Published by Weenenk & Snel

Weenenk & Snel in the city of Baarn was one of the Dutch publishers that created many film star postcards, first mainly of Dutch actors in sepia and later of film stars in black and white. In 1900, Wilhelm Reinier Weenenk opened a shop in Dern Haag (The Hague) selling postcards and cityscapes. In 1905 he associated with Nicolaas François Snel and the publishing company of Mr. Weenenk continued as Weenenk & Snel. In 1935 the head offices moved to Baarn. In an advertisement in the trade journal De Band in 1957, a completely new collection was promoted with new art cards, holiday and bathing cards, windmills, flower bulb fields, summer landscapes, and, of course, film cards.


Dutch postcard by Uitg. N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 133.

Beautiful Myléne Demongeot (1936) became in 1957 one of the blond sex symbols of the French cinema when she seduced Yves Montand in Les sorcières de Salem. The coquettish French actress would go on to co-star in the three Fantômas adventures and many other European films of the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1980s she also became a producer.


Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 661. Photo: MGM. Steve Reeves in Morgan il pirata/Morgan the Pirate (André De Toth, Primo Zeglio, 1960).

Handsome, musclebound Steve Reeves (1926-2000) was an American bodybuilder and actor, who was a huge success in Hercules (1958) and other Peplum films, the Italian sword-and-sandal epics. At the peak of his career, around 1960, he was reputedly the highest-paid actor in Europe.


Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 761. Photo: Gofilex. Heidi Brühl in Immer will ich dich gehören/Always I will be yours (Arno Assmann, 1960) with Peter Weck.

Blonde, blue-eyed schlager singer and film star Heidi Brühl (1942-1991) was called 'the Doris Day of Germany'. In 1963 she was the German participant at the Eurovision Song Contest.


Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 762. Photo: Günther Philipp, Conny Froboess and Peter Weck in Mariandl (Werner Jacobs, 1961).

Cornelia Froboess (1943) was as 'Conny' a teen idol in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Later she became a respected stage actress. Austrian actor, theatre impresario, and director Peter Weck (1930) appeared in more than 100 films. With his natural acting style in costume dramas and Heimatfilms, he became the Golden Boy from Vienna.


Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 853. Photo: Hafbo-film. Anna Karina in Le soleil dans l'oeil/Sun in Your Eyes (Jacques Bourdon, 1962).

French, but Danish-born film actress, singer, and director Anna Karina (1940-2019) was the queen of the Nouvelle Vague. Karina was the muse of director Jean-Luc Godard and starred in eight of his films.

Dutch actors

Dutch postcard by Weenenk & Snel, Den Haag. Photo: Willem Coret, Den Haag (The Hague).

Dutch actress Annie van Ees (1893-1970) performed hundreds of times in the stage play 'Boefje' (Little Rascal, 1922). Boefje is a little street boy who is always into mischief but has a heart of gold. In 1935 Annie had already played 'Boefje' 500 times, often together with her husband, stage director Cor van der Lugt Melsert. When Van Ees was 45 and mother, she starred again as Boefje in a Dutch film after the play, Boefje (1939), directed by Detlev Sierck, the future Douglas Sirk.


Dutch postcard by Weenenk & Snel, Den Haag. Photo: Willem Coret. Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Dutch actor Eduard Verkade (1878-1961) was one of the actor-directors who revolutionised Dutch theatre in the first decades of the 20th century. He also starred in Dutch films of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s.


Dutch postcard by Weenenk & Snel, Den Haag. Photo: Willem Coret.

Jacques Reule (1879-1954) was a Dutch stage actor who occasionally played in Dutch films as well. He acted in two Dutch silent films, Pro Domo (Theo Frenkel, 1918) and De duivel in Amsterdam/The Devil in Amsterdam (Theo Frenkel, 1919), and one Dutch sound film, Blokkade/Block cade (Willem de Hoog, 1934).


Dutch postcard by Weenenk & Snel, Den Haag. Photo: Willem Coret.

Esther de Boer-van Rijk (1853-1937) was the most popular Dutch actress ever. She was a national icon as the tragic fisherwoman Kniertje in the stage classic 'Op hoop van zegen' (The Good Hope) by Herman Heijermans and played the role again in both a silent (1918) and a sound film version (1934). She also appeared in a dozen other Dutch silent films.


Dutch postcard by Uitgave Weenenk & Snel, Den Haag. Photo: Willem Coret.

Jan van Ees (1896-1966) was a popular Dutch actor, the author of several stage plays, and the brother of Annie van Ees. He was one of the title characters of the Dutch film classic De Jantjes/The Tars (Jaap Speyer, 1934) and starred in several other Dutch films of the 1930s.


Dutch postcard by Weenenk & Snel, Den Haag (The Hague). Photo: Willem Coret.

Tilly Lus (1888-1971) was one of the great tragedy actresses of Dutch theatre. She also appeared in five silent films, including the first Dutch horror thriller Het Geheim van het Slot Arco/The Secret of Arco Castle (Maurits Binger, Jan van Dommelen, 1915), a Hollandia Filmfabriek production, filmed in Austria.

Hollywood in Holland

Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 861.

Tall and slim American actor Anthony 'Tony' Perkins (1932-1992) is best known for his boyish good looks and his nervous, sweet but often unbalanced characters. Perkins made his screen debut in The Actress (1953) featuring Jean Simmons and was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his second film, the Civil War film Friendly Persuasion (1956). Three years later, he appeared in what would be his most memorable role to date, Norman Bates in Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) and later in its three sequels.


Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 1060. Photo: M.G.M. Danny Kaye in Merry Andrew (Michael Kidd, 1958). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Danny Kaye (1911-1987) was an American actor, singer, dancer, comedian, and musician. His performances featured physical comedy, idiosyncratic pantomimes, and tongue-twisting songs. Kaye starred in 17 films like Wonder Man (1945), The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1947), and White Christmas (1954).


Dutch postcard by Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 1155. Photo: MGM.

British-born actress Greer Garson (1904-1996) was a very popular Hollywood star during World War II. She epitomized a noble, wise, and courageous wife in sleek and sentimental films, often with Walter Pidgeon as her co-star. As one of MGM's major stars of the 1940s, Garson received seven Academy Award nominations. She won the Oscar for Mrs. Miniver (1942), in which she personified the spirit and virtue of a British homemaker in wartime.


Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 160 (?). Photo: Paramount. Clark Gable in But Not For Me (Walter Lang, 1959). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

With his natural charm and knowing smile, Clark Gable (1901-1959) was 'The King of Hollywood' during the 1930s. He often portrayed down-to-earth, bravado characters with a carefree attitude, and was seen as the epitome of masculinity. Gable won an Academy Award for Best Actor for It Happened One Night (1934), and was nominated for leading roles in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) and for his best-known role as Rhett Butler in Gone with the Wind (1939).


Dutch postcard by N.V. v. h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn. Ricky Nelson in Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959).

American singer Ricky Nelson (1940-1985) was one of the first teenage stars in America. He started his career in his parents' television series The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet. In the late 1950s, he had such hits as 'Hello Mary Lou' and he starred in the Western Rio Bravo (1959) with John Wayne.

European film stars

Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 161. Photo: Centra.

Entertainer Tommy Steele (1936) was Britain's first teen idol and rock 'n roll star. His cheeky Cockney image and boy-next-door looks won him success as a musician, singer, and actor.


Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 306. Sabine Sinjen in Alt Heidelberg/Old Heidelberg (Ernst Marischka, 1959). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

German Stage and film actress Sabine Sinjen (1942-1995) was a teenage star of the 1950s, who became a protagonist of the Neue Deutsche Film in the 1960s.


Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 759 (?). Collection: Geoffrey Donaldson Institute.

Austrian actress Romy Schneider (1938-1982) was one of the most beautiful and intelligent actors of her generation. Thirty years after her death she still has an immense popular appeal.


Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn. Photo: Cornelia Froboess in Mariandl (Werner Jacobs, 1961). The man on the postcard is not the mentioned Günther Philipp but Rudolf Prack.

Cornelia Froboess (1943) was a teen idol in the late 1950s and early 1960s who would later become a respected stage actress. Austrian actor Rudolf Prack (1905-1981) was once 'the most often kissed man of the German cinema’. Nowadays he is mainly connected with his Heimatfilms of the 1950s, but his career already started in the middle of the 1930s.


Dutch postcard by NV v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 759. Photo: Rank Organisation. Hardy Krüger in The One That Got Away (Roy Ward Baker, 1957).

German actor and writer Hardy Krüger (1928-2022) was a blond heartthrob who acted in numerous European films of the 1950s and 1960s and also in several classic American films. He played friendly soldiers and adventurers in numerous German, British and French films and also in some Hollywood classics. Although he often was typecasted as the Aryan Nazi, he hated wearing the brown uniform.

Miscellaneous

 

Dutch postcard by Weenenk & Snel, The Hague, no. 14 71448. Postcard mailed in 1921. Caption: Happy New Year.


Dutch postcard by N.V. v.h. Weenenk & Snel, Baarn, no. 963. Photo: Phonogram / Philips. Dutch pop stars Johnny Lion, Anneke Grönloh, Willeke Alberti and The Young Sisters.

Source: Lodewijk van Duuren (VDP - Dutch).