Читать книгу Hedy Lamarr - Ruth Barton - Страница 10

HEDY NOW SIGNED UP for acting classes with Professor Arndt in Vienna.¹According to Ecstasy and Me and several interviews that she gave, Hedy forged a handwritten note to the school from her mother and slipped off one day to Austria's largest film studio, Sascha Film Studios, where she talked herself into a job as a script clerk. While there she overheard the assistant director say he would be interviewing actresses the next day to play a secretary. Hedy seized the opportunity: “Between scenes I went to the make-up table of one of the actresses and put on lipstick, eyebrow pencil and powder. I combed out my hair which I always have liked to wear long and free and went back on to the set. Going to the assistant director, I said boldly, ‘I want to play the part of the secretary.’ ”² According to Ecstasy and Me, her boldness landed her a small part in her first film: Alexis Granowsky's Storm in a Water Glass (Die Blumenfrau von Lindenau/Sturm im Wasserglas). That assertion, however, was mistaken, as Storm was directed by Georgjacoby in 1931, and Hedy's first film was actually Jacoby's Gold on the Street (Geld aufder Strasse), which was released by Sascha Film in 1930.

The prolific Jacoby was well regarded as a director of light comedies and admired for his effortless way of manipulating small details to produce films of great charm. He had started his career just before the First World War, working on sex-education and epic films, nearly sinking his reputation on a version of Quo Vadis (1923) with Emiljannings in the role of Nero that was ill-cast and ran massively over budget. With a new war now seemingly unavoidable, and the economic depression in full grip, audiences were happy to hand over their cash in return for an hour or two of screen comedy. Jacoby's tendency to play moments of chaos to the hilt made him one of their favorites, particularly because he crisscrossed between comedic and musical sequences. Although his comedies seemed innocuous, they allowed audiences to enjoy a gentle critique of the way things were without any danger of serious political engagement.

Although the Viennese film industry could not compete with its prolific neighbor in Berlin, it still turned out a respectable twenty or so films per year in the early days of sound. These films, more than anything else, contributed to the enduring myth of Vienna as the city of “waltzes and lieder, of exquisite emotional sacrifice and dashing but heartless young officers, of Franz-Joseph court intrigues, evenings with ‘Heurigen’ at the Prater amusement gardens, not forgetting the epitome of seductive naivety, the ‘Wiener Mädl’ [Viennese young woman].”³ Production centered around the Sascha Film Studio, founded in 1910 by Count Alexander Joseph “Sascha” Kolowrat-Krakowsky and relocated from Bohemia to Vienna in 1912. The Sievering Studio, where Hedy acted in her first film, was located in the 19th District, conveniently close to her home. As a classic wiener mädl, Hedy inherited a reputation that she would effortlessly exploit: that of the famed innocent-but-seductive Viennese beauty.

Gold on the Street is most notable for being Sascha Film's first sound production, an achievement that was facilitated by funding from the German Tobis Film (subsequently Sascha-Tobis Film). Sascha-Tobis would make its name and secure its income with a flurry of light comedies, of which Gold was the first. Gold's story takes place on the day Dodo (Lydia Pollman), the daughter of a banker, is set to marry Max Kesselberg (Hugo Thimig), her solid but dull fiancé. All are ready for the wedding to start, save Dodo, who is elsewhere, pleading with the famous tenor Dallibor (Karl Ziegler) to run away with her. When that plan fails, she takes up with the globetrotter Peter Paul Lutz (Georg Alexander), who conveniently comes into a fortune and is able to prevent the wedding and run off with Dodo. Hedy's role was too minor to warrant a screen credit or a mention in the press.

In her second film, Storm (Die Blumenfrau von Lindenau), Hedy played a small part as “Burdach's secretary.” The making of the film was a big event in Vienna, particularly since its 13 March 1931 opening was planned to coincide with the unveiling of the Sascha-Filmpalast.⁴

The story was an adaptation of Bruno Frank's well-known comedy Sturm im Wasserglas, with the title changed so that audiences wouldn't mistake it for an art film. It takes place on the day the small town of Lindenau is preparing to elect a new mayor. The front-runner is Town Councilor Thoss (Paul Otto), who has campaigned as a friend of the people. All appears to be favoring Thoss, that is, until the Flower Lady intervenes. She is outraged because her dog, a mongrel named Toni, was impounded after she failed to pay for its license. With the townsfolk on her side, an idealistic journalist, Burdach (Harald Paulsen), highlights the councilor's duplicity. This wins Burdach the heart of Thoss's young wife, who leaves her husband for the journalist and all falls happily into place in the end. The film's modest critique of the pomposity of officialdom and its assumption that the townsfolk would unthinkingly support anyone from their class went down well with certain reviewers. Audiences, too, reportedly laughed and applauded throughout the Berlin premiere, which was attended by the director and Toni. The only drawback was technical—some of the dialogue was lost when viewers laughed for too long; the trade press recommended that filmmakers bear this in mind when making further sound comedies.⁵

The star of that film was nominally the German beauty Renate Müller, who would later die in mysterious circumstances after becoming embroiled with leading Nazi figures. Much of the critical praise, however, went to the veteran Viennese comedienne Hansi Niese, who played the Flower Lady and whose performance, it was predicted, would win her a new generation of fans in Germany. With her small role, Hedy ought not to have expected a mention, nor did she receive one in most of the reviews. Still, the critic of Lichtbildbühne was sufficiently taken with the secretary at the newspaper, whose eyes were “as pretty as a picture,” to devote a line in his review to the unknown, and still unnamed, performer.⁶

While reviews of Storm were appearing in the press, Hedy was branching out. Her formal schooling, as far as she was concerned, was over. The March edition of Die Bühne carried a photograph of Hedy taken by the up-and-coming Viennese photographer Trude Fleischmann. The accompanying text describes Hedy as a young “society woman, who has just finished her schooling and is looking for a career in film.”⁷ Who inserted this notice? One suspects that Hedy sweet-talked someone with influence into promoting her in what was then one of Vienna's most popular theater and society magazines. But more important for her career and her burgeoning reputation as a local beauty with acting ambitions, Hedy met Max Reinhardt.

The great Vienneseborn director had always had an ambivalent relationship with his native city, moving back and forth between it and Berlin. In 1923, he began running the Theater in der Josefstadt and (thanks to the generous pockets of his patron, the war and inflation profiteer Camillo Castiglioni) restored it with “real gold and red brocade and velvet, with Venetian chandeliers and ceiling frescos by old masters and an asbestos curtain displaying the oversized reproduction of a Canaletto view of Vienna.”⁸

Reinhardt arrived in Vienna in April 1931 to hold auditions for his forthcoming production of Edouard Bourdet's comedy The Weaker Sex. Meanwhile, he was pitching a last-ditch battle to prevent his acting school, the Reinhardt Seminar, from folding. A man for whom there was never enough time, Reinhardt shuttled between the two sets of demands, arranging private financing for the acting school and auditioning a queue of aspiring actors whose hearts’ desire was to work for Herr Professor. Playing for Reinhardt, as everyone knew, could make an actor's name, and unfilled parts were few as many of the leading roles had been taken by cast members from the Berlin production. To no one's surprise, Reinhardt regular Paula Wessely was soon named, but in early May he unexpectedly announced that the role of the First American would go to the hitherto unknown Hedy Kiesler. The part was small but “nett” (nice).⁹Overjoyed as Hedy must have been, there was more good news to come.

Another minor cast member was the future Pulitzer Prize-winning author and journalist George Weller. According to Weller, it was during the rehearsal of a café scene with Hedy that Herr Professor turned to a group of reporters who were hanging around the set and said, “Hedy Kiesler is the most beautiful girl in the world.” Word soon swept through the acting community. By October 1931, the trade paper Lichtbildbühne was quoting Reinhardt on the extraordinary beauty of Hedy Kiesler, a description soon to be echoed by Louis B. Mayer. Praise such as this was not awarded lightly; all Hedy Kiesler had to do now was learn how to act.

Reinhardt apparently instructed Weller to teach Hedy some appropriate American songs. Hedy's idol, Weller soon discovered, was the American tennis player Helen Wills; otherwise, her familiarity with American culture was limited to renditions of “Yes Sir, That's My Baby” (she sang the title only for all lines regardless of length), “Yes! We Have No Bananas” (she hummed the melody), and “Sonny Boy” (she sang all the words and knew the melody). These and other exercises in Americanization took place in a small room backstage.¹⁰

The Weaker Sex ran at the Theater in der Josefstadt from 8 May to 8 June 1931 and received enthusiastic reviews, with critics opining that this was now as much or even more a Max Reinhardt play than the original by Edouard Bourdet. Hedy attracted no critical notices but it was a thrilling start, particularly in a city that valued its theaters infinitely more than its film productions and valued Max Reinhardt most of all.

Playing in the Theater in der Josefstadt also offered Hedy the opportunity to spend time with its sometime-manager, Otto Preminger, and his friend Sam Spiegel. According to Franz Antel (Hedy's childhood neighbor), Antel made the introductions. In his memoir, Antel recalls when, as a young man moving up in the 1930s film business, he learned that Sam Spiegel was in town. Knowing that Spiegel had a taste for pretty young women, Antel introduced first himself, and then a number of handpicked Viennese beauties. Of these, the most stunning was Hedy Kiesler, a school friend of his friend Melly Frankfurter. Spiegel was instantly smitten and asked her out to dinner and dancing and, Antel discreetly murmurs, whatever usually follows. Spiegel owned a large Ford coupé and competed with Preminger for the young woman's attentions. The rising producer would take her out to the Döblinger Bad and the Femina.¹¹

Working with Reinhardt was to open doors for the rising star as it did for so many other aspiring young actors of her generation. Being a Reinhardt actor was an effective calling card and anyone who could claim an association, particularly those who later emigrated to Hollywood, did. In August 1931, Hedy packed her bags and left for Berlin.

She was not alone in making this journey; many others in the Austrian film industry also followed the promise of money and opportunity to the capital of German-language filmmaking. The transition from silent cinema to talkies was under way, and the conventional German accent was considered too harsh by many. Audiences were reportedly roaring with laughter as previously silent stars opened their mouths and produced streams of sibilants and double consonants. The softer intonations of Southern Germany and Austria were more agreeable, and demand for actors from these regions grew, especially for the romantic roles. Hedy was also literally not alone; she traveled with Alfred (Fred) Döderlein, who was also en route from Vienna to Berlin and with whom she was having a brief affair.

Berlin was a magnet for the artistic community of the day. One of its adopted sons was Christopher Isherwood, whose account of the capital's decadence was immortalized onstage and then film with Cabaret, an adaptation of his Berlin Stories. Another vivid chronicler was Otto Friedrich. In Before the Deluge, he depicts Berlin in the decades between world wars as its population first saw the economy crumble beneath inflation and unemployment and then soar on the back of financial speculation; political instability was the order of the day, and militarism the first resort of the ruling classes. This was a city where hunger and artistic brilliance were bedfellows and all shades of sexual expression were on parade. The twenties were not the Golden Years for everyone, Friedrich reminds us, yet the names of the people, places, and events most associated with the Berlin of that time have retained a magical ring: “Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Josephine Baker, the grandiose productions of Max Reinhardt's ‘Theatre of the 5,000,’ three opera companies running simultaneously under Bruno Walter, Otto Klemperer, and Erich Kleiber, the opening night of Wozzeck and The Threepenny Opera.”12 Albert Einstein moved to Berlin, as did W. H. Auden and Isherwood; Vladimir Nabokov gave tennis lessons to the wealthy as their children raced their new motorcars along the recently constructed speedway. “Berlin's nightclubs were the most uninhibited in Europe; its booted and umbrella-waving street-walkers the most bizarre,” Friedrich continues. “Above all, Berlin in the 1920s represented a state of mind, a sense of freedom and exhilaration. And because it was so utterly destroyed after a flowering of less than fifteen years, it has become a kind of mythical city, a lost paradise.”¹³ No wonder, then, that Hedy should be drawn to this pulsating Center City.

By most accounts, Hedy moved to Berlin to study under Max Reinhardt; however, the Deutsches Theater archive has no record of her attendance in either Reinhardt's courses or in his Berlin productions. Certainly, she would have kept up with Reinhardt in Berlin; in fact, Hedy went to work with another great theater name of the day, Alexis Granowsky.

Through Granowsky, Hedy would encounter a circle of Russian émigrés whose political leanings were far to the left. Leo Lania describes Granowsky as “one of the most remarkable men I have ever met: a character out of a Russian novel.”¹⁴ He had been born to a well-to-do Jewish family in Riga and lived a life of privilege before the First World War, studying and traveling in Europe and mastering several languages. The Russian Revolution “made him a beggar,” according to Lania, “but poverty impressed him as little as wealth.” A close friend of Chagall and Mayakovsky and Maxim Gorky and his wife, in Russia Granowsky had been at the center of a coterie of Jewish and Soviet intellectuals. His Jewish Academic Theatre of Moscow (GOSET) became the sensation of Moscow and “the Bolsheviks overwhelmed him with honours, which in those years of civil war often had to take the place of bread, or even coal to heat his theatre…. The Soviet Government even let him keep his valuable library and his rare collection of erotic prints.”¹⁵ After a performance at GOSET, this group of intellectuals would retire to the Gorkys’ Moscow apartment and argue about art, politics, and theater through the night.

Granowsky's first film, Jewish Happiness, was produced for Sovkino in 1925, but it was in theater that he flourished. When Freud saw his stage production of Night in the Old Market in Vienna, he said he was “deeply moved.”¹⁶ By the 1930s, however, the advent of a more hard-line approach to the arts in the Soviet Union forced Granowsky to flee the country. “He thought himself a Western European—by culture and upbringing. But he was a Russian. This contradiction was his ruin.”¹⁷ After a few productions at the Reinhardt Theatre in Berlin, Granowsky turned to filmmaking, making his German debut with The Trunks of Mr. O. F. (Die KofferDesHerrnO.F).

Lania, himself a Russian Jew, journalist, and writer, who had been brought up in Vienna and had long been a Communist, wrote the script for Granowsky. He too was working with Reinhardt at the time, though he had previously scripted the film version of Brecht's The Threepenny Opera (Dreigroschenoper) for the famed Austrian film director, Georg Wilhelm Pabst, and collaborated with the left-wing theater director, Erwin Piscator, on his “political theater.” Lania remembers the part of Helene in The Trunks going to a “young girl just out of dramatic school. She was inexperienced, shy and very pretty. Her name was Hedy Kiesler.”¹⁸ Granowsky shot his film between 15 September and 17 October 1931 and it premiered in Berlin on 2 December 1931.

Once again, Hedy was acting in a comedy, this time as the pretty young daughter of the mayor of Ostend (Alfred Abel). Another of the film's rising stars was Peter Lorre. The film is subtitled A Fairytale for Grown-Ups and the story starts with the unexpected appearance at a modest hotel of thirteen suitcases bearing the initials O. F. The town's motto is apparently “Better two steps back than one step forward.” A small-time local journalist named Mr. Stix, played by Lorre, starts a rumor that the cases belong to the millionaire Mr. Flott, and that he has come to invest in Ostend. In anticipation of Mr. Flott's arrival, the townspeople shake off their apathy and set about modernizing Ostend. Mr. O. F. does not arrive, and Ostend continues to develop until it becomes a metropolis. Only then is the error revealed. The suitcases were destined for Ostende, not Ostend.

Hedy's part was small, but more significant than her Vienna roles. She is generally seen in long or medium shots with a just a few close-ups of her face, which is still rounded and more charming than classically beautiful. Indeed, her overall demeanor exemplifies the ideal of smalltown wholesomeness. She plays a strong character who is well able to scold those who displease her, but whose natural environment is the domestic space. In a sequence near the film's end, her character is explicitly contrasted with that of the imported cabaret singer Viola Volant (Margo Lion). Helen and her mother are waiting for the mayor to return for dinner. A phone call to his office finds him claiming that he has to work late. In fact, a cut to the other side of the room reveals that he is enjoying the company of Viola Volant, who is sitting and smoking a cigarette in a pose that reveals a considerable amount of leg. Hedy/Helene's virtuous domesticity is again emphasized in the next scene where she phones her fiancé, Baumeister Stark (Harald Paulsen), to discover that he too is allegedly working late. Sufficient scolding results in him scurrying round and the twosome are shortly married, thus concluding one of Granowsky's several parodies of bourgeois life.

Critics were divided over the production, in particular its fairy-tale qualities and Granowsky's decision to film in a nonrealist manner (the narrative was interrupted throughout with songs written by Erich Kästner). Some attributed the production's aesthetic to the influence of Rein-hardt's theater, while others saw in the cinematography reminders of the Soviet cinema. Still others questioned the need to spell out the meaning of the satire.¹⁹ This prompted the question of The Trunks' political message, which Lania said was intended as a critique of capitalism.²⁰ Given the recent collapse of Germany's industrial base and the country's subsequent revitalization through credit and speculation, capitalism was certainly ripe for satire.

For The Trunks' admirers, Granowsky's production was a breakthrough in an otherwise arid filmmaking environment; it was, Der Film commented, “a commentary on its time,” its strength being its reliance on symbols and images rather than on its realist qualities.²¹ Less politicized commentators refused to see anything more in this left-wing production than a good-natured comedy about small-town attitudes.

In February 1932, the film was cut by almost half and re-released in April with a new title, Building and Marrying (Bauen und Heiraten). According to the trade press, the filmmakers had heeded their critics and made substantial edits to tighten the structure and plot.²² In fact, the reasons were more sinister. When the film was re-released, it was without opening credits. The credits had listed several Jewish performers along with Erich Kästner's songs, all of which offended the censors. Also stripped was its portrayal of the decadence into which Ostend swiftly slipped. None of the sequences featuring Hedy was excised, which suggests the censors did not know she was Jewish.

Writers on Granowsky tend to dismiss his films, seeing them as little more than cash cows pulling down the end of an illustrious theater career, but The Trunks was a major release. When the film's message was not being debated, critical attention focused on its technical aspects and their contribution to the development of sound film. Its star to be watched was perceptively noted as Peter Lorre (Aribert Mog, later to star with Hedy in Ecstasy, also played a small role). Lorre's performance imbues the film with its sense of decadence; his insinuating, unctuous persona is compelling. What is perhaps most interesting for the purpose of this book, however, is the underlying assumption that Hedy Kiesler was a name familiar to audiences. Only Variety sounded a sour note: after commenting that Granowsky's film was “original in its idea and outstanding for photography” as well as “intentionally intellectual,” the reporter noted that “among the players is the young Viennese actress, Hedi [sic] Kiesler, introduced over here with much propaganda. She does not carry out the advance heralding.”²³

Granowksy was inundated with offers of more film work after the release of The Trunks, but he had meanwhile married a wealthy German woman and moved to Paris to found his own company. “His first picture, Le Roi Pausolle[actually Les Aventures du Roi Pausole or The Adventures of King Pausole], a musical revue, was the most expensive picture made in Europe up to that time. And his private life was as sumptuous as his films. The waiters at exclusive Paris bars hadn't seen such tips since the legendary champagne bouts of the Russian grand dukes in Mont-martre.” But, “All the luxury and success did not make Granovsky happy or deaden his longing for Russia. He refused to admit it. The close air of the dictatorship made it impossible for him to work, he said, but in the free atmosphere of Paris and London he could not breathe.”24 His wife left him and he died in 1938, a poor man.

The Trunks opened belatedly in Vienna on 4 June 1932. The critics were delighted; several compared it favorably to We Don't Need Money or Fun and Finance (Man Braucht Kein Geld), Hedy's next film. Indeed, it seemed that appreciating Granowsky's film suggested that Viennese society possessed a more cultured outlook than Berlin: “We have heard that in Berlin it was pretty unanimously dismissed. But we savages are better people and for us Granowsky's grotesqueries were a delightful surprise.”²⁵ Although Hedy remained mostly unheralded, one critic offered that Hedy Kiesler was supposed to look pretty and she did, and another mentioned her as part of the excellent cast.²⁶

Hedy stayed in Berlin to work with producer Arnold Pressburger on his new film We Don't Need Money which was shot quickly in November 1931. A founder of Allianz-Tonfilm, Pressburger hired Carol Boese to direct his latest project. Boese had none of Granovsky's political credentials; the high point of his career was his codirection (with Paul Wegener) of the expressionist classic Der Golem (1920). Otherwise, Boese is best remembered for his routine comedies. Adapted from a play of the same name by Ferdinand Alternkirch, We Don't Need Monejrevisited the themes of wealth accumulation and distribution familiar to audiences of The Trunks. The story centers on the activities of a shopkeeper named Brandt in the small town of Groditzkirchen. When some speculative investments in oil drilling go wrong, he and the local bank official, Schmidt (Heinz Rühmann), devise a plan to save face. Brandt announces that his millionaire uncle from Chicago, Thomas Hoffman (Hans Moser), is due to arrive shortly. But when Hoffman arrives with seven huge suitcases, he has just one $10 gold piece in his pocket. “No one must find out,” Schmidt insists. Schmidt ensures that Hoffman stays at the best hotel in town, but there he keeps the unfortunate visitor a virtual prisoner. With the myth of investment now personified, the bank official and the shopkeeper can obtain limitless credit and the two exploit this nonexistent capital until Brandt becomes wealthy and Groditzkirchen becomes an industrial city of extraordinary influence. The swindle also enables Schmidt to court Brandt's beautiful daughter Kathe, played by Hedy.

In We Don't Need Money, Hedy is again presented as a sweet young woman, without the slightest hint of the glamorous beauty she would project in her Hollywood years. The script required her to perform with an ensemble, which she did with reasonable competence, although she expressed herself mostly by rolling her eyes. Her vocal delivery, however, was hampered by a tendency to become shrill in long, heated speeches. Even in this early part, her character is no pushover and when Schmidt kisses her, she slaps him across the face. As was true throughout her career, the young Hedy Kiesler appears happiest when her character has ticked off a would-be lover and put him firmly in his place. She is also considerably taller than Rühmann, which only adds to the comic effect. In one scene, she appears rather startlingly in a bathing suit turning somersaults in her bedroom, an activity that emphasized her almost androgynous figure.

The film was an enormous success, which was attributed to the strong original script written by Karl Noti and Hans Wilhelm and led to its comparison with The Trunks; both films, it was said, were not just genre films but also expressed strong personal visions. We Don't Need Money, however, was credited as “livelier, funnier and less complicated” than Granowsky's production.²⁷ The film managed, a Lichtbildbühne critic suggested, to stay topical without reminding audiences of the miseries of life. Not normally noted for his light touch, director Carl Boese had acquitted himself well.

Hedy Kiesler, the Lichtbildbühne critic added, looked good enough to eat (“zum Anbeißen hübsch”) and showed talent.²⁸ This focus on the rising talent's looks over her acting skills foretold reviews to come. German Variety was in agreement: Hedy Kiesler was “enviably young and slim.”²⁹ The Kinematograph critic was more circumspect: “Hedy Kiesler really has nothing to do other than show off a couple of pretty costumes. She will have to content herself with being part of the general praise for the film.”³⁰ Der Film was even less encouraging, noting that Hedy's acting had “no dramatic appeal.”³¹ Thunderous applause greeted the final credits at the premiere in Berlin's Capitol cinema on 5 February 1932, and the film enjoyed a long run in both Vienna and Berlin. It also opened in the Hindenberg Theatre in New York in November 1932, where it played in a German version. The New York Times was as enthusiastic as the German press had been and welcomed the performance of the young Hedy Kiesler, “a charming Austrian girl.”³²

In Vienna, the film premiered on 22 December 1931, in time for the holiday season. On opening night, the audience laughed long and loud and the closing titles were met by rounds of applause. Here was a film, most reviewers agreed, that treated the current economic crisis with wit and intelligence. The appearance of Hedy Kiesler, now inevitably referred to as Max Reinhardt's protégée, had been widely anticipated in advance. She looked charming, the Wiener Allgemeine Zeitung noted, “but her acting is a little self-conscious.”³³ Meanwhile, Viennese authorities realized that posters adorning the city walls declared, “We don't need money.” In a moment of humorlessness, they ordered them to be removed.

In Berlin, Hedy stayed with Joe and Mia May, whose lives were to become peculiarly entwined with hers. Joe May was born Julius Otto Mandl in Vienna in 1880, which made him a cousin of the equally wealthy Fritz Mandl, Hedy's future husband. Unlike Fritz, however, Julius frittered away his share of the family fortune before turning to filmmaking, an occupation that permitted him to exercise the autocratic character traits that he also shared with Fritz. In April 1902, Julius Mandl married the actress Mia May and took her surname, calling himself Joe May. In the same year, their daughter, Eva Maria, was born. As will be seen in the next chapter, Hedy would later suggest that Eva Maria committed suicide because of her cousin Fritz Mandl's attentions.

Joe May was at the peak of his career when Hedy met him, with a reputation as a director that put him on a par commercially, if less so artistically, with the big names of UFA studios, such as Fritz Lang and F. W. Murnau. Later again, Hedy would be one of a number of people to help Joe when he fell on hard times. On this occasion, however, she only stayed with the Mays for a few months and by the time We Don't Need Money premiered in February 1932, she had left Berlin. Hedy planned to return, although she never would. The next year, Hitler's rise to power saw a mass exodus of the Austrian-Jewish film community back to Vienna, where they enjoyed a temporary haven before the Anschluß (annexation of Austria) in 1938. However, in 1932, Hedy left Berlin because she had been cast in a new film to be shot by the renowned Czech director Gustav Machaty. Its title was Extase or Ecstasy.