British postcard in the Colourgraph Series, London, no. C 130. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
Italian postcard by Rizzoli & C., Milano, 1940. Photo: Paramount.
British postcard. Photo: Dorothy Wilding.
French postcard, no. 713.
Unable to return to Australia
Betty Stockfeld was born in 1904 in Australia. Betty was the daughter of Sydney businessman Harry Hooper Stockfeld and Susan Elizabeth Stockfeld, née Evans, and supposedly a niece of commander F. Pryce Evans of Shackleton's Nimrod expedition.
The family was in London at the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, so unable to return to Australia. Stockfeld was educated in France and did the London School of Dramatic Art, before debuting on stage.
In 1929 Betty Stockfeld debuted on the London stage in the Ben Levy comedy 'Art and Mrs. Bottle', starring Irene Vanbrugh.
In 1931 she had her breakthrough opposite Polish singer/actor Jan Kiepura in the film City of Song by Carmine Gallone, set in a.o. Naples and London. It was the British version of Gallone's German film Die singende Stadt in which Brigitte Helm played Stockfeld's part.
Betty played Claire Winter, a rich English woman who travels to Naples seeking distraction. She finds it in her Italian guide, who has such a voice for singing she decides to make him famous, taking him with her to London and offering help for an operatic career.
British postcard by Film Weekly, London.
French postcard by Editions et Publications Cinématographiques (EPC), no. 99.
French postcard, no. 564.
Light entertainment films in Great Britain and France
Betty Stockfeld had a prolific career in British sound cinema. From 1932 she worked at the Ealing studios, BIP, and British & Dominion Film.
As she was also fluent in French, she worked in the French sound cinema too. First, she acted in Blanc comme neige/White like snow (Jean Choux et.al., 1931) with Bourvil, and from 1932 at the Paris Paramount studios.
Thanks to her bilingual training, she acted in both the French film Le roi des palaces (Carmine Gallone, 1932) with Jules Berry and the English version King of the Ritz (Carmine Gallonee, Herbert Smith, 1933) with Stanley Lupino, and also in Le vagabond bien-aimé/The Beloved Vagabond (both by Curtis Bernhardt, 1936) and both starring Maurice Chevalier.
All through the 1930s, Stockfeld was active in Britain and France in mostly light entertainment films, e.g. in French comedies with Lucien Baroux, Fernand Gravey, and Danielle Darrieux, and in Britain opposite e.g. Owen Nares, Tyrell Davis, and Gordon Harker.
In 1939, Betty Stockfeld acted in one Italian film: Frenesia/Frenzy (Mario Bonnard, 1939) starring the two old monstres sacré of the Italian stage, Dina Galli and Antonio Gandusio. In the same year she also acted in Les neuf célibataires/Nine Bachelors (Sacha Guitry, 1939), Son oncle de Normandie/His Uncle from Normandy (Jean Dréville, 1939), Derrière la façade/Behod the facade (Georges Lacombe, Yves Mirande, 1939), and Les gangsters du château d'If/The gangsters of Castle d'If (René Pujol, 1939).
In 1940 she still did three films in France before the war broke out. Yet, despite the indication on the Italian postcard above of Paramount, Stockfeld made no film for Paramount in 1939-1940, neither as a production company nor as a distribution company.
After 1942 she was away from the sets, but from 1950 she returned in 5 films and a few TV series between 1950 and 1961, including Jacques Becker's Edouard et Caroline/Edward and Caroline (1951) starring Daniel Gélin and Anne Vernon and Les amants du Tage/The Lovers of Lisbon (Henri Verneuil, 1954) with Daniel Gélin and Françoise Arnoul.
Betty Stockfeld died of leukemia in Tadworth, Surrey, in 1966.
French postcard by Viny, no. 141. Photo: Star.
French postcard by Editions et Publications Cinematographiques (EPC), no. 99. Photo: Self.
Vintage collectors card.
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 9512/1, 1935-1936. Photo: Toeplitz Productions. Betty Stockfeld in Le vagabond bien-aimé/The Beloved Vagabond (Curtis Bernhardt, 1936).
Sources: Seeking Betty, Wikipedia (French and English), and IMDb.
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