Yoka Berretty (1928-2015)

Last Saturday, Dutch singer and actress Yoka Berretty (1928-2015) passed away. She started her career as a glamorous starlet in Italian films. Back in the Netherlands, she appeared in several films and TV productions. A national sensation was the satiric TV show Zo is het toevallig ook nog eens een keer (1963-1966). Later, Berretty played leading parts in three films by director and publicist Theo van Gogh, who was assasinated in 2004. She was 87.


Postcard by Forronia.

Italian films

Yoka Berretty was born as Johanna Ernistina Petrusa Meijeringh in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, in 1928.

After secondary school, she attended acting classes at the Actor's Studio in New York, at the Théatre de Poche with Marcel Marceau and Etienne Decroux in Paris, and in Rome.

Yoka started her career with bit and supporting parts in the Italian films Angela (Edoardo Anton, Dennis O’Keefe, 1955) featuring Mara Lane, the hit Pane, amore e.../Scandal in Sorrento (Dino Risi, 1955) starring Vittorio de Sica and Sophia Loren, the hilarious farce La banda degli onesti/The Band of Honest Men (Camillo Mastrocinque, 1956) starring the comedians Totò and Peppino De Filippo, and the drama Gli occhi senza luce/The Eyes Without Light (Flavio Calzavara, 1956) with Milly Vitale.

She returned to The Netherlands, where she worked on stage for theatre companies like Nederlandse Comedie, Ensemble, Centrum, Amsterdams Volkstoneel and Theaterunie. She also appeared on radio and television.

Incidentally, Berretty played small roles in international film productions such as the war drama The Last Blitzkrieg (Arthur Dreifuss, 1959) starring Van Johnson and the Knut Hamsun adaptation Das Letzte Kapitel/The Last Chapter (Wolfgang Liebeneiner, 1961) with Hansjörg Felmy.


Yoka Berretty as Erica in a hilarious scene from Pane, amore e.../Scandal in Sorrento (Dino Risi, 1955) starring Vittorio de Sica and Sophia Loren. Source: Rosanna Molignini Brockstedt (YouTube).

TV personality

Yoka Berretty became a well known TV personality in The Netherlands. In 1959, she was the organiser and co-presenter of the first TV benefit action show Redt een Kind/Save A Child for child refugees from Algeria. A national sensation was the satiric TV show Zo is het toevallig ook nog eens een keer (1963-1966), based on the BBC programme That Was the Week That Was.

She also played parts in the prestigious Dutch films Makkers staakt uw wild geraas/That Joyous Eve (Fons Rademakers, 1960) as the wife of Guus Oster, and opposite Rob de Vries in De Overval/The Silent Raid (Paul Rotha, 1962) about the Dutch resistance in the Second World War.

Her later films were VD (Wim Verstappen, 1972) with Kees Brusse, Rufus (Samuel Meyering, 1975) starring Rijk de Gooyer, the German-Dutch coproduction Charlotte (Frans Weisz, 1981) starring Birgit Doll and Derek Jacobi, the thriller De Prooi/The Prey (Vivian Pieters, 1985) and Advocaat van de Hanen/Punk Lawyer (Gerrit van Elst, 1996) with Pierre Bokma.

In the 1990s, Berretty played leading parts in three films by director and publicist Theo van Gogh, who was assasinated in 2004: Eva (1992), Au!/Ouch! (1997) and In het belang van de staat/In the Interests of the State (1997) starring Marlies Heuer.

The last times she appeared for the cameras was on television in an episode of the popular crime series Baantjer (Will Koopman, 2000) starring Piet Römer, and in the short film Anderland (Arne Toonen, 2003).

Yoka Berretty was married twice. Her first marriage was with Dominique Berretty, a famed Magnum-photographer whose surname she adopted. Later she was married to publisher Andreas Landshoff, the son of German film actress Ruth Hellberg. Yoka Berretty is the mother of Yolante Berretty, and of director Benjamin Landshoff, in whose TV series Erwassus/Once upon a time (1997), she appeared.

Yoka Berretty made a fall from a staircase in her house in Amsterdam, and on 28 November 2015, she died in a hospital from complications. Her daughter declared that her mother had lead "a beautiful, intense and full life."


De Overval/The Silent Raid (Paul Rotha, 1962). Full movie, no subtitles. Source: kitekat112 (YouTube).


Yoka Berretty sings the title song of the satiric TV programme Zo is het toevallig ook nog eens een keer (1963-1966). Source: Toen was kwaliteit nog heel gewoon (YouTube).

Source: Beeld en Geluid Wiki (Dutch), Wikipedia Dutch), Trouw (Dutch), NOS (Dutch) and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 13 May 2023.

Rob de Vries

Dutch actor Rob de Vries (1918 – 1969) was the star of the classic war film De Overval/The Silent Raid (1962). During the 1940’s and 1950’s he appeared in more Dutch films that were internationally successful.

 
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2010, 1964. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: publicity still for De Overval/The Silent Raid (1962, Paul Rotha).

Arrested and Imprisoned
Rob de Vries was born as Abraham de Vries in Amsterdam, The Netherlands in 1918. After finishing high school he worked as a junior clerk at a trading office in Amsterdam. He was an extra in the Dutch film adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s famous play Pygmalion (1937, Ludwig Berger). The film starred Lily Bouwmeester as Eliza Dolittle and also Eduard Verkade, one of the most prominent stage actors and directors of the Netherlands. Verkade offered to give him acting lessons. In 1938 De Vries made his acting debut for the Centraal Toneel company. He had a small role in the play De Wrekende God (the avenging God) by playwright Edward Veterman. He played briefly with the stage company of Jan Nooy and moved in 1939 to the company of Saalborn-Parser. During World War II, De Vries joined the resistance group of Eduard Veterman, where he did important work during the occupation. In 1943 he was arrested and imprisoned. He fled, however, the Utrecht prison and continued to do illegal work. After the war he took up his acting career and performed in plays like De wereld heeft geen wachtkamer (The world has no waiting room), Billy Bud, Peer Gynt and Het dagboek van Anne Frank (The Diary of Anne Frank). He also participated in several radio plays. His real film debut was as jeune premier in the comedy Een koninkrijk voor een huis/A kingdom for a house (1948, Jaap Speyer) starring Henriëtte Davids and Johan Kaart. It was the first Dutch post-war feature and it was a huge box office hit with 1.291.728 visitors. The film was also a success in Germany. Another local blockbuster was the drama Ciske de Rat/A Child Needs Love (1955, Wolfgang Staudte) in which De Vries played the father of the boy of the title (Dick van der Velde). This drama attracted 2.433.000 spectators which made it the third most popular Dutch film ever. It was shown at the Venice Film Festival, where it was awarded with a Silver Lion. There was also a German version of the film, Ciske: Ein Kind braucht Liebe. That same year he also appeared in the American TV series Secret File, U.S.A. (1955, Arthur Dreifuss a.o.) which was filmed in the Netherlands. The typical cold war series starred Robert Alda as an American intelligence agent, who goes on missions deep behind enemy lines to gather information about threats to American security and protect American diplomats abroad.

 
Yoka Beretty. Dutch postcard.

The Silent Raid
In the 1960's, Rob de Vries also appeared in the children’s film De Laatste Passagier/The Last Passenger (1961, Jef van der Heyden) in which his son Edwin de Vries also appeared as his film son. De Vries’ best known film is De Overval/The Silent Raid (1962, Paul Rotha). It shows a true story from World War II: the raid on Leeuwarden prison of 8 December 1944, on which De Vries had cooperated. Without firing a shot, Dutch resistance members disguised as German SD and their prisoners entered the prison, freed 39 prisoners and vanished into the city. The Germans were unable to find any of the organizers or escapees. Rob de Vries starred as resistance leader Piet Kramer. Other main roles were played by Kees Brusse, Yoka Berretty and Hans Culeman. The scenario was written by WW II historian Loe de Jong, and produced by the Dutch-German producer Rudolf Meyer. With 1,474,000 tickets sold, De Overval also became one of the most successful films ever in the Netherlands. It would be De Vries' last film, although he would later appear in some Dutch TV films and series. From 1961 until his death in 1969, De Vries was the director of the Nieuw Rotterdams Toneel (New Rotterdam Theater Company). Previously he was the director of Theater, a stage company in the city of Arnhem. In 1969, Rob de Vries died in Amsterdam. He was only 51. De Vries was married to Paula Faassen. Their sons Edwin and Bart de Vries are now both also well known actors in the Netherlands.


Scene from De Overval (1962). Source: Duckeeeee (YouTube).

Sources: Ridder (Nostalgie) (Dutch), Wikipedia (English and Dutch) and IMDb.