Marion Michael

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Marion Michael (born October 17, 1940 in Königsberg , † October 13, 2007 in Gartz (Oder) ; actually Marion Ilonka Michaela Delonge ) was a German stage and film actress .

Life

Film star from 1956 to 1963

Marion Michael fled with her mother and brother during the Second World War from East Prussia to the island of Hiddensee , later moved to Berlin and completed secondary school there . In 1955, at the age of 15, after a newspaper announcement - allegedly with 12,000 other applicants - she applied to the Berlin Arca film production for the lead role in the film Liane, the girl from the jungle and received the role that she had in 1956 from producer Gero Wecker (Premiere: October 4th) at the side of Hardy Krüger suddenly made famous. Her fee for this performance was 1,300 DM. The film, in which she plays a girl raised by "savages" in Africa who is brought back to civilization, was not least because of her scanty clothing (" topless " and loincloth ) and the The involuntary advertising of the Catholic Church, which denounced this “moral decline”, was a great success. Michael was considered the first youthful “nude star” and the first “screen nudist” in post-war Germany. Hardy Krüger, who acted alongside Marion Michaels, later described the film as the "worst film I have ever made" . However, this did not detract from the young actress’s beginning career. Gero Wecker signed a contract with her in which she undertook to work only for him for seven years. However, this did not apply to television productions and theater appearances.

After she had meanwhile also started to take acting lessons, she played her second big role at the side of Hans Albers and Harald Juhnke in The Great Bomberg (1957). In the same year, a sequel to the Liane film followed under the title Liane, the white slave , in 1958 she played alongside Christian Wolff in It was the first love . In 1958/59 Marion Michael was at the height of her popularity, the press sometimes referred to her as "the German Brigitte Bardot ". While filming the crime film Bombs on Monte Carlo with Eddie Constantine and Victor de Kowa , she was seriously injured in a car accident in Southern Provence in the summer of 1959 and a scar remained on her face. The press announced the end of her career. After recovering from the accident injuries, she entered into a liaison with Gero Wecker, which she soon ended. She married a sports student, the marriage failed after three years.

From 1960 onwards, Marion Michael was engaged at the Cologne City Theaters, in 1962 and 1963 she took part in several television productions. She used alarm clock in a few films, most recently in Jack and Jenny (shot in 1962, premiered in 1963), where she acted alongside Senta Berger and Ivan Desny .

1963 to 1979

After the seven-year contract with Gero Wecker (1963) expired, there were no film offers, Marion Michael now shifted to stage roles. She quit her engagement in Cologne in 1963 because she was not offered any major roles. However, until 1975 she gave regular guest appearances in Hamburg, Munich and Berlin and was on stage in renowned theaters such as the Thalia Theater , the Theater am Kurfürstendamm and the Renaissance Theater . In 1970 she founded a commune- like experimental theater in Berlin-Kreuzberg , which she gave up after about a year. Also in 1970 she became the mother of a son from a short relationship with an American who was a director at the AFN soldier broadcaster .

In the 1970s, Michael attempted a comeback with several television films. After a brief activity as a presenter on the children's program Emm wie Meikel (1975), which was broadcast in the first program and which she had to give up after the fifth episode because of excessive stage fright , she resigned from the public business. She fell ill with severe depression and attempted suicide in 1975 . In 1976 she looked for a new professional field and learned the trade of retail saleswoman . In 1978 she met Marcel Werner (1952–1986, died by suicide due to chronic alcoholism ), the son of Elfriede Rückert and Hanns Lothar , later adopted by Carlos Werner . The relationship failed after a year.

Relocation to the GDR

In 1979 Marion Michael moved to the GDR with her son because she was convinced that the people there lived more harmoniously than in the West. For the next twelve years she worked as a dubbing assistant for East German television in East Berlin. In 1983 she married her second husband, a department head in the GDR Ministry of Glass and Ceramics. In 1987, her then 17-year-old son fled to the Federal Republic of Germany via Hungary. He didn't see his mother again until the night the Berlin Wall came down on November 9, 1989.

In the mid-1990s, Michael went in front of the camera again. Under the director Lothar Lambert she appeared in the film In Haßliebe, Lola (1995) and in 1997 she took on a small role again in Lambert's Blonde to the Blood. In 1996, based on a script by Horst Königstein and Frank Gaede, with the participation of Marion Michael, the musical Liane was created as a television production , which - fabulously exaggerated - has stations in her life as its theme. It was nominated for the Grimme Prize and the Prix ​​Europa in 1997. In 1996 the NDR produced a television documentary about her life under the title Das Mädchen Liane .

Marion Michael last lived with her husband in a farmhouse in the Uckermark near the Polish border. She died of heart failure a few days before her 67th birthday.

Movies

Television productions

  • 1961: my best friend
  • 1962: Patsy
  • 1963: the parasite
  • 1965: With family connection (2 parts, based on the novel of the same name by Willy Grüb )
  • 1971: Teresa
  • 1975: Emm wie Meikel (children's series, 5 episodes)
  • 1977: broken doll
  • 1994: In love-hate Lola
  • 1996: Liane (Music: Paul Vincent Gunia )
  • 1996: The girl Liane (documentary by Torsten Schulz )
  • 2005: film legends. German (interview)

literature

  • Star Gallery, No. 12: Marion Michael . Dreipfeil-Verlag, Munich 1960.
  • Brigitte Tast / Hans Jürgen Tast: Marion Michael. A photo story . Lory, Düsseldorf 1981, ISBN 3-922258-11-5 .

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Michael, Marion
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Delonge, Marion Ilonka Michaela (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German stage and film actress
DATE OF BIRTH October 17, 1940
PLACE OF BIRTH Koenigsberg
DATE OF DEATH October 13, 2007
Place of death Gartz (Or)