Wera Engels

Birthday: May 12th, 1909 Date of Death: November 16th, 1988 Place of Birth: Kiel - Germany

From Wikipedia

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.

She died on November 16, 1988 (age 79) in Munich, Germany.