Lil Dagover


Lil Dagover was a German actress whose film career spanned from 1913 to 1979. She was a popular film actress in the Weimar Republic.

Early life

Lil Dagover was born Marie Antonia Siegelinde Martha Seubert in Madiun, Java, Dutch East Indies to German parents. Some sources inaccurately give her birth name as Marta Maria Lillits. Her father, Adolf Karl Ludwig Moritz Seubert, born in Karlsruhe/Baden Germany, was a forest ranger in the service of the Dutch colonial authorities. She had two siblings. Her mother died in 1897, after which she returned to Germany, where she lived with relatives in Tübingen. She was educated at boarding schools in Baden-Baden, Weimar, and Geneva, Switzerland.
Orphaned at the age of 13, she spent the rest of her adolescence with friends and relatives. After completing her education she began pursuing a career as a stage actress around the principal cities of Europe. In 1907 she married actor Fritz Gustav Josef Daghofer, who was fifteen years her senior. The couple had a daughter, Eva but divorced a decade later, in 1919. Eva married Hungarian director Géza von Radványi in 1930.
Seubert began using a variant of her husband's surname as a professional moniker – changing the spelling of "Daghofer" to "Dagover".

Acting career in the Weimar Republic

Lil Dagover made her screen debut in a 1913 film by director Louis Held. During her marriage to Fritz Daghofer, she was introduced to several notable film directors; among them Robert Wiene and Fritz Lang. Lang cast Dagover in the role of O-Take-San in the 1919 exotic drama Harakiri which proved to be Dagover's breakout role. The same year, she was directed by Robert Wiene in the German Expressionist horror classic Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari, from a script by Carl Mayer and Hans Janowitz opposite actors Werner Krauss and Conrad Veidt. Lang directed Dagover in three more films: 1919's Die Spinnen, 1921's Der müde Tod, and 1922's Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler.
By the early 1920s, Dagover was one of the most popular and recognized film actresses in the Weimar Republic, appearing in motion pictures by such prominent directors as F. W. Murnau, Lothar Mendes and Carl Froelich. In 1925 she made her stage debut under the direction of Max Reinhardt. In the following years she played in Reinhardt’s Deutsches Theater in Berlin and also at the Salzburg Festival. In 1926 she married film producer Georg Witt, who produced many of Dagover's future films. The couple remained married until Witt's death in 1973.
Lil Dagover's film career in German cinema through the 1920s was prolific, making over forty films and appearing opposite such actors as Emil Jannings, Nils Olaf Chrisander, Willy Fritsch, Lya De Putti, Bruno Kastner and Xenia Desni. She also made several films in Sweden for directors Olof Molander and Gustaf Molander and appeared in several French silent films – her last film appearance of the 1920s was in the 1929 Henri Fescourt-directed French silent film Monte Cristo opposite Jean Angelo and Marie Glory.

Talkies and the Third Reich

With the advent of talkies, Lil Dagover ceased making foreign films and appeared only in German productions; with the exception of one English language American film, the Michael Curtiz-directed drama The Woman from Monte Carlo with actor Walter Huston, shot on location in the United States.
After her return to Germany and the rise of the Third Reich in 1933, she avoided overt political involvement and generally appeared in popular costume musicals and comedies during World War II. However, in 1937, she received the State Actress award, and in 1944 she was awarded the War Merits Cross for entertaining Wehrmacht troops on the Eastern Front in 1943 and on the German occupied Channel Islands of Jersey and Guernsey in 1944.
While Dagover's films of the period were decidedly apolitical, she was known to be one of Adolf Hitler's favorite film actresses and Dagover is known to have been a dinner guest of Hitler's on several occasions.

Later career

After the defeat of Nazi Germany, Dagover continued to appear in West German films. In 1948, she starred in the anti-Nazi drama Gaspary's Sons. The film follows the disintegration of a German family living under National Socialism. Dagover's most internationally popular film of the post-WWII era is the 1959 Alfred Weidenmann-directed adaptation of the 1901 Thomas Mann novel Buddenbrooks.
In 1960, Dagover began appearing in numerous West German television roles in addition to continuing to perform in film. In 1973 she starred in the Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe-winner for Best Foreign-Language Foreign Film of 1973, The Pedestrian. The film was directed by Austrian actor-director Maximilian Schell, and featured international former early silent film peers Peggy Ashcroft, Käthe Haack, Elisabeth Bergner, Elsa Wagner and Françoise Rosay.
Dagover's last film role was at age 91 in the 1979 Maximilian Schell-directed and produced drama motion picture Tales from the Vienna Woods.

Death and legacy

In 1962, Lil Dagover was awarded the Bundesfilmpreis. In 1964, she was awarded the Bambi annual television and media award from Hubert Burda Media, and the Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1967.
In 1979, she published her autobiography, Ich war die Dame. Dagover died at the age of 92, on 24 January 1980, in Munich, Bavaria, West Germany, and was buried at the Waldfriedhof Grünwald cemetery, near Munich.

Filmography

Die Retterin *Credited as Martha DaghoferClown Charly *Credited as Martha DaghoferDas Rätsel der Stahlkammer *Credited as Martha DaghoferLebendig tot Der Volontär The Song of the Mother *Credited as Martha DaghoferBettler GmbH The Mask The Spiders, as Sonnenpriesterin NaelaThe Dancer, as Mutter RellnowHarakiri, as O-Take-SanPhantome des Lebens Revenge Is Mine The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, as Jane OlsenSpiritismus The Woman in Heaven, as TatjanaThe Hunt for Death, as Tänzerin MalattiThe Mayor of Zalamea, as IsabelThe Blood of the Ancestors, as Fürstin Wanda LubowiczkaThe Kwannon of Okadera, as KwannonThe Eyes of the Mask The Secret of Bombay, as Die Tänzerin FarneseIsland of the Dead The Medium Destiny, as Young Woman / Das junge Mädchen / Zobeide / Monna Fiametta / Tiao TsienMurders in the Greenstreet Dr. Mabuse: The Gambler Luise Millerin, as Luise MillerinPower of Temptation Phantom, as Marie StarkeLowlands, as MarthaPrincess Suwarin, as Tina BermonteHis Wife, The Unknown, as EvaComedy of the Heart, as Gerda WerskaChronicles of the Gray House, as BärbeThe Humble Man and the Chanteuse, as Toni SeidewitzTartuffe, as Elmire, Orgon's wifeWenn die Filmkleberin gebummelt hat The Brothers Schellenberg, as EstherLove is Blind, as DianeThe Violet Eater, as Melitta von ArthofOnly a Dancing Girl, as Marie Berner - varieté dansösHis English Wife, as Cathleen Paget, née BrockOrient Express, as Beate von MortonAttorney for the Heart, as June OrchardThe Maelstrom of Paris, as Lady Amiscia AbenstonThe Secret Courier, as Mme. Thérèse de RenalHungarian Rhapsody, as CamillaLa grande passion, as Sonia de BlickMarriage Monte Cristo, as Mercédès / Comtesse de MorcerfHungarian Nights, as Coraly RekocziThe Favourite of Schonbrunn, as Empress Maria TheresaThe Ring of the Empress, as Catherine the GreatThe White Devil, as NelidowaThere Is a Woman Who Never Forgets You, as Tilly FerrantesVa Banque, as Miss Harriet WilliamsThe Old Song, as Baronin EggedyBoycott, as Mrs. HallerDie große Sehnsucht, as Herself, Lil DagoverThe Case of Colonel Redl, as Vera NikolayevnaElisabeth of Austria, as Elisabeth of AustriaThe Congress Dances, as The CountessMadame Bluebeard, as Frau Erika DankwarthThe Woman from Monte Carlo, as Lottie CorlaixThe Dancer of Sanssouci, as Barberina CampaniniThea Roland, as Thea RolandJohannisnacht, as Lisa LersThe Fugitive from Chicago, as EvelineA Woman Who Knows What She Wants, as Mona Cavallini', as Lisa BehmerThe Bird Seller, as ElectressLady Windermere's Fan, as Mrs. ErlynneThe Higher Command, as Madame MartinAugustus the Strong, as Countess Aurore KönigsmarkFinal Accord, as Charlotte GarvenbergThe Girl Irene, as Jennifer LawrenceFridericus, as Marquise de PompadourThe Kreutzer Sonata, as Jelaina PosdnyschewStrife Over the Boy Jo, as Leonine BrackwieserBeate's Mystery, as Beate KaiserlingTriad, as Cornelia ContariniMaja zwischen zwei Ehen, as MajaThe Stars Shine, as HerselfDetours to Happiness, as Hanna BrachtFriedrich Schiller, as Franziska von HohenheimBismarck, as Empress EugénieThe Little Residence, as Herzogin von LauffenburgVienna 1910, as Maria AnschützMusic in Salzburg, as Ursula SandenGaspary's Sons, as Margot von KorffDon't Play with Love, as Florentine AlvenslebenA Day Will Come, as Mme. MombourChased by the Devil, as Frau DakarThe Secret of the Mountain Lake, as LambertaRed Roses, Red Lips, Red Wine, as Gräfin WaldenbergHis Royal Highness, as Gräfin LöwenjoulHubertus Castle, as Baronin KleesbergI Know What I'm Living For, as Alice LechaudierThe Fisherman from Heiligensee, as Baronin Hermine von VeldenRoses in Autumn, as Mrs. von BriestThe Barrings, as Thilde von BarringCrown Prince Rudolph's Last Love, as Empress ElisabethMy Sixteen Sons, as Frau Senator GiseliusConfessions of Felix Krull Beneath the Palms on the Blue Sea, as Contessa Celestina MoriniThe Buddenbrooks, as Elisabeth BuddenbrookThe Strange Countess, as Lady Leonora Moron