Lya Mara

Lya Mara was born on August 1, 1897 in Riga, Russian Empire as Aleksandra Gudowiczówna.

She became a solo dancer and in the following years she danced for the Rigaer State theater and became astonishingly famous. This success was crowned with her promotion to a prima ballerina in 1913.

Lya Mara got married with Friedrich Zelnik in 1918. The couple became a popular hub for other filmworkers who met often at the house of Mara/Zelnik and polished their scripts and talked.

She was an actress, known for Charlotte Corday (1919), Kri-Kri, die Herzogin von Tarabac (1920) and Anna Karenina (1920). She was married to Frederic Zelnik.

Zelnik promoted Lya Mara to a major star in Germany as she played mainly in films he directed and produced. Since 1920 Zelnik's film production company was named Zelnik-Mara-Film GmbH.

Somehow Lya Mara could not adapt her acting to the new artistic conditions after the introduction of sound in cinema in 1929, while Zelnik became first director in Germany who post synchronized foreign films.

Leading lady of the silent cinema, born in what is present day Latvia. She was trained as a ballerina and performed on the stage in Warsaw before the onset of World War I. She was discovered for the screen by the director Friedrich Zelnik. He became her mentor and husband. In her film roles, she embodied at once naivety and sex appeal, often playing charming Viennese lasses. She essentially retired from acting in 1932.

When Hitler took power in Germany (1933), Lya Mara left with Zelnik for London. There is no record of her acting there, in none of her husband films produced until 1939 in England and The Netherlands.

After her husband's death in 1950, she retired from film business. Her fate is unknown.