Lotte Lenya
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| Lotte Lenya | |||||||||||
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 Lotte Lenya photo taken by Carl Van Vechten, 1962 |
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| Born | Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer October 18, 1898 Vienna, Austria |
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| Died | November 2, 1981 (aged 83) New York, United States |
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| Occupation | Actress | ||||||||||
| Spouse(s) | Kurt Weill (1926-1933, 1937-1950) | ||||||||||
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Lotte Lenya (October 18, 1898 – November 27, 1981), was a Tony Award-winning and Academy Award-nominated singer and actress, born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer, in Vienna, Austria. She is best known for her performance as Jenny in Kurt Weill's and Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera, and some other Brecht-Weill plays. Her role as Vivien Leigh's earthy friend Contessa Magda Terribili-Gonzales in the screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) brought Lenya an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. Her portrayal of the villainous Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love (1963) brought her additional fame. She is also known for receiving a mention in the Louis Armstrong and Bobby Darin versions of the song "Mack the Knife".
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[edit] Life and career
[edit] The early years
The child of working class Roman Catholic parents, Lenya wanted to be a dancer. She moved to study in Zurich, Switzerland in 1914, taking up her first job at the Schauspielhaus using the stage name Lotte Lenja (later changed to Lenya). She moved to Berlin to seek work in 1921.
[edit] Kurt Weill
The following year she was seen by her future husband, the German composer Kurt Weill during an audition for his first stage score Zaubernacht, but because of his position behind the piano, she did not see him. She was cast, but owing to her loyalty to her voice teacher who was not, she declined the role. They did not meet properly until 1924 through a mutual acquaintance, the writer Georg Kaiser. Lenya married Kurt Weill in 1926.
She accepted the part of Jenny in the first performance of The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) in 1928 and the part became her breakthrough role. During the last years of the Weimar Republic, she was busy in film and theatre, and especially in Brecht-Weill plays.
She also made several recordings of her husband's songs. In these, she sang in a high, wavering pitch.
[edit] Escape from Germany
With the rise of Nazism in Germany, she left the country, having become estranged from Weill. In March 1933, she fled to Paris, France where she sang the leading part in Brecht-Weill's "sung ballet" The Seven Deadly Sins.
[edit] Divorce and remarriage
She divorced Weill in 1933 but reunited with him in September 1935, when they both emigrated to the United States. They remarried in 1937. In 1941, the couple moved to a house of their own in New City, Rockland County, New York, roughly 50 km north of New York City. Their second marriage lasted until Weill's death in 1950.
[edit] The War
During World War II, Lenya — now spelling her stage name with a 'y' — did a number of stage performances, recordings and radio performances, including for the Voice of America. After a badly received part in her husband's musical The Firebrand of Florence in 1945 in New York, she withdrew from the stage. After her husband's death she was coaxed back to the stage. She appeared on Broadway in Barefoot in Athens and married influential American editor George Davis.
[edit] Late career
In 1956 she won a Tony Award for her role as Jenny in Marc Blitzstein's English version of The Threepenny Opera, the first and only time an Off-Broadway performance has been so honored. Lenya went on to record a number of songs from her time in Berlin, as well as songs from the American theater. Her voice had grown a lot deeper than during her first success as a performer. When she was to sing the soprano part in Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and The Seven Deadly Sins, the part needed transposition to substantially lower keys.
Sprechstimme was used in some famous songs in the Brecht-Weill plays, but now Lenya used it even more to compensate for the shortcomings of her voice. Lenya was aware of this as a problem; in other contexts she was very careful about fully respecting her late husband's score. She founded the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, to administer incomes and issues regarding rights, and to spread knowledge about Weill's work.
She was present in the studio when Louis Armstrong recorded Brecht-Weill's Mack the Knife. Armstrong improvised the line "Look out for Miss Lotte Lenya!" and added her name to the list of Mack's female conquests in the song. After the death of George Davis in 1957, she married the artist Russell Detwiler in 1962. He was 26 years her junior, and he died at age 44 in 1969.
[edit] James Bond
In 1963, she got the part as the SPECTRE agent Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love, starring, among others, Sean Connery and Daniela Bianchi. In the final scene in the film, she wore a pair of shoes with knives sticking out. She later said in interviews that when she met new people, the first thing they looked at was her shoes.
[edit] Cabaret
In 1966, Lenya originated the role of Fräulein Schneider in the original Broadway cast of the musical Cabaret. Kander's and Ebb's score was inspired by Kurt Weill's music, so Lenya was considered a particularly appropriate casting choice.
[edit] Death
Lotte Lenya died in New York from cancer in 1981, aged 83.
She is buried next to Weill in Haverstraw, New York. [1]
[edit] Legacy
In 2007, the musical Lovemusik, based on Lenya's relationship with Weill, opened on Broadway. Lenya was portrayed by Donna Murphy.
[edit] Filmography (not complete)
- The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) (1931) as Jenny Diver
- The Roman Spring of Mrs Stone (1965) which won her a nomination for an Academy Award as Contessa
- From Russia with Love (1963) as Rosa Klebb
- The Appointment by Sidney Lumet (1969) as Emma Valadier
- Semi-Tough (movie) (1977) as Clara Pelf
[edit] TV films
- Bertolt Brecht's Übungstücke für Schauspieler (Practice Pieces) (1964)
- Mutter Courage in Brecht's Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder (Mother Courage and Her Children) (1965)
- The Gypsy in Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1966)
- Mahagonny (1980)
[edit] As narrator
She was the narrator in the documentary about the drawings of George Grosz (Interregnum, 1960).
[edit] External links
- FemBio: Lotte Lenya
- Lotte Lenya at the Internet Movie Database
- Lotte Lenya at the Internet Broadway Database
- Threepenny Opera Off-Broadway
[edit] Footnotes
| Preceded by Joseph Wiseman |
Official James Bond villain actor 1963 |
Succeeded by Gert Fröbe |
| Awards | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by Carol Haney for The Pajama Game |
Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical 1956 for The Threepenny Opera |
Succeeded by Edie Adams for Li'l Abner |
