|
Brigitte Helm (1908-1996)
Fräulein Schittenhelm and Metropolis
 |
Metropolis star, Brigitte Helm, captive in her robot costume, gets some help eating/drinking during filming at the Babelsberg Ufa studios. This was just part of her torture at the hands of
director Fritz Lang.
> POSTERS |
|
|
|
|
|
Born in Berlin with the less than marquee-suitable name Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm, Brigitte Helm is best remembered for her role as the sexy robot in Fritz Lang's 1926 masterpiece Metropolis, her very first film role and the one that brought her instant celebrity. But when she died in Switzerland in 1996, she had been almost completely forgotten.
Very few film buffs are aware that she went on to star in lesser-known films such as G.W. Pabst's Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (“The Love of Jeanne Ney,” 1927), Alraune (“Unholy Love,” 1928), an early sci-fi remake (of the 1918 German original) in which Helm plays a sort of female Frankenstein; Die singende Stadt (1930, “The City of Song” was the British version in 1931) and Herrin von Atlantis (“Queen of Atlantis,” 1932), or that she had spent two months in jail for her negligence in a traffic accident. But unlike her fellow Berliner and sex symbol, Marlene Dietrich, Helm did not go on to bigger and better things. (It is said that Helm was the original choice for the role of Lola in Der blaue Engel, but she turned director von Sternberg down.)
The advent of talking pictures in the early 1930s was unkind to Helm and helped put a damper on her film career. In 1935, with her film career fading, Helm ended her contract with the Ufa studios and started a new role as a wife and mother with her second husband, millionaire industrialist Hugo von Kuenheim. She and her husband made their new home in Munich. Together the couple raised four children.
Helm as Maria in Metropolis.
With the Nazis in power and World War II raging, the von Kuenheims found life in Germany increasingly difficult. Like fellow Berlin-born actress Marlene Dietrich (who was now in America), Helm had no sympathy for the Nazi regime. She and her husband moved to Florence, Italy in 1942. After the war, they returned briefly to Germany, but in 1953 Brigitte von Kuenheim left Munich with her family to set up residence in the resort town of Ascona, in the Italian region of Switzerland near Lago Maggiore. She was still residing there when she died of heart failure on June 11, 1996 at the age of 88 (or 90, according to some sources).
|
BRIGITTE HELM in BRIEF |
- Born: March 17, 1908 in Berlin (some sources claim 1906)
- Parents: Prussian army officer father; mother?
- First Husband: Rudolf Weissbach (married in 1920s; divorced in ?)
- First Film: Metropolis - filming lasted 18 months; Berlin premiere on Jan. 10, 1927
- Last Film: Ein idealer Gatte - Berlin premiere on Sept. 6, 1935
- Second Husband: Dr. Hugo von Kuenheim (married in 1935, four children)
- Dies: June 11, 1996 in Ascona, Switzerland
| |
METROPOLIS Movie Posters
|
|
In a film career that lasted only nine years (1927-1935), Helm made over 30 pictures, most of them at the famous Ufa film studios near Berlin. During her cinema career she had several offers from Hollywood studios, but she turned them all down, reluctant to leave her native Berlin, friends, and family. Had she chosen to join Dietrich in Hollywood, her life and career might have been very different.
The Five Star Collection "Metropolis" DVD
features the Brigitte Helm robot on the cover.
ORDER this DVD
Although she never made a movie in Hollywood, she did play the role of the Hungarian “Countess Gabrielle” in the British production The Blue Danube (1932), directed by Herbert Wilcox (who also brought Joseph Schildkraut from the U.S. to fill the role of Sandor). Her impact on Hollywood came primarily through her memorable Metropolis role as the world's first female robot—considered a landmark of silent film acting. The impressive image of her seductive robot has influenced the design of robots seen in later Hollywood productions—e.g., Robocop and C3PO in Star Wars. But Helm must have felt anything but seductive in her uncomfortable, tight-fitting robot costume. As if that weren't enough, director Lang decided he needed real flames for the Metropolis witch-burning scene. Though she was unhurt, poor Brigitte's dress caught fire during the filming, and Lang an his assistants had to quickly beat out the flames.
Also see Helm's films and more below...
N E X T > Metropolis & Lang Filmography
Copyright © 1997-2005 Hyde Flippo
Brigitte Helm Filmography
- Metropolis (1926) > BUY the DVD
- Am Rande der Welt (1927, "At the Edge of the World")
- Die Liebe der Jeanne Ney (1927, "The Love of Jeanne Ney")
- L'Argent (1927)
- Alraune (1928, "Mandrake," "Unholy Love," "Daughter of Evil")
- Skandal in Baden-Badeb (1929, "Scandal in Baden-Baden")
- Die singende Stadt (1930), "The City of Song" (1931)
- Alraune (1930, "Daughter of Evil")
- Im Geheimdienst (1931, "In the Employ of the Secret Service")
- The Blue Danube (1932, British)
- Die Herrin von Atlantis (1932, "L'Atlantide")
- Gold (1934) - A weak sci-fi imitation of Metropolis
- Ein idealer Gatte (1935) - German film version of Oscar Wilde's "An Ideal Husband"
Brigitte Helm Connections
ON THE WEB
Copyright © 1997-2005 Hyde Flippo
N E X T > Metropolis & Lang Filmography
M O R E > Lang Movie Posters
I N D E X > Full Index of film people
Previous | Home| Film People | Film Studios | Next
|
