Lilian Harvey

Lilian Harvey
Lilian Harvey in 1932
Born	Helene Lilian Muriel Pape (1906-01-19)19 January 1906 London, United Kingdom
Died	27 July 1968(1968-07-27) (aged 62) Juan-les-Pins, France
Occupation	Actress
Years active	1924–1940
Spouse(s)	Hartvig Valeur-Larsen (1953–1957)

Lilian Harvey (19 January 1906 – 27 July 1968) was an Anglo-German actress and singer, long based in Germany, where she is best known for her role as Christel Weinzinger in Erik Charell's 1931 film Der Kongreß tanzt.

Helene Lilian Muriel Pape was born in 1906, in Hornsey, North London. Her mother, Ethel Marion (Laughton), was English, and her father, Walter Bruno Pape, was a German businessman. At the beginning of World War I the family found itself in Magdeburg, and as they were unwilling and unable to return to England, Harvey was sent to live with an aunt at Solothurn in Switzerland. After the war, the Papes lived in Berlin, where Lilian took her high-school diploma (Abitur) in 1923. She began her career by attending the dance and voice school of the Berlin State Opera and assumed her grandmother's maiden name (Harvey) as her professional surname.

After an engagement as a revue dancer in Vienna in 1924, Harvey received her first movie role as the young Jewish girl "Ruth" in the Austrian film The Curse directed by Robert Land. Subsequently, she starred in many silent films. In 1925, she was cast in her first leading role in the film Passion by Richard Eichberg, side by side with Otto Gebühr.

Because of her training as a singer, Harvey was able to pursue a successful acting career during the initial talkie era of the early 1930s. Her first movie with Willy Fritsch was the operetta film Chaste Susanne in 1926. Harvey and Fritsch became the "dream couple" of German movies in the early 1930s with the romantic love story Waltz of Love; she was called the "sweetest girl in the world" by the press, after a song featured in the film. She and Fritsch starred in a total of 11 movies together, among them the criminal comedy Hokuspokus (1930) after a play by Curt Goetz, directed by Gustav Ucicky, which became a box office success. An English version (The Temporary Widow) was filmed simultaneously, starring Lilian Harvey and Laurence Olivier, who thereby made his film debut. She also appeared in the musical film The Three from the Filling Station of the same year, which also became a major success and gave the young actor Heinz Rühmann his break. During this period she became the muse of the composer Charles Koechlin who, in his sixties, wrote numerous pieces in her honour; initially flattered, she soon became disturbed by his apparent obsession with her.