The Sun And Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler's Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood

Product Information

Or that it was two women, Liesl Frank and Charlotte Dieterle, who carried out most of the paperwork-heavy, unglamorous, but effective rescue work of the European Film Fund (EFF) in Hollywood.

Viertel was a classical stage actress in her own right for 20 years in Germany during the Weimar era. A close con­fi­dante and fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor of Gre­ta Gar­bo, Sal­ka had fled Nazi Ger­many and quick­ly emerged as the keep­er of artis­tic and intel­lec­tu­al soci­ety in WWII-era Los Ange­les. A vital presence in the golden age of Hollywood, Salka Viertel is long overdue for her own moment in the spotlight"--,Provided by publisher. Each Sunday afternoon for many years, her Santa Monica home was the scene of weekly gatherings, where the exiles could speak German and enjoy Salka’s extraordinary cooking and gemutlichkeit (“cozy friendliness”). But Salka had a strong, confident personality and wielded a degree of influence, for a time, in a Hollywood embittered by chronic discord, frustration, jealousy, and misogyny both casual and institutional.It is more often in the imaginative literature about Hollywood and the 1930s exiles, rather than in the histories, that women play prominent roles and emerge as fully fleshed characters: Anna Trautwein in Lion Feuchtwanger’s novel Paris Gazette, for example; or Erich Maria Remarque’s heroines in Shadows in Paradise and The Night in Lisbon; and Salka herself, who appears in fictional form in Joseph Kanon’s Stardust, Elizabeth Frank’s Cheat and Charmer, Gavin Lambert’s Inside Daisy Clover, Christopher Hampton’s Tales from Hollywood, Irwin Shaw’s short story “Instrument of Salvation,” and, fleetingly, in the film The Way We Were. Viertel was born Salomea Sara Steuermann in Sambor, a city then in the province of Galicia, [2] which was a part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, but today is in western Ukraine. These include Something Ain’t Kosher Here: The Rise of the “Jewish” Sitcom (2003), Driven to Darkness: Jewish Émigré Directors and the Rise of Film Noir (2009), and a memoir based on his German-Jewish refugee parents’ experiences, All About Eva: A Memoir of Holocaust Survivors, with a Hollywood Twist (forthcoming, 2021). America’s own deeply rooted anti-Semitism, the eruptions of homegrown fascism that emerged in the 1930s with rallies sponsored by the Silver Shirts and the German American Bund, and widespread anti-immigrant sentiments stoked by such fearmongers as Father Coughlin were factors in the Roosevelt administration’s reluctance to alter strict immigration policies that had been further tightened during the Great Depression.

In less­er hands, this book could have been noth­ing more than a vehi­cle to name­drop, but native Ange­leno Rifkin unearths the larg­er, mov­ing sto­ry of how Sal­ka Vier­tel pro­vid­ed not just a famil­iar cul­tur­al base, but a true safe haven for fel­low Jew­ish immi­grants.Her subject, Salka Viertel, is likely not known to most readers, but her life unfolds in these pages. The Viertels initially lived on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, before renting a house at 165 Mabery Road in Santa Monica, California. For just one example, the following from the novel Prater Violet by Christopher Isherwood, about his character Friedrich Bergmann, based on Salka Viertel's husband Bertholdt: "The face was the face of an emperor, but the eyes were the dark mocking eyes of his slave. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. Eventually she was granted a temporary one, but it arrived too late for her to travel to Europe to see her dying ex-husband before his death.

Such vituperation may seem extreme toward a woman who titled her memoir The Kindness of Strangers and who is remembered, if at all, for inviting people to parties on Sunday afternoons. Her father, Joseph Steuermann, was a lawyer and the mayor of Sambor [2] before antisemitism forced him to renounce his office. W. Murnau and Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein, who were being disrespected by the industry that acknowledged them as cinematic masters. Salka and Berthold became naturalized citizens, and their European-born sons, especially, Peter, eagerly sought to “become fully American. Vincent Brook; Review: The Sun and Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler’s Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood, by Donna Rifkind.Not just a good friend, Salka—who was a Jewish Austrian immigrant who only happened to miss needing to flee her home country by rare circumstance—used those powers of connection to bring artists over to America via emergency visas.

Little wonder that Salka fantasizes about a future Hollywood dominated by “the Warner Sisters, Louisa B. An immersive biography…Chock-full of scandalous affairs and wartime atmosphere, this sparkling account brings overdue attention to a woman who helped make Hollywood’s golden age possible.Her guests included Bertolt Brecht, Charlie Chaplin, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and Thomas Mann. The Viertels had a successful open marriage almost from the beginning, even though they eventually divorced, they remained a loving and committed couple. Your current subscription allows you to be actively logged in on up to three (3) devices simultaneously.