Tilly Losch

Tilly Losch
from the trailer for the film The Good Earth (1937).
Born	Ottilie Ethel Leopoldine Losch (1903-11-15)November 15, 1903 Vienna, Austro-Hungarian Empire
Died	December 24, 1975(1975-12-24) (aged 72) New York City, New York, U.S.
Years active	1936–1946
Spouse(s)	Edward James (1930–1934) Henry Herbert, 6th Earl of Carnarvon (1939–1947)

Ottilie Ethel Leopoldine Herbert, Countess of Carnarvon (November 15, 1903 – December 24, 1975), née Losch, was an Austrian-born dancer, choreographer, actress and painter who lived and worked for most of her life in the United States and United Kingdom.

Born in Vienna to a Jewish family, Losch studied ballet from childhood at the Vienna Opera, making her student debut in 1913 in Louis Frappart's 1885 Wiener Walzer. She became a member of the corps de ballet on March 1, 1918 and a coryphee three years later. Her first solo role was the Chinese Lady Doll in Josef Hassreiter's Die Puppenfee. Ballet master Heinrich Kroeller and the Opera's co-director, composer Richard Strauss, promoted her to soloist on January 1, 1924. She danced prominently in new ballets by Kroeller, Georgi Kyaksht and Nicola Guerra. Outside the Opera, Losch took modern dance class with Grete Wiesenthal and Mary Wigman, and performed dramatic and movement roles in Viennese theaters, at the Salzburg Festival and in Max Reinhardt's 1924 Berlin production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, also choreographing for the Shakespeare play. Losch resigned from the Vienna Opera on August 31, 1927 in order to work more with Reinhardt at the Salzburg Festival and in New York. She also choreographed Reinhardt's Everyman and Danton's Death.

Losch made her London debut in 1928 in Cochran's production of Noël Coward's musical review The Year of Grace, and over the course of the next few years, worked in London and New York as both a dancer and choreographer. In New York she danced in The Band Wagon with Fred and Adele Astaire in 1931. Reinhardt encouraged her to extend herself and believed she could also act; casting her in a 1932 London production of The Miracle, Losch's part was rewritten to provide her with the only spoken dialogue in the production (The Lord's Prayer) which she recited to dramatic effect.