Born Today September 10: Tala Birell

1907-1958

Romanian born actress Tala Birell was born Natalia Bierle to an German family living in Bucharest on this day (her mother was from a Polish aristocratic family of Galician stock). She said that she studied drama while attending a private school during the first World War. She made her stage debut in Germany sometime in the mid-1920's and her first appearance in a film came in an uncredited bit part in a Pabst film starring Werner Krauss: Don't Play With Love in 1926.  Her first actual film credit came the next year in Ich habe im Mai von der Liebe geträumt  (roughly I Dreamed of Love in May), a Franz Seitz directed picture.  This was the extent of her involvement in films of the 1920's, but her involvement with silents. She stepped away from film acting for a number years, choosing to concentrate on the stage instead. She next appears in a film in 1930 in the late Austrian silent Die Tat des Andreas Harmer (The Deed of Andreas Harmer). Her first appearance is a full sound film came in a British made German language film featuring Conrad Veidt in the the leading role The Love Storm (Menschen im Käfig). The film was directed by Eswald André Dupont and part of a pair of films, one for the German audience and the other--Cape Forlorn (also called The Love Storm)--for British distribution. It is likely that her appearance in this film that first earned her the notice of film makers in America.  If it wasn't, then her touring of the U.S. in a German language staging of the film The Boudoir Diplomat, certainly was!  She did return to make films in Germany, but also made a bit of a sub-specialty in appearing in German language versions of Hollywood films like The Doomed Battalion (1932). By 1933, she was lured to Hollywood full time due to the popularity in the States of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. Her first Hollywood production Nagana in 1933 opposite Melvyn Douglas was a lower budget African adventure film.  She appears in a fair number of films in the mid to late 1930's, the most famous of which is Bringing Up Baby in 1938.  She also continued to work on the stage while living in the United States--appearing in Broadway productions, meaning that she divided her time between Los Angeles and New York City. She remained in the U.S. during World War II, appearing in a number of films in the early 1940's with a decidedly anti-Nazi bent; yet she clearly was becoming home-sick. In late 1948-early 1949 she moved back to Germany, desiring to help with the reconstruction effort. Settling first in Munich and then, in 1951, back to Berlin. Her last American film production was Women in the Night, though Homicide for Three was released later, in 1948. I first encountered her acting when I was kid watching Friday night/Saturday afternoon re-runs of old horror films; she appears in 1944's b-grade The Monster Maker.  Diagnosed with cancer in her late 40's, she succumbed to the disease in Landstuhl on the 17th of February. She was only 50 years of age. She was laid to rest in a family tomb located the cemetery of Marquartstein, which is located in Bavaria.

 

[Source: Bauer Ute (Find A Grave)]

 

[Source: Bauer Ute (Find A Grave)]

 

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