Background
Zarah Leander was born on 15 March 1907 in Karlstad, Sweden, the daughter of a pastor.
Zarah Leander was born on 15 March 1907 in Karlstad, Sweden, the daughter of a pastor.
Zarah Heidberg married at the age of sixteen the actor Nils Leander, an inveterate alcoholic whom she soon left.
Following her success in a Viennese musical comedy and as the star of Geza von Bovary’s Première (1937), the Scandinavian actress was offered a long-term contract by the German UFA studios. Over the next eight years the most beautiful woman of the Nazi cinema became a semi-official personage in the Third Reich, the ‘chastitv-belted Ewige Weib of the Nazi screen’.
Her films were projected throughout the territories conquered by the Wehrmacht. For the most part they were musicals and romantic love stories set in past centuries or exotic climes.
During a bombing raid on Berlin in 1943 her villa caught fire and Zarah threw all her wardrobe through the windows to avid passers-by. A few hours later she flew back to Stockholm.
After several years in retreat in the Swedish countryside, she returned to Vienna, the scene of her first triumph, to resume her film career.
As late as 1965 Zarah Leander appeared in musical comedy in West Berlin and two years later in the Italo-German production Come Imparai ad Amare la Donne. She spent her last years in quiet retirement in Sweden, where she died in August 1981.
Première
1937Zu Neuen Ufern
1937Heimat
1938Der Blaufuchs
1938Es war eine Rauschende Ballnacht
1939Das Lied der Wüste
1939Das Herz der Königin
1940Der Weg ins Freie
1941Die Grosse Liebe
1942Damals
1943Cuba Cubana
1952Ave Maria
1953Bei Dir war es Immer so Schön
1954Der Blaue Nachtfalter
1959Never an adherent of Nazism, Zarah Leander, who remained a Swedish citizen, avoided politics and propaganda activity, preferring the artistic and bohemian milieu in Berlin, throwing lavish and noisy receptions in her home and engaging in eccentric conduct which infuriated Goebbels and other Nazi potentates.
Quotes from others about the person
'She projected a screen-filling décolletage beneath which, with chaste and steady rhythm, beat a woman's heart'
Richard Grünberger