Lilian Harvey

In 1933, the last year of the Weimar Republic—the year “before the deluge”, as it has been called, Lilian Harvey was the most popular film star in Germany. Yes, she was even more popular than Marlene Dietrich and Greta Garbo.
Lilian Harvey was born as Lilian Helen Muriel Pape in North London, England in 1906 to an English mother and German father. Her family moved back to Berlin in 1914, but sent Lilian to live with an aunt in Switzerland when the First World War broke out. Afterwards, she attended ballet school at the Staatsoper Berlin and by the early 1920’s was touring throughout Europe.
Her first film was “Der Fluch” in 1925, and within a year she was taking leading roles. The next year, she first teamed up with Willi Fritsch in “Die Keusche Susanne”; the two were a very popular pair and worked together often. In 1932, she signed a contract with 20TH Century Fox to try to capture the American film world. Altough she made a few films in America, she was not able to recreate her successes in Germany, and she returned home in 1935.
During the Nazi-time, she helped several of those persecuted by the regime to emmigrate, and for her trouble ended up interogated by the Gestapo. She emigrated herself to France in 1939, and eventually to the United States as the Second World War broke out and engulfed France. She spent the war years working as a Red Cross nurse in California.
She returned to Europe after the war in 1946, but was not able to reignite her film career. Lilian Harvey was married only once in 1953 (and briefly –for only four years) to Valeur Larsen, a Danish theater director. She took many small stage roles before finally retiring to the Riviera. She died there in France in 1968.