Lil Dagover
A prominent German film actress born on 30 September 1887 at Madiven, Java, the daughter of a forest ranger in the service of the Dutch authorities. Sent at the age of ten to Baden-Baden to study, she later entered the cinema thanks to her marriage in 1917 to the actor Fritz Dagover who was 25 years her senior. They divorced in 1919 but not before he had introduced her to director Robert Wiene and other notables of German cinema. She made her screen debut in Fritz Lang's Harakiri (1919). Immediately after she appeared in Wiene's classic expressionist film, "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" (aka The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920)). Apart from three trips -- one to Sweden in 1927, another to France in 1928-9 and one to Hollywood in 1931 -- most of Lil Dagover's career and fate was linked to that of the German cinema, where her role was usually that of the frail, menaced heroine. She continued to star in a great number of films during the Nazi era. Among her best performances were her roles in Congress Dances (1931), in Gerhard Lamprecht's The Higher Command (1935) and in Veit Harlan's The Kreutzer Sonata (1937). She also acted in the Deutsches Theatre Berlin, the Salzburg Festival, at forces shows and at war theaters. At one time, she was reported to have been a close friend of Adolf Hitler. In 1944, she received the War Merits Cross. Dagover continued her career in post-war Germany, playing many supporting parts until the late 1970s.
Acting
Movie
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
as Jane
1920
Movie
Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler
as (uncredited)
1922
Movie
Destiny
as Young Woman / Zobeide / Mona Fiametta / Tiao Tsien
1921
TV
Scene of the Crime
as Mutter Koenen
1970
Movie
Tartuffe
as Frau Elmire / Elmire, Orgon's wife
1926
Movie
Phantom
as Marie Starke
1922
Movie
The Spiders: Part 1 - The Golden Sea
as Sun Priestess Naela
1919
Movie
End of the Game
as Gastmann's Mother
1978
Movie
Harakiri
as O-Take-San
1919
Movie
The Strange Countess
as Gräfin / Lady Leonora Moron
1961
Movie
Congress Dances
as Komtesse
1931
Movie
Monte Cristo
as Mercédès / Comtesse de Morcerf
1929
Movie
The Chronicles of the Gray House
as Bärbe
1925
Movie
Buddenbrooks - 1. Teil
as Elisabeth Buddenbrook
1959
Movie
Tales from the Vienna Woods
as Helene
1979
Movie
The Final Chord
as Charlotte Garvenberg, seine Frau
1936
Movie
Bismarck
as Eugénie
1940
Movie
Boycott
as Frau von Generaldirektor Haller
1930
Movie
The Stars Shine
as Gast
1938
Movie
The Pedestrian
as Frau Eschenlohr
1973
Movie
Buddenbrooks - 2. Teil
as Elisabeth Buddenbrook
1959
Movie
Fridericus
as Marquise de Pompadour
1937
Movie
Red Roses, Red Lips, Red Wine
as Gräfin Waldenberg
1953
Movie
The Little Residence
as Herzogin von Lauffenburg
1942