Jean Chevrier

French actor Jean Chevrier (1915-1975) appeared in 50 films between 1936 and 1972. The attractive star often appeared in roles in which he was dressed in uniform. He also had a distinctive stage career.


French postcard.


French postcard, no. 78. Photo: Cinéma de France.


French postcard by Ed. Chantal, Rueil, no. 18 B. Photo Burgus Films. Burgus Films was a French film production company, most active in the 1940s and 1950s. Chevrier starred in e.g. the Burgus production Andorra ou les Hommes d'airain/Andorra or The Bronze Men (Émile Couzinet, 1942).


French postcard, no. 807. Photo: Film C.F.C. C.F.C. stood for Compagnie Commerciale Française Cinématographique. Chevrier acted for C.F.C. in L'Emigrante/The Emigrant (Léo Joannon, 1940). On the poster of the film, Chevrier was depicted based on the same photo as used for this card.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 142. Photo: Gibé.

Gigolo

Jean Chevrier was born in 1915 in Paris.

He made his first film appearance as a gigolo in the comedy Mademoiselle ma mère/Wicked Stepmother (Henri Decoin, 1936) with Danielle Darrieux. The next year he was seen in the classic film J'accuse/I Accuse (Abel Gance, 1937), and in Liberté/Freedom (Jean Kemm, 1937). In his first films, he was just credited as Chevrier.

He soon played starring roles in the adventure Trois de Saint-Cyr/The Three of Saint-Cyr (Jean-Paul Paulin, 1939) and the comedy L'Émigrante/The Emigrant (Léo Joannon, 1940) opposite vedette Edwige Feuillère.

During the Second World War, he played a part in Marcel Pagnol’s La Prière aux étoiles/The Prayer at the Stars (1941), a film that was never completed. Other films in which he appeared were the whodunit thriller Le Dernier des six/The Last One of the Six (Georges Lacombe, 1941), L'assassin a peur la nuit/The Murderer is Afraid at Night (Jean Delannoy, 1942 with Mireille Balin, Tornavara (Jean Dréville, 1943) and Falbalas/Paris Frills(Jacques Becker, 1945) with Raymond Rouleau.

During this period he also worked in the theatre with Rouleau, who was also a stage director. After the war, Chevrier would become an ensemble member of the Comédie Française.


French postcard by Editions P.I., La Garenne-Colombes, no. 142. Photo: Erpe, Nice.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 142. Photo: Erpe, Nice.


French postcard by Ed. Chantal, Paris, no. 18. Photo: D.U.C.


French postcard by Ed. Chantal, Paris, no. 18. Photo: D.U.C.


French postcard by Editions Continental, no. 122/A. Photo: Continental Films.

Marie Bell

Directly after World War II, Jean Chevrier starred as one of the Ludovics in the comedy Messieurs Ludovic/The Misters Ludovic (Jean-Paul Le Chanois, 1946).

This was followed by a busy decade, in which he appeared in films like Le Diable souffle/Woman of Evil (Edmond T. Gréville, 1947), Aux yeux du souvenir/Souvenir (Jean Delannoy, 1948) starring Michèle Morgan, La Maison dans la dune/The House on the Dune (Georges Lampin, 1952), Si Versailles m'était conté.../Affairs in Versailles (Sacha Guitry, 1954) and Napoléon (Sacha Guitry, 1955).

He also played in the Italian productions Donne e briganti/Of Love and Bandits (Mario Soldati, 1950), and Messalina (Carmine Gallone, 1951) with Maria Felix. His last film appearances were in Le Gigolo/The Gigolo (Jacques Deray, 1960) and Les Vierges de Rome/Amazons of Rome (Vittorio Cottafavi, Ludovico Bragaglia, 1961).

Later he was often seen on television in such productions as David Copperfield (1965), the Jean Racine adaptation Phèdre (Pierre Jourdan, 1968), the series D'Artagnan (1969) and Lancelot du Lac/Lancelot of the Lake (1970). His last TV appearance was in the series Les Rois Maudits/The Damned Kings (1972).

Jean Chevrier died in 1975 in Paris. He was married to actress Marie Bell. At the end of his life, he had a long affair with Jean-Claude Pascal. He was buried alongside his wife at the Monaco Cemetery in Monaco.


French postcard by Editions P.I., offered by Les Carbones Korès, no. 80. Photo: Qibé. Jean Chevrier, Michèle Morgan and Jean Marais Aux yeux du souvenir/To the Eyes of Memory (Jean Delannoy, 1948).



French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 142. Photo: Star.


French postcard by Editions O.P., Paris, no. 38. Photo: Studio Piaz.


French postcard. Photo: Studio Harcourt.


French postcard. Photo: Harcourt, Paris.

Sources: Wikipedia, and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 24 September 2023.

Jeanne Helbling

Jeanne Helbling (1903-1985) was an actress of the French cinema of the 1920s and 1930s, who was extremely active in early French sound film. She was also a resistance heroine.


French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 776. Photo: Paramount.


French postcard by Edition Cinémagazine (EC), Paris, no. 926.


French postcard by Edition Cinémagazine (EC), Paris, no. 1053. Photo: Paramount. Collection: Didier Hanson.

Madame de Pompadour

Johanna Marie Helbling was born in 1903 in the village of Thann in the Alsace, annexed by Germany after the French defeat of the Franco-Prussian war. She came from a family of factory workers and vineyard keepers. In 1920, two years after Alsace had become French again, she became an extra in the film Le grillon du foyer/The Cricket of the Hearth (Jean Manoussi, 1920), starring Charles Boyer.

A small part followed in Julien Duvivier’s Les roquevillards/The Roquevillards (1922). More substantial parts she had in Un bon petit diable/A Good Little Devil (René Leprince, 1923) and Survivre/Survive (Edouard Chimot, 1923). Then she played Madame de Pompadour in Mandrin (Henri Fescourt, 1923), with Romuald Joubé in the title role as the notorious smuggler.

In 1924 she acted opposite Pierre Blanchar in L’arriviste/The Thruster (André Hugon, 1924). All in all she acted in some 30 silent films, among which were also La chaussée des géants/The Giant's Causeway (Robert Boudrioz, Jean Durand, 1926) with Armand Tallier, Le juif errant/The Wandering Jew (Luitz-Morat, 1926) adapted from Eugène Sue, and Le capitaine Rascasse/Captain Rascasse (Henri Desfontaines, 1926) with Gabriel Gabrio in the title role.

She also appeared in the avant-garde film La glace à trois faces/The Three-Sided Mirror (Jean Epstein, 1927) in which past and present were mingled unusually. Helbling played a naïve working-class girl, one of the three women the protagonist met… and was disappointed with. After this followed roles in the Molière adaptation La jalousie du Barbouillé/The Jealousy of le Barbouillé (Alberto Cavalcanti, 1927), and Tire au flanc/The Sad Sack (Jean Renoir, 1928) with Michel Simon and Catherine Hessling, Renoir’s then-wife.

In the late 1920s, Helbling went to Berlin to act in Das Geheimnis des Abbé X/Behind the Altar (Julius Brandt, Wilhelm Dieterle, 1927). Co-director Wilhelm Dieterle, later known as William Dieterle played the title role himself. Helbling starred in Germany also in Der Held aller Mädchenträume/The Hero of All Girls Dreams (1928, Robert Land) with Harry Liedtke, and in Mascottchen/Mascots (Felix Basch, 1928), with Käthe von Nagy.


French postcard by A.N., Paris in the series 'Les Vedettes de Cinéma', no. 69.


French postcard by P.C. Paris, no. 4262. Collection: Marlene Pilaete.


French postcard for Campari. Photo: Studio Lorelle. Caption: 'Un Campari, c'est un peu de Paris'. (A Campari is like a bit of Paris).

Chantal and the White Rabbit

Without much difficulty, Jeanne Helbling passed on to talking pictures. In the meantime, she did Music-hall as well, such as a 1932 show with Josephine Baker at the Casino de Paris. Paramount France hired her to act at the studios of Joinville-Le-Pont for the French versions of films like Une femme a menti/The Lady Lies (Charles de Rochefort, 1929), a multilingual shot at the same time in German, Swedish, Italian and Spanish.

In the early 1930s, Jeanne Helbling also played in American features destined for French audiences, such as L’aviateur/The Aviator (William A. Seiter, Jean Daumery, 1931) with Douglas Fairbanks Jr., and Buster se marie/ (Claude Autant-Lara, 1931) the French-language version of Buster Keaton's 1931 comedy Parlor, Bedroom and Bath.

Until the outbreak of the Second World War, Helbling would act in some 40 films, mostly supporting parts in comedies. She played for instance Empress Eugénie in Les trois valses/Three Waltzes (Ludwig Berger, 1938), starring Yvonne Printemps. Another example is Paix sur le Rhin/Peace on the Rhine (Jean Choux, 1938), shot in Helbling’s natal region and dealing with a wine owner family of which two sons fight each other in the First World War. Helbling’s co-actors were Françoise Rosay, Pauline Carton, Michèle Alfa, and John Loder. The pacifist film, though, soon became unfit for the times. For a long time, it was considered destroyed but in the late 20th century it was found and restored again.

During the German occupation in Paris, Helbling joined the resistance under the name of Chantal. She hosted people from the resistance as well as Allies in her apartment in Rue Casimir Pinel in Neuilly. Within the framework of the triple mission Arquebuse-Brumaire-Seahorse, Pierre Brossolette, Colonel Passy and Forest Yeo-Thomas organised an important meeting in 1943 which led to the creation of the Committee for the Coordination of the Resistance movements in Northern France. This effected in the constitutive meeting of the National Council for the Resistance in Paris. Even though she was concerned about the Gestapo, Jeanne Helbling managed to survive the Second World War. She was honoured for her work by the state of France, in particular by General de Gaulle, as well as by the United Kingdom, who gave her the Order of the Empire for hosting the British agent Forest Yeo-Thomas, known as Shelley or The White Rabbit.

After the Liberation, Helbling only did two more films, Dernier métro/The Last Metro (Maurice de Canonge, 1945) with Gaby Morlay, and Jeux de femmes/Women's Games (Maurice Cloche, 1946). In 1946 she married an American of French origin, Henri Garin. She retired from the film business and moved with her husband to the United States. Forty years later, Jeanne Helbling died in New York in 1985. She had just turned 82.


French postcard by E.C. (Editions Chantal), no. 71. Photo: Studio Piaz, Paris.


French postcard by E.C. (Editions Chantal), no. 97. Photo: Studio Piaz, Paris.


Italian postcard by Cinema-Illustrazione, Milano, Series 1, no. 40. Photo: Paramount.


French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 649. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Jeanne Helbling acted a.o. in the MGM film Buster se marie (Claude Autant-Lara, Edward Brophy, 1931).

Sources: Caroline Hanotte (CinéArtistes - French), Wikipedia (French), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 5 September 2024.

Daniel Gélin

Handsome and sensitive Daniel Gelin (1921-2002) did not have an easy life but he was warmly embraced as one of the great stars of the French post-war cinema. The talented lead and character actor appeared to fine advantage for such legendary directors as Max Ophüls, Louis Malle, Jean Cocteau, Alfred Hitchcock, and Claude Lelouch.


West German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag GmbH, Minden. Photo: Daniel Gélin in Retour de manivelle/There's Always a Price Tag (Denys de La Patellière, 1957). The German title was Luzifers Tochter.


French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 156. Photo: Studio Harcourt.


Belgian postcard by Bromofoto, Bruxelles.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 361. Photo: Sam Lévin.


Dutch postcard, no. 162.

A seductively moody heart-breaker

Daniel Yves Alfred Gélin was born in Angers, France, in 1921. When he was 10 his family moved to Saint-Malo where Daniel went to college until he was expelled for 'uncouthness'. His father then found him a job in a shop that sold cans of salted cod.

It was seeing the shooting of Marc Allégret's film Entrée des artistes/The Curtain Rises (1936) with Louis Jouvet that triggered his desire to be an actor.

He left home at age 16 to take dramatic training by René Simon at the Cours Simon in Paris before entering the Conservatoire National d'Art Dramatique. There he met Louis Jouvet again and embarked on a theatrical career. He made his first film appearance in Miquette (Jean Boyer, 1940) starring Lilian Harvey, and for several years he worked as an extra or bit player.

He appeared in a bigger role with Jean Gabin and Marlene Dietrich in the romantic melodrama Martin Roumagnac/The Room Upstairs (Georges Lacombe, 1946), and gradually he developed from small parts and light youth roles.

Finally, he won his first leading roles as a seductively moody heart-breaker in Rendez-vous de juillet/Appointment with Life (Jacques Becker, 1949) and Edouard et Caroline/Edward and Caroline (Jacques Becker, 1950) with Anne Vernon. These romantic comedies made him a star of the French cinema.


Yugoslavian postcard by Sedma Sila. Photo: Morava Film, Beograd (Belgrade).


West German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel, no. 255. Photo: Paramount.


Dutch postcard by Uitgeverij Takken, Utrecht, no. 1929.


French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 70. Photo: Teddy Piaz, Paris.


French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 718. Photo: Studio Harcourt.

His personal life was a mess

Daniel Gélin went on to appear in more than 170 films, often in sensitive, literate, man-of-the-world roles. In the early 1950s, he formed with his wife Danièle Delorme a ‘dream couple’ of the French cinema and they starred together in light romances till their divorce in 1954.

Gélin mesmerised audiences in Max Ophüls' frivolous soufflés La Ronde/The Round (1950) and Le Plaisir/Pleasure (1952) with Simone Simon.

He also directed one film, Les Dents Longues/The Long Teeth (1953). Later he was memorable in Sacha Guitry's films Si Versailles m'était conté/Royal Affairs in Versailles (1954) and Napoléon (1955) as the young Bonaparte.

He was especially good as the heavily disguised Arab spy in The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956) with James Stewart.

Despite these successes, Wikipedia writes that he squandered his talent and could have accomplished much more. His personal life was a mess. Gélin lived a turbulent life full of parties and stormy relationships that led to suicide attempts and a long battle with alcohol and drugs.


West German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2316. Photo: Melodie / DLF (Deutsche London) / Heil. Daniel Gélin in Bonsoir Paris/Good Evening, Paris (Ralph Baum, 1956).


German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 4068. Photo: Lilo / Pallas. Daniel Gélin in La fille de Hambourg/Port of Desire (Yves Allégret, 1958).


French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 661. Photo: Sam Lévin.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 759. Photo: Sam Lévin.


West German postcard by Ufa/Film-Foto, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 1109. Photo: Serge Beauvarlet, Paris.

Nouvelle Vague

During the 1960s, Daniel Gélin acted in several films by Nouvelle Vague (New Wave) directors. For Costa-Gavras he appeared in Compartiment tueurs/The Sleeping Car Murders (1965), for Claude Chabrol in La Ligne de démarcation/Line of Demarcation (1966) with Jean Seberg, for Marguerite Duras in Détruire, dit-elle/Destroy, She Said (1969) and for Louis Malle in Le souffle au coeur/Murmur of the Heart (1971) with Lea Massari.

He also appeared in Le Testament d'Orphée/The Testament of Orpheus (Jean Cocteau, 1960), the war film Paris brûle-t-il?/Is Paris Burning? (René Clément, 1965) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo, and the comedy hit Nous Irons Tous au Paradis/We Will All Meet in Paradise (Yves Robert, 1977).

On television, he played in popular series like Les Saintes chéries (The Holy Cherished) (1965-1970). During the late 1970s, he disappeared from films until the early 1980s. Since then, Daniel Gélin only made sporadic appearances in films like La Nuit de Varennes/That Night in Varennes (Ettore Scola, 1982) with Jean-Louis Barrault, the comedy La Vie Est Une Longue Fleuve Tranquille/Life Is a Long Quiet River (Etienne Chatiliez, 1988) and Hommes, Femmes: Mode d'Emploi/Men, Women: A User's Manual (Claude Lelouch, 1996) starring Fabrice Luchini.

Daniel Gélin also worked in the theatre both as an actor and as a director. He appeared in plays by Molière, Jean Cocteau, Alberto Moravia, and Georges Siménon. He also wrote scenarios occasionally and published a few volumes of poetry.

Daniel Gélin died of kidney failure in a Paris hospital, in 2002. He had been married three times: first to Danièle Delorme (1945-1954), then to Sylvie Hirsh (1955-1968) and finally to Lydie Zaks (1973 till his death in 2002). While married to Danièle Delorme, he had an affair with model Marie Christine Schneider that produced a daughter, film star Maria Schneider. However, Gélin never acknowledged his paternity of her. His children Manuel Gélin and Fiona Gélin became actors too. His son Pascal died at the age of 14 months when he accidentally swallowed pills in 1957. Another son, producer Xavier Gélin died of cancer in 1999.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 2.195, 1964.


Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 872.


Trailer Rendez-vous de juillet/Appointment with Life (Jacques Becker, 1949). Source: Rialto Pictures (YouTube).


Trailer The Man Who Knew Too Much (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956). Source: Video Detective (YouTube).



French trailer La Nuit de Varennes/That Night in Varennes (Ettore Scola, 1982). Source: Gaumont (YouTube).

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Ephraim Katz (The Film Encyclopedia), Hollywood.com, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 11 May 2024.

Sylvia Bataille

French stage and screen actress Sylvia Bataille (1908-1993) is best remembered for her part in Jean Renoir’s Une partie de campagne/A Day in the Country (1936).


French postcard by EPC (Editions Publications Cinématographiques), no. 122. Photo: Harry O. Meerson.

Agit-prop theatre

Sylvia Bataille was born Sylvia Maklès in Paris in 1908. Her family was of Jewish-Romenian origin.

As a pupil of Charles Dullin, she debuted on stage with La Compagnie des Quinze, led by Michel Saint-Denis and also acted with the company Groupe Octobre, a kind of agit-prop theatre company led by Jacques Prévert. In 1928 she married writer Georges Bataille. They had a child, the later psychoanalytic Laurence Bataille (1930-1986) who appeared in Jean Renoir’s French Cancan (1954).

Sylvia Bataille started to appear in short films such as La joie d’une heure/The joy of one hour (André Cerf, 1930) in which she played a salesgirl. She began to use the name of her husband as her stage and screen pseudonym. In the mid-1930s the couple separated though they only officially divorced in 1946.

From 1938 on, Sylvia Bataille shared her life with psychoanalytic Jacques Lacan, with whom she had a daughter, the actual psychoanalytic Judith Miller (1941), who would marry philosopher/psychoanalyst Jacques-Alain Miller. Sylvia Bataille married Jacques Lacan in 1953.

From 1933 Bataille’s film career became serious. After playing Adémaï’s wife in the Noël-Noël comedy Adémaï aviateur/Skylark (Jean Tarride, 1933), she acted as Ernestine in the first film adaptation of Marcel Pagnol’s Topaze (1936), directed by the writer himself. Early 1936 Bataille played the secretary of the perfidious Batala (Jules Berry) in Le crime de M. Lange/The Crime of Monsieur Lange (Jean Renoir, 1936). Despite his plotting, frauding and cheating, she cannot stop loving him. Then her hair was turned blonde for her role of the prostitute Florence in Jenny (Marcel Carné, 1936) starring Françoise Rosay.


French postcard, no. 630. Photo: Studio Harcourt.

A tremendous fight

Sylvia Bataille wrote history in her subsequent role of the fresh and innocent Henriette in Jean Renoir’s adaptation of Guy De Maupassant's Une partie de campagne/A Day in the Country (1936). She played the daughter of Monsieur and Madame Dufour, played by Gabriello and Jane Marken, who is seduced by the good-looking Henri (Georges D’Arnoux) while his mate Rodolphe (Jacques Brunius) chases her mother.

Henriette first resists Henri, then gives in. The kiss Henri gives to Henriette is followed by a tear: she has definitely lost her innocence. Years after: Henri discovers that Henriette has married Mr. Dufour’s aid, the odious Anatole (Paul Temps), but the two have never forgotten their short moment of love.

The production started as a joyful Summertime picknick on the borders of the Loing river, but soon became ridden by problems: the rain that kept falling down (and in the end was incorporated into the narrative), the teeth of D’Arnoux which had to be repaired after an accident, money running out, and most of all Renoir’s loss of confidence to finish the production, as he had an obligation to start a new film after the summer: Les bas-fonds/The Lower Depths (Jean Renoir, 1936).

As innocent as she looks in the film, Sylvia Bataile had a tremendous fight with Renoir when he announced to break up the production, as he forced the crew & cast to wait in the countryside while she had to renounce other film offers. Most collaborators were hardly or never paid, even if they had been promised a share in the revenues in the film. A young intern in the preproduction and production was Luchino Visconti, who took care of the costumes and always claimed his film career began there. While visiting the set, Georges Bataille was enrolled to play one of the passing priests who lustful watch Henriette on a swing - another one was assistant-director and future photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

Renoir modified the film as such that the opening and closing scene at the Dufour house in Maupassant’s story were excluded, so he kept a unity of space, time and action. Ten years after the shooting of the film, producer Pierre Braunberger had the film edited by Marguerite Houlé (scriptgirl of Une partie de campagne, but also Renoir’s red-blooded socialist friend in the mid-1930s and therefore often named Marguerite Renoir), aided by Marinette Cadix. Melancholic music by Joseph Kosma was added.


French postcard by Editions Chantal, Paris, no. 555. Photo: Piaz.

France's most promising actress

Subsequent roles of Sylvia Bataille were not of this stature, though she had a highly active career in the late 1930s. She had major parts as Madeleine, the mistress of Courriol (Jean Tissier) in L’affaire du courrier de Lyon/Courier of Lyons (Claude Autant-Lara, Maurice Lehmann, 1937), and as Ming in Forfaiture/The Cheat (Marcel L’Herbier), 1937, a variation of The Cheat (Cecil B. de Mille, 1915) with again Sessue Hayakawa as the evil Asiatic.

Other titles are Serge Panine (Charles Meré, Paul Schiller, 1939) with Françoise Rosay, Le chateau des quatre obèses/The castle of the four obese (Yvan Noé, 1939 with André Brulé, L’étrange nuit de Noël/The strange Christmas Eve (Yvan Noé, 1939), Quartier Latin (Christian Cmaborant, Pierre Colombier, 1939) with Bernard Lancret, Le collier de chanvre/Hangman's Noose (Léon Mathot, 1940) with Jacqueline Delubac, and Campement 13/Camp 13 (Jacques Constant, 1939) starring Alice Field.

L’enfer des anges/Hell Angels (Christian Jaque, 1939), starring Louise Carletti won Bataille the Prix Suzanne-Bianchetti for France's most promising actress. The war broke off her career. After 1945, she played minor parts in the comedy Ils étaient cinq pensionnaires/There were five residents (Pierre Caron, 1945), in Les portes de la nuit/Gates of the Night (Marcel Carné, 1946), and in the episode Il miracolo/The Miracle in L’amore/The Love (1948) by Roberto Rossellini.

Sylvia Bataille played her last role in Julie de Carneilhan (Jacques Manuel, 1950) starring Edwige Feuillère and Jacques Dumesnil. Henceforth she focused on the work of her husband. Sylvia Bataille survived Lacan who died in 1981. She herself died in Paris in 1993, due to a heart attack.

Sylvia Bataille was the sister of Rose Maklès - the wife of Surrealist painter André Masson, Bianca Maklès - a stage actress under the name of Lucienne Morand and wife of writer Théodore Fraenkel, and Simone Maklès, wife of writer, philosopher and politician Jean Piel. After Sylvia Bataille’s death, the French government acquired from her estate the painting 'L’origine du monde' by Gustave Courbet, which had been in her possession for over 40 years.


French postcard by Edit. Chantal, Paris, no. 61. Photo: R.A.C.

Sources: Pascal Donald (CineArtistes), Wikipedia (French, Italian and English) and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 4 May 2023.

Magda Sonja

Actress Magda Sonja (1895-1974) was one of the divas of the Austrian silent cinema. She often starred in the films of her husband, noted director Friedrich Feher. Their last, English film together, The Robber Symphony (1936) became a cult classic in the Netherlands.


German postcard by NPG, Berlin, no. 1116. Photo: D'Ora, Wien.


Austrian postcard by Arenberg Verlag, Wien (Vienna), no. 226/5. Photo: Arenberg Atelier.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5022. Photo: National / Mondial Film.

Star-building

Magda Sonja was born in Wien (Vienna), Austria-Hungary (now Austria) in 1895.

She started her acting career on stage at the Theater an der Wien. Later she worked as a 'diseuse' in different cabarets of the city.

She made her film debut in 1917. From 1918 on, the Sacha-film studio built her up like a star as a competitor to the star of the Wiener Kunstfilm, Liane Haid.

The Austrian film industry produced more than 1000 films yearly in this period. Sonja appeared in films like Das andere Ich/The Other Me (Fritz Freisler, 1918) with Fritz Kortner, and Um ein Weib/Because of a Woman (Ernst Marischka, Hubert Marischka, 1918).

During the 1920s, she would become the most popular star of Sacha-film and was able to impersonate some impressive leading roles. To her well-known films of the early 1920s belong Die Venus/The Venus (Hans Homma, 1922) with Raoul Aslan and Nora Gregor, the Hungarian production Drakula halala/Draculas Death (Károly Lajthay, 1923) featuring Paul Askonas, and Ssanin (Friedrich Feher, Boris Nevolin, 1924) with Oscar Beregi Sr. and Hans Moser.


Austrian postcard. Photo: Franz Löwy, Vienna.


Austrian postcard by Arenberg Verlag. Photo: Arenberg Atelier, Vienna.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 960. Photo: Verleih Engel & Walter.

Mata Hari

Magda Sonja achieved the height of her fame when she made a series of films with her husband, actor, and director Friedrich Feher, in Germany. She played leading roles in his Das graue Haus/The Grey House (1926) with Werner Krauss, Mata Hari, die rote Tänzerin/Mata Hari, the Red Dancer (1927), and Maria Stuart/Mary Queen of Scotts (1927) with Fritz Kortner.

Mata Hari was the first full-length screen treatment of the life of the WW I spy. The film was produced in Germany in 1926, a full decade after the subject's death. Magda Sonja starred as the title character, an exotic dancer whose romance with a Russian grand duke comes to an end when she falls for a handsome peasant, Grigori (Mathias Wieman).

In due course, Grigori is arrested and threatened with execution unless Mata Hari agrees to become a spy on behalf of the Russians. Ultimately betrayed by her superiors, Mata Hari nonetheless faces the firing squad with no regrets, secure in the knowledge that her lover has been spared. When released in the U.S. in 1927, Mata Hari was extensively ballyhooed on the strength of Magda Sonja's extraordinarily revealing costumes.

Another successful production was Sensations-Prozess/That Murder in Berlin (Friedrich Feher, 1928) with Carl Goetz and Gustav Diessl.

With the rise of sound film, her career dropped off. To her last films belong Ihr Junge/Her Boy (1931) opposite her son, Hans Feher. In 1933 she emigrated with her husband and son to England.

There they made one film together, The Robber Symphony (1936), an alternate version of their earlier film Gehetzte Menschen/Harried People (1932). The Robber Symphony is an anarchistic musical about a gang of robbers who are searching for a treasure, hidden in a pianola. The film became a surprise cult hit in the Netherlands, where it appeared for 20 years in the arthouse cinema De Uitkijk. Outside of the Netherlands, the film was not a success and it would be Magda Sonja’s last film.

She and Feher emigrated to the United States, but their careers went nowhere in Tinseltown. Magda Sonja died in 1974. The Dutch Filmmuseum (now Eye) made a restored copy of The Robber Symphony in 2006, which was broadcasted on Dutch television. Director Cherry Duyns made a TV documentary about the Dutch success of the film and the sad 'werdegang' of the Feher family in Hollywood.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5021. Photo: Verleih Mondial-Film / National.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5022. Photo: Verleih Mondial-Film / National.


Austrian postcard by Iris Verlag, no. 5504. Photo: Perussa-Film / Verleih Engel & Walter.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1672/1, 1927-1928. Photo: Friedrich Feher Film, Berlin.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, Berlin, no. 1861/1, 1927-1928. Photo: National.


Tenor Webster Booth sings Romance in Italian from The Robber Symphony (1936), written by Friedrich Feher aka Frederick Feher. Source: Duettists (YouTube).

Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia (German), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 23 May 2021.