Ilse Werner

Ilse Werner
UFA press photo
Born	Ilse Charlotte Still (1921-07-11)11 July 1921 Batavia, Dutch East Indies (now Jakarta, Indonesia)
Died	Lübeck, Germany
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1937–2003

Ilse Werner (née Ilse Charlotte Still, 11 July 1921 – 8 August 2005) was a Dutch-German actress and singer.

Life

She was born in Batavia (present-day Jakarta) to a Dutch father, merchant and plantation owner, and a German mother. Werner was a Dutch citizen by birth; although she had her greatest successes in Germany, mainly during the time of the Third Reich, she did not assume German citizenship until 1955.

Arriving in Frankfurt, Germany at the age of 10, Werner's family in 1934 moved to Vienna, where she attended the Max Reinhardt Seminar drama school and gave her debut at the Theater in der Josefstadt in 1937. She later made her name at the legendary UFA Studios near Berlin. She starred in the popular wartime films "Die schwedische Nachtigall" (The Swedish Nightingale) and "Wir machen Musik" (We're Making Music). She was the hostess of a popular television show of Fernsehsender Paul Nipkow since 1941, titled "Wir senden Frohsinn - Wir spenden Freude"

Having briefly been barred from performing by the Allies at the end of World War II, due to her alleged role in Nazi propaganda, she returned to the big screen in the 1950s where she excelled in dramatic character roles.

Werner had her last appearance on German TV in 2000 before dying peacefully in her sleep on 7 August 2005 at a retirement home in Lübeck. She had been suffering from pneumonia. Her last wish was to have her ashes scattered in Potsdam-Babelsberg.

Filmography

• Die unruhigen Mädchen (1938)
• Das Leben kann so schön sein (1938)
• Bel Ami (1939)
• Bal pare (1940)
• Wunschkonzert (1940)
• The Swedish Nightingale (1941)
• We Make Music (1942)
• Wedding in Barenhof (1942)
• Münchhausen (1934)
• Große Freiheit Nr. 7 (1944)
• Mysterious Shadows (1949)
• The Orplid Mystery (1950)
• Gute Nacht, Mary/Die gestörte Hochzeitsnacht (1950)
• Queen of the Night (1951)
• Mutter sein dagegen sehr (1951)
• Der Vogelhändler (1953)
• Ännchen von Tharau (1954)
• Der Griff nach den Sternen (1955)
• Die Herrin vom Sölderhof (1956)
• Rivalen Der Rennbahn (1989, TV series)
• Die Hallo-Sisters (1990)

Dubbing

After the war, she became an active voice dubber, dubbing foreign films in German.

• 1948 - Gene Tierney in Laura (1944)
• 1949 - Margaret Lindsay in The Spoilers (1942) - (Die Freibeuterin)
• 1949 - Gale Sondergaard in The Mark of Zorro (1940) - (Im Zeichen des Zorro)
• 1950 - Olivia de Havilland in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) - (Robin Hood, König der Vagabunden)
• 1950 - Maureen O'Hara in The Black Swan (1942) - (Der Seeräuber)
• 1950 - Paulette Goddard in Reap the Wild Wind (1942) - (Piraten im Karibischen Meer)
• 1950 - Rita Hayworth in My Gal Sal (1942) - (Die Königin vom Broadway)
• 1950 - Maureen O'Hara in Buffalo Bill (1944) - (Buffalo Bill, der weiße Indianer)
• 1950 - Linden Travers in Christopher Columbus (1949)
• 1952 - Gale Storm in The Texas Rangers (1951) - (Grenzpolizei in Texas)

Further reading

• 1941 Ich über mich. Berlin: Kranich-Verlag, 1943 (autobiography)
• 1981 So wird’s nicht wieder sein. Ein Leben mit Pfiff; Ullstein-TB, 1996; ISBN 3-548-35636-2 (autobiography)
• Marion Schröder et al.; Ilse Werner; Bildband 2001; ISBN 3-00-007938-6
• Rüdiger Bloemeke La Paloma - Das Jahrhundert-Lied, Hamburg 2005, ISBN 3-00-015586-4

External links

• Ilse Werner at the Internet Movie Database
• BBC News article about her death
• Filmportal: Filmografie
• Photographs of Ilse Werner