Von Nagy, Käthe (1909–1973)

German film actress. Name variations: Kathe von Nagy. Born on April 4, 1909, in Szabadka, Hungary; died in 1973; daughter of a bank director; attended school in St. Christiania (Frohsdorf); married Constantin J. David (a film director); married Jacques Fattini, around 1935.

Worked briefly at Hungarian newspaper Pester Hirlop; began career as a film actress (1927); appeared in German, French, and Italian films of both silent and early sound eras; associated with Nazi-era German cinema, particularly comedies.

Selected filmography:

Männer vor der Ehe (Men Before Marriage, 1927); Republik der Backfische (Teenager's Republic, 1928); Rotaie (Rails, 1929); Der Andere (The Other One, 1930); Ronny (1931); Der Sieger (The Victor, 1932); Ich bei Tag, Du bei Nacht (I by Day, You by Night, 1932); Flüchtlinge (Refugees, 1933); Prinzessin Turandot (1934); Liebe, Tod und Teufel (Love, Death and the Devil, 1934); La Route impériale (The Imperial Road, 1935); Unser kleine Frau (Our Little Wife, 1938).

Käthe Von Nagy was born on April 4, 1909, in Szabadka, Hungary, a town that was to be annexed to Yugoslavia after World War I, and was the daughter of a prosperous bank director who worked and owned considerable property in the village of PaliČs. Von Nagy's quiet, bourgeois upbringing included studying French and German with nuns in St. Christiania (Frohsdorf), languages that were to prove invaluable in her later career. At the age of 15, she ran away to Budapest in order to fulfil her ambition of becoming a writer of short stories, although the police soon found her at the elegant Hotel Ragusa, where she had registered under a false name. In order to keep her occupied, her father offered her a job working in his office, overseeing all German correspondence, but Von Nagy's taste of big-city life had made her eager for more. Her literary ambitions forgotten, she persuaded her father to send her to Berlin to become an actress.

Von Nagy spent a fruitless year in Berlin trying to attract the attention of one of the numerous film companies there. Her dark complexion, pitch-black eyes, and willowy figure were striking but not fashionable, and she eventually admitted defeat, returning to Budapest to work answering correspondence for the newspaper PesterHirlop. But in 1927 she won a supporting role in a Deulig company production called Männer vor der Ehe (Men Before Marriage), chosen by the Corsican director Constantin J. David, who directed a number of her films and eventually became her husband. Under David's tutelage, Von Nagy transformed herself from a girlish amateur into a shrewd, hard-working professional actress. Her breakthrough role was in 1928's Republik der Backfische (Teenager's Republic), in which her appealing, insouciant performance as a girl leading a band of young women to found a new state brought her public recognition.

Von Nagy's first real dramatic role came in Mario Camerini's classic Italian film Rotaie (Rails, 1929), to which a musical soundtrack was later added. Von Nagy and Maurizio D'Ancora, an actor who was to become better known as a member of the Gucci family fashion dynasty, played a poor couple who, finding a wallet stuffed with bills, live the high life for a while before choosing to return to their jobs in a factory. Her first sound film, Der Andere (The Other One, 1930), was based on the phenomenon of the split personality, enabling Von Nagy—playing the girlfriend of a public minister with a double life—to reveal new depths as a performer.

Like many actors of the era, Von Nagy found the adjustment to sound films difficult (technicians had to remind her not to fidget with her pearl necklace, as the sound was distracting). But she soon became an accomplished comic actress, often typecast in the role of a minx, in a constant stream of frothy, escapist films, many of which were made in both German and French versions. Among the most successful were Der Sieger (The Victor, 1932), also starring Hans Albers in his usual role of bon vivant, as well as Ronny (1931), Ich bei Tag, Du bei Nacht (I by Day, You by Night, 1932), and Prinzessin Turandot (1934), all featuring film operetta star Willy Fritsch. Prinzessin Turandot was written by Thea von Harbou (1888–1954), one of the most prolific and creative of Germany's female screenwriters, who chose to remain in Germany with the Nazis rather than emigrate to the United States with her husband, director Fritz Lang, whom she divorced in 1934.

Von Nagy also acted in some serious films during this period, demonstrating considerable gifts in both La Route impériale (The Imperial Road, 1935) and Flüchtlinge (Refugees, 1933), again with Albers. Flüchtlinge was considered by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels to be a prime example of the "new film" which would reflect Nazi ideals of the "national revolution." Hans Albers' name was not mentioned at the ceremony when Flüchtlinge won an award for best film, because he had just married the Jewish actress Hansi Burg in Switzerland.

By the mid-1930s, Von Nagy was living in Paris with her second husband Jacques Fattini, although she continued to make films in Germany and Italy (the 1938 premiere of Unser kleine Frau, made at Cinecittà, was held in Naples on board the American cruiser Milwaukee). Unlike many Teutonic actresses of the period, Von Nagy was best suited to flirtatious, saucy, and sometimes provocative roles in light comedies or exotic tales like Liebe, Tod und Teufel (Love, Death and the Devil, 1934). She became one of the most popular stars of Nazi-era cinema in Germany, despite the fact that she had neither an Aryan heritage nor appearance. Von Nagy died in 1973.