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Lotte Lenya

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Occupation
  
Actress

Years active
  
1922–1981


Name
  
Lotte Lenya

Role
  
Singer

Lotte Lenya Quotes by Lotte Lenya Like Success

Full Name
  
Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer

Born
  
18 October 1898 (
1898-10-18
)

Died
  
November 27, 1981, New York City, New York, United States

Spouse
  
Richard Siemanowski (m. 1971–1973)

Albums
  
Lotte Lenya / Kurt Weill, Die Dreigroschenoper

Awards
  
Grammy Hall of Fame, Tony Award for Best Featured Actress in a Musical

Movies
  
From Russia with Love, The Roman Spring of, The Threepenny Opera, Semi‑Tough, Ten Blocks on the Camino

Similar People
  
Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Daniela Bianchi, Robert Shaw, Terence Young

Theater Talk- Ethan Mordden on Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya (Full Episode)


Lotte Lenya (18 October 1898 – 27 November 1981) was an Austrian singer, diseuse, and actress, long based in the United States. In the German-speaking and classical music world she is best remembered for her performances of the songs of her husband, Kurt Weill. In English-language cinema, she was nominated for an Academy Award for her role as a jaded aristocrat in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961). She also played the murderous and sadistic Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love (1963).

Contents

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Early career

Lotte Lenya Lotte Lenya Biography amp History AllMusic

In 1922 Lenya was seen by her future husband, German composer Kurt Weill, during an audition for his first stage score Zaubernacht but because of his position behind the piano, she did not see him. She was cast but owing to her loyalty to her voice coach she declined the role. She accepted the part of Jenny in the first performance of The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) in 1928, and the part became her breakthrough role. During the last years of the Weimar Republic, she was busy in film and theatre, and especially in Brecht-Weill plays. She made several recordings of Weill's songs.

Lotte Lenya OPERA NEWS And Now for Something Completely Different

With the rise of National Socialism in Germany, left-leaning artists were not appreciated and although not Jewish, she left the country, having become estranged from Weill. (They would later divorce and remarry.) In March 1933, she moved to Paris where she sang the leading part in Brecht-Weill's "sung ballet", The Seven Deadly Sins.

Lotte Lenya Friday Fierceness Look Out for Miss Lotte Lenya Edition

Lenya and Weill settled in New York City on 10 September 1935. During the summer of 1936, Weill, Lenya, Paul Green and Cheryl Crawford rented a house at 277 Trumbull Avenue in Nichols, Connecticut, about two miles from Pine Brook Country Club, the summer rehearsal headquarters of the Group Theatre. Here, Green and Weill wrote the screenplay and music for the controversial Broadway play Johnny Johnson, which was titled after the most frequently occurring name on the American casualty list of World War I. During this period Lenya had a love affair with playwright Paul Green.

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During World War II, Lenya did a number of stage performances, recordings and radio performances, including for the Voice of America. After a badly received part in her husband's musical The Firebrand of Florence in 1945 in New York, she withdrew from the stage. After Weill's death in 1950, she was coaxed back to the stage. She appeared on Broadway in Barefoot in Athens and married editor George Davis.

Late career

In 1956 she won a Tony Award for her role as Jenny in Marc Blitzstein's English version of The Threepenny Opera, the only time an Off-Broadway performance has been so honored. Lenya went on to record a number of songs from her time in Berlin, as well as songs from the American stage. Her voice had deepened with age. When she was to sing the soprano part in Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny and The Seven Deadly Sins, the part needed transposition to substantially lower keys.

Sprechstimme was used in some famous songs in the Brecht-Weill plays but now Lenya used it even more to compensate for the shortcomings of her voice. Lenya was aware of this as a problem; in other contexts, she was very careful about fully respecting her late husband's score.

She founded the Kurt Weill Foundation for Music, to administer incomes and issues regarding rights, and to spread knowledge about Weill's work. She was present in the studio when Louis Armstrong recorded Brecht-Weill's "Mack the Knife". Armstrong improvised the line "Look out for Miss Lotte Lenya!" and added her name to the list of Mack's female conquests in the song.

Her role as Vivien Leigh's earthy friend Contessa Magda Terribili-Gonzales in the screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) brought Lenya an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. In 1963, she was cast as the SPECTRE agent Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love starring Sean Connery and Robert Shaw.

In 1966, Lenya originated the role of Fräulein Schneider in the original Broadway cast of the musical Cabaret. Kander and Ebb's score was considered by some to be inspired by Weill's music. In 1979, two years before her death, Lotte Lenya was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Personal life

Lenya was born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer to Catholic working class parents in Vienna. She went to Zürich to study in 1914, taking her first job at the Schauspielhaus, using the stage name Lotte Lenja. She moved to Berlin to seek work in 1921.

Lenya and Weill did not meet properly until 1924 through a mutual acquaintance, the writer Georg Kaiser. They married in 1926, and later divorced in 1933, only to reconcile in September 1935 after emigrating to the United States. They remarried in 1937. In 1941, the couple moved to a house of their own in New City, Rockland County, New York, roughly 50 km north of New York City. Their second marriage lasted until Weill's death in 1950.

Lenya's second husband (1951–57) was American editor George Davis. After Davis' death in 1957, she married artist Russell Detwiler in 1962. He was 26 years her junior but she was widowed for a third time when Detwiler died at the age of 44 in 1969.

Death

Lenya died in Manhattan of cancer in 1981, aged 83. She is buried next to Weill at Mount Repose Cemetery in Haverstraw, New York.

Legacy

In 1956, Louis Armstrong recorded the song "Mack the Knife", both as a solo number and as a duet with Lenya. Armstrong added Lenya's name into the lyrics, in place of one of the characters in the play.

Donovan's 1968 song "Laléna" was inspired by Lenya.

The Michael Kunze play, Lenya, is about Brecht’s favorite singer, Lotte Lenya.

In 2007, the musical LoveMusik, based on Lenya's relationship with Weill, opened on Broadway. Lenya was portrayed by Donna Murphy.

She is mentioned in the Fascinating Aïda song "Lieder", which originally described her as German but was corrected for later performances. She is referenced in the Gavin Friday song 'Dolls' from his 1995 album Shag Tobacco.

Filmography

Actress
1980
Mahagonny (voice)
1977
Semi-Tough as
Dr. Clara Pelf
1974
CBS Daytime 90 (TV Series) as
Rosa Harcourt
- Trio for Lovers (1974) - Rosa Harcourt
1969
The Appointment as
Emma Valadier
1966
Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (TV Movie) as
The Gypsy
1965
Mutter Courage und ihre Kinder - Eine Chronik aus dem Dreißigjährigen Krieg (TV Movie) as
Mutter Courage
1964
Bertolt Brecht: Übungstücke für Schauspieler (Short)
1963
From Russia with Love as
Rosa Klebb
1961
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone as
Contessa Magda Terribili-Gonzales
1931
The Threepenny Opera as
Jenny (as Lotte Lenja)
Soundtrack
2017
Popular Voices at the BBC (TV Mini Series) (performer - 1 episode)
- Truth Tellers at the BBC (2017) - (performer: "Alabama Song")
2016
Uncle Howard (Documentary) (performer: "September Song")
2007
The Savages (performer: "Salomon-Song")
2001
Guileless Guile (Short) (performer: "Denn wie Man sich bettet")
1997
Seven Years in Tibet (performer: "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer/The Ballad of Mack the Knife")
1952
För min heta ungdoms skull (performer: "Die Seeräuber-Jenny. Ur Die Dreigroschenoper")
Self
1979
The Music of Man (TV Mini Series documentary) as
Self
- Part 7: The Known and the Unknown (1979) - Self
1979
...es war das Schönste auf der Welt - Begegnungen mit Lotte Lenya (TV Movie documentary) as
Self
1979
Omnibus (TV Series documentary) as
Self - Interviewee
- Lotte Lenya (1979) - Self - Interviewee
1979
Skyline (TV Series documentary) as
Self - Interviewee
- Lenya - Paris-New York (1979) - Self - Interviewee
- Lenya - The Berlin Years (1979) - Self - Interviewee
1973
New York, New York (TV Series) as
Self
- Episode dated 13 November 1978 (1978) - Self
- Episode dated 18 March 1973 (1973) - Self
1976
Bicentennial Minutes (TV Series short) as
Self - Narrator
- Episode #1.695 (1976) - Self - Narrator
1966
Today (TV Series) as
Self
- Episode dated 16 May 1975 (1975) - Self
- Episode dated 23 November 1966 (1966) - Self
1968
The Dick Cavett Show (TV Series) as
Self / Self - Musician
- Lotte Lenya, Peter Cook & Dudley Moore (1975) - Self - Musician
- Episode dated 15 November 1972 (1972) - Self
- Episode #1.31 (1968) - Self
1973
Bertolt Brecht zum 75. Geburtstag (TV Special) as
Self - Musician
1972
What's My Line? (TV Series) as
Self - Mystery Guest
- Lotte Lenya (1972) - Self - Mystery Guest (uncredited)
1969
Lotte Lenya singt Kurt Weill (TV Movie) as
Self - Musician
1968
Lotte Lenya sings Kurt Weill (TV Special short) as
Self - Musician
1967
NET Playhouse (TV Series) as
Self
- The World of Kurt Weill (1967) - Self
1967
The Merv Griffin Show (TV Series) as
Self
- Tom Ewell, Anthony Perkins, Lionel Hampton, Lotte Lenya (1967) - Self
- Will Jordan, Garson Kanin, Rocky Graziano, Lotte Lenya, Aliza Kashi (1967) - Self
1967
Das Berliner Requiem (TV Special) as
Narrator
1965
Aaron Copland: Music in the Twenties (TV Series) as
Self - Musician
- New Movements in Opera (1965) - Self - Musician
1965
13 Stars for Channel 13 (TV Series) as
Self
- Episode #1.1 (1965) - Self
1958
Camera Three (TV Series) as
Self / Nurse in Romeo and Juliet
- Brecht on Shakespeare (1964) - Self / Nurse in Romeo and Juliet
- The Music of Kurt Weill (1958) - Self
1964
Stage 2 (TV Series documentary short) as
Self
- Lotte Lenya: The Broadway Years of Kurt Weill (1964) - Self
1964
George Grosz' Interregnum (Documentary short) as
Narrator
1962
Treffpunkt New York (TV Series documentary) as
Self
- Broadway-Melodie 1962 (1962) - Self
1961
Monitor (TV Series documentary)
- Lotte Lenya Sings Kurt Weill/Jack Yeats (1961)
1958
Probe and Night Beat (TV Series documentary) as
Self
- Episode dated 4 June 1958 (1958) - Self
1957
Was war hier los? (TV Mini Series) as
Self - Guest on Phone
- Episode #1.3 (1957) - Self - Guest on Phone (voice)
1956
Lotte Lenya singt Songs von Kurt Weil (TV Movie) as
Self - Musician - Narrator
Archive Footage
2021
007: Licence to Drive (TV Special documentary)
2021
Lotte Lenya: Warum bin ich nicht froh? (TV Movie documentary) as
Self - Subject
2017
Popular Voices at the BBC (TV Mini Series) as
Self
- Truth Tellers at the BBC (2017) - Self
2016
Die Öscars (TV Mini Series documentary) as
Self
- Der Exodus (2016) - Self
2015
James Bond's 'Spectre' with Jonathan Ross (TV Movie documentary) as
Rosa Klebb (uncredited)
2014
From Caligari to Hitler: German Cinema in the Age of the Masses (Documentary) as
Self
2013
Skyfall: Modern Day Bond (TV Movie documentary)
2013
Bond's Greatest Moments (TV Movie documentary) as
Rosa Klebb (uncredited)
2012
Skyfall on Set (TV Movie documentary) as
Rosa Klebb (uncredited)
2010
Cabaret-Berlin, la scène sauvage (TV Movie documentary) as
Self - Singer
2008
Swatch James Bond 007 Villain Collection Television Commercial (Video short) as
Rosa Klebb
2007
Brecht vs. Pabst (Video documentary) as
Self
2005
From Russia with Love (Video Game) as
Rosa Klebb
2002
James Bond: A BAFTA Tribute (TV Special)
2002
Best Ever Bond (TV Movie documentary) as
Rosa Klebb (uncredited)
2002
Premiere Bond: Die Another Day (TV Movie documentary) as
Rosa Klebb (uncredited)
1995
In Search of James Bond with Jonathan Ross (TV Movie documentary) as
Rosa Klebb (uncredited)
1994
Kvitt eller dobbelt (TV Series) as
Rosa Klebb
- Episode #9.12 (1994) - Rosa Klebb
1992
Historiska teaterpremiärer (TV Mini Series documentary) as
Jenny
- Bertolt Brecht's "Threepenny Opera" at the Theater am Schifferbauerdamm in 1928. (1992) - Jenny
1989
MTV Movie Special: Licence to Kill (TV Special documentary) as
Rosa Klebb (uncredited)
1989
The Exiles (Documentary) as
Self
1987
James Bond: Licence to Thrill (TV Movie documentary)
1986
James Bond at the Movies (Video short) as
Self
1979
My Name Is Bond... James Bond (TV Movie documentary)
1971
Opernführer (TV Series)
- Aufstieg und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (1971)
1965
The Incredible World of James Bond (TV Movie documentary) as
Self

References

Lotte Lenya Wikipedia


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