Tilly Losch

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Tilly Losch
from the trailer for the film The Good Earth (1937).
Born	November 15, 1907 Vienna, Austria
Died	December 24, 1975, age 68 New York, New York, USA

Ottilie Ethel Losch, Countess of Carnarvon (November 15, 1907 – December 24, 1975) was an Austrian dancer, choreographer, actress and painter.

1 Early Life
2 First marriage
3 Drama and film
4 Second marriage
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Early Life

Born in Vienna, Austria as Ottilie Ethel Losch, she studied ballet from childhood with the Vienna Imperial Opera ballet school, and sufficiently impressed the Opera Director, Richard Strauss, that by age fifteen she was a member of the ballet corps. After solo performances in Paris, Budapest and Prague she was chosen by Max Reinhardt to perform at the 1927 Salzburg Festival in Shakespear's A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Under contract with the Vienna Imperial Opera, Losch was forced to resign in order to accept an invitation to perform in the United States with Reinhardt's troupe in 1927. Reinhardt had such faith in her art that he asked her to choreograph several of the dances, although she had not choreographed before, and she choreographed further productions, Everyman and Danton's Death.

She made her London theatre debut in 1928 in Noel Coward's musical review The Year of Grace, and over the course of the next few years, worked in London and New York as both a dancer and choreographer. In New York she danced in The Bandwagon with Fred and Adele Astaire in 1931. Max Reinhardt further encouraged her to extend herself and believed she could also act; casting her in a 1932 London production of The Miracle, Losch's part was rewritten to provide her with the only spoken dialogue in the production, "The Lord's Prayer", which she recited to dramatic effect.

[edit] First marriage

Losch's first husband, the Anglo-American millionaire and surrealist arts patron Edward James, had several productions created expressly for her, the most notable of which was Les Ballets 1933, which included Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya and George Balanchine. Losch went on to appear in the Russian Ballet as a premier dancer, under Balanchine. She was divorced by James in 1934, after being accused of adultery with Prince Serge Obolensky, an American hotel executive; her countersuit, in which she made it clear that her husband was homosexual, failed.^[1]

A permanent reminder of Tilly Losch can be seen at Edward James’s former family home, West Dean House in West Dean, West Sussex (now West Dean College). Her ‘wet’ footprints are woven into the carpet on the spiral staircase. The story behind these is that as Tilly emerged from the bath; leaving behind a trail of wet footprints as she ascended the spiral stairs, Edward subsequently commissioned the carpet with the motif woven into it as a token of his love for her. After their divorce he had a similar carpet made with his dog's footprint.

[edit] Drama and film

She extended her work into drama, and achieved her greatest popularity in England, and her success led her into films. She appeared in several productions including Limelight (1936), The Garden of Allah (1936), The Good Earth (1937) and later Duel in the Sun (1946), but she was dissatisfied with film work and did not enjoy life in Hollywood. She continued working as a dancer and choreographer and appeared on Broadway.

[edit] Second marriage

A severe clinical depression caused Losch to spend time in a sanitarium in Switzerland and abandoned dance. It was during this time that she married Henry Herbert, 6th Earl of Carnarvon. Losch began painting, first in watercolors and then later in oils. Her earliest works were self portraits, but she later created portraits of friends such as Anita Loos, Lotte Lenya, and Kurt Weill, and she received encouragement from Cecil Beaton. Carnarvon, aware of Losch's delicate health, sent her to the United States, where he perceived she would be safe from the growing danger of the war in Europe. She mounted her first exhibition in New York in 1944, and was well received by critics; the prominent collector and museum founder Albert C. Barnes bought one of Losch's works from her American debut show.[1]

She later combined visual elements of dance into her paintings, and often placed her subjects on a backdrop that evoked scenes of the war in Europe. As her painting style developed she won acclaim, and her works were eventually purchased by such galleries as London's Tate Gallery.

Losch's marriage to Carnarvon ended in divorce in 1947, though they remained on friendly terms, and Losch commuted between London and New York for the remainder of her life. She died in New York from cancer, and Carnarvon was among the mourners at her funeral. She bequeathed many of her personal documents, sketches, painting and photographs to the Max Reinhardt Archives at the State University of New York.