Wera Engels

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wera Engels (May 12, 1909 in Kiel, Germany—November 16, 1988 in Epfach, Germany) was a German actress, who had a short but very eventful film career.

Wera Engels was a daughter of a German Admiral and Governor of the, then German, Colony Tsing-tau-China. After successful leading roles in productions of the well-established German UFA-studios in Babelsberg as well as in France, Wera Engels was invited to Hollywood. Producers saw her as a cheap alternative to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. She was contracted with RKO. Engels was given roles under Walter Futter and M.H. Hoffman, whose productions would nowadays be considered B-productions at best. She became best friends with the silent movie super star Mary Pickford (with whom she shares her final resting place in the Hollywood cemetery). By 1935 she returned to Germany, but left soon thereafter, because of the decline of the German movie industry caused by the Nazi propaganda machine. Back in Hollywood Wera Engels married the Lithuanian-born actor/writer Ivan Lebedeff. After Lebedeff's death in 1958 (he died of Angina pectoris), Wera Engels moved back to Europe, where she stayed with several friends in London and Stockholm before she went back to Germany. She lived the rest of her life together with Erna Hoffmann (widow of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's friend and personal photographer) in the Munich area.