Truus van Aalten

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- LITTLE DUTCH GIRL - Geertrguida Everdina Wilhelmina van Aalten (B) was born on August 2nd 1910 in Arnhem, Holland, the daughter of Louis van Aalten (X), a high-street chemist (B). She had a brother, Wolfe-William, who was eleven years her elder (X). Named after her Dad’s mother (Z), the good-humoured, chubby little (W) girl was nicknamed Truus.

After school she found a job with a milliner, then trained as a salesgirl at the very stylish Peek & Cloppenburg fashion store in Amsterdam (B), but what everyone knew about Truus was that she was movie crazy, and always had been. Pocket money, birthday cash, then her tiny salary were all hoarded and spent in the local cinemas. The darkened auditorium, the gliding apart of the velvet curtains as the orchestra started to play, the first shock of light as the projector started up - these were the most exciting things in the world to her (W). Most of all she wished that she could be a movie actress (W) - to glide through the black and white world like Asta Nielsen, Lois Wilson and Mary Pickford; to meet Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks... but how? Very few films were made in the Netherlands at the time - the Dutch movie industry had blossomed briefly during the First World War, when their Hollandia studios had made several popular features (M), but now Germany and Italy were the main European film producers.

Then came the day in 1926 when an advertisement in a Dutch newspaper changed her life forever. It was for a competition, and if she won, she’d have to - somehow - get to Berlin (W).

Germany was Europe’s rival to Hollywood, releasing nearly six hundred movies every year (E). By 1926, Universum Film A.G. (Ufa), was the main German film studio. Based at Neubabelsburg in Berlin, Ufa had produced gigantic films like Fritz Lang’s “Die Niebelungen” in 1923 and “Metropolis” (seventeen months in the shooting and still in the final stages of production) (D). Budgets had tightened perceptibly - Ufa had nearly gone bust anyway in 1925 (E) - and everyone at the studio knew that “Metropolis” would have to be a huge hit to prevent its 5,000,000 Mark budget sinking the company. In this atmosphere, experienced director Ragnar Hyltén-Cavallius was planning a much smaller film, “Die Sieben Töchter Der Frau Gyurkovics” (“Mrs Gyurkovics’ Seven Daughters”), based on Hungarian writer Ferenc Herczeg’s popular 1893 novel “The Gyurkovics Girls”. Ufa had came up with a plan to raise some publicity, and had launched an international competition to find a young actress to play the part of Lilly, one of the daughters.

Truus, her 16-year-old heart pounding, sealed up the envelope with her photograph in it, just as required by the ad, and posted it to Berlin. Weeks passed, then a telegram arrived which threw the van Aalten household into chaos - Ufa wanted to see Truus for a final audition. She, her father (?) and her big doll Juliana (in an old suitcase) arrived in Berlin and made their way to the audition. There they found that Truus was just one of two hundred girls, all desperate to be in the film - taller girls, thinner girls, frauleins fluent in German... Lugging her suitcase, leather bag and country-girl umbrella across the floor, Truus presented her telegram as proof that she belonged there, and, terrified, sat down to wait (W). She’d never had an acting lesson in her life, and was certain she’d be sent home at once (A,B). One after the other, the girls were asked to stand in front of a camera, to see how they looked on film. They were all older than Truus, and she could see she hadn’t a hope (W). When director Hyltén-Cavallius watched the tests, one girl stood out - where everyone else had gazed into the lens with expressions of the deepest sincerity, this one hadn’t been able to repress a cheeky grin. What, he asked was her name? Wasn’t she the Dutch girl, the one with the umbrella? She was funny, it shone through, and she got the job (W).

Shortly after that, rehearsals started, and Truus was introduced to the Ufa film studio. Like its counterparts in California, Rome and New York, Ufa was a factory - scripts were being written, scenes were being shot in big, barn-like studios, editors assembled printed footage in cuttingrooms. There were plasterers’ workshops, carpentry shops, prop stores, hair and wardrobe departments, and publicity offices planning the release of completed movies (Ufa ran 3,000 cinemas, admitting nearly a million people a day (E)). Truus met the other members of the cast - her six “sisters” (including Betty Balfour, all the way from England) and handsome lead Willy Fritsch as Count Horkay (K). Fritsch was very well-known and terribly handsome, and Truus fell in love with him on the spot (W). Truus’ suitcase caused some curiosity - she never seemed to go anywhere without it. The answer came when the film crew managed to get her to open it - a few toiletries, some clothes - and Juliana, who was handed around amidst gales of laughter. To her embarrassment, the director was watching too, with great amusement. “You have some talent,” he told her reassuringly. “We shall see if we can do something with it!” (W).

Truus had to quickly get used to being made up and going through wardrobe, then finding her place on the sets. She watched cameraman Carl Hoffman (who had lit big hits like “Dr Mabuse Der Spieler” and “Die Niebelungen”) and all the grips, riggers, plasterers, cable bashers, and set dressers bustling about their jobs. She learned that acting didn’t just mean showing emotions and moving about, but demanded that she concentrate on staying within chalk marks on the floor so as not to stray outside the range of the lights or the camera’s focus. Despite it all (and perhaps because of one particular scene in which Willy Fritsch kissed her), Truus loved the work (W).

Ufa bigwigs made a decision. The little Dutch girl’s German was wobbly at best, but she was sparkly and funny and the camera liked her. If her father would sign a six-month contract, Ufa would train Truus and put her in some more films. Her future would depend on hard work and luck. Truus and her Dad talked it over. Being an actress wasn’t a secure job - it wasn’t even a well-respected job - but it was all she’d ever wanted to do. The contract was signed and Truus moved to Berlin.

At Ufa Truus was introduced to a major figure in her life, highly-respected actress Olga Tschechowa, who became her unofficial mentor and mother-figure in movieland. Olga was a fascinating woman, born in exotic Transcaucasia, part of the Russian Empire. Her claim to be related to Anton Chekhov was true, but she also loved to spin the most amazing yarns about her early life: she was close to Tsar Nicholas II, had met Rasputin and had fled the Revolution disguised as a mute peasant woman, hiding her jewellery in her mouth. She’d been acting since 1917, and had become on of Germany’s most popular stars (K). Truus adored Olga, later citing her as a major influence both personally and professionally. Nicknaming her “Trulala”, Olga taught her the disciplines of movie work and encouraged her to be more serious in her approach to it. She also badgered the still-chubby girl to lose some of her 106lb. “Have you done any exercises yet today, Trulala?” she would cry. “Which ones? For how long? Go get a copy of ‘Eat Well And Stay Healthy’ - we can’t use fat girls in films!” (W)

Ufa put Truus into her next film in 1927. Starring Willy Fritsch, Max Hanson and Olga Tschechowa, “Die Selige Exzellenz” (“His Late Excellency”) was directed by their hottest comedy helmer, William Thiele (U).

In preparation for the premiere of “Die Sieben Töchter Der Frau Gyurkovics”, Truus had a dress made specially. It’s possible that the more sophisticated ladies present may have thought that in a dress so decorated and with so many colours in it, she looked rather like an over-decorated birthday cake, but Truus was delighted with it. She sat in her box, trembling with nerves as the lights went down, waiting for her scenes to appear. What nobody had told her was that the film had been edited severely to get it to length - her scenes had been shortened or cut altogether. Soon she was grateful that nobody could see her in the dark as she hid at the back of her box, crying all over her beautiful new dress. When the credits ran at the end, her name wasn’t even mentioned - but this was the new, tough Truus van Aalten, not the kid from Arnhem any more - she decided to stay in Berlin and make a career as an actress (W). Ufa continued to employ her for the following year, after which she worked for various other film companies (A).

Silent films were genuinely international. While today’s Hollywood movies are typically dubbed straight into German, French, Russian and Spanish, films were originally adapted much more closely to different countries’ tastes. Reading intertitles specially written for them, an audience in Florence or Heraklion or Omsk could enjoy a story about people with local names (John became Hans or Jan or Ioan or any other name that suited his character better - if a fat man was funnier coming from Dusseldorf rather than Dortmund, then that’s where he came from). Local jokes and references were built into the dialogue, and audiences welcomed foreign actors into their lives with far greater affection than later when the movies became talkies. Truus was funny, pretty, spunky - and audiences across Europe were destined to love her.

The next year brought parts in “Die Geheime Macht” (aka “Secret Power”) and “Gustav Mond... Du gehst so Stille” (“Gustav Mond, You Walk So Softly”) (K). She benefitted hugely from all this experience - particularly in dealing with directors, who played a particularly powerful rôle in German moviemaking. One problem she did occasionally encounter from older actors was a certain snobbishness about her non-theatrical origin: a “real” actress had stage training (U).

German film companies tended to draw from a fairly small pool of actors and actresses. A trusted performer moved from production to production (R), and being welcomed into this movie village meant that Truus could anticipate the same security - as long as she worked hard and didn’t do anything to turn the public against her. A born comedienne, her fresh style attracted cinema audiences, and she became affectionately known in Germany as a "Backfisch". An odd word, literally meaning “fish to fry”, it was often applied to the new, 1920s girl - short hair, gawky limbs, a young flapper on the edge of sexuality. Truus was a “Bakvisje” in Holland too, and the word spread across Europe (A, HH).

Truus learned about the machinery of being a movie starlet - she posed for photos and gave interviews for film magazines. She even found herself being asked to appear in advert-isements, and earned a surprising amount of money endorsing Bubisan hair products and Marylan face cream.


- BOBBING ALONG - Truus had a distinctive look - her mixture of boyish yet feminine energy was very 1920s. In fact, her sharply bobbed hair and uninhibited style owed a lot to American comic actress Colleen Moore, who’d appeared in her first film in 1916. Seven years later, trapped in “little girl” roles, Moore had sought a way out of the long dresses and demure ringlets that she knew no longer represented young American women. When she’d read the scandalous modern novel “Flaming Youth”, then learned that it was to be filmed, she’d seen that the lead part could be her route to stardom. “I begged for the role,” she remembered in her auto-biography, “but the New York office said I wasn’t the type, I was better in costume parts. I was frantic for fear they’d give the part to someone else.” It was Colleen’s mother who’d had the inspiration: “She said, ‘Why don’t we cut your hair?’ I was elated. She picked up the scissors and, whack, off came the long curls. I felt as if I’d been emancipated. Then she trimmed my hair around with bangs like a Japanese girl’s haircut. Five days later I had the part.” Colleen wasn’t the first girl to bob her hair, but doing so was still quite shocking for most people. “Flaming Youth” was a hit around the world, and women in their millions started queuing at barber shops for Colleen Moore bobs (V).

Post-Great War Germany was a country bearing deep mental scars. Humbled, disgraced, frustrated by the Allies’ redrawing of Europe’s borders and by heavy reparation payments, the German people resented their new “Weimar” democratic government, and wondered how they’d fallen so low. Germany had been Imperial, monarchic, and the population had never really cast off the mindset of a being ruled by a Royal figurehead. It was still seen as good form to respect authority, to know one’s place, to obey instructions from one’s betters. Bureaucrats and officials were an everyday part of life, and this allowed the government to mould public opinion as they saw fit (R). Rebellion, even in minor ways, tended to make ordinary people nervous. The 1928 German parliament (“Reichstag”), elections left mainly Marxist parties in power, but a few seats were won by the NSDAP, a “Social Democrat” party known as the Nazis (R). 999

Truus’ next films built up her experience and slowly added to her fanbase. The funny Dutch girl was attracting attention that could easily have dissipated had her “Girl Wins Film Competition” fame not been backed up by talent and hard work. In quick succession, Truus worked on “Sechs Mädchen suchen Nachtquartier” (“Six Girls Seek Sleeping Quarters”), “Das Spreewaldmädel” (“Girl From The Spreewald”)/“Wenn die Garde Marschiert” (“When The Guards March”), “Leontines Ehemänner” (“Leontine’s Husbands”), “Die lustigen Vagabunden” (“The Merry Tramps”) and “Der moderne Casanova”, all released in 1928. Comedy was definitely what Truus did best - and she was a bright spark in often uninspired films. German audiences loved to laugh, and almost a quarter of all films made in Germany were comedies (U). She had a long way to go, though - big comedy stars like Heinz Rühmann, Felix Bressart and Karl Valentin were on a completely different plane to her (U).

In the autumn of 1929, the New York stock market crashed, erasing millions of dollars of shares and credit overnight and destroying businesses around the world. Germany didn’t escape this Depression, and great damage was done to her industrial structure. Now the Nazi party’s charismatic leader, Adolf Hitler, started to rise in popularity as he targeted the unemployed, the middle classes and big business with speeches promising a better future. Claiming that Germany’s problems stemmed from foreign spite following the War and sabotage by Jewish self-interest, he started to build up support based more on aspirations and fears than genuine political planning. The Nazis’ private militia of thugs and bruisers, the SA, now began to establish a reputation for intimidation and violence, particularly against Jewish people, Gipsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses and homosexuals (R).

For Truus, 1929 brought “Ich Hab' Mein Herz Im Autobus Verloren” (“I Lost My Heart On A Bus”), “Jennys Bummel durch die Männer” (“Jenny’s Stroll Through The Men”) and “Die Fidele Herrenpartie” (roughly “The Jolly All-Male Party”)/“Herren unter Sich” (K).

Also in 1929, “Der Sonderling” (“The Eccentric”) gave her the chance to work with one of Germany’s comedy giants, Karl Valentin. A superb visual clown, Valentin made the most of his gangling frame, creating agonizing scenes where the most dreadful violence would happen - usually to himself. He wrote and produced many influential comedies, and was revered for transcending the uninspired slapstick that plagued German comedies. Valentin, a hypo-chondriac, wasn’t always easy to work with, but he gave Truus third billing after Liesl Karlstadt, his longterm working partner - a real indication of the respect Valentin felt she warranted (CC, DD, U).


- WHAT’S THAT YOU SAY? - During 1927, the American film “The Jazz Singer” had offered general audiences something really new. At one point in the story, star Al Jolson had ad-libbed some lines before singing a song. “Wait a minute!” he’d laughed, “Wait a minute - you ain’t heard nothin’ yet!” That was the point - from now on, moving pictures could talk. Two years later, German technicians and patent-owners were still wrestling with the mechanics of shooting and projecting sound films (though nobody was really sure that it wasn’t just a distracting gimmick) and studios were worrying about the expense of upgrading every cinema in the country. Everybody remembered that Ufa had produced a sound film back in 1925 - the premiere had been a technical disaster and the process had been abandoned (U). Still, various systems were being tried, usually using records playing in sync (or not) with a running film. Two German companies held patents for sound-film machinery, and when they merged (R), performers suddenly realized that if their voices didn’t “record well”, their careers could be over. Even before Ufa released their first all-talkie film “Melodie des Herzens” (“Melody Of The Heart”) at Christmas 1929, actors and actresses were gloomily awaiting the call to have their voices tested. American actress Colleen Moore, in her autobiography “Silent Star”, recalled the day she reported to the Warners lot have her voice recorded: “In the center of a half-darkened stage was a small, totally bare room with glass walls. At the far end was a smaller room filled with machinery. In front of a large steel panel covered with knobs and switches sat a young man. He was about my age, twenty-five. He wasn’t a movie person. He wasn’t connected with any of the arts. Nor did he know anything about acting. He was a young engineer sent out by General Electric to man this complicated new thing called a sound machine. On this young man’s judgment my whole career depended. A voice boomed from nowhere, ‘Come closer to the microphone’. Bewildered, I said, ‘What’s a microphone?’” (V) Colleen needn’t have worried - her voice recorded well. Truus van Aalten, whose 1930 film “Oh Mädchen, mein Mädchen, wie lieb' Ich dich!” (“Oh Girlie, My Girlie, How I Love You!”) was to be one of Germany’s last silent films, turned out to be equally lucky. Her Dutch accent wasn’t held against her (A, B), and she (unlike a number of her contemporaries) continued to work. She was becoming well known now - film magazines featured articles about “das Mädchen aus Holland” (that girl from Holland) (W), the huge publisher Ross Verlag (and others) issued postcards of her in various moviestar poses, and tobacco companies used her face on collectors’ album cards.

Sound films took off like a rocket - European audiences loved them. Unreleased movies were re-edited or re-shot to contain sound sequences. “Metropolis” producer Erich Pommer set up a complete new scriptwriting department at Ufa, and everyone else followed suit. The only unhappy people were cinema musicians, who were unceremoniously dumped by their employers (U).

“Nur am Rhein - da mocht Ich leben” (“Only On The Rhein - That’s Where I Want to Live”), was Truus’ first talkie (W). Shot in 1930, it brought her into contact with veteran movie-maker Max Mack. He’d been writing, acting and directing since the impossibly primitive days of 1911, and was a human dynamo, endlessly creative. He’d been a main force in making the despised medium of the movies respectable (AA). Truus was a particular favourite in Holland, where she was hailed as the local girl who’d become a film star. They called her Truusje (“Truusie”), an affectionate form of her name. She wasn’t just popular in Europe, either - she was building a following across the Atlantic too. German-language cinemas in New York and many other cities showed all the big German movies, though sometimes a couple of years after their European releases. The New York Times gave “Nur am Rhein...” a lukewarm review in September 1931: “Measured against the high standard of excellence set by the German cinema in New York, "Nur Am Rhein," the new resident at the Belmont, is pleasant rather than distinguished. Its melodies and humors are charming and rather meager. Its gentle story of romance in the Rhineland in the days before the British evacuation is charming. But for the German visitor its scenes along the beautiful Rhine will have a sharp nostalgic effect, and for the New Yorker a sense of loveliness. Rolling green hills, white blossoms, the gables and church steeples of a tiny German village nestling in a crook of the river, the steep cobble-stoned streets - the camera catches these admirably. The story of the English Lieutenant and his German sweetheart unrolls in a leisurely fashion. Her boat has drifted from a little island in the Rhine and he goes out and brings her back. They talk of love while the university students gambol about the town with their wine and their girls. Then one of the students, the girl's brother, is caught in a nocturnal escapade and it is the Lieutenant's painful duty to make the arrest. The girl pouts and will not understand, the Lieutenant is sad and misunderstood. Just in time comes the news that the English are evacuating the territory and the boy can be freed. No more than that.” (J).

Another early sound comedy, “Pension Schöller” (an adaptation of an old German stage farce (J), released in 1930), introduced Truus to director Georg Jacoby, who would use her in films several times in the future (K). The story of the film was the usual complicated nonsense: two Berlin boys-about-town (Paul Heidemann and Kurt Vespermann) realise that their lifestyle is in danger - they’ve spent all their money. They hatch a plot and write to an uncle (Jakob Tiedke) for some cash, claiming they need it to run a lunatic asylum they’ve set up. He surprises them by turning up in person, and they have to quickly disguise the boarding house they’ve been living in as a clinic - and populate it with maniacs. The film was well-received, and was reviewed by the New York Times when it showed in America. Though “Pension Scholler”’s sound quality wasn’t what it should have been, the Times called it “a happy-go-lucky comedy” and praised “an excellent cast” (J).

The 1930 elections brought the Nazis many more seats than before (R). Most people didn’t give the party much thought, and nobody could have predicted the predatory ambition that drove Adolf Hitler.


- MOVIE STAR - Truus’ 1930 film “Susanne macht Ordnung” (“Susanne Cleans Up”) proved very popular both in Germany and in America. For the first time, Truus got top billing for her part as Susanne Braun, a 17-year-old orphan attending a Swiss boarding school, where she’s been living since she was little. She meets Robert, a young man on holiday from Berlin, and they fall in love. His questions about her family embarrass her - she believes that her mysterious father is still alive. Helped by another girl, she scrapes together enough money to set off to Berlin to look for him. As the film progresses she finds several possible Fathers, and greets each one with “Hello, Papa!”, causing huge confusion and breaking up his marriage (J). The film, a musical comedy, was reviewed by the New York Times in October 1931: “With the arrival at the Belmont of Truus von (sic) Aalten, as the stellar performer in "Susanne Macht Ordnung," those understanding German will have an opportunity of enjoying the work of an excellent young screen actress, “ the reviewer wrote, adding that Truus was “alert and interesting” in her role. “The banking concern of which Susanne's father is a member is in distress, and can be saved only through his marriage to the adipose sister of the firm's heaviest creditor. He is about to consent to the marriage, when Susanne's arrival causes great confusion. It seems impossible for her to ascertain who is her father and finally she gives up the investigation, refusing the protection of the man who really is her father. But all is not lost, for Robert, who has had his own troubles trying to find Susanne in Berlin, encounters her eventually and all is well.” Susanne “cleans up’ by fooling the five estranged couples into meeting at a nightclub and reuniting them(J).

1930 was a busy year - other films in which Truus appeared were “Kopfüber Ins Glück” (“Head Over Heels In Luck”) (K) and “Liebling der Götter” (“Favourite Of The Gods”), which was produced by Ufa’s top producer, Erich Pommer, a man dedicated to creativity and innovation. The film starred the imposing Emil Jannings, who’d just completed “Der Blaue Engel” (“The Blue Angel”) with a new actress, Marlene Dietrich. World-famous (he’d won the first-ever Oscar(GG)) what Jannings thought of Truus - who played her rôle as a ballet dancer while wearing a very fetching little white tutu - isn’t recorded. Also in the film, as the wonderfully-named Olga von Dagomirska, was Truus’ old friend Olga Tschechowa (W). Truus’ German had improved by now - one interviewer quipped that “she occasion-ally mixes up ‘mir’ and ‘mich’’’, but felt that this was excusable since “that happens to even the best linguists!” (W).

Foreign loans finally enabled German industry to climb out of the Depression, and the movie business quickly found its feet again as more and more films were made (R). During 1931, Truus played a typist deceived by her boyfriend in the comedy “Ausflug ins Leben” (also known as “Hirsekorn Greift Ein” (“Hirsekorn Butts In”). Hirsekorn (played by comedy legend Felix Bressart) is a performer in a struggling travelling show. Meanwhile novelist Thea van Dieman (Charlotte Susa) is pretending to be a factory girl to gather material for a book, and finds herself in love with an electrical works foreman (Rolf Von Goth). Hirsekorn somehow ends up as Thea’s chauffeur, though when he meets a cute typist, Alma (Truus), he tells her that he’s rich and actually owns the car himself. When the truth about them both comes out, Hirsekorn and Thea are in disgrace, but all is sorted out in time for the inevitable happy ending. The New York Times praised the film’s direction, photography and acting, and described Truus as “vivacious” (J).

There were many production companies in Germany, and film actors tended not to have long-term contracts with any of them in particular (U). Truus was reliable and well-liked by her industry peers, and during 1931 she worked on “Teilnehmer antwortet nicht” (“That Number Doesn’t Answer”) for Elite/Tobis Filmkunst and the operetta “Der Bettelstudent” (“The Beggar Student”) for Aafa-Film, for whom she worked several times. Other roles came in “Kasernenzauber” (“Magic At The Barracks”), and 1932’s “Nur Ein Viertelstündchen (“Just A Quarter Of An Hour”)” (K).

By 1931, Truus was living in her own fourth-floor apartment in Berlin’s Konigin Augustastrasse, overlooking a canal - a nice reminder of Holland. Her friends called her flat “The Nursery” - a cosy, ribbon-strewn, white-painted place with posters on the walls, shared with Pucki (her Airedale terrier), Didi (a Maltese dog) and a Cyprian cat (whose name has not survived). Visitors were greeted with loud barking, hearty mewing and the occasional bloodcurdling squawk from her parrot (donated by a family in Indonesia). Juliana was now rather battered, but was loved none the less and was displayed prominently in her own bed. Other dolls, teddies and Bonzo Dogs occupied various shelves and occasionally invaded the sofa. Also among Truus’ prized possessions were a gramophone and a glass cabinet filled with souvenirs from the Netherlands - porcelain, little sabots and ornaments. One of her jobs on days when she wasn’t shooting was to answer the piles of letters she received asking for autographs. This was an expensive sideline (she had to buy the postcards and stamps herself), but she enjoyed hearing from people all over the world, and knew that it was a vital part of building up her fanbase (W).


- RATS RISING - Street battles between the SA (the Nazi’s private army) and members of the Communist Party became commonplace on Berlin’s streets, and a week before the March 1933 elections, the city awoke to the sound of fire bells - the Reichstag had been set ablaze. The Nazis blamed the Communists and made thousands of arrests. The result - when the elections were held, Hitler and his men gained many more votes. Much more worryingly, the government passed a new law which effectively removed the concept of human rights in Germany. From now on, the police (now under Nazi control) had the power to arrest anybody without a warrant, to hold a prisoner without trial for as long as they liked, to read private letters, to censor radio programmes, to close down newspapers and to confiscate private property. This was followed by a Bill which denied Parliament the right to veto any new laws (F).

The New York Times for October 14th 1933 reviewed Truus’ film “Der Bettelstudent”, then showing at the 79th St Theatre. The movie, it said, had “a certain amount of charm”, but didn’t measure up to other operetta films of its type. Truus, the reviewer said, was “excellent in her leading comedy rôle” (J).

Working on a movie can insulate people from the outside world - but even the long hours and introspective dedication required to create a film couldn’t hide what was now going on outside the studio walls. While the economic situation in Germany was improving with remarkable speed (unemployment had dropped and standards of living were rising) (S), something dreadful was happening in the German government. That March, Adolf Hitler had announced in the Völkischer Beobachter (the Nazi’s daily newspaper) that he intended to pursue: “a systematic campaign to restore the Nation’s moral and material health. The whole educational system, theatre, film, literature, the press and broadcasting - all of these will be used as a means to this end. They will be harnessed to help preserve the eternal values that are part of the integral nature of our people (U)”. What this meant for creative artists couldn’t be imagined. Independent Trade Unions were abolished and the new Reich Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda (its mission: to control the “spiritual direction of the Nation”) soon showed its true colours - a new class of people, “degenerate artists” were to be removed from any position from which they could influence popular culture. Jewish people were also targeted (U). Foreign artists and technicians had always been welcome in the German film industry - huge star Asta Nielsen hailed from Denmark, Pola Negri was Polish, Lya de Putti was Hungarian, the gorgeous, sulky Louise Brooks was American - but now a stream of frightened workers set about leaving Germany (U). What this might mean for Truus van Aalten was unclear - as a Dutch national, could she hope for more sympathy from the authorities? In fact, the police were taking a definite interest in Truus - and her family. Thorough as always, they researched her family tree: the van Aaltens turned out to be members of Arnhem’s prosperous and long-established Jewish community. Truus’ ancestors had lived there for more than 100 years and were buried in Arnhem’s Jewish cemetery (Z).

Released in New York in May 1933, Truus’ film “Eine Liebesnacht” (“A Night Of Love”), directed by Joe May, was reviewed by the New York Times as “a fairly entertaining German mystery comedy”. The film, running at the 79th St Theatre, was “a mixture of gaiety at a masquerade ball, complicated by polished crooks and semi-serious love affairs”, while Truus was described as “one of the attractive gamin types of the German screen”. She was “as full of life as ever and leads Harry Liedtke, the middle-aged husband of a charming wife (Franscini Albertini), a merry chase. In the meantime the temporarily neglected wife amuses herself rather half-heartedly with several dance partners until she falls in with a handsome young swindler (Harry Halm) posing as a prince.” (J).


- THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN - That summer the Nazis were declared by law to be the only political party in Germany. Without having met any real resistance, Hitler was now head of a totalitarian state. He was held in check - supposedly - by the President, von Hindenburg, who didn’t approve of him, but could do little to stop him (F, S).

Now Truus found herself in an industry where the most creative people were fearful for their livelihoods - not to mention their lives. Writers, producers, directors, art directors, composers and actors didn’t have to be Jewish or homosexual to fear the 3AM knock on the door - just being artistic and outspoken was enough to attract suspicion and surveillance by the police. Some people found themselves skating on very thin ice indeed - if you were a “half-Jew” you might be issued a special work permit, while your colleagues flitted towards France, England and the US (U). 1933 also brought a shocking story which swept through the movie grapevine: propaganda Minister Josef Goebbels had banned Fritz Lang’s unreleased “Das Testament des Dr Mabuse” (which surprised nobody who had seen it, since it was obviously anti-Nazi), but he had then invited Lang to his office to congratulate him on “Metropolis” and offer him the job of overseer of all future government-controlled filmmaking... and Lang had fled to Paris that very night (G, R). Directors like Robert Siodmak, Douglas Sirk and Billy Wilder, actors such as Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt, Ufa’s top producer Erich Pommer - they all fled the country, just a few of thousands of frightened film professionals. Even Germany’s highest-paid actor, Jewish comedian Felix Bressart (Hirsekorn himself), had to run for his life (U). Karl Valentin, the great physical comedian, found his career destroyed simply because the authorities didn’t approve of his jokes, and he died, poor and forgotten, a few years later (DD). As the months passed, non-Aryan performers found themselves offered fewer and fewer parts (E) as production companies were intimidated by the new laws. The movies were being (in Goebbels’ words) “racially purified” (U).

That same year, Truus worked for director Georg Jacoby again - twice - first on an Ufa short film called “Eine Ideale Wohnung” (“An Ideal Home”), and then on his “G'schichten aus dem Wienerwald” (“Tales From The Vienna Woods”). Shot in Austria, this was a musical based on tunes by Johann Strauss (J). Musicals were extremely popular, and Viennese operettas could always find an enthusiastic German audience (R). The Nazi government didn’t encourage the production of propaganda movies - they knew that the public would best be reassured by comfy subjects. In “G’schichten...”, Wolf Albach-Retty plays Count Rudi Waldheim, a young man who has just discovered that he’s inherited a castle. Unfortunately the place is falling to bits, and a rich old goat named Schopf (Leo Slezak) owns the mortgage on it. Schopf, worried that there’s no hope of getting his money back, reads a newspaper story that Mary Limford, daughter of an American billionaire, is travelling to Vienna - could she, he wonders, be fooled into buying the castle? On the train Mary (Truus) meets Millie (Magda Schneider), an American journalist, and suggests that they swop places for a few days. Millie agrees, and finds herself wined and dined around Vienna and staying in a luxury hotel. Schopf manages to reach “Mary” on the phone, but can’t sell her Rudi’s castle - but he does learn that she’d be interested in marrying a Count. Luckily he has one available - Rudi. As the story unfolds, Mary somehow finds herself employed by Rudi’s boss (a car salesman who has recognised her, and hopes to wangle some money out of her), while Millie accidentally meets Rudi and falls in love with him. Mary’s cousin Bobby turns up and wins her heart, while Millie discovers that Schopf is actually her uncle, and (the mortgage on the castle dissolved) marries Rudi (FF).

The NY Times called “G’schichten...” “a tasty mélange of comedy and music”, and mentioned “the little Dutch actress” (J). There weren’t many Dutch film stars - the only other one was Lien Deyers, born in Amsterdam, three months younger than Truus. She’d been working steadily since 1927, when an act of supreme cheek had endeared her to Fritz Lang himself. Living in Vienna with her actress mother, she’d attended a teaparty, knowing that the director of “Niebelung’ and “Mabuse” would be there. Spotting the Great Man and picking a moment when the crowds around him thinned, she approached him and asked (in not-very-good German), “Herr Lang - wouldn’t you like to discover me?”. Lang screwed in his monocle and surveyed this blonde, self-assured girl. By coincidence his upcoming film, “Spione” (“The Spies”) had a part for a girl like her. Movies were silent, so her voice was unimportant... The film did good business, the public liked her, and she was soon in great demand, even coping well with the arrival of sound. She married producer Alfred Zeisler (who’d overseen production on Truus’ film “Die Geheime Macht”) and obviously had a great future ahead of her (EE, K, W).

President Hindenburg died on August 2nd 1934. Rather than electing a replacement, the cabinet announced that all Presidential powers had been inherited by Adolf Hitler. This also put the Nazi leader in control of the Army, Navy and Air Force (S). A more sinister body was gaining power, too - Hitler had dumped his bully-boy SA army for a much more sophis-ticated secret police force - the SS (F).

1934 saw Truus in Holland, starring in her only film in Dutch, “Het meisje met den blauwen hoed” (“The Girl In The Blue Hat”). A musical, the film was based on Johan Fabricius’ 1927 novel and was shot in Amsterdam (A, K). Holland’s film industry was thriving - the rise of the talkie had increased local demand for Dutch films (M). In the film, Roland Varno played Daantje, a decent and gullible young soldier from the country. He sees and falls in love with a girl on a train (Betsy, played by Truus in a blonde wig), while on his way to a new barracks. There he meets Toontje (Lou Bandy), another soldier, who makes his life miserable, but later befriends him. Toontje, a smart cookie, helps Daantje find Betsy - then has to come to his aid again as none-too-bright Daantje forgets to ask her address. Betsy is a bit of a flirt, very popular with the soldiers, but she starts to fall for Daantje and they get engaged. They visit his parents in the country - but everyone takes against the loud city girl - is the relationship doomed??? (K) Truus’ costar Lou Bandy was an interesting man, though notoriously difficult to work with. One of the most popular entertainers in Holland at the time, Bandy was a singer, musician and Music Hall comedian, well known for funny songs like “Louise zit niet op je nagels te bijten” (“Louise, don't bite your nails”) (Q).

The Nazi party, unstoppable now, continued to tighten its grip on everyone's’ lives. Businesses and careers were destroyed and many people lived in fear for their lives. Even film stars weren’t immune - Lien Deyers was now popular enough to have been offered a contract with Paramount Pictures’ Paris studios, but her husband Alfred Ziesler was Jewish, and in 1935 they had to flee to England (EE, K, W).

It wasn’t until 1939, while on holiday with friends in Berlin (?) (B), that Truus was offered another film part. Hitler’s Germany had few places for female actors not prepared to play fruitful mothers, and even fewer for foreign girls with Jewish families. She played the widow Anni, a good part in the German Tobis Company’s movie “Ein ganzer Kerl” (“A Regular Chap”). Truus didn’t know it, but her film career was now over (A).

Holland had stayed neutral during recent wars - her people were determined not to take part in the sort of carnage caused during the 1914-18 conflict. Holland and Germany had always enjoyed close political friendship - while the Dutch had been neutral during the Great War, they had tended to quietly support the German cause. They had never seen the rise of the Nazis as a threat to themselves, and the Dutch armed forces were nowhere near as well equipped nor trained as their German counterparts. This was partly because the Depression of the 1930s had hit Holland particularly hard, but also because there had never been any obvious need. Now, positioned between Germany and France, it was becoming pretty plain that Hitler might well invade Holland. Defensive plans were quickly planned and executed, and defence treaties were sought with France and Belgium, but nobody really thought that German forces could be held back if they wanted to cross the border (L).


- THE STORM BREAKS - On the 10th of May 1940, German radio news announced that attacks had begun on Luxembourg and Holland, and that German forces were aiming for Belgium. A bombing attack on a Dutch airfield near Rotterdam had signaled the beginning of the German invasion of the low countries. Soon after, cinema newsreels showed Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe forces attacking Truus’ homeland (H,L), as William Shirer described in his book: “Berlin Diary”: “The film showed pictures of the German Army smashing through Belgium and Holland. Some of the more destructive work of German bombs and shells was shown. Towns laid waste, dead soldiers and horses lying around, and the earth and mortar flying when a shell or bomb hit” (R). German people in general weren’t terribly happy about their country’s aggression (L). Dutch people living there were horrified and astounded - more so when soon after, the Germans unleashed a fierce bombing attack on Rotterdam, claiming that hostile British troops had landed and had to be quelled. Four days later the Dutch government had surr-endered (H,L).

In the Autumn of 1940, Truus returned to live in a Holland under German occupation (B). Only now did she really learn how the country had suffered during the invasion. Blitzkrieg, Hitler’s “Lightning War” methods, had swept Dutch forces aside despite valiant efforts which had postponed German victory by several days. The attackers had concentrated on seizing airfields (in preparation for further attacks on France and Britain) and bridges. The Dutch had flooded low-lying areas as part of a prepared plan, but to no avail as German soldiers and paratroops had poured in all over the country. Anyone who had moved to Holland from Germany for fear of persecution was now trying to escape, but European borders were locked down tight, and visas into America were almost impossible to get (O). The Dutch had been sure that the British and the French would come to their aid, but while the French did try an advance over the border, they were quickly pushed back by German forces. There had been no British soldiers in Rotterdam when the Germans had attacked - Hitler had used the city as an example of just how hard the German forces were prepared to hit back if opposed. The attack had caused massive civilian casualties and destroyed the old city, making 78,000 people homeless. When Hitler had threatened to deal out the same treatment to Amsterdam and Utrecht, the government had been forced to order their military commanders to capitulate. Queen Wilhelmina had fled to England, where she now led a government-in-exile (L), while Princess Juliana, her daughter, was now in Canada (N).

Holland’s own Nazi party (which had enjoyed minor success during the Depression) had become the only legal political party during the occupation (N). The government was headed by the loathsome Reichkommissar Arthur Seyss-Inquart, a strong supporter of Hitler’s concepts of racial purity. This was a civil government, not a military one - its concern was primarily to control the ordinary people rather than soldiers. That meant that the general population found their lives to be under intense scrutiny by the authorities, and most people lived in fear of informers, sympathizers and sneaks (P). Nobody knew who would win the War - nobody could plan anything, and Truus soon found that the Dutch film industry (which had been doing pretty well before the invasion, partly because of the influx of experienced movie professionals fleeing Germany) was in mothballs (M).

Jewish people found themselves having to register their names and family details with the authorities. After gently reducing their freedoms, the State started to assign the properties of Jewish people to itself, and by late 1941 had started doing the same with bank accounts and investments. Jews had to wear a yellow star on their clothing and were forbidden to use telephones or public transport (N).

As the government tightened its grip on the Dutch, so an active Resistance movement grew -slowly at first, but very determined. As identity and ration cards were issued and radios were confiscated, a strong movement dedicated to passive resistance was forged, but Dutch people generally avoided direct confrontation with their new masters (O). Rules were introduced which compelled all men of working age to report to German-controlled factories under pain of losing their ration cards (N).


- IT GETS HARDER - As the war progressed, Dutch people found themselves being treated increasingly badly. Ration cards entitled them to less and less food and punishments for breaking Occupation laws became harder (when one German officer was attacked near Putten, the entire male population of the town was sent to a concentration camp - without trial). Hundreds of thousands of people found themselves homeless as their houses were demolished to build fortifications. Rebellious workers did their jobs on these defences as badly as possible, but some people, foreseeing that German rule was there forever, simply knuckled down and did their jobs as ordered (N).

July of 1942 saw the spread of stories about three “work camps” on Dutch soil - Westerbork (on the Dutch/German border), Vught and Amersfoort. Now Jews, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and dissidents in general were being rounded up and put on trains, passing through these camps, bound for mysterious Somewheres called Auschwitz and Sobibor. Jewish people had few places to hide - the country was surrounded by occupied territories, and while some were sheltered by sympathetic Dutch people, 107,000 were deported, most never to return. The Catholic Church rose to the Jews’ defence, but that just made priests targets too. Hitler’s longterm plan appeared to be to clear out all non-Aryan types, then absorb Holland into the Reich (N, O, P).

Life, dreadful as it was under the Nazis, was about to get even worse. Truus’ brother, Wolfe-William, had married a girl called Anna-Naatje, who was about sixteen years older than Truus. Arrested and deported (probably along with hundreds of other people in the filth and misery of a sealed cattle truck) to Poland, poor Anna-Naatje found herself in Auschwitz (X, Y, Z), the Nazi’s largest concentration camp. There she died during September of 1942 (X) just one of an eventual 1,5000,000 other wretched prisoners.

Dutch people were allowed to listen only to Government approved radio stations, and as time went on, an odd thing was noticed - the locations of battles the Germans claimed to have won were getting closer and closer to Germany itself (N). The fact that the tide was slowly turning against the Germans was no help to Arnhem’s Jewish community, which had grown to more than 1390 people during the general exodus from Germany a decade before. Of 1389 people, almost every one of them was rounded up and sent for extermination in Poland (BB).

On June 6th 1944, word spread that British and American troops had landed in great force in Normandy. The Allies worked their way slowly up the country, and that September they fought a huge battle at the bridge over the Rhein at Arnhem, Truus’ birthplace (N). The winter of 1944 brought frightful weather, an added misery to a population weakened and demoralized by the Occupation (O). The exiled Dutch government asked the population to support a railway strike to disrupt German war traffic, at which point Prime Minister Seyss-Inquart, furious, stopped movement of food from Eastern Holland to the cities of the West. People named that time the “hongerwinter” or Hunger Winter. Householders burned their furniture, doors and belongings for heat. Droves of starving people took to the roads, walking for miles to search for food. An estimated 30,000 people died of cold and starvation (N).

On May 5th the Germans in Holland surrendered to the Allies. Three days later Berlin announced that the Führer was dead and that the war was over (N).


- RUINS - This war, like all wars, left more than physical devastation after it. People were displaced, people were missing, people hid. Wills and land deeds had been destroyed, jobs were gone, lives were destroyed. Dutch people tried to recreate their lives as they had been, and failed. Old hatreds ran wild - Nazi collaborators were judged by vigilante courts and punished. Women who had had relations with German soldiers were publicly punished, their heads shaved and their scalps painted orange. The Dutch East Indies, a great source of income and prestige, were rapidly slipping out of Dutch control. Thousands of Germans were deported, There were plans to seize part of Germany and make it Dutch. Arguments erupted over who now owned the stolen properties of Dutch Jews now lying in ashes in Polish concentration camps (N). In all this confusion, film production came low on the list for the Dutch government (M).

Germany was in utter disarray - every aspect of government and life in general had to be re-thought. Worst of all was the growing international knowledge of the Nazi genocide programmes - figures gathered over months revealed that 6,000,000 Jewish people had been murdered, along with nearly as many Poles, disabled people, Gipsies, Jehovah’s Witnesses, homosexuals and anyone else the Nazis hadn’t liked (O). For Truus, the movie industry as she’d known it was dead. Berlin was divided, surrounded by the Soviets and kept in essential supplies only by the Allied Airlift. Ufa was gone, and many of the people with whom she’d worked were simply gone - her “Selige Exzellenz” director, William Thiele was in Hollywood, as was “Eine Liebesnacht” director Joe May (GG), Max Mack (dynamic Jewish helmer of “Nur Am Rhein...”) was in Britain, “Meisje met den blauwen Hoed” helmer Rudolf Meinert had just died in London (K)), “Sechs Mädchen...” director Hans Behrendt had (along with many others ) disappeared into Auschwitz (K). Worse than that, it was in the Allies’ interest to squash German film-making, mainly to guarantee a market for their own movies (U).

Truus tried to find acting work in Holland, then in England, but in the depressed atmosphere of post-war Britain, nobody was interested in an unknown foreign actress with poor English (A, B). Perhaps this was one reason she hadn’t tried to get to Hollywood, where so many of her contemporaries had found work. Comedian Felix Bressart (Germany’s favourite actor in 1933) was now in Los Angeles (U), as were Adolf Licho and many others (K). Their brand of movie comedy was extremely popular in America, and their careers were assured (U). Why was Truus still in Holland? Had she tried to go but left it too late? She could have learned English, so that wasn’t really a reason not to escape to another country... Perhaps she needed to be close to her family in a time of confusion and terror. Whatever the reason, Truus never acted again.


- MAKING THE BEST OF IT - 1954 found Truus in Voorhout, a town in the western Netherlands, setting up what was to become a successful business importing and exporting souvenirs (B). She and her Russian husband, Sam Chougol, had a daughter, Fanny, and a son, David (who died in 1958) (X, Y, Z).

Truus married a man named Henk Godwalt in 1964 (B, C, T). Film Stardom was a long way behind her now, but she was still doing better (though she didn’t know it) than the “other” Dutch film star, cheeky blonde Lien Deyers. She and Alfred Zeisler had reached England, but had found no work for them there. They’d moved on to Los Angeles where her husband had found employment as a producer, but Lien (even with her history of stardom in Europe) couldn’t find a job there either. Having tried running a business selling novelties, she’d drifted into alcoholism and multiple divorces. Her life ruined, she spent time in custody for violent behaviour and she died, forgotten, in 1965 (K, W).

In 1972, Dutch TV transmitted a four-part version of “Het meisje met den blauwen Hoed” (“The Girl In The Blue Hat”), an update of Truus’ 1934 film. Watching Jenny Arean play Betsy (K) must have been a strange experience for Truus, whose film career was now almost totally forgotten by the general public. As the years passed, textbooks on German film like “The BFI Companion to German Cinema”, “Das gab’s nur einmal” and “The German Cinema Book” simply left her out, and even the growing internet contained almost nothing about her.

Truus’ friend from her first Ufa days, Olga Tschechowa, died during 1980. She’d led an amazing life, made all the more entertaining by her endlessly embellishing it. Her wartime experiences had included staving off a besotted Adolf Hitler, hiding the fact that her first husband had been Jewish, using her influence to save her brother’s life after it was discovered that he’d been sent to Germany by the Kremlin with orders to assassinate the Führer, and working as a spy for the Soviets. On her deathbed, she’d asked for a glass of champagne, declared that “Life is beautiful!” and expired (K).

Truus’ old age was marred by bouts of mental illness (C), and she spent her last two years at a psychiatric clinic in the village of Warmond. Survived by her second husband, Henk Godwalt (T), she died there on the 27th of June 1999, aged 88 (B).



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TRUUS NOW: Truus was cremated and her ashes placed in a private area of the cemetery in Warmond.

The only book I’ve been able to find containing an article of any length on Truus is “Twaalf Van De Film” by B. Binger-Cantor. It’s long out of print, but searching the Internet can usually find a copy - one place to try is abebooks.com - but I’ve built all the facts in it into this article, so don’t panic.

Very few of her films have ever been released for home viewing. One possible reason is that the Russian Army seized the Ufa studios in April 1945 and appropriated the contents - including copies of a huge number of German films that have never been seen since. Films available during 2007: “Liebling der Götter”: DVD from American company germanvideo.com. “Der Sonderling”: DVD from amazon.de (Germany)on its own or as part of a Karl Valentin box set. “Het meisje met den blauwen hoed”: VHS through the Internet.

Postcards, cigarette cards, etc turn up all the time on ebay.com, but you can often find stuff from individual sellers by going to Google Image Search and putting her name in.

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REFERENCES: (A) www.cyranos.ch/smaalt-e.htm (AA) www.cyranos.ch/smmack-e.htm (B) de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truus_van_Aalten (BB) Moscowa Cemetery, Arnhem info: http://www.jhm.nl/netherlands.aspx?ID=10 (C) www.imdb.com/name/nm0885549/bio (CC) Karl Valentin info: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_ValentinKarl Valentin (D) Brochure for Kino International’s restoration of “Metropolis”. (DD) Karl Valentin info: http://www.cyranos.ch/smvale-e.htm (E) www.germanhollywood.com/Ufa.html (EE) http://www.cyranos.ch/smdeye-e.htm (F) “German History 1933-45” by H. Mau and H. Krausnick. Oswald Wolff Ltd, London, 1963. (FF) Cinema herald for “G’schichten aus dem Wienerwald” (translation: Dorothy Bradbury, 2007) (G) www.jscheuer.com/lang.htm (GG) “The BFI Companion to German Cinema”. (H) www.historylearningsite.co.uk (HH) “Backfisch” info: http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id=1170950 (J) Film reviews from the New York Times: www.nytimes.com (K) www.imdb.com (L) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Netherlands (M) en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_the_Netherlands (N) www.answers.com/topic/the-netherlands-in-world-war-ii (O) “Survival and Resistance: The Netherlands Under Nazi Occupation” by Linda M. Woolf, PhD: www.webster.edu/~woolflm/netherlands.html (P) http://www.humboldt.edu/~rescuers/book/Strobos/Conditions.Holland.html (Q) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lou_Bandy (R) “From Caligari To Hitler” by Siegfried Kracauer. Princeton University Press, USA, 2004. (S) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler (T) http://www.members.lycos.nl/bidprentjes/1999/1999a.htm (U) “The German Cinema Book” by Bergfelder, Carter and Gokturk. BFI Publishing, UK 2002. (V) “Silent Star’ by Colleen Moore. Doubleday, USA, 1968. (W) “Twaalf Van De Film” by B Binger-Cantor. JM Meulenhoff, Holland (translation: Elte Rauch, 2007). (X) Dutch Jewish gealogy: http://shum.huji.ac.il/~dutchjew/genealog/ndbeli/5827.htm (Y) http://shum.huji.ac.il/~dutchjew/genealog/ndbeli/19843.htm (Z) http://home.hetnet.nl/~mayerhirsch/moscowa.html ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

A YAHOO SITE DEDICATED TO TRUUS VAN AALTEN CAN BE FOUND AT GROUPS.YAHOO.COM - PUT HER NAME INTO THE SEARCH ENGINE OR JUST GO TO http://movies.groups.yahoo.com/group/TruusVanAalten.

IF ANY MEMBER OF TRUUS' FAMILY OR FRIENDS WOULD CARE TO CONTACT ME, I'D BE DELIGHTED. MY EMAIL ADDRESS IS vzd963@hotmail.com

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