Wera Engels
Wera Engels was a daughter of a German Admiral and Governor of the then German colony Tsing-tau-China. After successful leading roles in productions of the well-established German UFA-studios in Babelsberg as well as in France, Engels was invited to Hollywood. Producers saw her as a cheap alternative to Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich. She was contracted with RKO.
Engels was given roles under Walter Futter and M.H. Hoffman. She and the silent movie super star Mary Pickford became best friends. By 1935 she returned to Germany, but left soon thereafter, because of the decline of the German movie industry caused by the Nazi propaganda machine. Back in Hollywood, she dated Gary Cooper for a while but married the Lithuanian-born actor/writer Ivan Lebedeff. After Lebedeff's death in 1953 of Angina pectoris, she moved back to Europe, where she stayed with several friends in London and Stockholm before she went back to Germany. She lived the rest of her life with Erna Hoffmann (widow of Heinrich Hoffmann, Hitler's friend and personal photographer) in the Munich area.
She died on November 16, 1988 (age 79) in Munich, Germany.
Acting
Movie
The Ringer
1932
Movie
Scent of the Woman in Black
as Edith Rance
1931
Movie
Sweepstake Annie
as Baroness Yvonne Baritska
1935
Movie
Talking About Jacqueline
as Jacqueline Topelius
1937
Movie
Hong Kong Nights
as Trina Vidor
1935
Movie
Fugitive Road
as Sonya Valinoff
1934
Movie
The Great Impersonation
as Princess Stephanie Elderstrom
1935
Movie
The Copper
as Mabel
1930
Movie
Together We Live
as Sonia
1935
Movie
English as it is spoken
1931
Movie
The Great Jasper
as Norma McGowd
1933
Movie
Lucky children
1931
Movie
The Girl from Spree Woods
1928
Movie
Fighting the White Slave Traffic
as Irene Wendtland
1927
Movie
Lützow's Wild Hunt
1927
Movie
Stjenka Rasin
as Prinzessin Dolgoruki
1936
Movie
Hast Du geliebt am schönen Rhein?
as Ellen Shiffer
1927
Movie
Befehl zur Ehe
1928