Ery Bos

From 27 September to 5 October, Utrecht is once again the capital of Dutch cinema while hosting the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF). EFSP presents you with another post in the Unofficial Dutch Film Star Postcards Festival. Sweet and elegant Ery Bos (1908-2005) was a Dutch-German actress, who had a short but productive film career in the early German sound film. In only three years, from 1932 to 1934, she took part in a dozen films of the Weimar cinema, before the Jewish actress had to flee Nazi Germany.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 6835/1, 1931-1932. Photo: Ufa. Ery Bos in Schuß im Morgengrauen/A Shot at Dawn (Alfred Zeisler, 1932).


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7644/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Jacobi.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 7919/1, 1932-1933. Photo: Atelier Yva, Berlin.

Solo dancer and choreographer

Erika Bos was born in Berlin, Germany in 1908 (some sources say 1910). She was the daughter of the internationally renowned Dutch composer and pianist Coenraad V. Bos and singer Elsa Stein.

At the age of 10, she already had dance classes and as a 13-year-old she performed in a production by Leni Riefenstahl in Berlin. She first attended public attention as a solo dancer in the 1920s and at 17 she was already a solo dancer in the city of Dortmund.

 At the end of 1925, she was in the Amsterdam Central Theater with a dance performance under the guidance of her father. In 1928, Bos was a solo dancer and choreographer at the Opera Graz. The following year. she was again both solo dancer and choreographer at the Stadstheater Augsburg, and then followed an engagement in 1931 at the Stadstheater Bremen, again as solo dancer and choreographer.

The beautiful dancer also followed speaking lessons by Ilka Grüning. In Graz she played in 'Die Dreigroschenoper' (The Threepenny Opera) by Bertolt Brecht, later she joined Josef Jarno's company in Vienna. In the early 1930s, she played with Fritz Rotter in Berlin. There she was noticed by the film director Alfred Zeisler of the major German film studio Ufa.

Ery made her film debut in a lead role in his crime film Schuß im Morgengrauen/Shot at Dawn (Alfred Zeisler, 1932) opposite Peter Lorre. Her other films that year were Liebe in Uniform/Love in Uniform (Georg Jacoby, 1932) and Unmögliche Liebe/Crown of Thorns (Ery Grünfeld, 1932) in which she appeared as a daughter of Asta Nielsen. In the early 1930s, Ery Bos would play in 12 films.


German collectors card in the 'Der Künstlerische Tanz' series by Eckstein-Halpaus, Dresden, group 2, no. 102. Photo: Robertson.


German collectors card in the series 'Vom Werden Deutscher Filmkunst - Der Tonfilm', album no. 11, picture no. 129, group 44. Photo: Ufa / Ross Verlag. Karl Ludwig Diehl, Ery Bos, Theodor Loos and Fritz Odemar in Schuss im Morgengrauen/A Shot at Dawn (Alfred Zeisler, 1932).


German collectors card by Ross Verlag for Jasmatzi Cigarettenfabrik G.m.b.H., Dresden, in the series 'Hänsom Filmbilder, Serie V, Bild no. 84 (1-147). Photo: Ufa. Ery Bos, and Peter Lorre in Schuss im Morgengrauen/A Shot at Dawn (Alfred Zeisler, 1932).


Austrian collectors card by Bensdorp, Wien, Serie G, no. 324. Photo: Ross / Gnom Tonfilm.


German collectors card by Salem Zigaretten in the series Bunte Filmbilder, no. 269 (in a series of 275). Photo: Dührkoop / Ross Verlag.

Escaping the holocaust

After Adolf Hitler and the Nazis had gained power in January 1933, the assignments of Ery Bos gradually dried up. In 1933, she played parts in Roman einer Nacht/Story of a Night (Carl Boese, 1933) and Der Zarewitsch/The Czarevitch (Victor Janson, 1933) starring Márta Eggerth.

Her final films were Mit dir durch dick und dünn/With you through thick and thin (Frans Seitz, 1934), Du bist entzückend, Rosmarie!/You are adorable, Rosmarie! (Hans von Wolzogen, 1934), Jede Frau hat ein Geheimnis/Every Woman Has a Secret (Max Obal, 1934) with Karin Hardt, and Grüß' mir die Lore noch einmal/Greet Lore again for me (Carl Heinz Wolff, 1934).

On stage, she played in the season 1934-1935 at the Berliner Komödie. Then the Jewish actress fled the country, escaping the holocaust. In London, Ery Bos married the Jewish businessman Herbert Grünfeld in 1938.

In 1941 Erika and her husband crossed the Atlantic Ocean to Canada. In 1947, Herbert Grünfeld founded his successful company Metallurg Inc. op, a precursor to the current Dutch-American conglomerate AMG. The couple settled in the very prosperous New York suburb of Chappaqua.

Ery Grünfeld would never make another film. In 1958 she became an American citizen. In 2005, Erika Grünfeld died in Chappaqua (some sources say New Castle) in the state of New York at the age of 96.


Dutch postcard. Photo: Godfried de Groot, Amsterdam. Collection: Didier Hanson.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 8282/1, 1933-1934. Photo: Gnom-Tonfilm. Publicity still for Das Lied vom Glück/The Song of Happiness (Carl Boese, 1933). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.


Dutch postcard by JosPe, no. 529.


German postcard, no. 4236. Photo: Gerstenberg (earlier Dührkoop).

Sources: Thomas Staedeli (Cyranos), Rate Your Music, Wikipedia (German and Dutch), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 15 July 2023.

Sylvia Kristel

From 27 September till 5 October, Utrecht is once again the capital of the Dutch cinema while hosting the Netherlands Film Festival (NFF). In EFSP's Unofficial Dutch Film Star Postcards Festival, we present you today Sylvia Kristel (1952-2012). The Dutch actress will always be remembered as Emmanuelle, thanks to the massive soft-porn hit of the 1970s. Emmanuelle’s sexual adventures attracted 500 million people to the cinema.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Although the back side is in the style of the Casa Filmului Acin cards, this postcard is probably a fake card while Acin never published nudity. A curiosity. Photo: publicity still for Emmanuelle (Just Jaeckin, 1974).

Tufty-haired Tomboy

Sylvia Kristel was born in Utrecht, Netherlands, in 1952. She was the daughter of Piet and Jean-Nicholas Kristel, who ran a hotel in Utrecht. Sylvia and her sister, Marianne, were brought up in Room 21. Unless the hotel was full, and they were shifted, often in the middle of the night, to Room 22 which was like a cupboard.

Her parents divorced when she was 14 years old after her father left home for another woman. She had to go to a strict Catholic boarding school and she learned to speak English, French, German and Italian.

Kristel began modelling when she was 17, and in 1973 she won the Miss TV Europe contest in London. However her future was not on television but in the cinema. Her film career had started a year earlier with a part in the Dutch thriller Niet voor de poesen/Because of the cats (Fons Rademakers, 1972). She also played supporting parts in the Dutch films Naakt over de schutting/Naked Over the Fence (Frans Weisz,1973) starring Rijk de Gooijer, and Frank en Eva/Living Apart Together (Pim de la Parra, 1973) with Willeke van Ammelrooy.

Winning the TV Europe contest lead to a casting audition in Paris for the title character in the softcore film Emmanuelle (Just Jaeckin, 1974) with Alain Cuny. The film was based on Emmanuelle Arsan's autobiographical novel. Although her tufty-haired tomboy appearance was far from the long-locked Eurasian the casting agents and the book's author had imagined, director Just Jaeckin was intrigued by her mix of the sensual and the pure. With her role, she gained overnight controversy and international success and notoriety.

Brian Donaldson in The Herald: “In the early Seventies, eroticism was making genuine inroads to the mainstream, with Don't Look Now's ongoing debate over whether Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie actually had intercourse, and the controversial Last Tango In Paris with Marlon Brando and Maria Schneider. When Emmanuelle came along, it blurred the line between soft-core and the mainstream, and by having a largely plotless tale interspersed with random segments of masturbation, consensual sex and rape plus a scene of a Thai stripper doing unmentionable things with lit cigarettes. Despite some problems in France where for the first six months, the movie was deemed suitable only for porno cinemas rather than respectable film theatres, the first Emmanuelle was an international sensation.”

Forty years later, Emmanuelle remains one of the most successful French films ever produced. In total some 500 million people around the world paid to see the sexual adventures of the liberated Frenchwoman.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 623.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Although the back side is in the style of the Casa Filmului Acin cards, this postcard is probably also a fake card like the one above. Romanian postcard collector Véronique 3 at Flickr called it a 'dissident postcard'. We like that! Photo: publicity still for Emmanuelle (Just Jaeckin, 1974).

Typecast as Emmanuelle

Sylvia Kristel also appeared in the sequel Emmanuelle: L'antivierge/ Emmanuelle - The Joys of a Woman (Francis Giacobetti, 1976) and other erotic films like La Marge/The Margin (Walerian Borowczyk, 1976) with Joe Dallesandro.

She also appeared in prestigious non-erotic films, such as Une femme fidèle/A Faithful Woman (Roger Vadim, 1976), Claude Chabrol’s Alice ou le dernière fugue/Alice, or the Last Escapade (1977) with Charles Vanel, and the crime comedy René la canne/Rene the Cane (Francis Girod, 1977) featuring Gérard Depardieu.

But the Emmanuelle franchise proved to be far more profitable for producers and so she appeared in part 3, Goodbye Emmanuelle/Emmanuelle 3 (François Leterrier, 1980), and later followed parts 4, 5, 6 and finally in the early 1990s part 7. So, Kristel found herself typecast as Emmanuelle.

She continued to play roles that capitalised upon that image – title roles in an adaptation of Lady Chatterley's Lover (Just Jaeckin, 1981) and in a nudity filled biopic of World War I spy Mata Hari (Curtis Harrington, 1985).

Her Emmanuelle image followed her to the United States where she played an immigrant maid who seduces a 15-year-old boy (Eric Brown), in the controversial sex comedy Private Lessons (Alan Myerson, 1981). Other American film appearances were a part as a stewardess in The Concorde... Airport '79/Airport '79 (David Lowell Rich, 1979) with Alain Delon as the captain, and a brief comic turn in the Get Smart revival film The Nude Bomb (Clive Donner, 1980). Although Private Lessons was one of the highest grossing independent films of 1981 ($50,000,000 worldwide), Kristel saw none of the profits.

She continued to appear in films and over the years, she received good reviews for some of her Dutch films, including Pastorale 1943 (Wim Verstappen, 1978), the Knut Hamsun adaptation Mysteries/Evil Mysteries (Paul de Lussanet, 1980) with Rutger Hauer, and Lijmen/Het been/The Publishers (Robbe de Hert, 2000).

In 2006, Kristel received an award at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York for directing the animated short film Topor and Me. After not having acted for eight years, Kristel played a part in the Croatian-French film Two Sunny Days (Ognjen Svilicic, 2010) and in the same year she played the mother of the Dutch Trio Lescano in the Italian TV film Le ragazze dello swing/The Swing Girls (Maurizio Zaccaro, 2010).


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin.

No Bitterness Or Regret

During her turbulent life, Sylvia Kristel had a string of lovers, including Roger Vadim and Warren Beatty.

Her first major relationship was with Belgian author Hugo Claus, twenty-seven years her senior with whom she had a son, Arthur (1975). She left him for British actor Ian McShane, whom she met on the set of the film The Fifth Musketeer (Ken Annakin, 1979).

They moved in together in Los Angeles where he had promised to help her launch her American career. However their five year affair would lead to no significant career break for Kristel. About two years into the relationship she began using cocaine. This proved to be her downfall, though at the time she thought of it as a necessary fuel to stay in swing.

Since McShane, she has been married twice, first only five months to American businessman Alan Turner (1982) and then five years to film producer Phillippe Blot (1986-1991). She spent a decade with Belgian radio producer Fred De Vree before he died.

A heavy smoker from the age of eleven, Kristel was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2001 and underwent three courses of chemotherapy, and surgery after it spread to her lung. In June 2012, Sylvia Kristel suffered a stroke and was hospitalised in life threatening condition.

In her autobiography Nue/Undressing Emmanuelle: A Memoir (2006/2007), she tells about her addictions, and her quest for a father figure. Carole Cadwalladr reviewed the book for The Observer: “it is, all in all, a strangely gripping tale. There's no bitterness or regret, and although there's a Francophone quality to the writing - the use of the present tense, short chapters and liberally sprinkled pensees - it gives the book a reflective edge that lifts it above the kind of celeb memoir commissioned here in Britain.”

On 17 October 2012, Sylvia Kristel died in her sleep from esophageal and lung cancer. She was survived by her son, Arthur Claus, and her younger sister, Marianne.


British theatrical trailer for Niet voor de poesen/Because of the Cats (1973). Source: Sicky33 (YouTube).


American theatrical trailer for Emmanuelle (1974). Source: Robatsea2009 (YouTube).

Sources: Carole Cadwalladr (The Observer), Brian Donaldson (The Herald), Film Reference, Wikipedia and IMDb.

Carice van Houten

The Netherlands Film Festival (NFF) starts today. From 27 September to 5 October, Utrecht is once again the capital of Dutch cinema. Like every autumn, EFSP provides you during the festival daily with postcards of Dutch films and stars from the past. The NFF opens with Instinct (2019), the directing debut of actress Halina Reijn, in which Carice van Houten plays the leading role. She plays the character Nicoline, a psychologist in a TBS clinic who becomes entangled in a power game with a client (Marwan Kenzari) who is about to go on unaccompanied leave for the first time. Van Houten also has been nominated this year for an Emmy Award for best guest role in Game of Thrones (2012-2019) with her interpretation of the character Melisandre. So we start this year's Unofficial Dutch Film Star Postcards Festival with Carice.


Belgian promotion card by Cinémanie. Photo: Carice van Houten and Sebastian Koch in Zwartboek/Black Book (Paul Verhoeven, 2006).


American postcard by Home Box Office, 2019. Photo: HBO. Carice van Houten in the TV series Game of Thrones (2012-2019).

A girl named Carice

Carice Anouk van Houten was born in Leiderdorp, Netherlands in 1976. Her parents are Margje Stasse, who is on the board of the Dutch educational TV, and the late Theodore van Houten, a writer and film historian. Carice is the older sister of actress and singer Jelka van Houten.

She is named after the daughter of the English composer, Sir Edward Elgar, due to the fact that Carice's father was investigating the secret of Elgar's 'Enigma Variations'.

She attended St. Bonifatius College (high school) in Utrecht. Van Houten studied briefly at the Maastricht Academy of Dramatic Arts but continued her professional education after one year at the Kleinkunstacademie in Amsterdam.

Her first leading role in the television film Suzy Q (Martin van Koolhoven, 1999) won her the Golden Calf - the Dutch Oscar - for Best Acting in a Television Drama. Two years later, she won the Golden Calf for Best Actress for her role as a cat who transforms into a human woman in Minoes/Undercover Kitty (Vincent Bal, 2001), based on the children's novel 'Minoes' by Annie M.G. Schmidt.

She then appeared in several stage plays and in such Dutch films as the drama De Passievrucht/Father's Affair (Maarten Treurniet, 2003) with Peter Paul Muller and Halina Reijn, and the children's film Lepel/Spoon (Willem van de Sande Bakhuyzen, 2005). For her stage acting, she won the Pisuisse Award and the Top Naeff Award.


Carice van Houten. Photo by Victor Bergen-Henegouwen in Volkskrant Magazine, no. 378, 2007.

Five golden calves

Carice van Houten gained international recognition for her role as Rachel Stein in Zwartboek/Black Book (Paul Verhoeven, 2006), the most commercially successful Dutch film to date. Rachel is a young Jewish woman in the Netherlands who becomes a spy for the resistance during World War II after tragedy befalls her in an encounter with the Nazis. For her performance, she won her second Golden Calf for Best Actress at the Netherlands Film Festival.

The Dutch romantic comedy Alles is Liefde/Love is All (Joram Lürsen, 2007) gained her further critical acclaim and was another box office hit in The Netherlands. Carice's first English-spoken film was the psychological thriller Dorothy Mills (2008) by French director Agnès Merlet. In 2008, Van Houten also had a role opposite Leonardo DiCaprio in the action thriller Body of Lies (Ridley Scott, 2008), but her scenes did not make the final cut of the film.

She was nominated for a Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actress for the historical thriller Valkyrie (Bryan Singer, 2008), starring Tom Cruise. The film is set in Nazi Germany during World War II and depicts the 20 July plot in 1944 by German army officers to assassinate Adolf Hitler and to use the Operation Valkyrie national emergency plan to take control of the country. In 2009, Van Houten appeared opposite Barry Atsma in the Dutch drama Komt een vrouw bij de dokter/Stricken (Reinout Oerlemans, 2009), based on the novel of the same name by Kluun. She also starred in the Science Fiction thriller Repo Men (Miguel Sapochnik, 2009) with Jude Law.

Van Houten won her fourth Golden Calf Award for Best Actress for De gelukkige huisvrouw/The Happy Housewife (Antoinette Beumer, 2010), in which she played Lea, a housewife who has trouble adjusting to the birth of her son. Then she played South African poet Ingrid Jonker in Black Butterflies (Paul van der Oest, 2011) with Rutger Hauer. For this role, she won her fifth Golden Calf and also the Best Actress award at the Tribeca Film Festival.

In 2012, Carice and her sister Jelka van Houten starred in the comedy Jackie (Antoinette Beumer, 2012) as twin sisters from the Netherlands who embark on a road trip across the United States on a mission to help their prickly biological mother (Holly Hunter) receive physical therapy.


Dutch postcard. Photo: Carice van Houten in De gelukkige huisvrouw/The Happy Housewife (Antoinette Beumer, 2010).


American postcard by Home Box Office, 2019. Photo: HBO. Carice van Houten in the TV series Game of Thrones (2012-2019).

The red priestess Lady Melisandre

Since 2012, Carice van Houten received international recognition for her role as the Red Priestess, Lady Melisandre on the HBO television series Game of Thrones (2011–2019). For this highly popular series, she has been nominated for two Screen Actors Guild Awards for Outstanding Performance by an Ensemble in a Drama Series.

In 2012, she also released an album, 'See You on the Ice'. In 2013, she published a book with fellow Dutch actress Halina Reijn, titled 'Anti Glamour', a parody style guide and a celebration of their friendship. That year, she appeared in the biographical thriller The Fifth Estate (Bill Condon, 2013), about the news-leaking website WikiLeaks. Benedict Cumberbatch played its editor-in-chief and founder Julian Assange.

She voiced the character Annika Van Houten (Milhouse's cousin) in Let's Go Fly a Coot (Chris Clements, 2015), an episode of The Simpsons. She co-starred in the dark Western Brimstone (Martin van Koolhoven, 2016), opposite Dakota Fanning, Guy Pearce and Kit Harrington. It was her fourth collaboration with director Martin Koolhoven. Van Houten also played the role of German film director/propagandist Leni Riefenstahl in the biopic Race (Stephen Hopkins, 2016), about African-American athlete Jesse Owens (played by Jason Sudeikis), who won a record-breaking four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympic Games.

She appeared in the disappointing crime thriller Domino (2019), directed by Brian De Palma and also starring Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Guy Pearce. In Instinct (Halina Reyn, 2019) she played a prison therapist that becomes infatuated with one of her patients, a serial rapist (Marwan Kenzari). Van Houten also acted as one of the producers of the film. Together with Halina Reijn, she played in and produced the Dutch-Belgian TV series Red Light (Halina Reyn, 2020). Like Instinct (2019), the series was written by Esther Gerritsen.

Carice van Houten could also be seen in The Glass Room (Julius Sevcik, 2019), a love story about the relationship between two women set in an iconic modernist house in Czechoslovakia, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, and in the American TV series Dangerous Liaisons (2022), a period drama, based upon the novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos. She narrated the Dutch-language version of Steve McQueen's film De Bezette Stad/Occupied City (2023). Van Houten is in a relationship with Australian actor Guy Pearce. In 2016, she gave birth to their son, Monte Pearce. She previously dated German actor Sebastian Koch, whom she met on the set of Zwartboek/Black Book (2006).


Official trailer for Black Book (2006). Source: Sony Pictures Classics (YouTube).


Official Dutch trailer for Instinct (2019). Source: September Film Distribution (YouTube).

Sources: AllMovie, Wikipedia and IMDb. This post was last updated on 21 October 2024.

Marie Ventura

Marie or Maria Ventura (1888-1954) was a Romanian-French actress and theatre director. She became well known in the silent cinema with her role in the popular serial Les misérables (1912). From 1919 till 1941, she worked at the Comédie-Française. In 1938, she directed 'Iphigénie' by Racine, becoming the first women to direct a play at the Comédie-Française.


French postcard, no. 12. Photo: Félix.


French postcard by A.N., Paris, no. 50. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères.

A dazzling Salome

Marie Ventura was born Aristida Maria Ventura in 1888 (IMDb states 1890) in Bucharest, Roumania. She studied at the 'Dramatic Art Conservatory' of Bucharest in 1901.

After her graduation, she moved to France and was a pupil of Mounet-Sully. Then, at the Conservatoire (the Dramatic Art Conservatory of Paris), she studied with Silvain in whose class she won two first prizes in 1905.

The following years, she acted in plays at the Boulevard Theatres and at the Odéon, then led by Antoine. She triumphed in particular in 'Antar' by Chekri Ghanem.

Ventura also appeared in several early silent French films. One of her first was the short Le roman d'un jeune homme riche/The story of a young rich man (Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, 1909), produced by Éclair.

Other Éclair productions were L'ensorceleuse/The sorcerer (Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, 1910) and Hérodiade/Herodias (Georges Hatot, Victorin-Hippolyte Jasset, 1910) based on the novel by Gustave Flaubert. In the latter she played Salome, who dazzles King Herod (Karlmos) with her dance, and claims the head of John the Baptist. The production was shot on location in Tunisia, and was an international success.

She moved to Pathé Frères, where she starred as Isabelle de la Croye, a young Burgundian countess in the period drama Quentin Durward (Adrien Caillard, 1912) featuring René Alexandre. She also appeared for Pathé in La fin de Robespierre/The End of Robespierre (Albert Capellani, 1912) with Georges Saillard and Charles de Rochefort, Le fils de Charles Quint/The Son of Charles Quint (Adrien Caillard, 1912) with Léon Bernard and Paul Capellani, and as Nini in Nini l'assommeur/Nini the stunner (N.N., 1912)


French postcard by Edition Pathé Frères. Photo: Félix. Caption: Mlle Ventura de l'Odéon (Miss Ventura of the Odeon).


French postcard by Edition Pathé Frères. Photo: Félix.

Elegant, with a dramatic temperament and a harmonious voice

Marie Ventura was best known for her role as Fantine Thénardier in the popular Pathé serial Les misérables (Albert Capellani, 1912-1913), based on the novel by Victor Hugo. Henry Krauss starred as Jean Valjean, and Henri Étiévant played his antagonist Javert.

Marie Ventura also starred in an early version of Zaza (Adrien Caillard, 1913), but then the First World War started and probably ended her promising film career.

From 1919 to 1941 Marie Ventura worked at the Comédie-Française. Elegant, with a dramatic temperament and a harmonious voice, she embodied the heroines of Pierre Wolff (Le Voile déchiré/The Torn Veil), Henry Bataille (Maman Colibri/Mom Colibri), Alexandre Dumas fils (La Princesse Georges/The Princess George), Henry Bernstein (Le Secret/The Secret), while playing with great fire the great classical tragedies (Phèdre/Phaedrus, Le Cid/The Cid, Andromaque/Andromache) and romantic dramas (Hernani).

She also interpreted the Repertory, from Molière to Alfred Musset, and created the most contemporary pieces. In 1938, she directed 'Iphigénie' by Jean Racine, becoming the first women to direct a play at the Comédie-Française. She made frequent trips to Roumania and helped to create cultural links between France and her native country.

In the autumn of 1940, after the Nazis had invaded France, Marie Ventura was questioned personally by Jacques Copeau, the Provisionary Administrator of the Comédie-Française, about her origins. She managed to convince Copeau who decided she could remain to work on 'L'Impromptu de Versailles' (The Impromptu of Versailles) by Molière.

But in December 1941, under German pressure, the actress had to retire. After the Liberation, she was reintegrated at the Comédie Française. She then founded a drama class and played on the Boulevards, including in Jean Anouilh's plays 'Colombe' (1950) and 'La Valse des toréadors' (The Waltz of the Toreadors, 1951).

In 1951, she returned for once to the screen in Gibier de potence/Gigolo (Roger Richebé, 1951), starring Arletty and Georges Marchal.

Marie Ventura died in 1954 in Paris. She was 66.


French postcard by Editions Sid, no. 8046. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères, Paris. The costume on the card refers to a stage play set in the Middle Ages or the Renaissance, but it is unclear which one.


French postcard by Editions Sid, no. 8041. Photo: G.L. Manuel Frères, Paris.

Sources: Comédie Française (French), Wikipedia (French) and IMDb.

Rock Hudson

Rock Hudson (1925–1985) was a popular Hollywood star in the 1950s and 1960s. The tall and handsome actor was teamed up in romantic comedies with Doris Day, but he also starred in dramatic roles in Magnificent Obsession (1954) and Giant (1956), for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. In later years, he starred on TV in the mystery series McMillan & Wife (1971-1977) and the soap opera Dynasty (1984-1985). Hudson, secretly gay, became in 1985 the first major celebrity who died from an AIDS-related illness.


German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/131. Photo: Terb Agency / UFA. Rock Hudson in Come September (Robert Mulligan, 1961).


German postcard by ISV, no. A 74. Photo: 20th Century Fox. Rock Hudson in A Farewell to Arms (Charles Vidor, 1957).


Spanish postcard by Postalcolor, Hospitalet (Barcelona), no. 65. Photo: Warner Bros.


German postcard by UFA, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK 416. Photo: Terb Agency / UFA. Rock Hudson in The Last Sunset (Robert Aldrich, 1961).


Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 199.

You big dumb bastard, don't stay there like a tree!

Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. in 1925 in Winnetka, Illinois at Sarah A. Jarman Memorial Hospital. He was the only child of Katherine (née Wood), a homemaker and later telephone operator, and Roy Harold Scherer Sr., an auto mechanic. During the Great Depression, Hudson's father lost his job and abandoned the family. Hudson's parents divorced when he was four years old. Several years later, in 1932, his mother married Wallace Fitzgerald, a former Marine Corps officer whom he despised. Fitzgerald adopted his stepson without his consent, whose legal name then became Roy Fitzgerald. That marriage eventually ended in a bitter divorce and produced no children.

Hudson attended New Trier High School in Winnetka. He sang in the school glee club and later was remembered as a shy boy who delivered newspapers, ran errands, and worked as a golf caddy. At some point during his teenage years, he worked as an usher in a cinema and developed an interest in acting. He tried out for several school plays but failed to win any roles because he could not remember his lines, a problem that continued to occur throughout his early acting career. He graduated from high school in 1943, and the following year enlisted in the United States Navy, during World War II. After training at the Great Lakes Naval Training Station, he departed San Francisco aboard the troop transport SS Lew Wallace, with orders to report to Aviation Repair and Overhaul Unit 2, then located in Samar, Philippines, as an aircraft mechanic. In 1946, he returned to San Francisco aboard an aircraft carrier and was discharged the same year.

Hudson then moved to Los Angeles to live with his biological father, who had remarried, and to pursue an acting career. Initially, he worked odd jobs, including as a truck driver. He applied to the University of Southern California's dramatics program but was rejected due to poor grades. After he sent talent scout Henry Willson a picture of himself in 1947, Willson took him on as a client, let him cap his teeth and changed the young actor's name to Rock Hudson, combining the Rock of Gibraltar and the Hudson River. Later in his life, Hudson admitted that he hated the name.

Rock Hudson made his acting debut at Warner Bros. with an uncredited part as a pilot in the World War II aviation war film Fighter Squadron (Raoul Walsh, 1948), starring Edmond O'Brien and Robert Stack. According to Wikipedia, Hudson was under personal contract to director Raoul Walsh, who rode him unmercifully, saying "You big dumb bastard, don’t just get in the centre of the camera and stay there like a tree, move!" It took 38 takes to get a good version of Hudson's one line, "You’ve got to get a bigger blackboard." Hudson was signed to a long-term contract by Universal Studios. There he was further coached in acting, singing, dancing, fencing, and horseback riding. He began to be featured in film magazines where, being photogenic, he was promoted. His first film at Universal was the Film Noir Undertow (William Castle, 1949), starring Scott Brady. It gave him his first screen credit.

Several small parts followed. He played an American Indian in the Western Winchester '73 (Anthony Mann, 1950), starring James Stewart and Shelley Winters, an Arab in the action-adventure The Desert Hawk (Fred de Cordova, 1950) with Yvonne De Carlo, and supported the Nelson family in the comedy Here Come the Nelsons (Fred de Cordova, 1951). Hudson was billed third in the Film Noir The Fat Man (William Castle, 1951), but back down the cast list for the romantic war drama Bright Victory (Mark Robson, 1951). Reportedly, he had a good part as a boxer in Iron Man (Joseph Pevney, 1951), starring Jeff Chandler, and as a gambler in the great Western Bend of the River (Anthony Mann, 1952), starring James Stewart.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 113. Photo: Universal International.


British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 309. Photo: R.K.O.


Belgian postcard, no. 27. Photo: Universal International.


Belgian postcard, no. 28. Photo: Universal International.


Dutch postcard by Uitg. Int. Filmpers (I.F.P.), Amsterdam, no. 1174.


Spanish postcard, no. 598. Rock Hudson and Yvonne De Carlo in Scarlet Angel (Sidney Salkow, 1952).

Soaring to being the most popular actor in American cinemas in 1957

Rock Hudson was promoted to leading man for the adventure film Scarlet Angel (Sidney Salkow, 1952), opposite Yvonne De Carlo, who had starred in his earlier films The Desert Hawk (Fred de Cordova, 1950) and Tomahawk (George Sherman, 1951). He then co-starred with Piper Laurie in the comedy Has Anybody Seen My Gal? (1952), directed by Douglas Sirk. In the Western Horizons West (Budd Boetticher, 1952), Hudson supported Robert Ryan, but he was the star again for another pair of Westerns, The Lawless Breed (Raoul Walsh, 1953) and Seminole (Budd Boetticher, 1953). In 1953 he also appeared in a Camel commercial which showed him on the set of Seminole.

He and Yvonne De Carlo were borrowed by RKO for Sea Devils (Raoul Walsh, 1953), an adventure set during the Napoleonic Wars. Back at Universal, he played Harun al-Rashid in the 'Eastern' The Golden Blade (Nathan Juran, 1953). There was the 3-D Technicolor Western Gun Fury (Raoul Walsh, 1953), with Donna Reed, and the adventure film Back to God's Country (Joseph Pevney, 1953) with Steve Cochran. Hudson had the title role in Taza, Son of Cochise (Douglas Sirk, 1954), produced by Ross Hunter.

Hudson was by now firmly established as a leading man in B adventure films. What turned him into a star was Magnificent Obsession (Douglas Sirk, 1954), co-starring Jane Wyman and produced by Ross Hunter. The film received positive reviews, with Modern Screen Magazine citing Hudson as the most popular actor of the year. Magnificent Obsession made over $5 million at the box office. For millions of female filmgoers, Hudson with his towering, sculpted frame, his deep, sensuous voice and thick black hair, was the ideal leading man. Hudson went back to adventure films with Bengal Brigade (Laslo Benedek, 1954), set during the Indian Mutiny, and Captain Lightfoot (Douglas Sirk, 1955), produced by Hunter. In 1954, exhibitors voted Hudson the 17th most popular star in the country. Hunter used him again in two melodramas, One Desire (Jerry Hopper, 1955) with Anne Baxter, and All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955), which reunited him with Jane Wyman. Never Say Goodbye (Jerry Hopper, 1956) with Cornell Borchers, loosely based on the play 'Come Prima Meglio Di Prima' by Luigi Pirandello was more drama.

While his career developed, Hudson and his agent Henry Willson kept the actor's personal life out of the headlines. In 1955, Confidential magazine threatened to publish an exposé about Hudson's secret homosexuality. Willson stalled this by disclosing information about two of his other clients. Willson provided information about Rory Calhoun's years in prison and the arrest of Tab Hunter at a gay party in 1950. Soon after the Confidential incident, Hudson married Willson's secretary Phyllis Gates. Gates filed for divorce after three years in April 1958, citing mental cruelty. Hudson did not contest the divorce and Gates received alimony of $250 a week for 10 years. Gates never remarried. His popularity soared with George Stevens' Western drama Giant (1956). The film is an epic portrayal of a powerful Texas ranching family challenged by changing times and the coming of big oil. Stevens gave Hudson a choice between Elizabeth Taylor and Grace Kelly to play his leading lady, Leslie. Hudson chose Taylor. Bosley Crowther of the New York Times wrote that "George Stevens takes three hours and seventeen minutes to put his story across. That's a heap of time to go on about Texas, but Mr. Stevens has made a heap of film. (...) Giant, for all its complexity, is a strong contender for the year's top-film award." Hudson and his co-star James Dean were both nominated for Oscars in the Best Actor category.

Another hit was the melodrama Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1957), co-starring Lauren Bacall, Robert Stack and Dorothy Malone, and produced by Albert Zugsmith. Sirk also directed Hudson in the war film Battle Hymn (Douglas Sirk, 1957), produced by Ross Hunter. Hudson played Colonel Dean E. Hess, a real-life United States Air Force fighter pilot in the Korean War. These films propelled Hudson to be voted the most popular actor in American cinemas in 1957. Hudson was borrowed by MGM to appear in Richard Brooks' Something of Value (1957), a box office disappointment. So too was his next film, a remake of A Farewell to Arms (Charles Vidor, 1957). A Farewell to Arms received negative reviews, failed at the box office and became the last production by David O. Selznick. Hudson was reunited with the producer, director and two stars of Written on the Wind in The Tarnished Angels (Douglas Sirk, 1958), at Universal. He then made the adventure film Twilight for the Gods (Joseph Pevney, 1958) and the melodrama This Earth Is Mine (Henry King, 1959) with Jean Simmons.


Swiss-German-British postcard by News Productions, Baulmes / Filmwelt Berlin, Bakede / News Productions, Stroud, no. 56493. Rock Hudson and Yvonne De Carlo in Sea Devils (Raoul Walsh, 1952), produced by Coronado (RKO).


Spanish postcard, sent by mail in 1956. Rock Hudson and Arlene Dahl in Bengal Brigade (Laslo Benedek, 1954).


Spanish card, no. 5164. Photo: Arch. Bermejo.


German postcard by Kolibri Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 105. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Publicity still for Something of Value (Richard Brooks, 1957).


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 1332.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 1631. Photo: Columbia. Donna Reed and Rock Hudson in Gun Fury (Raoul Walsh, 1953).


Swiss-German-British postcard by News Productions, Baulmes / Filmwelt Berlin, Bakede / News Productions, Stroud, no. 56498. Photo: Collection Cinémathèque Suisse, Lausanne. Rock Hudson and Dorothy Malone in Written on the Wind (Douglas Sirk, 1956), produced by Universal.

One of the best-dressed male stars in Hollywood

Ross Hunter teamed Rock Hudson with Doris Day in the bedroom comedy, Pillow Talk (Michael Gordon, 1959), which was a massive hit. Hudson was voted the most popular star in the country for 1959 and would be the second most popular for the next three years. Less popular was a Western, The Last Sunset (Robert Aldrich, 1961), co-starring Kirk Douglas. Hudson then made two hugely popular comedies: Come September (Robert Mulligan, 1961) with Gina Lollobrigida, and Lover Come Back (Delbert Mann, 1961) again with Doris Day. He made two dramas: The Spiral Road (Robert Mulligan, 1962), a medical adventure story, and A Gathering of Eagles (Delbert Mann, 1963), a military story. Hudson was still voted the third most popular star in 1963. He went back to comedy for Man's Favorite Sport? (Howard Hawks, 1964), and more popularly, Send Me No Flowers (Norman Jewison, 1964), his third and final film with Doris Day. Along with Cary Grant, Hudson was regarded as one of the best-dressed male stars in Hollywood and made the 'Top 10 Stars of the Year' list a record-setting eight times from 1957–1964.

His next film, Strange Bedfellows (Melvin Frank, 1965), with Gina Lollobrigida, was a box office disappointment. So too was A Very Special Favor (Michael Gordon, 1965) with Leslie Caron, despite having the same writer and director as Pillow Talk. That year he was voted the 11th most popular star in the country, and he would never beat that rank again. Hudson tried a thriller, Blindfold (Philip Dunne, 1966). He worked outside his usual range on the Science-Fiction thriller Seconds (1966), directed by John Frankenheimer. The film flopped but it later gained cult status, and Hudson's performance is often regarded as one of his best. He also tried his hand in the action genre with the World War Two film Tobruk (Arthur Hiller, 1967).

After the Italian comedy Ruba al prossimo tuo/A Fine Pair (Francesco Maselli, 1968) with Claudia Cardinale he starred in the action thriller Ice Station Zebra (John Sturges, 1968) at MGM, a role which he had actively sought and remained his personal favourite. The Cold War era suspense and espionage film was a hit but struggled to recoup its escalating production costs. Rock Hudson dabbled in Westerns, appearing opposite John Wayne in The Undefeated (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1969). He grew a moustache and sideburns for his role in The Undefeated. Afterwards, he decided to retain that look throughout the 1970s.

He co-starred opposite Julie Andrews in the musical, Darling Lili (Blake Edwards, 1970). Edwards suffered continual interference from Paramount executives while making Darling Lili, and it was eventually edited by the studio largely without his input. Edwards later claimed Darling Lili was budgeted at $11.5 million but ended up costing $16 million. He said half the cost was due to second unit filming in Ireland and he had pleaded with Paramount not to shoot in Europe due to the weather, but the studio insisted. The film was reasonably popular but it became notorious for its huge costs. During the 1970s and 1980s, Rock Hudson starred in several TV movies and series. His most successful television series was McMillan & Wife opposite Susan Saint James, which ran from 1971 to 1977. Hudson played police commissioner Stewart 'Mac' McMillan, with Saint James as his wife Sally, and their on-screen chemistry helped to make the show a hit.

During the series' run, Hudson appeared in Showdown (George Seaton, 1973), a Western with Dean Martin, and the Horror-Science Fiction film Embryo (Ralph Nelson, 1976). Hudson took a risk and surprised many by making a successful foray into live theatre late in his career, the most acclaimed of his efforts being 'I Do! I Do!' in 1974. In 1977 he toured 13 cities as King Arthur in the musical 'Camelot'. After McMillan & Wife ended, Hudson made a disaster film for New World Pictures, Avalanche (Corey Allen, 1978) with Robert Forster and Mia Farrow, and two miniseries, Wheels (Jerry London, 1978) based on the novel by Arthur Hailey, and The Martian Chronicles (Michael Anderson, 1980), based on Ray Bradbury's novel. He was also one of several faded stars in the enjoyable British mystery film The Mirror Crack'd (1980), based on Agatha Christie's Miss Marple novel 'The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side' (1962).


Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, no. 38. Photo: Universal International.


French-German postcard by Editions P.I., Paris / UFA, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. FK 3997. Photo: Universal.


French postcard by Editions du Globe, no. 596.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 1882. Photo: Universal. Rock Hudson in The Spiral Road (Robert Mulligan, 1962).


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2170.


German postcard by Kolibri Verlag, Minden/Westf., no. 2323. Photo: Universal International.

Giving AIDS a face

In the early 1980s, following years of heavy drinking and smoking, Rock Hudson began having health problems which resulted in a heart attack in November 1981. Emergency quintuple heart bypass surgery sidelined Hudson and his new TV show The Devlin Connection for a year, and the show was cancelled in December 1982 soon after it had first aired. Hudson recovered from the heart surgery but continued to smoke. He nevertheless continued to work with appearances in several TV movies such as World War III (David Greene, Boris Sagal, 1982). He was in ill health while filming the action-drama film The Ambassador (J. Lee Thompson, 1984 ) in Israel during the winter months from late 1983 to early 1984. He reportedly did not get along with his co-star Robert Mitchum, who had a serious drinking problem and often clashed off camera with Hudson and other cast and crew members.

From December 1984 to April 1985, Hudson appeared in a recurring role on the ABC prime-time soap opera Dynasty as Daniel Reece, a wealthy horse breeder and a potential love interest for Krystle Carrington (Linda Evans), as well as the biological father of the character Sammy Jo Carrington (Heather Locklear). While Hudson had long been known to have difficulty memorising lines, which resulted in his use of cue cards, it was his speech itself that began to visibly deteriorate on Dynasty. He was originally slated to appear for the duration of the show's second half of its fifth season; however, because of his progressing ill health, his character was abruptly written out of the show and died off-screen. Unknown to the public, Hudson was diagnosed with HIV in June 1984, just three years after the emergence of the first cluster of symptomatic patients in the U.S., and only one year after the initial identification by scientists of the HIV virus that causes AIDS. Over the next several months, Hudson kept his illness a secret and continued to work while, at the same time, travelling to France and other countries seeking a cure – or at least treatment to slow the progress of the disease.

On 16 July 1985, Hudson joined his old friend Doris Day for a Hollywood press conference announcing the launch of her new TV cable show Doris Day's Best Friends in which Hudson was videotaped visiting Day's ranch in Carmel, California, a few days earlier. He appeared gaunt and his speech was nearly incoherent; during the segment, Hudson did very little speaking, with most of it consisting of Day and Hudson walking around as Day's recording of 'My Buddy' played in the background, with Hudson noting he had quickly tired out. His appearance was enough of a shock that the reunion was broadcast repeatedly over national news shows that night and for days to come. Media outlets speculated on Hudson's health. Two days later, Hudson travelled to Paris, France, for another round of treatment. After Hudson collapsed in his room at the Ritz Hotel in Paris on 21 July, his publicist, Dale Olson, released a statement claiming that Hudson had inoperable liver cancer. Olson denied reports that Hudson had AIDS, but, four days later, Hudson's French publicist Yanou Collart confirmed that Hudson did in fact have AIDS. He was among the first mainstream celebrities to have been diagnosed with the disease.

In October 1985, Rock Hudson died in his sleep from AIDS-related complications at his home in Beverly Hills at age 59, less than seven weeks before what would have been his 60th birthday. Hudson requested that no funeral be held. His body was cremated hours after his death and his ashes were scattered in the channel between Wilmington and Santa Catalina Island. The disclosure of Hudson's AIDS diagnosis provoked widespread public discussion of his homosexual identity. In Logical Family: A Memoir, gay author Armistead Maupin, who was a friend of Hudson's, writes he was the first person to confirm to the press that Hudson was gay in 1985, effectively outing him. Maupin explains that he said to Randy Shilts of the San Francisco Chronicle that he was annoyed that producer Ross Hunter, who was gay himself, denied it.

In August 1985 People published a story that discussed his disease in the context of his sexuality. The largely sympathetic article featured comments from famous show business colleagues such as Angie Dickinson, Robert Stack, and Mamie Van Doren, who claimed they knew about Hudson's homosexuality and expressed their support for him. At that time, People had a circulation of more than 2.8 million, and, as a result of this and other stories, Hudson's homosexuality became fully public. Hudson's revelation had an immediate impact on the visibility of AIDS, and on the funding of medical research related to the disease. Rock Hudson had given AIDS a face. After his death, his long-time lover Marc Christian successfully sued his estate, again calling attention to the homosexuality Rock had hidden from most throughout his career.


Israelian postcard by Editions de Luxe, no. 116.


Spanish postcard by Postal Oscarcolor, no. 424. Photo: Gina Lollobrigida and Rock Hudson in Come September (Robert Mulligan, 1961).


German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/129. Photo: Terb Agency / UFA. Gina Lollobrigida and Rock Hudson in Come September (Robert Mulligan, 1961).


West-German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/260.


South-African postcard by East-West Publishers, Cape Town, no. 272.

Sources: Ed Stephan (IMDb), Wikipedia and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 29 October 2024.