Engels Wera

Wera Engels est une actrice allemande née le 12 mai 1904 (Kiel, Empire Germanique) et décédée le 16 novembre 1988 (Denklingen, Allemagne). Wera Engels was a daughter of a German Admiral and Governor of the then German colony Tsing-tau-China.

After successful leading roles in productions of the well-established German UFA-studios in Babelsberg as well as in France, Engels was invited to Hollywood. Producers saw her as a cheap alternative to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. She was contracted with RKO. Engels was given roles under Walter Futter and M.H. Hoffman. She and the silent movie super star Mary Pickford became best friends. By 1935 she returned to Germany, but left soon thereafter, because of the decline of the German movie industry caused by the Nazi propaganda machine.

Back in Hollywood, she dated Gary Cooper for a while but married the Lithuanian-born actor/writer Ivan Lebedeff. After Lebedeff's death in 1953 of Angina pectoris, she moved back to Europe, where she stayed with several friends in London and Stockholm before she went back to Germany. She lived the rest of her life with Erna Hoffmann (widow of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's friend and personal photographer) in the Munich area.

Filmographie

• 1926 White Slave Traffic
• 1927 Lützow's Wild Hunt
• 1927 Du hast geliebt am schoenen Rhein?
• 1928 Das Spreewaldmädel
• 1928 Befehl zur Ehe
• 1929 The Streets of London
• 1930 L'anglais tel qu'on le parle
• 1930 Der Greifer
• 1931 Le parfum de la dame en noir
• 1931 Kinder des Glücks
• 1932 Der Hexer
• 1932 Lumpenkavaliere
• 1933 The Great Jasper
• 1934 Fugitive Road
• 1935 Sweepstake Annie
• 1935 Together We Live
• 1935 The Great Impersonation
• 1935 Hong Kong Nights
• 1936 Wolga-Wolga
• 1937 Man spricht über Jacqueline