Product Code Database
Salka Viertel (June 15, 1889 – October 20, 1978) was an Austrian actress and Hollywood screenwriter. While under contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer from 1933 to 1937, Viertel co-wrote the scripts for many movies, particularly those starring her close friend Greta Garbo, including Queen Christina (1933) and Anna Karenina (1935). She also played opposite Garbo in MGM's German-language version of Anna Christie (1930). Viertel was known as the "social connector" within the large European émigré community of artists who settled on the West Side of Los Angeles in the 1930s and '40s.
In 1928, at F.W. Murnau's instigation, the Viertel family emigrated to Hollywood when Berthold received a contract with Fox Film as a director and writer. Even though they left before the Nazis came to power, the Viertels were often linked with "Hitler's gift to America". That's how one biographer characterized the many artists throughout Europe who fled the continent seeking safe haven from political turmoil. Historian Thomas Saunders notes that, as with U.S. universities in the 1930s, the Hollywood studios could be very selective because "the list of émigrés reads almost as a who's who of Weimar production." Saunders ranks Berthold Viertel as "only marginally less significant" than other émigrés whom he considers "without peer."
Salka Viertel first met Garbo in 1929 at a party at Ernst Lubitsch's home, and the two women became instant friends. Over the next couple of decades, Viertel was a mentor and confidante to the famous Swedish actress. It was Garbo who encouraged Viertel to write screenplays as an alternative to film acting. Although Viertel was hesitant at first, she went on to co-write scripts for several Garbo films such as Queen Christina (1933), The Painted Veil (1934), and Anna Karenina (1935). It was said, "the path to a Hollywood production with Garbo was through collaboration with Salka Viertel." But despite numerous attempts in the 1940s, Viertel was unable to develop an acceptable film project for Garbo, who remained in retirement. Likewise, Viertel's plans to co-author a "commercial" script with her fellow exile Bertolt Brecht never materialized.
The Viertel home became the site of salons and meetings of the émigré community of European intellectuals along with Hollywood luminaries, particularly at Sunday night tea parties that Salka hosted. Her assortment of regular guests included not only Sergei Eisenstein, Charlie Chaplin, Jean Renoir, Christopher Isherwood (who moved into Viertel's garage apartment with his boyfriend in 1946), Hanns Eisler, Bertolt Brecht, Max Reinhardt, Bruno Walter, Lion Feuchtwanger, Franz Werfel, and Thomas Mann, but could range all the way from Arnold Schoenberg to Ava Gardner. Professor Ehrhard Bahr dubbed this cultural sanctuary of distinguished artists and intellectuals, many of them from German-speaking countries, "Weimar on the Pacific".: Viertel would open her Santa Monica home on Sunday afternoons (the only day off then for movie industry employees), as film director Robert Parrish recalled: "I walked in the back door one day, and there was a guy with short hair cooking at the stove. In the living room, Arthur Rubinstein was tinkling on the piano. Greta Garbo was lying on the sofa, and Christopher Isherwood was lounging in a chair. 'Who's the guy cooking in the kitchen?' I asked no one in particular. 'Bertolt Brecht,' came the reply."
Besides acting as a diplomat within the ethnically and politically diverse expatriate colony, Viertel also played a practical role as a go-between who could accelerate projects and careers. She actively fundraised for Eisenstein's Que Viva Mexico! project. Composer Franz Waxman met director James Whale through her and wrote his first Hollywood soundtrack for Whale. Brecht was introduced to Charles Laughton at her house, and that was the genesis of their collaboration on the English-language version of Life of Galileo. Charles Boyer was among the European actors whom she helped get started in the American film industry.
In the fight against Nazism, Viertel came to the aid of those trapped in Europe, "German Exiles in Southern California – Berthold Viertel (1885–1953) & Salka Viertel (1889–1978)" , Feuchtwanger Memorial Library, University of Southern California in part by serving as a founding member of the European Film Fund, which brokered contracts with Hollywood studios. Through the Fund's assistance, notable artists such as Leonhard Frank, Heinrich Mann, Alfred Polgar, Walter Mehring, and Friedrich Torberg received emergency visas that enabled them to escape the Nazis. Viertel also helped émigrés "find their footing when they arrived." New Yorker music critic Alex Ross speculated that "Weimar on the Pacific might never have existed without her."
In January 1953, Auguste died. In that same year, Viertel learned that her ex-husband was gravely ill in Austria. She wanted to see him one last time, but in August 1953 the U.S. State Department denied her passport application due to her having been "closely associated with known Communists." As a consequence, she was unable to travel to Europe to visit Berthold before his death in September.
In early December 1953, the State Department summoned Viertel to Washington, D.C. to discuss her political associations. At the hearing, she sufficiently cleared herself to be granted a restricted passport, valid for four months. She immediately made plans to flee the country. She booked an airplane ticket for Ireland on December 26, with the intention to settle in Klosters, Switzerland near family members. As Viertel later recalled, she was alone on Christmas Eve, packing for her departure, when she heard a knock at the door:
In 1960, her son Peter married his second wife, actress Deborah Kerr, and they lived part of the year in Klosters. Salka Viertel's well-received memoir, The Kindness of Strangers, was published in 1969 (it was reissued in 2019). During her last years, she suffered from Parkinson's disease. After a two-year bout with cancer, she died in Klosters on October 20, 1978, aged 89.
Social activism
The Viertels, members of the intelligentsia in Europe, moved to the United States in 1928 for a planned four-year period. They initially lived on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, before renting a house at 165 Mabery Road in Santa Monica, California. In 1932, during Hitler's ascendancy, they decided to stay in Santa Monica, where their sons grew up.
Later life
Following her divorce from Berthold in December 1947, Viertel continued to live on Mabery Road. Her ailing mother Auguste was staying with her. With the onset of the Cold War and McCarthy era, Viertel was one of the Hollywood screenwriters suspected of being a Communism or "Fellow traveller" and was blacklisted from employment. To earn money, she gave drama lessons, managed to sell a couple of teleplay, and vied for various poorly paid film script assignments.
Selected filmography
Actress
Screenwriter
Commentator
Bibliography
(2026). 9781681372747, New York Review Books. ISBN 9781681372747
External links
Categories: 1889 Births, 1978 Deaths, Jews From Galicia, American People Of Austrian-jewish Descent, People From Sambir, Austrian Screenwriters, American Women Screenwriters, American People Of Ukrainian-jewish Descent, Austrian Emigrants To The United States, American Emigrants To Switzerland, Jewish American Screenwriters, 20th-century American Women Writers, 20th-century American Screenwriters, American Salon-holders
|
|
