My kind of Diva - Greta Keller

A darkened room, a small stage, a single spotlight, cigar smoke and the hint of absinthe.
Welcome - Greta Keller!

I stumbled on her music while on a rather esoteric YouTube search.
I thought then that I had never heard of her before.

Loved her voice! Greta was definitely worth a further listening and a little research.

It turns out she was responsible for one of the most touching songs in the film Cabaret. in It was she who sang the beautiful song "Heirart" (Married).  ----

Also it was her version of 'Blue Moon' recorded in 1935 that was included in the BBC TV series Pennies from Heaven starring Bob Hoskins:

First called "The Great Lady Of Chanson" in her native Vienna, the nickname followed her to London and America.
In fact Greta was the role model for how Marlene Dietrich developed her own voice.
She also appeared on stage with Marlene Dietrich on Broadway and spent many years in the United States, notably in the club room at the Waldorf.

While living in America her husband was murdered in 1943, two weeks after finishing a major role in the Republic serial The Masked Marvel. The murder was never solved.
No stranger to scandal and gossip, there were rumours of of affairs with Howard Hughes and an unknown actor during her marriage.  It must have been a very difficult time for Greta and unfortunately not long after the murder of her husband their child was stillborn.

It took some time for her to recover from these events, but she restarted her career in Switzerland, then moved on to Vienna, Berlin and then back to New York.

Rod McKuen met her in Vienna in the 70s. He wrote the English lyric "If You Go Away" to Jacques Brel's "Ne Me Quitte Pas," which she always sang in her stage appearances after that.

Greta lived, worked, and traveled with her last partner, Wolfgang Nebmaier until her death in November 1977
Her records are still selling - I checked today and Amazon has four pages of CDs on sale by Greta.

Well I did say that 'My kind of Diva' might be the beginning of a series!

Hold on to your hats - 1950's France is the next stop.

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My kind of Diva - Anita Berber

I am enjoying a rainy mid week day off, pottering around the the house. Without much to do, it's time for a new post methinks.

This one is about my constant search to discover fab divas, both old and new.
We kick off in Germany with:

Anita Berber (1899-1928)

What attracted me to her? Here is a clue.

Anita Berber was immensely famous in 1920s Berlin, for reasons not acknowledged in polite society.

She danced nude in nightclubs, seduced a wide swathe of the the population both male and female, appeared in soft porn silent films, drank on the average one bottle of cognac per day, married three times, was addicted to cocaine and opium, was never seen in public without heavy make-up, talked incessantly, told lies with abandon and, predictably, died at an early age.

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Known as the “The Priestess of Depravity”,  in June 1926, Anita was on tour in a new production “Dances of Sex and Ecstasy”.  Whilst in Zagreb, Anita publicly insulted the King of Yugoslavia and was imprisoned for six weeks.

Broke, she returned to performing cabaret at The 'Weisse Mausin' in the busy Friedrichstadt area of Berlin.

She performed in the nude along with her own troupe of six teenage girls.
Customers who wished to conceal their identities were given a choice of a black or white mask to wear.

”After midnight, the guests were ready for the apocalyptic moment when she pranced up the stage ramp. Anita’s girls were powdered in deadly pallid shades and appeared like figures of death incarnate. But Anita performed with bitter sincerity. Each intrusion annoyed her. She responded to the audience’s heckling with show-stopping obscenities and indecent provocations.

Berber had been known to spit brandy on them or stand naked on their tables, dousing herself in wine whilst simultaneously urinating”

One night the entire cabaret sank into a groundswell of shouting, screams and laughter. Anita jumped off the stage in fuming rage, grabbed the nearest champagne bottle and smashed it over a businessman’s head.”

It was Anita’s last evening , she was sacked without notice”

From Mel Gordon's ‘Voluptuous Panic’ and ‘ The Seven Addictions and Five Professions of Anita Berber'

The 29 year old dancer, actress and ‘wild-child’ of the Weimar cabaret era died in 1928. She was buried in a pauper's grave in St. Thomas Friedhof in the Neukoln district of Berlin. The cemetery is now disused and her grave gone.

When I first started researching Anita, I thought I knew nothing at all about her but as with several others, something had already been absorbed into my consciousness. In her case this fabulous painting by Otto Dix, ‘The Dancer Anita Berber’ (1925).

"Otto Dix was never huge on using the color red, but did so here for his friend to eye-popping effect. we are nearly physically assaulted with her sexual power - even on canvas, even 80+ years after the fact."

She also starred in probably the first real gay film ever, the ground-breaking  film ‘Different From The Others” (Anders als die Anderen) 1919. Only one print survives as a fragmented copy. The rest were destroyed by German censors in 1920.

Conrad Veidt plays what was probably the first homosexual character written for cinema.

"You must not condemn your son because he is a homosexual, he is not to blame for his orientation. It is not wrong, nor should it be a crime. Indeed, it is not even an illness, merely a variation, and one that is common to all of nature."

Not bad for 1919!

Hope you liked this as I am planning a little mini series of them - keep posted let me know what you think.

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