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Marguerita Maria “Mady” Christians (January 19, 1892 – October 28, 1951) was an Austrian actress and naturalized US citizen who had a successful acting career in theatre and film in the United States until she was blacklisted during the McCarthy period. She was born on January 19, 1892 to Rudolph Christians, a well-known German actor, and his wife, Bertha. Her family moved to Berlin when she was one year old, and to New York City in 1912, where her father became the Irving Place Theatre’s general manager. Five years later she returned to Europe to study under Max Reinhardt.
She appeared in a number of European films prior to the early 1930s. In 1929, she starred in the first full sound film made in Germany It’s You I Have Loved. In 1933, she toured the United States in a play called Marching By and was offered a Broadway contract the following year that allowed her, like a number of other German artists, to seek refuge from the Nazi regime in the United States.
On Broadway, Christians played Queen Gertrude in Hamlet and Lady Percy in Henry IV, Part I, staged by director Margaret Webster. Webster was part of a small but influential group of lesbian producers, directors, and actors in theater (a group that included Eva Le Gallienne and Cheryl Crawford). Webster and Christians became close friends: according to Webster biographer Milly S. Barranger, it is likely that they also were lovers.
She also starred in Lillian Hellman’s Watch on the Rhine. She originated the title role in the 1944 play I Remember Mama. Her last movie roles were in All My Sons, based on the play by Arthur Miller, and Letter from an Unknown Woman, both released in 1948.
During World War II, Christians was involved in political work on behalf of refugees, rights for workers (especially in theater and film), and Russian War relief, political efforts that would bring her to the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and other anti-communist institutions and organizations. In addition to her political work, Christians also publicly criticized the House Committee on Un-American Activities in early 1941 and likened the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee’s investigation of propaganda in US film to Nazi harassment of film and radio artists in the 1930s. In 1950, the FBI’s internal security division began investigating Christians, who had been identified as a “concealed communist” by a confidential informant. When Christians’ name appeared in Red Channels, the so-called bible of the broadcast blacklist, her career was effectively over.
Mady Christians Biography / Wiki
Name | Mady Christians |
Also Know | Margarete Christians |
Gender | Female |
Known For | Acting |
Place of Birth | Vienna, Austria-Hungary (now Austria) |
Date of Birth | 1892-01-19 |
Age(as in 2022) | 59 |
Deathday | 1951-10-29 |
Mady Christians Acting Movies
Movie Name | Character | Release Date | Overview |
Die Königin von Moulin Rouge | die Herzogin | 1926-10-04 | a silent movie by Robert Wiene… |
A Wicked Woman | Naomi Trice, aka Naomi Stroud | 1934-12-07 | A woman and her children escape severe poverty and abuse. She successfully betters her family’s condition while living with the secret that she killed… |
Dich hab’ ich geliebt | Inge Lund | 1929-11-30 | … |
Salon Dora Green | Dora Green | 1933-02-22 | … |
Leutnant warst Du einst bei deinen Husaren | Königin Alexandra von Gregorien | 1930-10-29 | … |
Frederica | Friederike | 1932-11-01 | … |
Queen Louise | Königin Luise | 1927-12-22 | … |
Fräulein Chauffeur | Steffi Walker | 1928-06-19 | … |
Das Schicksal der Renate Langen | Renate Langen | 1931-02-11 | … |
In the Valleys of the Southern Rhine | Bettina von Wittelsbach | 1925-01-01 | … |
Der Farmer aus Texas | Mabel Bratt | 1925-10-21 | … |
A Glass of Water | 1923-02-01 | A Glass of Water (German: Ein Glas Wasser) is a 1923 German silent historical film directed by Ludwig Berger and starring Mady Christians, Lucie Höfl… | |
Der Sohn der Hagar | Lore | 1927-03-24 | … |
The Burning Heart | Dorothee Claudius | 1929-02-16 | … |
The Runaway Princess | Princess Priscilla | 1929-03-01 | A prince in disguise saves a runaway princess from becoming a forger’s dupe…. |
Nachtschatten | 1918-01-01 | … | |
Eine Frau von Format | 1928-09-12 | … | |
Grand Hotel…! | 1927-09-05 | … | |
Die geschiedene Frau | 1926-10-08 | … | |
Der Wetterwart | 1923-01-01 | … | |
Meine Schwester und ich | 1929-08-27 | … | |
Nanette macht alles | 1926-04-15 | … | |
Zopf und Schwert | 1926-08-26 | … | |
The Duel | 1928-10-10 | … | |
Wer unter Euch ohne Sünde ist | 1921-02-18 | … | |
The Only Girl | Kaiserin Eugenie | 1933-02-22 | A dashing marquis bends from his horse when he discovers a lost garter in the woods and falls. During his delirium he is serenaded by a little hairdre… |
Der schwarze Husar | Marie Luise | 1932-11-20 | In 1812, during the French period, large parts of Germany are occupied by the troops of Napoleon. Several paramilitary Freikorps units battle the Fren… |
The Waltz Dream | Prinzessin Alix | 1926-03-14 | Austrian actress Mady Christians stars alongside German matinee idol Willy Fritsch in this adaptation of the Oscar Straus operetta about a Prince who,… |
Die Buddenbrooks | Gerda Arnoldsen | 1923-08-30 | Four-generation story-saga dealing with the decline of a middle-class Lübeck family. The first adaptation of a Thomas Mann book was also Gerhard Lam… |
Mensch gegen Mensch | 1924-12-02 | … | |
Wien, wie es weint und lacht | Sefi | 1926-09-15 | … |
Ship Cafe | Countess Boranoff | 1935-11-09 | The singing stoker and the vamp…. |
Letter from an Unknown Woman | Frau Berndle | 1948-04-28 | A pianist about to flee from a duel receives a letter from a woman he cannot remember. As she tells the story of her lifelong love for him, he is forc… |
All My Sons | Kate Keller | 1948-05-01 | During WWII, industrialist Joe Keller commits a crime and frames his business partner Herbert Deever. Years later, his sin comes back to haunt him whe… |
Peter Voss, Thief of Millions | Gert Nissen | 1921-01-01 | … |
Manolescu, der Fürst der Diebe | Comtesse Maria Freyenberg | 1933-03-17 | … |
Soll und Haben | Baroneß Leonore von Rothensattel | 1924-10-09 | … |
Die Welt will belogen sein | Mery | 1926-10-28 | … |
Address Unknown | Elsa Schulz | 1944-06-01 | When a German art dealer living in the US returns to his native country he finds himself attracted to Nazi propaganda…. |
Come and Get It | Karie Linbeck | 1936-11-06 | An ambitious lumberjack abandons his saloon girl lover so that he can marry into wealth, but years later becomes infatuated with the woman’s daughter…. |
Tender Comrade | Manya Lodge | 1944-05-30 | Jo Jones, a young defense plant worker whose husband is in the military during World War II, shares a house with three other women in the same situati… |
Escapade | Anita | 1935-07-05 | A romantic comedy-drama-musical of mistaken identity, infidelity and farce, set in Vienna at the turn of the 20th century…. |
In the Slums of Berlin | Regine Lossen | 1925-08-28 | It was not just the children who were treated badly by the wealthy Weimar republic. Robert Kramer is released from prison but struggles to adjust to c… |
The Lost Shoe | Violante | 1923-12-05 | One of the first movies made about the fairy tale Cinderella. The film is part of the current German expressionism. Because of that the film ends up b… |
The Woman I Love | Florence | 1937-04-15 | In World War I France, a pilot falls in love with the wife of his friend and superior officer…. |
The Loves of Pharaoh | 1922-02-21 | The Ethiopian King offers his daughter to a powerful Pharaoh to secure peace between the two countries…. | |
Heidi | Dete | 1937-10-15 | Heidi is orphaned and her uncaring maternal Aunt Dete takes her to the mountains to live with her reclusive, grumpy paternal grandfather, Adolph Krame… |
Seventh Heaven | Marie | 1937-03-25 | A Parisian sewer worker longs for a rise in status and a beautiful wife. He rescues a girl from the police, lives with her in a barren flat on the sev… |
Michael | Woman (uncredited) | 1924-09-26 | A famed artist fights his passion for a male model, until the young man falls for a woman…. |
The Finances of the Grand Duke | Großfürstin Olga von Rußland | 1924-01-07 | The likeable and carefree Grand Duke of Abacco is in dire straits. There is no money left to service the State’s debt; the main creditor is looking fo… |
Credit: TMDB
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