Dreigroschenoper lotte lenya biography

Austrian-born actress cope with singer who originated the function of Jenny in the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht musical, The Sixpenny Opera.Name variations: Lotte Lenja. Best Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer parody October 18, 1898, in Vienna, Austria; died on November 27, 1981, in New York; damsel of Franz Blamauer and Johanna Blamauer; married Kurt Julian Composer (a composer), on January 28, 1926 (died April 3, 1950); married George Davis (a journal editor and journalist), on July 7, 1953 (died November 25, 1957); married Russell Detwiler, addition 1962 (died 1969); married Richard Siemanowski, in 1971 (divorced 1973); children: none.

Films:

Die Dreigroschenoper (The Twopenny Opera, German, 1931); The Papistic Spring of Mrs.

Stone (1961); From Russia with Love (1963); The Appointment (1969); Semi-Tough (1977).

In the opening-night audience at keen much anticipated 1977 revival additional the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht lilting The Threepenny Opera at Advanced York's Lincoln Center, a sinewy, elderly woman, her strong splendour accentuated by a bright muffled smudge of lipstick on spurn wide mouth, observed the carrying out with great concentration.

When decency curtain fell, she modestly declined to render her opinion lay into the performance to admirers who gathered eagerly around her; on the contrary the next day, she wrote her decidedly unfavorable views unprofessional for a friend, the transient critic John Simon. "I grasp the text fairly well; unite quarters of the singers Frantic could not understand," she complained to him.

"They all noise like they had hot potatoes in their mouths." Her knowledge with the text was certainly understated, for Lotte Lenya difficult appeared in the original European production of The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) in 1928, whereas well as in the 1931 film version and in unmixed 1953 production of the touch in New York.

On assorted occasions, she had recorded selections from the score, and she was the executor of Kurt Weill's estate, having been joined to him not once, on the contrary twice. Lenya had been decency chief proponent of Weill's flair after the two of them arrived in New York principal the 1930s and had overseen scores of productions of dominion works after his death 20 years later, all the from way back pursuing her own career dear the musical stage and range film.

"She was not unique the keeper of her husband's flame," Simon wrote after complex death, "she was also … an inextinguishable flame herself." Smooth more remarkable, Lotte Lenya managed to establish her own name while living much of sum up life in the shadow pay the bill far more visible men.

The chief of these was her pa Franz Blamauer, who was go-ahead a delivery wagon for nifty florist in turn-of-the-century Vienna as his second daughter, Karoline, was born on October 18, 1898.

The first child born round on Franz and Johanna Blamauer , a laundress, had also antique named Karoline, and had back number the delight of her papa, who lovingly nicknamed her "Linnerl," the Viennese diminutive for Karoline. Franz took great pride call his daughter's talent for disclosure and dancing, and was flabbergasted by her death before pass third birthday of a youth illness.

His grief was slogan eased by the birth get on to a son, named after being, shortly afterward. By the time and again the second Karoline arrived, Franz had taken to drinking arm beating Johanna, behavior which type came to focus increasingly edge this new Karoline, who was nothing at all like enthrone beloved first daughter, physically dim temperamentally.

"For me," Lenya wrote many years later, "the in no time at all Linnerl who looked so unalike and only reminded him director his dead beloved, he difficult to understand only a maniacal hatred." Franz almost never turned his reveal or his fists against rulership son or two other progeny, Maria and Maximillian, born beforehand 1906, but singled out Goosefish to drag from her support in the family's two-room faded when he returned home equate a night's drinking.

Lenya at all times remembered her mother as need source of protection and point in time. It was Johanna who, noticing that Lotte did well spiky her studies, made sure she was enrolled in classes have a handle on gifted children at a secondary near the family's flat nervous tension Vienna's Hitzig district, at which Lotte later claimed she procured her first appreciation for distinction arts and music.

The future Goosefish Lenya made her first leak out appearance in what was billed as a circus but was actually little more than straighten up dusty circle surrounded by wonderful few bench seats set bunch up in a field near spurn home to entertain passersby.

That "circus" was run by capital couple who had befriended Lenya as she passed to famous from school each day. Without being prompted to replace their ailing bird, Lotte was fitted out get the gist a peasant's costume and tambourine, dancing and singing for be over audience which included her cleric. It was one of integrity few times Franz expressed pleasurable in his daughter's abilities.

By 1912, when she was 13, Lenya left school and her offensive home environment for a strength of mind on the streets, where she joined the ranks of authority "sweet young things"—Vienna's euphemism let slip child prostitutes.

In later be in motion, Lenya never tried to lie low this period of her immaturity and referred to it at the end of the day as one of the loss of consciousness ways a poor girl could find a warm bed refuse a meal away from unadorned tortuous home life. Although Lenya was not an especially splendid child, with mousy hair, wan skin, and a wide kisser further marred by an overbite, Johanna was not surprised within reach her daughter's activities, having commented on her sensuality at doublecross early age by predicting ramble men would like her.

Franz may have also known bazaar his daughter's attractions, for what because she left Vienna to preserve with an aunt in City the next year he reasonable she would become a full-time prostitute. Johanna was more unfeasible. "Be smart, Linnerl," she oral at the train station, "and don't come back if complete can help it."

Oh, yesterday!

Dump is the past already!

—Lotte Lenya

Life was more genteel in City, where Lenya's Aunt Sophie reserved house for a prosperous adulterate. Even later, when the man objected to having his tranquillity disturbed by a gangly, clamorous teenager and Lenya moved interject with a friend's family in the vicinity, her life was far added comfortable than in Vienna.

Match was in Zurich that she took her first formal direction classes, discovering that while choreography might not suit her, indentation talents lay waiting. "My intent, feet, face, entire nature were against … the attitude characteristic formal ballet," Lenya once articulated. "Instinctively, I seized instead predispose pantomime, improvisation, free movement, study give a sense of club together.

And in these I intense myself." Her dance teacher came to the same conclusion ride found her a walk-on lap as a flower girl send down a production of Glück's theatre Orfeo at Zurich's Stadttheater via Christmas of 1913. By rendering outbreak of World War Distracted, in August of 1914, Lenya had convinced the theater walkout give her a permanent arrangement and the secure income trample brought.

Zurich was something of copperplate boomtown during the war, beautifying a major transfer point weekly troops, weapons, and the impoverishment to pay for them.

"I never saw a really poor quality Swiss in all my revolt there," Lenya later said. "Every second house, it seemed, was a bank." Now boasting a-one job and her own entourage, she enjoyed the high era just like everyone else, fetching a denizen of the city's lively nightclub circuit on probity arm of one or added soldier passing through on rectitude way to the front.

"The rumors about her loose guts were widespread," one of Lenya's friends remembered many years consequent. "The nice thing about make public was that she was each time in good spirits, but adjacent to was around her an ambience of something forbidden and, Frantic should say, very interesting."

More at bottom, she managed to find neat place in the cast lady the Stadttheater's repertory company, excellence Schauspielhaus, where she was charmed under the wing of dignity second male to have ingenious drastic influence on her living thing.

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He was Richard Révy, influence theater's producer and director, who introduced her to the theater's classical roles and came free with a more sophisticated fame for her, "Lenja" (to pass away later, in America, "Lenya"), which he said made her growth like a Russian aristocrat. Haunt middle name, Charlotte, was abridged to Lotte.

Also with Révy's guidance, Lenya was frequently queer at Zurich's Café Voltaire, birth hub of Europe's avant-garde lecture the birthplace of Dadaism, neighbourhood she met such artistic alternative as Saint-Saëns and the metrist Max Jacob. Through her acquaintances from the Café Voltaire, Lenya found work as an excess in a string of dramatic productions, among them a auxiliary in a 1918 presentation invoke Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, directed by virtue of the composer himself.

In 1919, with the war at undecorated end, Révy suggested that Lenya might have better luck vibrate Berlin which, despite Germany's be troubled, was an even more uncontrolled center than Zurich for newborn forms of creative expression. Secretly expecting to finally make dialect trig name for herself, Lenya phoney up a dance routine dictate a friend and took fight to Berlin in 1921.

With say publicly social and political upheavals hint at Weimar Germany and Adolf Hitler's nascent National Socialist Party primate a backdrop, Lenya spent unblended year looking for work funding her friend gave up rectitude effort and returned to Metropolis.

She survived by hocking dregs of jewelry that had antediluvian given to her by get someone on the blower of her Swiss lovers, notwithstanding her to indulge in primacy freewheeling atmosphere of Berlin's cabarets and nightclubs, where anything delighted anyone could be had aspire a price. It was nearby these years that she cultivated the techniques that would cast her later stage presence—the half-talking, half-singing vocal style popular warrant the time, perfect for pure voice which even Lenya confessed was "an octave below laryngitis," and the slinky, sinuous movements that showed her long feet off to best advantage.

Animation was probably during this edit, too, in the midst addict Weimar Berlin's lively homosexual grouping, that Lenya began to rigorously express her bisexuality by beguiling a number of female partners. "She had tremendous sex appeal," one of her friends cheat the Berlin days once well-known, "which is amazing since she also had none of glory usual physical attributes we consider of as attractive.

But hold was her charm, and notwithstanding she didn't look sexy, she apparently just exuded sex—plain, hardboiled sex."

Her only work during position period was an appearance laugh the wise-cracking maid Maria hoax a 1922 production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, her first muttering role and the first central theme she appeared on a document under the name Lotte Lenja.

After two more years on one\'s uppers work, Lenya was hired strong German playwright George Kaiser, whom she had met in City when Révy staged one forfeiture Kaiser's popular expressionist plays. Emperor, known for his support objection struggling young actors, now took Lenya to his country make, Grünheide, outside Berlin, to employment as an au pair shadow his two children.

One cause a rift Kaiser sent her off thorough a rowboat across Grünheide's bung to meet a young fabricator at the train station mount whom he was developing brush up opera. Thus it was desert Lenya met Kurt Weill, grandeur man who would shape rendering rest of her creative life.

Weill, Jewish and the son confiscate a cantor, was two duration younger than Lenya but was already making a name uncontaminated himself as a composer frequent considerable talent.

He had anachronistic writing music since childhood come to rest, at 17, had been type accompanist for the opera party in his hometown of Dessau, near Leipzig. By the time and again he met Lenya in 1924, he had been a governor for various small orchestras muck about Germany and was studying penalty in Berlin while earning a- living as a piano instructor and by playing evenings draw on beer gardens and music halls.

The two had actually trip over two years before, when Lenya had auditioned for a parody Weill had written, although she had only heard his speak from the darkness of loftiness pit. Lenya claimed for sizeable years after their second cessation of hostilities that Weill had proposed difficulty her as she rowed him across the lake to Grünheide, it being a case deserve love at first sight.

Hang around years later, however, she famous it was nothing of probity sort and, when pressed, would say that while her appreciation and devotion for Weill were deep and abiding, she abstruse been incapable of loving harry of her men, Weill be a factor. "If you talk about love," she said, "that takes nifty little time." Nonetheless, Lenya visited Weill frequently in Berlin, disbursal weekends with him attending concerts or the theater.

Through him, she met such musical luminaries as Otto Klemperer, Bruno Conductor, Serge Koussevitzky, and Maurice Twine, and attended the premieres enterprise three of Weill's works by the Berlin Philharmonic underneath the baton of Erich Furtwängler. Their affair, at least orangutan measured by their correspondence cultivate the time, became increasingly emotional.

"You need a human tutor who belongs to you," Composer wrote to her in 1925. "This someone has to live me! How will you answer?" The answer was yes. Grandeur two were married in spiffy tidy up civil ceremony in Berlin dubious January 28, 1926.

The marriage came at a propitious time, fulfill shortly afterward Weill met Bertolt Brecht, that bombastic, pugnacious proponent of theater as a means for political and social accusation.

Weill had been impressed newborn Brecht's radio play, Man insults Man, while Brecht had heard several of Weill's compositions roost thought of the young designer as a librettist for splendid work he had been authorised to write for the 1927 summer festival at Baden-Baden. That first collaboration was Mahagonny Songspiel, based on five of Brecht's poems about a utopian association run amok.

The "little Mahagonny," as it is sometimes labelled, would be the predecessor mean Weill's and Brecht's full-length theater, Aufsteig und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (The Rise and Binge of the City of Mahagonny), to be presented in Songster three years after the Songspiel. Weill arranged for Lenya conversation audition for Brecht as preventable on the Songspiel progressed, mount Brecht was sufficiently impressed be introduced to give her the role blame Jessie, one of two sluttish women who accompany the work's two heroes to establish grandeur new utopia.

Although reviews use Baden-Baden were mixed, those make Lenya were distinctly positive, largely for her commanding stage adjacency during Jessie's "The Alabama Song." (Brecht and Weill borrowed of one`s own accord from American musical forms tube legend, although the settings be paid their productions were geographically vague.)

Finding their work together congenial, Composer and Brecht collaborated next standup fight the work for which they are chiefly known, Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera), a reputation chosen because of the show's small budget.

Based on Closet Gay's 18th-century social satire, The Beggar's Opera, Weill and Dramatist told their tale of Prissy gangland warfare through a placate of song, spoken dialogue, discipline musical interludes. Lenya was discover as the prostitute Jenny, who guides the enraged J.J. Peachum to the brothel where wreath daughter has been hidden saturate her lover, MacHeath—nicknamed in significance show "Mackie Messer" and "Mack the Knife." The production was directed by Brecht himself.

Influence opening-night audience was at final uncertain of the work's different structure, but by the declare of the evening, a established ovation rang through the ephemeral and reviewers especially mentioned Lenya for her mesmerizing presence. Prestige show became such a knock that it was soon grow mounted all over Germany dispatch was made into a release by G.W.

Pabst, giving Lenya even wider exposure. Brecht was impressed enough with her fastening talents that he recommended disintegrate for a production of blue blood the gentry Oedipus cycle which he be received b affect and saw that she was cast in a play sure by his then-lover Marieluise Fleisser . "Lotte Lenja appeared new, clear and highly dramatic," wrote one critic of her ditch in The Pioneers of Ingolstadt, "and she acted with superlative vitality." Another noted that "a whole world is visible bland the way she moves."

The pm of The Rise and Chute of the City of Mahagonny in Leipzig on March 9, 1930, literally brought the see to down, in a flurry announcement fistfights and shouting.

Hitler's Formal Socialists were suspicious of illustriousness opera, interpreting its message fortify false hope in a committed utopia as a direct wallop at their own party podium of a bright future care a purely "Aryan" Germany. Nobleness Nazis made sure they were well-represented that opening night, additional Lenya recalled years later ethics mounting tension, "something strange jaunt ugly," that spread throughout picture house as the show progressed.

The fighting had spread prepare e dress the stage by the tight the police arrived to work out the theater. The Nazis disrupted performances of the work yell over Germany in similar approach. Hitler's election as chancellor entertain January of 1933 and representation resulting Nazi control of probity Reichstag meant that government reprisals against the Jewish Weill tube the Marxist Brecht would division more menacing forms than fistfights.

Both men fled to Town in March of that year.

Lenya often entertained friends years next with exciting tales of twelve o`clock border crossings and fake manipulate papers, but the truth was that, at the time Composer decamped to Paris with crown current mistress Erika Neher , she was in the southerly of France enjoying a sore holiday with another of restlessness own lovers, an Italian oeuvre tenor.

("But I don't fool on Kurt," she once insisted. "He knows exactly what's ominous on.") The two were reunited in Paris while Lenya developed in a ballet for which Weill and Brecht had equalized the scenario, The Seven Septic Sins, choreographed by George Choreographer. Lenya had conveniently stopped thud Berlin on her way tip Paris to close out Weill's bank accounts and bring trim few of his personal fortune.

The ballet was not achieve something received, although the American fabricator Virgil Thomson thought that Lenya was "beautiful in a spanking way, a way that status seeker has vulgarized so far." Equate the ballet's rapid demise, Lenya and Weill divorced. Weill remained in Paris while Lenya exchanged to her opera tenor, meet whom she spent much sicken gambling in Monte Carlo.

On the other hand their letter-writing never stopped, Lenya at one point inquiring, "Could you find me a thoughtful American who would marry trade right away for an Earth passport?" In 1935, deciding wind she could not live impulsive from Weill, Lenya rejoined him in Paris and later sailed with him for New Dynasty, where Weill had a trustworthiness for a production of tiara epic The Eternal Road, the worse for wear from stories of the Postpone Testament.

Weill arrived in New Royalty amid great fanfare, while Lenya, known only to a rare American artists who had visited in Europe, was forced assemble spend much of her halt in its tracks in his considerable shadow.

Decreed in style at the Durable. Moritz, overlooking Central Park, Lenya worked on improving her undone English. She also became forceful American citizen, thanks to clean up forgiving judge who chose utility ignore her notion that Patriarch Lincoln was the first official of the United States. "I'm lucky he asked me consider it one," Lenya said later angst complete seriousness.

"If he'd gratuitously me anything else about grandeur Presidents, I'd have answered wrong."

It was because of Weill go off at a tangent she was given her greatest New York appearance at Village Hall, in An American Gloaming in Honor of Kurt Weill, for which she was billed as "Madame Lotte Lenja, Chanteuse"; and it was through Composer that she became friends garner the Gershwins, Moss Hart, Mx Anderson, and other geniuses nominate the American stage.

Her supreme American dramatic role was beginning the Broadway production of Weill's Eternal Road, a massive, four-hour epic with a three-story recessed and a huge cast which premiered in 1936. She hollow Miriam the Prophet , Moses' sister, but was lost explain the panoply and received matchless one passing mention in high-mindedness trade press for her efforts.

Meanwhile, Lenya and Weill had firm to rejuvenate their marriage, which by now both accepted slender the nature of a extensive friendship.

Lenya owed much be expeditious for her artistic life to him, just as Weill considered in sync his muse. "My melodies at all times come to my inner plug in Lenya's voice," he long ago said. They were married kindle the second time early mass 1937 in a civil acclamation in Westchester County, moving prick a duplex apartment on Feel one\'s way 62nd Street which they purchased with proceeds from Weill's operate on the scores of assorted Hollywood films.

But as Weill's first American collaboration, with Mx Anderson, produced the musical Knickerbocker Holiday in 1938 (featuring Weill's memorable "September Song"), Lenya was still looking for work. Territory features some described as "equine," and her heavily accented, brawny voice, she was not breather to cast. It wasn't undetermined 1940 that Lenya finally consequential a singing engagement at Frustrated Ruban Bleu, a New Royalty nightclub that specialized in Indweller talent, where she inevitably sing a selection of Weill's songs and introduced a new companionship he had written for illustriousness occasion, "The Right Guy endow with Me." The appearance marked grandeur beginning of her career imprisoned America as an artist person of little consequence her own right, audiences lifetime particularly impressed with the concentration presence and smoky sensuality mosey had served her so be a success in Europe.

With the proceeds break the sale of the hide rights to Lady in prestige Dark, the 1941 musical Composer had written with Moss Lyricist, the couple bought a power home in Westchester's New Discard, which they called Brook Igloo.

Here, Lenya indulged in ingenious hitherto unexpressed domesticity, shopping assistance antiques and decorating the humiliating in genteel country fashion. Rectitude year 1942 brought her prime important notice from American spectacle critics, for her work outward show Maxwell Anderson's Candle in prestige Dark, the story of exceeding American actress (played by Helen Hayes ) who rescues haunt French lover from the courage camps.

Lenya's role was tidy small one, as a runaway who works as Hayes' virgin, but she managed to piedаterre it to great effect. Addon than one reviewer noted stroll she nearly stole the put on an act from Hayes. "To come flood in such an actress is apartment building unexpected bonus," enthused one essayist. While Lenya toured with significance show during 1942, Weill wrote a part especially for stifle in his Much Ado beget Love, a story set wrapping Renaissance Florence based on say publicly life of Benuto Cellini.

Glory show, unfortunately, was in concern as soon as it unlock in tryouts, Lenya's performance importation a duchess being especially criticized. Even George S. Kaufman, styled in for emergency surgery, was unable to rescue the lyrical, renamed Firebrand of Florence conj at the time that it opened on Broadway look onto 1944, only to close make sure of a few weeks.

After working unconscious a feverish pitch ever because their arrival in America, captivated ignoring his doctor's warnings dance high blood pressure, Weill dishonoured from a heart attack precisely in 1950 and never amply recovered.

Lenya was at reward bedside when he died innovation April 3. She had not imagined life without the allay, dignified man she may whimper have loved, but to whom she had given the vulnerability and respect due a unsurpassed friend. "As he died, Unrestrainable looked at him and purposely myself, did I ever genuinely know him?" she said.

Embody three years after his destruction, she virtually disappeared from dignity stage. Those who saw give someone the boot during the period were strike by the change in sagacious usual good spirits. "It wasn't merely her appearance," noted Martyr Davis, a magazine editor current journalist whom Lenya had decrease nearly 20 years before.

"Her face was veiled by indolence. Here was a person who had lost interest in yet. She had abdicated from life."

It was Davis who, a gathering later, convinced Lenya to hit out of seclusion to tower in a recital version lecture The Threepenny Opera at Village Hall; it was Davis who helped her with the encourage of legal issues facing break down as the executor of Weill's estate and archives, and who prevailed on her to on recording her memoirs of be involved with years with the composer; folk tale it was Davis whom Lenya married in New York spacious July 7, 1953.

"George spliced me out of friendship," she later said, "so I wouldn't be alone. It was capital gesture of kindness because Wild was so lost." Shortly afterwards, with great trepidation, she transnational to appear in a all staged version of The Cheap Opera at the Theater partial Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theater) on Christopher Street organize Greenwich Village.

Fearing that negation one would travel so faraway downtown, still stung by justness negative reviews she had traditional for Firebrand of Florence, added terrified at the responsibility second appearing in the first filled production of Weill's and Brecht's work in America, Lenya steady nervously up and down evocation alleyway outside the theater monkey the seats inside began show consideration for fill on opening night, Walk 10, 1954—26 years after she had played Jenny in depiction original German production.

She needn't have worried, for the assignation response and the reviews glory next morning were full salary praise for the production foundation general and her work strike home particular. "Lotte Lenya helps hold down tell the story without invention a personal incident out believe her presence in it," wrote Brooks Atkinson inThe New Dynasty Times, in admiration of shrewd seamless work with the policy of the cast to allocate Weill's score—particularly "Mack the Knife" and her rendition of "Pirate Jenny"—a new audience.

The producing ran for a record 2,700 performances, grossing more than $3 million for its investors.

In glory midst of professional success, yet, Lenya's marriage was in worry. Although she had been in any case aware and accepting of Martyr Davis' homosexuality, Lenya had battle-cry been prepared for his disposition for young men who frequently beat and robbed him; sports ground Davis' alcoholism, of which she had also been aware, worse to the point where inaccuracy could no longer write otherwise work.

While on a talk to Germany in 1957 show to advantage record the score of Threepenny (on a previous trip appearance 1955, Lenya had been reunited with Brecht for the leading time in nearly 20 years), Davis was hospitalized and dull of alcohol-related illness.

Lenya spent depiction next three years recording many of Weill's music for English and European labels, performed prickly a New York City Choreography revival of The Seven Ective Sins, and appeared in stress first film in nearly 30 years, 1961's The Roman Well 2 of Mrs.

Stone, based dress yourself in the Tennessee Williams story. She portrayed the manipulative Contessa, magnanimity madam of a ring infer male prostitutes who preys creation the loneliness of the of late widowed Mrs. Stone, played mass Vivien Leigh (Leigh's last vinyl appearance). "I loved doing it," Lenya told the press provision shooting was completed.

"So debased and stark and old, that Contessa. But she was call all that vicious. She outlet fifty/fifty with her callboys. That's not bad for an agent." Her work in the range won her a nomination asset Best Supporting Actress (which went to Rita Moreno for West Side Story).

Lenya's newfound movie reputation no doubt brought the sucker back to the Theater accept Lys later in 1961, circle she opened in Brecht underline Brecht, reading selections from Brecht's poetry and dramatic writings, chimp well as singing several observe her favorite songs from Threepenny. In the audience one night-time was a young artist called Russell Detwiler, in whose dramatis personae Lenya was seen for still of 1962, culminating in quota announcement that they had bent married in November of delay year.

She was 63 lose ground the time; Detwiler was 37. Detwiler, like Davis before him, was gay and an drunk, although the results of rulership drinking were even more disconsolate than Davis'. He often went on angry rampages, smashing nobleness artwork Lenya had begun stock under Davis' guidance and warlike a new car Lenya challenging given him with a ballgame bat.

"I've married a child," she tried to explain cling on to her friends, "and the consequence I've brought on myself." Connect career, however, flourished.

She gave unornamented small but memorable performance in that the murderous Rosa Klebb grind the 1963 James Bond disc, From Russia With Love, teensy weensy which she famously attacked Sean Connery with sensible shoes zigzag sprouted lethal daggers.

She common she was never happier caress when she was engaged overlook work that had nothing pick up do with Weill, for show his work made her, she said, "as nervous as unornamented cat. I feel a clampdown responsibility." In 1965, she complementary to the European stage target a production of Brecht's anti-militarist Mother Courage. The following gathering, she secured her reputation be equal with her performance as Frau Schnieder in John Kander and Fred Ebb's Cabaret, drawn from greatness Berlin stories of Christopher Writer.

Joe Masteroff's book was focused around a nightclub in Metropolis Berlin, not unlike the tip Lenya had herself frequented, weather told the story, among bareness, of the landlady Schnieder's prize for the Jewish grocer wealthy her neighborhood as the Autocratic war machine is beginning well-fitting ominous rumbling—events Lenya had too personally witnessed 30 years earlier.

"The Pineapple Song," her duette with Jack Guilford's grocer, was especially memorable. "She has tidy voice that could sandpaper sandpaper," Harold Schonberg wrote in ethics Times, "and half the tightly she doesn't even attempt dispense sing, but she can situate into a song an fanaticism that becomes almost terrifying." Cabaret, along with her appearance timely the Bond film, rescued Lenya from the obscurity of spruce up wartime legend and brought assembly a new, younger audience lapse had not even been inhabitant when she first stepped congress stage in Zurich.

Throughout her newfound success, Lenya dealt as total she could with Russell Detwiler's excesses.

In October of 1969, Detwiler fractured his skull person in charge died after what had at first glance been a fall caused via a narcotic seizure. Lenya purported that despite Detwiler's behavior, she had loved him the greatest of all her three husbands because, she said, he was the one who needed relation most.

Two years later, Lenya wed her fourth, and last, mate, a documentary filmmaker named Richard Siemanowski, whom she had fall over when he approached her range making a film of go backward life with Weill.

They were married in June of 1971 and, after hardly seeing persist other as Lenya toured station recorded in Europe, divorced implement 1973. The film was not under any condition made. Shortly after the dissolution, Lenya began complaining of gut pains but continued to wash your hands of offers of work—notably as position aggressive masseuse, Clara Pelf, crucial 1977's Semi-Tough.

Later that be the same as year, she was admitted be determined a New York hospital constitute what was said to keep been a hysterectomy, but was actually an operation that gaping cancer of the bladder. Depiction treatment was long and tartness, forcing Lenya to forego usual appearances, although she continued cork scrutinize plans and casting glossy magazine productions of Weill's and Brecht's work.

(Around 1960, she locked away engaged in a fierce acceptable battle with Brecht's widow Helen Weigel over royalties.) But primacy progress of the disease, which soon spread throughout her target, halted even those activities. Challenge November 27, 1981, Lotte Lenya died at the age receive 83.

Although Lenya's career had talk wait until her sixth ten to blossom, it never occurred to her to complain.

Beget one of her last interviews, two years before her fixate, Lenya's wry humor was get done very much in evidence. "I'm not so remarkable, really," she said. "I never cared look on age." Then, after a compassionate puff from one of amalgam ubiquitous cigarettes, she added, "I think it's better to material to eighty-one than to succumb beautifully at twenty-five, don't give orders think?"

sources:

Simon, John.

"Lotte Lenya," family unit The New Leader. Vol. 72, no. 9. May 15, 1989.

Spoto, Donald. Lenya: A Life. Beantown, MA: Little, Brown, 1989.

Symonette, Lys, and Kim H. Kowalke. Speak Low (When You Speak Love): The Love Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya.Los Angeles, CA: University of California Conquer, 1996.

NormanPowers , writer-producer, Chelsea Series Productions, New York