Acting
Oct 16, 1898
Vienna, Austria
Lotte Lenya
Acting
Biography
Lotte Lenya (born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer; 18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian-American singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world, she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her first husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language cinema, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a jaded aristocrat in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961). She also played the murderous and sadistic Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love (1963). Description above from the Wikipedia article Lotte Lenya, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Feature Films (16)
Agent 007 is back in the second installment of the James Bond series, this time battling a secret crime organization known as SPECTRE. Russians Rosa Klebb and Kronsteen are out to snatch a decoding device known as the Lektor, using the ravishing Tatiana to lure Bond into helping them. Bond willingly travels to meet Tatiana in Istanbul, where he must rely on his wits to escape with his life in a series of deadly encounters with the enemy.
From Russia with Love
A three-way friendship between two free-spirited professional football players and the owner's daughter becomes compromised when two of them become romantically involved.
Semi-Tough
An aging actress travels to Rome with her husband; after he suddenly dies during the flight, she begins a passionate affair with a young gigolo.
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
The story of Kurt Weill 's relationship with the American popular theatre. During his years in exile on Broadway, the composer of Mack the Knife and The Alabama Song, who personified decadent Berlin, found a new life in New York, creating such standards as September Song and Speak Low. Director Barrie Gavin describes the film as "the history of an artist ... struggling to write music which could have real meaning for the society he had just joined." Weill is remembered by the conductor Maurice Abravanel and the actor Burgess Meredith and there are extracts from several of his works.
I'm a Stranger Here Myself: Kurt Weill in America
In London at the turn of the century, underworld kingpin Mack the Knife marries Polly Peachum without the knowledge of her father, the equally enterprising 'king of the beggars'.
The 3 Penny Opera
Filmmaker Larry Weinstein stages a wide range of performances in tribute to the compositions of Kurt Weill.
September Songs: The Music of Kurt Weill
Ken Russell directed a short document of German actress (and widow of famed composer Kurt Weill) Lotte Lenya performing many of Weill's best known compositions for BBC TV series "Monitor."
Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill
This promotional film was aired on American television on 26 November 1965, one month before the release of Thunderball (1965). Narrated by Alexander Scourby, the 48 minute documentary aired as a one hour special. It included footage of the filming at Silverstone Racetrack, Northamptonshire and of the fight aboard the Disco Volante at Pinewood Studios; media coverage of Martine Beswick, Luciana Paluzzi and Claudine Auger; and archive footage of Ian Fleming at 'Goldeneye', Jamaica.
The Incredible World of James Bond
Lawyer Federico Fendi has reasons to suspect that his fashion model wife Carla is secretly one of Rome's highest paid call-girls.
The Appointment
Harry Smith’s final film; an epic four-screen projection. Smith worked on this cinematic transformation of Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht’s opera Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny (1929) for over ten years and considered it his magnum opus. The film was shot from 1970 to 1972 and edited for the next eight years. The “program” of the film is meticulous, with a complex structure and order. The Weill opera is transformed into a numerological and symbolic system. Images in the film are divided into categories— portraits, animation, symbols and nature— to form the palindrome P.A.S.A.N.A.S.A.P. The film contains invaluable cameos of important avant-garde figures such as Allen Ginsberg, Patti Smith, and Jonas Mekas, intercut with installation pieces from Robert Mapplethorpe’s studio, New York City landmarks of the era, and Smith’s visionary animation.
No. 18: Mahagonny
Television & Series (5)
Companion programme to Gregory Porter's Popular Voices (2017) in which Gregory Porter introduces a selection of live performances culled from the BBC archives.
Popular Voices at the BBC
The Dick Cavett Show has been the title of several talk shows hosted by Dick Cavett on various television networks.
The Dick Cavett Show
NET Playhouse is an American dramatic television anthology series produced by National Educational Television. NET subsequently merged with WNDT Newark, New Jersey to form WNET and was superseded by the Public Broadcasting Service. American television anthology series of wide range of genres, from history and drama, to fantasy, and science fiction. Fiction novels, stories, stage plays, fairytales, and historic events are dramatized in each episode.