John Cecil Lawrence (m. 1928; div. 1936) Curtiss Thomas (m. 1943)
Children
1
Landi in 1932
Elissa Landi (born Elisabeth Marie Christine Kühnelt; December 6, 1904 – October 21, 1948) was an Austrian-American actress born in Venice, who was popular as a performer in Hollywoodfilms of the 1920s and 1930s.[1] She was noted for her alleged aristocratic bearing.[2]
Landi was born Elisabeth Marie Christine Kühnelt[3] in Venice, Italy, to Austrian military officer Richard Kühnelt and his wife Caroline. She was raised in the village of Kleinhart in Lower Austria near Vienna until the divorce of her parents. Later on she was educated in England. From 1928 to 1936, she was married to John Cecil Lawrence, and from 1943 to 1948 to Curtis Kinney Thomas (1905–2002).
Landi's first ambition was to be an author. She wrote her first novel at the age of twenty, and returned to writing during lulls in her acting career.[4] She debuted on stage in Dandy Dick (1923).[3] She joined the Oxford Repertory Company at an early age, and appeared in many successful British and American stage productions. In 1926 she starred in Dorothy Brandon's Blind Alley in the West End.
During the 1920s she appeared in British, French, and German films before traveling to the United States to appear in a Broadway production of A Farewell to Arms (1930).[4] Her other Broadway credits included Empress of Destiny (1938), Apology (1943), and Dark Hammock (1944).[5]
Fox loaned her to Paramount to play Mercia, the female lead in Cecil B. DeMille's 1932 film adaptation of the play of the same name. DeMille said he chose her for the role because "[t]here is the depth of the ages in her eyes, today in her body and tomorrow in her spirit."[6]
Her contract with Fox was abruptly cancelled in 1936 when she refused a particular role. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed her, and after a couple of romantic dramas, she played the cousin of Myrna Loy in the very popular After the Thin Man (1936). She retired from acting in 1943, after making only two more films.
Landi became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1943 and dedicated herself to writing, producing six novels and a series of poems. She had published her first novel as early as age nineteen. She continued writing novels at the height of her movie fame and for the rest of her short life.
Diana Wynyard, CBE was an English stage and film actress.
Elisabeth Bergner was an Austrian-British actress. Primarily a stage actress, her career flourished in Berlin and Paris before she moved to London to work in films. Her signature role was Gemma Jones in Escape Me Never, a play written for her by Margaret Kennedy. She played Gemma first in London and then in the Broadway debut, and in a film version for which she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1943, Bergner returned to Broadway in the play The Two Mrs. Carrolls, for which she won the Distinguished Performance Medal from the Drama League.
Anne Baxter was an American actress, star of Hollywood films, Broadway productions, and television series. She won an Academy Award and a Golden Globe, and was nominated for an Emmy.
Dorothy Lamour was an American actress and singer. She is best remembered for having appeared in the Road to... movies, a series of successful comedies starring Bing Crosby and Bob Hope.
Edith Madeleine Carroll was an English actress, popular both in Britain and America in the 1930s and 1940s. At the peak of her success in 1938, she was the world's highest-paid actress.
Agnes George de Mille was an American dancer and choreographer.
Carole Landis was an American actress and singer. She worked as a contract player for Twentieth Century-Fox in the 1940s. Her breakout role was as the female lead in the 1940 film One Million B.C. from United Artists. She was known as "The Ping Girl" and "The Chest" because of her curvy figure.
Jane Darwell was an American actress of stage, film, and television. With appearances in more than 100 major movies spanning half a century, Darwell is perhaps best remembered for her poignant portrayal of the matriarch and leader of the Joad family in the film adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, for which she received the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Joseph Schildkraut was an Austrian-American actor. He won an Oscar for his performance as Captain Alfred Dreyfus in the film The Life of Emile Zola (1937); later, he was nominated for a Golden Globe for his performance as Otto Frank in the film The Diary of Anne Frank (1959) and a Primetime Emmy for his performance as Rabbi Gottlieb in a 1962 episode of the television series Sam Benedict.
Richard Cromwell also known as Roy Radabaugh, was an American actor. His career was at its pinnacle with his work in Jezebel (1938) with Bette Davis and Henry Fonda and again with Fonda in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Cromwell's fame was perhaps first assured in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935), sharing top billing with Gary Cooper and Franchot Tone.
Roland Young was an English-born actor. He began his acting career on the London stage, but later found success in America and received an Academy Award nomination for his role in the film Topper (1937).
Gertrude Maud Barnes, known professionally as Binnie Barnes, was an English actress whose career in films spanned from 1923 to 1973.
Jetta Goudal was a Dutch-American actress, successful in Hollywood films of the silent film era.
Julia Faye Maloney, known professionally as Julia Faye, was an American actress of silent and sound films. She was known for her appearances in more than 30 Cecil B. DeMille productions. Her various roles ranged from maids and ingénues to vamps and queens.
Ian Keith was an American actor.
Catherine Townsend Johnson was an American stage and film actress.
The Sign of the Cross is a 1932 American pre-Code epic film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille and released by Paramount Pictures. Based on the original 1895 play by English playwright Wilson Barrett, the screenplay was written by Waldemar Young and Sidney Buchman. It stars Fredric March, Elissa Landi, Claudette Colbert, and Charles Laughton, with Ian Keith and Arthur Hohl.
Katherine Lester DeMille was a Canadian-born American actress who played 25 credited film roles from the mid-1930s to the late 1940s.
Conchita Montenegro was a Spanish model, dancer, stage and screen actress. She was educated in a convent in Madrid.
Oscar C. Apfel was an American film actor, director, screenwriter and producer. He appeared in more than 160 films between 1913 and 1939, and also directed 94 films between 1911 and 1927.
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