Lya De Putti

The actress Lya de Putti, she is Hungarian by birth, got married at an early age with district administrator Zoltan Szepessy in 1913. There were two children of this marriage. The marriage was soon divorced (Szepessy committed suicide in 1931 shortly after the death of Lya de Putti).

Had two daughters with her first husband Zoltán Szepessy - Ilona Szepessy (b.1914) and Judith Szepessy (b.1916).

Entered films in 1918 and appeared in U.S., German, and British productions.

In 1920 she went to Berlin where she played support roles at the beginning.

F. W. Murnau engaged her for his movie "Der brennende Acker" (1922) where she played one of her most impressive parts. Now she had success and with it she played in many further movies in which she worked together with a lot of stars of this time.

In 1925 she impersonated the leading role under the direction of Ewald André Dupont in the movie "Variété" with which she reached the zenith of her career. The film was a huge success, especially in the USA. Lya de Putti knew how to play a woman between two men with real female challenge.

The movie "Junges Blut" (1926) was her last German movie for a long time, after that she went to the USA.

She acted in D. W. Griffiths movie "Sorrows of Satan" in 1927 and when she made a contract with Universal she got leading roles in the movies "Midnight Rose" (1927) and "Buck Privates" (1927). Between these two movies she returned to Germany for a short time in order to shoot the movie "Charlotte etwas verrückt". During this stay happened a serious accident when Lya de Putti fell down from a window. The press interpreted it as an attempted suicide. But Lya de Putti recovered quick and returned to the USA.

Lya de Putti swallowed a chicken bone at the end of 1931 which had to be surgical removed; but there were complications because of a blood poisoning and a pneumonia which led to her death in the same year.