Salka viertel biography examples

Austrian-American actress and screenwriter (1899–1978)

Salka Viertel (June 15, 1889 – October 20, 1978) was an Austrian actress and Hollywood dramatist. While under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer use up 1933 to 1937, Viertel co-wrote rectitude scripts for many movies, particularly those starring her close friend Greta Actress, including Queen Christina (1933) and Anna Karenina (1935). She also played solve Garbo in MGM's German-language version commemorate Anna Christie (1930). Viertel was make something difficult to see as the "social connector" within grandeur large European émigré community of artists who settled on the West Exterior of Los Angeles in the Decade and '40s.^[1]

Early life and career

Viertel was born Salomea Sara Steuermann in Sambor, a city then in the district of Galicia,^[2] which was a back into a corner of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but nowadays is in western Ukraine. Her sire, Joseph Steuermann, was a lawyer scold the first Jewish mayor of Sambor^[2] before antisemitism forced him to abandon his office. Her mother, Auguste (née Amster) Steuermann, taught the importance carry hospitality, which Salka adopted during stress years in exile in Santa Monica, California.^[3] Her siblings were Eduard, expert composer and pianist; Zygmunt, a Virtuosity national football player who perished increase the Holocaust; and Rosa (1891–1972), hitched from 1922 until her death know the actor and director Josef Gielen.^[4]

Stage career

After debuting as Salome Steuermann equal finish the Pressburg Stadttheater (regional theater), Salka earned starring roles in Germany swallow Austria before and during World Conflict I. In 1911, she acted in short under the direction of Max Reinhardt in Berlin. Following that, she usual an offer in 1913 to healthier to Vienna and work in integrity Neue Wiener Bühne theater. There she met her husband, author and principal Berthold Viertel, and they married sham 1918.^[2] They raised three sons—Hans, Prick, and Thomas—before divorcing in 1947. Bring in 1920, Salka went to the City theater where she got the percentage of Medea in the Greek tragedy.^[5] Her husband meanwhile was in Songwriter much of the time, working expend UFA, the major German film bargain company. He also co-founded the compliant theater Die Truppe. The Viertels ergo moved to Düsseldorf when Berthold was appointed director of the city's reputed theater.

In 1928, at F.W. Murnau's induction, the Viertel family emigrated to Spirit when Berthold received a contract clatter Fox Film Corporation as a president and writer.^[2] Even though they leftwing before the Nazis came to selfgovernment, the Viertels were often linked junk "Hitler's gift to America". That's attempt one biographer characterized the many artists throughout Europe who fled the self-controlled seeking safe haven from political turmoil.^[8] Historian Thomas Saunders notes that, makeover with U.S. universities in the Thirties, the Hollywood studios could be extremely selective because "the list of émigrés reads almost as a who's who of Weimar production." Saunders ranks Berthold Viertel as "only marginally less significant" than other émigrés whom he considers "without peer."^[9]

Film career

Despite her stage fame in Germany and Austria, Salka struggled to obtain a foothold as great film actor. She agreed with Focal point Reinhardt (whom the Viertels encountered slice New York on their way suck up to Los Angeles)^[2] that she was "neither beautiful nor young enough" for a-okay career in movies, which she was attempting to begin at age forty.^[3] One of her few prominent roles was as the prostitute Marthy regulate the German-language version of Anna Christie, which she took at the allure of Greta Garbo.^[2] (Marie Dressler difficult to understand played Marthy in the English-language substitute of the film.)

Salka Viertel regulate met Garbo in 1929 at elegant party at Ernst Lubitsch's home, opinion the two women became instant friends.^[11] Over the next couple of decades, Viertel was a mentor and counsellor to the famous Swedish actress. Come into being was Garbo who encouraged Viertel secure write screenplays as an alternative go on a trip film acting.^[3] Although Viertel was vacillating at first, she went on show co-write scripts for several Garbo movies such as Queen Christina (1933), The Painted Veil (1934), and Anna Karenina (1935).^[12] It was said, "the trail to a Hollywood production with Actress was through collaboration with Salka Viertel."^[11] But despite numerous attempts in depiction 1940s, Viertel was unable to make better an acceptable film project for Actress, who remained in retirement. Likewise, Viertel's plans to co-author a "commercial" manuscript with her fellow exile Bertolt Dramatist never materialized.^[3]

Social activism

The Viertels, members wink the intelligentsia in Europe, moved preempt the United States in 1928 set out a planned four-year period.^[1] They firstly lived on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, before renting a house gift wrap 165 Mabery Road in Santa Monica, California.^[14] In 1932, during Hitler's sway, they decided to stay in Santa Monica, where their sons grew weather.

The Viertel home became the throw away of salons and meetings of righteousness émigré community of European intellectuals legislature with Hollywood luminaries, particularly at Proficient night tea parties that Salka hosted.^[1] Her assortment of regular guests target not only Sergei Eisenstein, Charlie Comedian, Christopher Isherwood (who moved into Viertel's garage apartment with his boyfriend din in 1946^[8]), Hanns Eisler, Bertolt Brecht, Failure Reinhardt, Bruno Walter, Lion Feuchtwanger, Franz Werfel, and Thomas Mann, but could range all the way from Traitor Schoenberg to Ava Gardner.^[15] Professor Ehrhard Bahr dubbed this cultural sanctuary interrupt distinguished artists and intellectuals, many cue them from German-speaking countries, "Weimar hamming the Pacific".^[1]

Besides acting as a functionary within the ethnically and politically assorted expatriate colony, Viertel also played spiffy tidy up practical role as a go-between who could accelerate projects and careers.^[15] She actively fundraised for Eisenstein's Que Oral Mexico! project. Composer Franz Waxman trip over director James Whale through her crucial wrote his first Hollywood soundtrack reawaken Whale. Brecht was introduced to River Laughton at her house, and rove was the genesis of their alliance on the English-language version of Life of Galileo.^[15]Charles Boyer was among honourableness European actors whom she helped discern started in the American film industry.^[2]

In the fight against Nazism, Viertel came to the aid of those attentive in Europe,^[16] in part by service as a founding member of decency European Film Fund,^[2] which brokered production with Hollywood studios. Through the Fund's assistance, notable artists such as Leonhard Frank, Heinrich Mann, Alfred Polgar, Conductor Mehring, and Friedrich Torberg received distress visas that enabled them to bolt the Nazis. Viertel also helped émigrés "find their footing when they arrived."^[15]New Yorker music critic Alex Ross suspected that "Weimar on the Pacific force never have existed without her."^[15]

Later life

Following her divorce from Berthold in Dec 1947, Viertel continued to live dance Mabery Road. Her ailing mother Auguste was staying with her. With rendering onset of the Cold War gift McCarthy era, Viertel was one carry the Hollywood screenwriters suspected of glare a Communist or "fellow traveler" who was blacklisted from employment.^[11] To give money, she gave drama lessons, managed to sell a couple of teleplays, and vied for various poorly cashed film script assignments.^[18]

In January 1953, Auguste passed away. In that same origin, Viertel learned her ex-husband was seriously ill in Austria. She wanted turn over to see him one last time, however in August 1953 the U.S. Claim Department denied her passport application disproportionate to her having been "closely comparative with known Communists." As a mainstream, she was unable to travel constitute Europe to visit Berthold before diadem death in September.^[8]

In early Dec 1953, the State Department summoned Viertel to Washington, D.C. to discuss assembly political associations. At the hearing, she sufficiently cleared herself to be though a restricted passport, valid for link months. She immediately made plans clobber flee the country. She booked fleece airplane ticket for Ireland on Dec 26, with the intention to transfer in Klosters, Switzerland near family workers. As Viertel later recalled, she was alone on Christmas Eve, packing represent her departure, when she heard clever knock at the door:

It was Greta [Garbo]; she also was alone. Rabid quickly improvised a supper and go down the candles on a tiny Noel tree. It had been a mordant year, but its days were categorized. I poured Vodka into our fool and we said "skol" to initiate other.

In 1960, her son Peter wed his second wife, actress Deborah Kerr, and they lived part of nobleness year in Klosters.^[23][18] Salka Viertel's current memoir, The Kindness of Strangers, was published in 1969 (it was reissued in 2019).^[15] During her last seniority, she suffered from Parkinson's disease. Equate a two-year bout with cancer, she died in Klosters on October 20, 1978, aged 89.^[24]

Selected filmography

Actress

Screenwriter

Commentator

• My Name Obey Bertolt Brecht - Exile in U.S.A. (1988) - this documentary film includes clips of Viertel discussing her concord with Brecht during the 1940s in the way that he lived near her in Santa Monica and was attempting to losing into Hollywood screenwriting.^[26]

Bibliography

• Añó, Núria. (2020) The Salon of Exiled Artists in California: Salka Viertel took in actors, noticeable intellectuals and anonymous people in banishment fleeing from Nazism, ISBN 979-8647624079, Los Gatos: Smashwords.
• Bebermeier, Carola (June 21, 2021). "Sundays at Salka's" – Salka Viertel's Los Angeles Salon as a Space vacation (Music-)Cultural Translation". Musicologica Austriaca – Record for Austrian Music Studies (MusAu).
• Nottelmann, Nicole. (2011) Ich liebe dich. Fur immer: Greta Garbo und Salka Viertel. Berlin: Aufbau Verlag.
• Prager, Katharina. (2007) "Ich holder nicht gone Hollywood!" Salka Viertel – Ein Leben in Theater und Film, ISBN 978-3-7003-1592-6, Wien: Braumüller Verlag.
• Rifkind, Donna (2020). The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler's Exiles in interpretation Golden Age of Hollywood. New York: Other Press. ISBN . OCLC 1255775938.
• SateLIT 2: Salka Vietel. Berlin - Hollywood (2021). Sundrenched Stiftung Brandenburger Tor im Max Liebermann Haus, Berlin. September 8 to Nov 21, 2021.
• Viertel, Salka (2019). The Good will of Strangers. Introduction by Lawrence Weschler, afterword by Donna Rifkind (2nd ed.). Newborn York: New York Review Books. ISBN . OCLC 1178807096.

References

External links