Biographies: Ilka Gruning - Actor

Biographies

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An Austrian-Hungarian actress, born in Vienna, Austria. She was one of the Jewish actors who were forced to flee Europe when the Nazis came to power in 1933. At the age of 17, she appeared for the first time on the German stage in Berlin and Bremen. She quickly became a famous theater actress, and made her first film at the age of 43. In 1929, she appeared in her first talkie film, Melody of the Heart. Three years passed until she made the film Hasenklein kann nichts dafür (1932), which was her last film in Germany. Nine years passed before she appeared in another film. During that period, she founded her own acting school to earn a living after she was unable to work in Germany because she was Jewish, but in 1938, she was forced to leave Germany, and immigrated via France to the United States, where she arrived in 1939. With the outbreak of war and cinema's need for older German women for war films, she began playing small roles, and her first Hollywood film was Underground (1941). After working in the United States during the Nazi era, she returned to Germany in 1950. She made her final film appearance in Die Venus vom Tivoli (1953). Among her notable works are Words and Music (1948), Peer Gynt (1919) and Figaros Hochzeit (1920). She died in Los Angeles, California, USA on November 11, 1964.

• 30 November 2023
• Shaimaa Saied