Henny Porten

The 1920s were a terrible time for Germany, but its film industry flourished, and Porten worked with such directors as Ernst Lubitsch, G.W. Pabst, Carl Froelich and William Dieterle (her first husband, also a director, had died in WWI). Among Porten's 1920s roles were a Jewish actor's fiancee in "Das Alte Gesetz/The Ancient Law" (1923), a mother in "Mutter und Kind/Mother and Child" (1924), and a housemaid in "Mutterliebe" (1929). Porten's first official talkie--other than her early synchronized sound films--was Pabst's 1930 "Skandal um Eva/Scandal for Eve."Middle age and the rise of Nazism did not bode well for Porten's career (her second husband was Jewish). She refused to get a divorce and was in turn refused an exit visa, so her only films were given to her by sympathetic directors: "Der Optimist/The Optimist" (1938), "Komodianten/The Players" (1941), "Symphonie eines Lebens/Symphony of a Life" (1942), and her last leading role, as the matriarch of "Familie Buchholz/The Buchholz Family" (1944). She and her husband found themselves homeless and nearly starving by the end of the war. She died in relative obscurity in 1960.