Franziska Gaal

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Franciska Gaál, 1930

Franziska Gaal , also Franciska Gaál (born February 1, 1903 in Budapest as Szidónia Silberspitz , † August 13, 1972 in New York City , New York ), was a Jewish Hungarian actress .

Live and act

Franciska Silberspitz was the thirteenth child in a Jewish family. She attended the Budapest Theater Academy and made a name for herself as a singer, dancer and actress after the First World War . At the age of 20 she was allowed to play "Orska" in a one-act play by Ferenc Molnár at a Budapest theater. Her stage name Gaal was the name of one of her acting teachers. From then on she played theater and sang in several operettas. Ferenc Molnár, among others, wrote plays tailored to her. In 1927 she first appeared on Broadway in New York.

Her friend and later partner, UFA producer Joe Pasternak , brought the spirited actress to Berlin to film in 1932. In mixed-up comedies like Paprika and Greeting and Kiss - Veronika , Franziska Gaal, as the leading actress and partner of Paul Hörbiger , immediately became a singing film star. So she made several records, including the title of her film duet with Paul Hörbiger The Little Girls with the Faithful Eye .

After Hitler came to power , she was only able to participate in Austrian and Hungarian productions, several times under the direction of Hermann Kosterlitz and alongside other emigrants. During this phase she married the Budapest lawyer Franz Dajkovich.

At the invitation of Cecil B. DeMille , she emigrated to Hollywood in 1937 and took on a leading role in the film The buccaneer (1938) . After two more film roles, she returned to Hungary in 1941 because of her mother's illness. While many of her relatives fell victim to the Holocaust , she survived in her hiding place in a bombed villa on Lake Balaton .

Immediately after the war she was invited by the Soviets to travel to the USSR . In a private letter she criticized the conditions she found in Moscow. Perhaps this was the reason why she later left Hungary.

As early as 1946 she got the lead role in the Hungarian film The King is on strike alongside Theo Lingen and Hans Moser , but the film could not be completed in the post-war confusion. On May 23, 1947, she arrived again in the United States, lived in New York and occasionally acted in the theater. Later she apparently worked as an acting teacher at Erwin Piscator's theater school.

Her husband died in October 1965. Gaal later fell ill and was partially paralyzed. Her remains are interred in the Woodside Columbarium in Queens .

Filmography

Music track

  • Oh how often love comes unexpectedly . Foxtrot from the sound film: Paprika (Wachsmann-Schwabach) Franziska Gáal with vocal quartet and orchestra accompaniment. HMV AE 4319 / Electrola EG2666 (mx. OD 1251-II) end of 1932
  • Greetings and kiss Veronika . Foxtrot from the same sound film (Wachsmann-Schwabach) Franziska Gáal with the ODEON dance orchestra. Odeon A 251.409 (mx. Be 10 271)
  • The little girls with the faithful look . Slow-Fox ad sound film Greetings and Kiss Veronika (Wachsmann-Schwabach) Franziska Gáal with ODEON dance orchestra. Odeon A 254.117 (mx. Be 10 270) 1933
  • and duet version with Hörbiger.
  • Little adorable woman . Song from the sound film Früchtchen / Csibi, der Fratz (Nikolaus Brodszky-Ernst Schott) Franziska Gáal with orchestra, dir. Nikolaus Brodszky. HMV BA 412 (mx. OWX 642)
  • A baby cannot bear so many questions . Song from the sound film Früchtchen / Csibi, der Fratz (Nikolaus Brodszky-Ernst Schott) Franziska Gáal with orchestra, dir. Nikolaus Brodszky. HMV BA 412 (mx. OWX 643) 1933/1934

Web links

Commons : Franciska Gaál  - collection of images

Individual evidence

  1. Kay Less : "In life, more is taken from you than given ...". Lexicon of filmmakers who emigrated from Germany and Austria between 1933 and 1945. A general overview. ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-86282-049-8 , p. 177, (verified by US original documents. Hungarian sources cite 1904).
  2. Kay Less and Filmportal name August 13, 1972 as the date of death, IMDb on the other hand January 2, 1973