Franciska Gaál

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Skyderick
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Joined: 11 Apr 2014, 13:59

Franciska Gaál

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Post by Skyderick » 07 Jun 2014, 00:53

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Franciska Gaál, now a forgotten actress, was a rising movie star in the 1930’s and a popular cabaret artist and singer. Gaál had her first role in 1921, during the silent era, but rose to fame with the introduction of sound. Producer Joe Pasternak discovered her in 1933 and placed her in the leading roles in seven of his films. She was very popular in her native Hungary and in Germany, but in 1934 her films were no longer welcome in the Reich.
Gaál, who was born in Budapest in 1904 as Szidónia Silberspitz, was Jewish. Her 1934 film Peter, albeit being screened only briefly, was very successful in Germany. In his biography “Easy the Hard Way”, Joe Pasternak recalled having “heard that even Hitler, whom no one considered a joke any longer, adored her. He insisted that someone so pretty and so charming could not be Jewish. There must be a genealogical mistake somewhere, he said”.
Gaál immigrated to the US in 1937 in light of the growing anti-Semitism in Hungary. She starred as Dutch maiden Gretchen in The Buccaneer and as Katerina Linz in The Girl Downstairs in 1938. She was married briefly to German screenwriter Felix Jackson (Joachimson), but divorced him. Her heavy accent would only allow her to portray foreign characters, the final being that of “European peasant girl” Manya in Paris Honeymoon (1939). She then return to Budapest in 1940 to nurse her dying mother, and survived the round up and killing of Hungarian Jews through unknown means.
Gaál remained in Hungary after the war and had her final role in Ákos Ráthonyi’s 1946 project Der Konig Streikt, which was never completed. She eventually returned to the US and after many unsuccessful attempts to find her way back into the limelight, died lonely and forgotten in New York.
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