Tropics(1927), starring Josephine Baker. He appeared on screen in a small part as a smuggler in Jacques Feyder's Carmen (1926). After parting with Epstein, Buñuel worked as a film critic for La Gaceta Literaria (1927) and Les Cahiers d'Art (1928).  In the Catalonian periodicals L'Amic de les Arts and La gaseta de les Arts, he and Dalí carried on a series of "call and response" essays on cinema and theatre. They debated such technical issues as segmentation, découpage, the insert shot and rhythmic editing. He helped establish Madrid's first cine-club and served as its inaugural chairman.

With Salvador Dalí, Buñuel shot and directed a 16-minute short, Un Chien Andalou (1929). The film, financed by Buñuel's mother, consists of a series of startling images of a Freudian nature, starting with a woman's eyeball being sliced open with a razor blade. Un Chien Andalou was enthusiastically received by the burgeoning French surrealist movement. Critic Roger Ebert called it'the most famous short film ever made'. The script was written in six days at Dalí's home in Cadaqués. In a letter, Buñuel described the writing process: "We had to look for the plot line. Dalí said to me, 'I dreamed last night of ants swarming around in my hands', and I said, 'Good Lord, and I dreamed that I had sliced somebody's eye. There's the film, let's go and make it.' Buñuel and Dalí made a cardinal point of eliminating all logical associations. It was Buñuel's intention to outrage the self-proclaimed artistic vanguard of his youth. After the premiere, Buñuel and Dalí were granted formal admittance to the tight-knit community of Surrealists, led by poet André Breton.

Late in 1929, on the strength of Un Chien Andalou, Buñuel and Dalí were commissioned to make another short film by Marie-Laurie and Charles de Noailles, owners of a private cinema in Paris. The film, L'Age d'Or / The Golden Age (1930), was begun as a second collaboration with Dalí, but, while working on the scenario, the two had a falling out and Dalí had nothing to do with the actual shooting of the film.  During the course of production, Buñuel worked around his technical ignorance by filming mostly in sequence and using nearly every foot of film that he shot. One early screening was taken over by members of the fascist League of Patriots and the Anti-Jewish Youth Group, who hurled purple ink at the screen and then vandalised the adjacent art gallery, destroying several valuable surrealist paintings. The film was banned by the Parisian police "in the name of public order". The de Noailles, both Catholics, were threatened with excommunication by the Vatican because of the film's blasphemous final scene, which visually links Jesus Christ with the writings of the Marquis de Sade. They made the decision in 1934 to withdraw all prints from circulation, and L'Age d'Or was not seen again until 1981, after their deaths. Now, both films are considered masterpieces of surrealist cinema.

After a short Hollywood visit on the invitation of MGM, Buñuel decided to make a film focused on peasant life in Las Hurdes, one of Spain's poorest regions. The film, Las Hurdes: Tierra Sin Pan (1933), was financed on a budget of 20,000 pesetas donated by a working-class anarchist friend, Ramón Acín, who had won the money in a lottery. Buñuel later worked in Paris in the dubbing department of Paramount Pictures, and following his marriage in 1934, he switched to Warner Brothers in Madrid. A friend, Ricardo Urgoiti, who owned the commercial film company Filmófono, invited Buñuel to produce films for a mass audience. Of the 18 films produced by Buñuel during his years at Filmófono, four are believed to have also been directed by him. These included the popular musical La hija de Juan Simón / Juan Simón's Daughter (1935) and the comedy ¡Centinela, alerta! / Sentry, Keep Watch! (1937), Filmófono's biggest box-office hit. After a long visit to Hollywood, Bunuel connected in 1947 with French producer Dancigers in Mexico. The Golden Age of Mexican cinema was peaking, and film represented Mexico's third-largest industry, employing 32,000 workers and 72 film producers. From 1947 to 1960, Bunuel made grounded and human melodramas such as Gran Casino (1947) with Jorge Negrete, Los Olvidados (1950), which won the Best Director prize that year at the Cannes Film Festival in 1951, and the psychological Horror film Él /This Strange Passion (1953) starring Arturo de Córdova. In 1949, Buñuel renounced his Spanish citizenship to become a naturalised Mexican. In Mexico, he gained the fundamentals of storytelling.

Luis Buñuel then transitioned into making artful, unconventional, surrealistic, and satirical films. He earned acclaim with the morally complex arthouse drama film Viridiana (1961), which criticised the Francoist dictatorship. The film won the Palme d'Or at the 1961 Cannes Film Festival, but was banned in Spain for the next 17 years. He then criticised political and social conditions in the black comedy El ángel exterminador / The Exterminating Angel (1962) and Le Charme discret de la bourgeoisie / The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972), which won the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. He also directed Le Journal d'une femme de chambre / Diary of a Chambermaid (1964) with Jeanne Moreau and Belle de Jour (1967) with Catherine Deneuve. His final film was Cet obscur objet du désir / That Obscure Object of Desire (1977) starring Fernando Rey, Carole Bouquet and Angela Molina who play one character, Conchita, together. That Obscure Object of Desire was not financially successful, but it became a critical favourite. Many later critics have declared the film a masterpiece. Buñuel died in 1983. During his career, he earned five Cannes Film Festival prizes, two Berlin International Film Festival prizes, a BAFTA Award, and an Academy Award in 1972. He was nominated twice for the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1968 and then in 1972.


Dutch postcard by Filmmuseum, Amsterdam. Catherine Deneuve in Belle de Jour / Beauty of the Day (Luis Buñuel, 1966).


Swiss poster postcard by CVB Publishers, no. 56983. Affiche: René Ferracci / Collection Cinématèque Suisse / News Productions. Catherine Deneuve in Tristana (Luis Buñuel, 1970).


Chinese Postcard. Stéphane Audran, Bulle Ogier, Delphine Seyrig, Fernando Rey, Paul Frankeur, and Jean-Pierre Cassel in Le charme discret de la bourgeoisie / The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Luis Buñuel, 1973).


Chinese postcard. Scene from Le fantôme de la liberté / The Phantom of Liberty (Luis Buñuel, 1974) with Michael Lonsdale.


German postcard by Kunst und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn. Photo: Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin. Carole Bouquet and Fernando Rey in Cet obscur objet du désir / That Obscure Object of Desire (Luis Buñuel, 1977).

Sources: Luis Buñuel y El retablo de Maese Pedro de Manuel de Falla (MFA at En torno a Luis Buñuel - Spanish), Delpher, Wikipedia and IMDb

The Finest of the Fair: Marlene's selection

Italian postcard, reproduction after the original. Design: Enzo Van Dock. During the 1900s and 1910s, Italian artist Enzo Van Dock designed many caricatures which were turned into postcards.

On 3 and 4 April 2026, the editors of EFSP visited the VerzamelJaarbeurs in Utrecht, the Netherlands. This collectors' fair is Europe's largest market for vintage items, antiques, curiosities and pop culture. Under the title, 'The Finest of the Fair', we post some of our newest acquisitions from the VerzamelJaarbeurs. Two weeks ago, Ivo Blom posted his selection on EFSP and last week, Paul van Yperen did. Today, La Collectionneuse, Marlene Pilaete presents her 10 favourite postcards of the fair.


German postcard by EAS, no. 1639. Emmy Wehlen.


German postcard by Karl Geyer Filmfabrik G.m.b.H., Berlin. Photo: Universal Pictures Corporation. Laura La Plante.


Polish postcard by Edition Victoria, no. 409. Mary Nolan a.k.a. Imogene Robertson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3907/2, 1928-1929. Photo: Fox. Madge Bellamy.


British postcard in the Famous Cinema Stars Series by Beagles, no. 230 V. Photo: First National. Liane Haid.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 6700. Photo: Warner Bros. Alice White.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 788. Photo: Ufa. Sybille Schmitz, Paul Hartmann and Hans Albers in F.P.1 antwortet nicht / F.P.1 Doesn't Answer (Karl Hartl, 1932). With song text of 'Flieger grüss mir die Sonne...' with text by Walter Reisch and music by Allan Gray.


Dutch postcard by Uitgave P.F. Cladder, Amsterdam, no. 49-60. Photo: Warner Bros. Alexis Smith and Cary Grant in Night and Day (Michael Curtiz, 1946).


Dutch postcard by Uitgave P.F. Cladder, Amsterdam, no. 49-15. Ava Gardner.


Dutch postcard by Takken, Utrecht, no. 1515. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Marilyn Monroe.

Check out The Finest of the Fair: Ivo's selection.
Check out The Finest of the Fair: Paul's selection.