Born Today January 27: Karel Lamac

1897-1952

Prague born actor and director Karel Lamac (sometime credited as "Carl") was born on this day in what was then the Austro-Hungarian empire in the cosmopolitan city of Prague. His mother was a well known opera singer, and his father was a successful pharmacist. As a child he had interests in both pharmacology and stage work. His first foray into the work of camera operations came as an apprentice to a German camera manufacturing company in Dresden; it would not only mark his beginnings as a photographer, but also his long association with Germany as a country. His work at the company came to close with the outbreak of World War I, during which he became an in-field combat photographer. After the war, he made his first steps toward becoming the well known director he is today remembered for; he went to work at a film laboratory as a technical director. He made his debut in films in the year 1919, his debut as director (in which he was also an actor) in the Czech language Akord smrti (August 1919) would have been his first professional film credit, if he had not first acted in the comedy Aloisuv los, which was released in February of 1919. He would act in five films before taking up the director's chair again in 1920. One of those films was the Joe Jencik film Palimpsest (1919) which had Lamac (credited as "Carl") acting opposite Anny Ondra--a fateful pairing, as he would go on to have both a personal and deep professional relationship with, becoming both her life partner, and her business partner for several years. His next turn in the directing chair was also his first solo outing as a director (a film that also saw his first screenplay produced); Gilly poprvé v Praze (1920) was comedy also starring Lamac and Ondra with Václav Prazsky as the only other cast member. In between this and his next directing job, he and Ondra appeared in several films together, including the Jan S. Kolár fantasy horror picture The Arrival from the Darkness (October 1921) based on novel by Czech language fantasy writer Karel Hloucha. Lamac was added to the direction of Kolár next film, the science fiction crime drama about an illusionist Otrávené svetlo in 1921, which he and Kolár also wrote. By the mid-1920's he was adept at directing himself and Ondra in a variety of different styles and genres, and had even written a book on how to write a good screenplay--which he called film librettos (love that!)--in 1923. An excellent example of his work during this time occupying actor/writer/director is Bíly ráj (White Paradise), which sported some scenes that were carefully tinted. 

 

In White Paradise with Anny Ondra and Czech actress Sasa Dobrovolná as the mother.

 Lamac was equally at home (and probably more talented at) directing comedies and goodly portion of his films from the 1920's in Czechoslovakia were indeed comedy productions. They ranged from farces written directly by Lamac, to screen adaptations of successful plays. Also during this time, screenwriter Václav Wasserman became a writing partner. In 1926 he was the co-founder of a physical film studio in Kavalírka, where he made films until it was unfortunately destroyed by fire in 1929.  During this time, the studio housed his personal production company that simply used his name as the company logo. Starting in 1928, he and Ondra also began making joint productions between Germany and Czechoslovakia, with Evas Töchter (April 1928) being the first. His very next film, Der erste Kuß (September 1928) was a fully German affair.   Also in 1928, the pair had a run away success with Suzy Saxophone, an intensely physical comedy that was filmed very much like a musical without the actual singing; made all the more so with art direction by Carl Ludwig Kirmse (the film was remade twice by the pair in 1932/1933--one version in German, and the other in French).  His last film of the 1920's was the fully silent German production The Virgin of Paris (Die Kaviarprinzessin), released in December of 1929.  His first film in the decade, was also his first full sound film:  Das Mädel aus U.S.A. another comedy and the last film that Lamac made before founding another familial production company. In early 1930, he and Ondra founded the company Ondra-Lamac-Film, releasing Fair People in August of that year.  The two would only remain a together for as a couple for a few years after this. Though, the pair did continue to work together, and their production company remained in existence as well. His first film after their split was, I believe, his very first full sound Czech film Dobry tramp Bernásek in late 1933, starring...Karel Lamac.  Ondra would go on to marry famed German boxer Max Schmeling...this is how Ondra, and by association Lamac, came to be associated with the Nazi cinema.  The overtures made by the Nazi regime to the newly married couple are famous, many of the breath taking number of films Lamac made during the 1930's were in Germany or Austria and have become associated with the rising Nazi threat to the rest of Europe. But he also continued to make films in his native Czechoslovakia during this time; and, increasingly in France as well.  Lamac, though, had to flee his home land for The Netherlands when the Nazi's occupied Czechoslovakia and he made one film there (I love train films and it sports one of my favorite film posters!): De spooktrein (September 1939) [The horror genre was not new for him, he was well known for making an expressionistic version of The Hound of the Baskervilles in 1937.] He then went to the U.K. where in wound up in the RAF from 1941 until 1946 and served, in part, by making war documentaries. He also made commerical films in Britain, the first of which was It Started at Midnight in 1943. He next directed James Mason in the mystery thriller They Met in the Dark (1943). After his discharge from the RAF, he left for post-war France, where he made Rita in 1947. Between 1948 and 1952, he spent time in the United States specifically studying innovations in color filmming and learning how to shoot with new color films, but he never made a film during his tenure in the States.  He returned to the German speaking world, specifically to what was then West Germany, to make The Thief of Bagdad in 1952; all indications were that he wished the film to be a color extravaganza, but it wound up in black and white, most likely due to the state of the film industry there at the time. His last completed film, The Comedian, was released in November of 1953 in West Germany, posthumously. Lamac had died from cardiac arrest brought on by some sort of long lasting kidney ailment on the 2nd of August of 1952 in Hamburg. He was just 55. He is buried at the Ohlsdorfer Friedhof there. Six years after his death, some of his short film material was included as a segment in Unsterblicher Valentin (1958).  Lamac never did get the chance to make that post-war color film he was working on.

 

 

IMDb

 

Wikipedia 

 

Find A Grave entry

Born Today May 15: Anny Ondra

1903-1987

Born Anny Sophie Ondrákóva in Tarnów, Galicia--then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, now part of Poland; her father was Czech by ancestry and was an officer in the Austro-Hungarian military.  She grew up in Prague.  She got into stage acting as a teenager, and my the age of 16 she had made her first film Palimpsest, which is sadly a lost film.  There is a great deal of confusion over this lost drama.  For starters, many sources say that she was 17 instead 16 when she secretly agreed to star in this Czechoslovakian film.  Additionally, there is confusion as to who directed it, some sources cite her boyfriend at the time Karel (sometimes credited as Carl) Lamac, he is sometimes credited as an actor in the film; other sources cite Joe Jencík, but this is unlikely because it was Lamac that was the director by profession and Jencík was the actor.  In fact, this is the ONLY director credit for Jencík, which is suspicious. To make things more confusing, Lamac's name when applied to the film is often listed as Karell Lamatch.  Whatever the truth, when Anny's father found about her appearance in the film, he gave her a beating.  As she was billed under her real name, her family was intensely embarrassed by it.  As a military man, her father was outraged that his daughter would stoop to the profession of acting, which in that part of the world after World War I, acting was seen are barely above begging--almost on par with prostitution.  This in no way discouraged her!  Though her father had secured other plans for her after her graduation from convent school (he had managed to save her a position in the government), she instead left home and moved in with Lamac.  She promptly appeared in another film the following year, Dáma a malou nozkou, again under her birth name.  In fact, throughout most of the 1920's, the bulk of her silent career, she went by this name.  Her career at this point was off and running in what was then Czechoslovakia, (she, for example, made 4 films in 1920 alone).  The first film that can be confirmed that she is credited with her last name shortened came in the Czech language film, Chorus Girls in 1928.  Her first English language film also came in 1928 with Eileen of the Trees in the UK; it was also her first sound film, with the whole film in early mono.  She pretty much stayed in the UK from this point on for the rest of silent career.  In 1929 she was in her first Alfred Hitchcock film, The Manxman--it was his last silent film.  That same year, she starred in Hitchcock's first sound film Blackmail. The last silent film that she made was with her director beau, turned lifelong friend, in 1930 in Germany:  The Virgin of Paris.  She would go to marry a famous German boxer and lived the rest of her life in Germany (after WWII West Germany).  During the war, however, the German Fascists tried to exploit the couple to their ends, with the overtures always rebuffed by the couple.  In fact, they helped hide two Jewish children, saving their lives--a capital offense under the Nazi regime.  Unfortunately because of these public overtures to the couple during the war, after the war they were wrongly accused by the post war government of Nazi collaboration and fined to the point of poverty.  They managed to start their own business on family land, she had effectively retired from during the war, so she was committed to the family business from then on.  After the war, she made one more film in 1951 in One Must Be Handsome, then she retired for good.  She died on 28 February 1987 at the age of 84 from a stroke.  She is buried in the Saint Andreas Friedhof Cemetery in Hollenstedt, Germany.  

IMDb

Wikipedia

Leave Virtual Birthday Flowers @ Find A Grave