Lída Baarová

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Lída Baarová

Lída Baarová (September 7, 1914 – October 27, 2000) was a Czech actress.

1 Biography
2 Filmography
3 References
4 See also
5 External link

[edit] Biography

Born Ludmila Babková, she studied acting at Prague Conservatory and got her first movie role in a Czech film at the age of 17. Her mother appeared in several theater plays and her younger sister, Zorka Janů, was also a movie actress. Lida Baarova's first love affair was with the film director Karel Lamač. People who used to know her reminisce that she was the most beautiful woman they have ever seen. The foremost Czech movie director, Otakar Vávra said that her beauty likely infatuated every man she met. After being discovered by talent scouts for the German movie studios, Lídá Baarova left Prague for Berlin.

[edit] The road to fame

In Berlin she met Gustav Fröhlich, an actor in the German cinema, and starred in several films with him. In 1935, following her successful appearance in the German film Barcarole, she received several job offers from the Hollywood studios. She turned them down, but later regretted it and told her biographer, Josef Škvorecký:

Baarova and Frohlich cheerfully speak with Goebbels during a party in 1936.

I could have been as famous as Marlene Dietrich.

After her engagement to Gustav Fröhlich, she and her fiancé moved to the Schwanenwerder peninsula on the outskirts of Berlin, where their house on the (later named) Karl-Marx-Straße 8 was close to the residence of Joseph Goebbels on Inselstraße 8. Joseph Goebbels was a minister in Chancellor Hitler's administration, with a decisive voice in German movie production. Lída Baarová met Joseph Goebbels while working for Ufa films. They started a passionate love affair which lasted for over a year and caused her breakup with Gustav Fröhlich.

After Goebbels' wife Magda, learned about this affair, she complained to Adolf Hitler. Hitler, who himself was not immune to Baarová's beauty, was the godfather of Goebbels' children, and sympathetic towards Magda; he asked Goebbels to end the affair. Goebbels offered his resignation instead. He wanted to divorce his wife, marry Lída Baarová, and leave Germany with his Liduška, (Czech diminutive of Lída, connoting love), as he affectionatedly called her, for Japan. However, Hitler did not accept his resignation. On October 15, 1938, Joseph Goebbels attempted suicide.

Shortly afterwards, Lída Baarová received a call from the German police that she was a persona non grata and was given consilium abeundi to leave Germany. She went to Prague and, in 1941, to Italy, where she starred in such movies as Grazia (1943), La Fornarina (1944), Vivere ancora (1945), and others. After American troops occupied Italy, she returned to Prague, where she dated her old friend Hans Albers, another of Germany's movie idols. In April of 1945, Lída Baarová left Prague for Germany, to join Albers in his country house on the shores of Lake Starnberg. On the way, she was taken into custody by the American military police, imprisoned in Munich, and later extradited to Czechoslovakia.

[edit] The post-war years

In Czechoslovakia, Baarová faced a death sentence for her work with the Germans during the war, but she was able to prove that she worked in Germany before the war and received only a prison sentence. Thus, in a way, her love affair with Joseph Goebbels and subsequent expulsion from Germany saved her life. In prison, she was often visited by Jan Kopecký who, like many others, was infatuated with her. Kopecký was a close relative of a prominent politician in the post-war government of Czechoslovakia who arranged Lída's release from prison. Jan Kopecký and Lída Baarová were married in 1949 and formed an itinerant troupe playing marionettes before they escaped to Austria. From there, Kopecký immigrated to Argentina, leaving Lída behind to recuperate in the sanatorium of Dr. Lundwall.

In Austria, Lída attempted a comeback, but Anton Walbrook, who was persecuted during the war for his sexual orientation, withdrew from a film where he was cast with her. To escape the resulting hate media campaign, she left for Argentina, where she lived in extreme poverty. She decided to return to Italy. Her husband stayed in Argentina and they were divorced in 1956. Back in Italy, she appeared in several films, including Fellini's I Vitelloni (1953), where she played a Chinese girl. In 1958, she moved to Salzburg, where she performed in a theater. In 1970, she married Kurt Lundwall, a physician 20 years her senior. In the same year, Rainer Werner Fassbinder gave her a part in The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant.

[edit] After the fall of the Berlin wall

In the 1990s Lída Baarová reappeared on the cultural scene of the Czech Republic. She published her autobiography and a movie, Lída Baarová's Bittersweet Memories, appeared in 1995 and won an award at the 1996 Art Film Festival in Trenčianske Teplice, Slovakia.

Lída Baarová's headstone at Prague's Strašnice cemetery.

Lída Baarová suffered from Parkinson's disease and died in 2000 in Salzburg, while living alone on the estate she inherited after the death of her second husband, Dr. Lundwall. Her ashes were interred in Prague's Strašnice cemetery, where she rests with her parents and sister Zorka Janů. Shortly after her death, Bohumil Doležal (Události, November 8, 2000) commented on the incessant accusations, allegations, and media hate campaigns that were part of Lída Baarova’s life since the end of the World War II and did not cease even after her death. He wrote that

"This type of publicity is modeled on behavior of an animal pack of predators and has nothing in common with human morality".

[edit] Filmography

Sladké hořkosti Lídy Baarové (Lída Baarová's Bittersweet Memories, 1995)
The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1970)
Il Cielo brucia (The Sky Burns, 1957)
Retorno a la verdad (The Truth Will Set You Free, 1957)
El Batallón de las sombras (The Forgotten Ones, 1957)
Rapsodia de sangre (Ecstasy, 1957)
Todos somos necesarios (We All Matter, 1956)
Viaje de novios (Honeymoon, 1956)
La Mestiza (The Mestiza, 1956)
Miedo (The Fear, 1956)

Gli innocenti pagano (What Price Innocence? 1953)
Pietà per chi cade (Compassion, 1953)
I Vitelloni (The Loafers, 1953)
La vendetta di una pazza (Revenge of a Crazy Girl, 1952)
Carne inquieta (Restless, 1952)
Gli amanti di Ravello (The Lovers of Ravello, 1950)
La Bisarca (1950)

Vivere ancora (Still Alive, 1944)
L' Ippocampo (The Sea-Horse, 1944)
Il Cappello da prete (Priest's Hat, 1944)
Ti conosco, mascherina! (Masked Girl, Recognized!, 1943)
Grazia (The Charming Beauty, 1943)

Turbína (Turbine, 1941)
Paličova dcera (Arsonist's Daughter, 1941)
Za tichých nocí (In the Still of the Night, 1941)
Dívka v modrém (Girl in Blue, 1940)
Život je krásný (Life Is Beautiful, 1940)
Artur a Leontýna (Arthur and Leontine, 1940)

Ohnivé léto (Fiery Summer, 1939)
Die Geliebte (Love of my Life, 1939)
Männer müssen so sein (Men Are That Way, 1939)
Maskovaná milenka (Masked Paramour, 1939)

Liebeslegende (Love Story, 1938)
Der Spieler - Roman eines Schwindlers (Gambler's Story, 1938)

Baarova in the 1937 German film Deutschland with Mathias Wieman.

Die Fledermaus (The Bat, 1937)
Die Kronzeugin (The Chief Witness, 1937)
Panenství (Virginity, 1937)
Lidé na kře (People on the Floating Ice, 1937)
Patrioten (Patriots, 1937)
Unter Ausschluss der Öffentlichkeit (Private Show, 1937)

Komediantská princezna (Gypsy Princess, 1936)
Švadlenka (The Seamstress, 1936)
Die Stunde der Versuchung (The Hour of Temptation, 1936)
Verräter (Traitor, 1936)

Barcarole (Boatman's Song, 1935)
Leutnant Bobby, der Teufelskerl, (Lieutenant Bobby, the Daredevil, 1935)
Einer zuviel an Bord (The Fifth-Wheel, 1935)

Grandhotel Nevada, (Grand Hotel Nevada, 1934)
Dokud máš maminku (As Long as your Mother is Alive, 1934)
Zlatá Kateřina (Golden Kate, 1934)
Na růžích ustláno (Easy Life, 1934)
Pán na roztrhání (A Popular Guy, 1934)
Pokušení paní Antonie (Antonia's Temptation, 1934)

Její lékař (The Physician, 1933)
Sedmá velmoc (The Seventh Superpower, 1933)
Okénko (The Window, 1933)
Madla z cihelny (The Brickmaker's Daughter, 1933)
Jsem děvče s čertem v těle (Funky Girl, 1933)

Funebrák (The Undertaker, 1932)
Malostranští mušketýři (Prague's Musketeers, 1932)
Růžové kombiné (The Pink Slip, 1932)
Šenkýřka u divoké krásky (Waitress at the Wild Beauty's Bar, 1932)
Lelíček ve službách Sherlocka Holmese (Lelíček in Sherlock Holmes' Service, 1932)
Zapadlí vlastenci (Forgotten Patriots, 1932)

Kariéra Pavla Čamrdy (Pavel Čamrda's Career, 1931)
Obraceni Ferdyše Pištory (Conversion of Fred Pištora, 1931)

[edit] References

Lída Baarová, L. (1992). Života sladké hořkosti. Ostrava, Czech Republic: Sfinga.
Josef Frais, J. (1998). Trojhvězdí nesmrtelných. Prague, Czech Republic: Formát.
Motl, S. (2002). Prokleti Lidy Baarove. Praha: Rybka Publishers.
Škvorecký, J. (1983). Útěky: Vlastní životopis Lídy Baarové, jak jej vyprávela Josefu Škvoreckému. Toronto, Canada: Sixty-Eight Publishers.
Vávra, O. (1996). Podivný život režiséra: Obrazy vzpominek. Praha: Prostor.