Background
She was born in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Hungary).
She was born in Budapest, Austro-Hungarian Empire (now Hungary).
Billed as "the new Dietrich", she acted in three films with Nelson Eddy, including Rosalie (1937), and with Lon Chaney, Junior. in as Baroness Frankenstein. In 1943, she appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies. In 1947, she starred with Eddy in Northwest Outpost, a musical film composed by Rudolf Friml.
In 1949, she starred in Love Happy with the Marx Brothers.
She played Madame Egelichi, a femme fatale spy, and her performance inspired Milton Caniff in the creation of his femme fatale spy, Madame Lynx, in the comic strip "Steve Canyon". Caniff hired Massey to pose for him.
In 1950, Massey was one of the stars of the National Broadcasting Company spy show Top Secret on radio. In 1952 she began starring in Rendezvous on American Broadcasting Company television
The program was described in a magazine article as "a mystery-drama with plenty of glamour thrown in." Beginning on November 1, 1954, she hosted DuMont"s The Ilona Massey Show, a weekly musical variety show in which she sang songs with guests in a nightclub set, with music provided by the Irving Fields Trio.
The series ended January 3, 1955, after 10 episodes. Becoming an American citizen in 1946, she remained strongly anti-communist for what she saw as the destruction of her native country, at one point picketing the United Nations during the 1956 visit of Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev.