A Lingering Look at Lillian Harvey

Lilian Harvey (Helene Lilian Muriel Pape,1906-1968) was in many ways the perfect international star — until the disease of nationalism arrived to divide the world. (If her name sounds vaguely familiar and you haven’t seen her films, you may have encountered the reference to her in Quentin Tarantino’sInglourious Basterds.)

Born in London to a German father and a British mother, Harvey spent her first 8 years in the U.K. The family moved to Berlin on the eve of the First World War. Lilian was sent to a Swiss boarding school. There, she was given formal training in voice and dance, and learned to speak French as well as she spoke English and German. By age 18 she was in Vienna appearing in stage revues, and this was how she was discovered by the movies. Her screen career began a century ago at this writing (1925), with The Curse, a Jazz Age story about a Jewish girl who goes a bit wild, prompting her mother’s suicide. Then came a series of light hearted comedies by German producer-director Richard Eichberg, which proved to be international hits. Chaste Suzanne (1926) was the first of 14 films to pair her opposite the equally popular star Willy Fritsch.

In the early ’30s, her workload essentially tripled. Her trilingual abilities allowed her to maintain her international stardom into the talkie era, though it meant making German, French, and English versions of her films. Conrad Veidt was a co-star in some of these pictures. She acted opposite Laurence Olivier (in his first film role) in The Temporary Widow (1930), and opposite Charles Boyer in The Only Girl (1933), the British version of The Empress and I.Quick (1932), directed by Robert Siodmak, was one of the last of her Weimar Era films.

Success on the Continent led to a Hollywood contract at Fox, and so Harvey tried her luck in America. Her four films here were My Weakness (1933) with Lew Ayres and Charles Butterworth, My Lips Betray (1933) with John Boles and El Brendel, I Am Suzanne (1933) with Gene Raymond and Leslie Banks, and the musical Let’s Live Tonight (1935). In 1934, she was also part of the all-star cast of the movie George White’s Scandals, but she dropped out and was replaced by Alice Faye. Harvey soured on her American experiment after only a short time. Accustomed to being one of the biggest stars of Europe, she felt like a small fish in a very big pond in Hollywood. Not only wasn’t she competing with all of the mahor homegrown stars like Carole Lombard, Jean Harlow, Joan Crawford, Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert etc, but also fellow foreign imports like Greta Garbo, Marlene Dietrich, Lili Damita, and Lyda Roberti. And none of her handful of American pictures set the world on fire. She retreated to London to star in Invitation to the Waltz (1935), and then came back to Berlin.

The Berlin of 1935 was not the free-spirited Weimar Era one she had left. By now, the country was fully in the grip of the Nazis. Not of their ilk herself, she was distressed to find herself used as a puppet in propaganda by Goebbels‘ Ministry of Information, her brand of light comedies and historical dramas being the sanctioned form of entertainment at the time. She resumed her professional and personal relationship with director Paul Martin and they made several more films together.

The honeymoon was short-lived. In 1937, Harvey began to run afoul of authorities when she posted bailed for choreographer Jens Keith, who had been jailed for homosexuality, and he proceeded to flee to Paris. In 1938, she broke up with Martin, who then directed her in her last German film, Woman at the Wheel (1939), a satire about a female breadwinner.

Harvey left Germany in spring 1939 (which is significant, I think: the Germans didn’t invade Poland until September). She moved to France and made two more movies in Paris in 1940, Serenade and Miquette. When the Germans conquered France, Harvey fled to Spain, then, South America, the back to Hollywood, where she discovered that she was uncastable, being perceived as a Nazi collaborator. Ironic, given the fact that she had helped friends escape from Germany, and slipped away herself prior to the war. It had to do with her image, and how it had been employed. She was mentally lumped in with the likes of Leni Riefenstahl and the Mitford Sisters. For the duration of the war, she toured with a production of Noel Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and worked as a volunteer nurse

In 1947, Harvey returned to Paris to star in the revue Paris Qui S’Amuse, a major hit. Throughout the postwar period she toured as a singer, especially in the Nordic Countries. In 1949 she made a triumphant return to West Germany with a series of shows. In 1953 she married her manager, a Danish national, although they separated after a year, and divorced after four.

Harvey retired to the French Riviera, and remained active by operating a hotel, souvenir shop, and escargot farm! The companion of her later years was Else “Pitty” Wirth (Else Olga Weinreich, 1907-2007). Wirth was what we now call a trans person. Biologically female, he dressed male, desired women, and liked to be called “Peter”. The nature of their relationship seems ambiguous. The degree to which it was sexual is not known, but Wirth has been accused of having had a Svengali like influence over the fading Harvey as she began to fade into worsening alcohol abuse. Harvey eventually died from liver failure, and Wirth continued to live on her assets until her own death nearly 20 years later.

For more on show biz history,consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, for more on silent and early film please check out my book: Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Nickelodeons to Youtube.