Marika Rökk
| Marika Rökk | |
|---|---|
With fan mail, c. 1940
|
|
| Born |
Marie Karoline Rökk 3 November 1913 Cairo, Khedivate of Egypt |
| Died | 16 May 2004 (aged 90) Baden bei Wien, Austria |
| Occupation | Actress |
| Years active | 1930–1988 |
| Spouse(s) |
Georg Jacoby (1940–1964) Fred Raul (1968–1985) |
Marika Rökk (3 November 1913 – 16 May 2004) was an Egyptian-born singer, dancer and actress of Hungarian descent, who became famous in German films, notably in the Nazi era.
Marie Karoline Rökk was born in 1913 in Cairo, Egypt, the daughter of Hungarian architect and contractor Eduard Rökk and his wife Maria Karoline Charlotte née Karoly. She spent her childhood in Budapest, but in 1924 her family moved to Paris. Here she learned to dance and starred with the Hoffmann Girls at the Moulin Rouge cabaret. After a tour that led her to Broadway she continued her dance training in the United States, where she worked with Ned Wayburn. In 1929 she returned to Europe and the next year acted in her first film, Why Sailors Leave Home, a British comedy directed by Monty Banks, starring Leslie Fuller.
She made her real breakthrough when the Universum Film AG (UFA) attempted to create a German film star to rival Hollywood's top musical star actresses Eleanor Powell, Jeanette MacDonald, Ginger Rogers and later, Alice Faye, Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable. The Third Reich's Minister of Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, admired Hollywood movies and examined them carefully in regular private screenings. Technicolor films such as Becky Sharp (1935), The Garden of Allah (1936), Nothing Sacred (1937), and A Star Is Born (1937) made him realize that Hollywood feature films presented a threat to Germany's internal market and that Hollywood's dominance of colour and musical film technology should be matched, at least if Germany was serious about engaging in a cultural war with the U.S. and Britain.
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