Wessely, Paula (1907–2000)

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Wessely, Paula (1907–2000)

Austrian actress and celebrated star of stage and film for over a half-century . Born in Fünfhaus, Vienna, Austria, on January 20, 1907; died on May 11, 2000, in Vienna; daughter of a butcher and a former ballerina of the Hofoper (Court Opera); attended Vienna's Theater-Akademie; studied with Max Reinhardt; married Attila Hörbiger (an actor), in 1935; children: Elisabeth, Christiane, and Maresa.

Became famous as a stage actress prior to her first film appearance in Maskerade (1934); during World War II, made Nazi propaganda films; formed own movie production company (1949); reestablished successful stage career (late 1940s); became member of the ensemble of Burgtheater in Vienna (1953).

One of the most celebrated actresses in Central Europe for over a half-century and one of the superstars of Vienna's Burgtheater, Paula Wessely achieved acclaim for her freshness and charm, her subtle sense of comedy and pathos, and her ability to convey a comfortable image of a familiar friend to her audience. She gained an interest in acting from her aunt, Josephine Wessely , an actress of reputation with the Vienna Burgtheater, and began studying the expressions, gestures, and gaits of the customers who came to her father's butcher shop. She started a more serious study of the acting craft with the Hungarian actress Valerie Gray before auditioning for Max Reinhardt's Theater-Akademie in Vienna, one of the most prestigious theater schools in Europe.

Wessely's first professional performance was at the Deutsches Volkstheater in Vienna in 1924, and thereafter she was continually engaged in theaters in Vienna, Prague, and Berlin until 1945. She played a wide variety of roles, in genres from French farce to serious drama, showing unusual vocal range and flexibility. Her close personal and artistic rapport with Rein-hardt helped her to broaden her repertoire from flirtatious and superficial characters to a host of classical roles. Her most memorable artistic achievements are considered to be Gretchen in Reinhardt's production of Goethe's Faust in Salzburg in 1935 and the title role in George Bernard Shaw's St. Joan, translated into German, in Berlin in 1936.

Wessely's success on stage led to a flood of film offers. She rejected these opportunities until the script for Maskerade was submitted to her by Willi Forst and Walter Reisch. She found it too appealing to resist since the role so completely suited her Viennese temperament and used the dialect of her hometown. Released in 1934, Maskerade was a tremendous success and established her as a leading film actress. In 1935, she was directed by Reisch in Episode, another success, and later that year married Attila Hörbiger, an actor who became her frequent co-star.

Wessely's work in Maskerade brought her to the attention of Joseph Goebbels, the minister of propaganda under Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Goebbels saw in the plain Wessely his ideal of the "wholesome" German woman, as opposed to the erotic Marlene Dietrich (who was vehemently anti-Nazi anyway). Wessely reliably delivered the Aryan image required of her as she starred in a string of melodramatic propaganda films, the most blatant of which was Heimkehr (Homecoming) in 1941. This production gave Wessely dubious transatlantic fame when footage from it was included in a number of postwar documentaries on Nazi Germany.

After the war, Wessely was thought of in mythic terms as the grande dame of Austrian film culture. Although she made few films in the postwar period, she revitalized her interrupted stage career, becoming a member of the Burgtheater in Vienna, an honorary member of the Akademie für Musik und Darstellende Kunst of Vienna, and a special member of the Akademie der Künste of Berlin. Among her many awards were the Max-Reinhardt-Ring (1949), the Josef-Kainz-Medaille (1960), and the Goldmedaille der Stadt Wien (1967). Until her death in May 2000, Austro-German audiences continued to hold her in great affection for her down-to-earth persona and exceptional talent.