La Jana (actress)
Encyclopedia
La Jana was an Austro
-German
dancer and actress.
Heinrich Hiebel, who moved his family to Frankfurt am Main when she and her sister were still young. They grew up in the old city
, near the Goethe House
. Henny's older sister, Anny, later trained as an opera singer. Henny trained as a dancer at the Frankfurt Opera Ballet; she first appeared on stage there at the age of 8 and later became a dancer in revue
s.
In his autobiography, Géza von Cziffra
says that he encountered her in the Chat Noir cabaret
in Paris and brought her back to Berlin, where he introduced her to Frederic Zelnik
and got her into films. He describes her as he saw her then:
Géza von Cziffra's version of events is disputed. There are at least two other versions of how La Jana was discovered. According to contemporary reports, she was first discovered in Frankfurt, at the Weinklause cabaret, before going to Berlin to dance. Another story is that she was brought in at a day's notice to replace the ailing star of a revue in Dresden
and later received engagements in Berlin as a result.
Around 1926, La Jana, still known as Henny Hiebel, became engaged
to the actor Ulrich Bettac
. That year she moved with him to Berlin; however, the engagement was called off a few years later.
She appeared as a dancer in revues in Berlin, Stockholm (1933) and London (1934/35) among other cities, performing in Herman Haller's An und Aus, Erik Charell
's Casanova and Max Reinhardt
's Die schöne Helena. In Casanova she was presented to the audience semi-naked on a silver platter. She became the talk of Berlin. Crown Prince Wilhelm became her lover and visited her regularly at her villa in Grunewald
. There were also rumours of an affair between her and Joseph Goebbels
. The impressario Charles B. Cochran
, in contrast, reports reading in a newspaper that "Hitler was seldom seen in public without La Jana". When Charlie Chaplin
was in Berlin, they had an affair which he wrote up for the Women's Home Companion. But she is said to have been married to or at least living with the opera singer Michael Bohnen
.
With Cochran's Streamline, La Jana toured throughout England and Scotland in 1934. In this show, she played a Spanish dancer. After her return to Germany, Truxa (filmed in 1936, released in 1937
) made her a film star, and from then on she appeared in one or more films almost every year. She represented an exotic, not typically German type of womanhood. After she travelled to India with Richard Eichberg
, millions admired her in the films she made there, Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das indische Grabmal, which also featured Frits van Dongen
, Theo Lingen
and Gisela Schlüter amongst others. In Menschen vom Variete and Es leuchten die Sterne
, she appeared with Hans Moser
and Grethe Weiser
amongst others. She became the top dance and musical star in Nazi films.
In the winter of 1939/40, La Jana was engaged for a multi-city tour of Germany entertaining the troops, since her fame made her an assured draw. In February 1940, she fell ill with bilateral pneumonia
, and she died on 13 March 1940 in Wilmersdorf
. The premiere of her last film, Stern von Rio, took place a week later on 20 March at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo.
La Jana was buried in Waldfriedhof Dahlem
. The grave site had been cleared, but on 25 September 1990, the City of Berlin declared it an honorary grave
and it is now marked by a simple stone with a bas relief plaque of her in profile. The stone had been kept at the Heimatmuseum in Steglitz
.
n name meaning 'like a flower'. It is likely that it was actually made up. It is uncertain how she came to adopt it, although some sources say a director chose it for her. She appeared in 1924/25 as part of a two-woman act called 'The Charming Sisters'. Autographed cards exist in Sweden on which her name appears as 'Lary Jana'.
Austria
Austria , officially the Republic of Austria , is a landlocked country of roughly 8.4 million people in Central Europe. It is bordered by the Czech Republic and Germany to the north, Slovakia and Hungary to the east, Slovenia and Italy to the south, and Switzerland and Liechtenstein to the...
-German
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...
dancer and actress.
Life and career
Henriette 'Henny' Hiebel was the younger daughter of the master gilderGilding
The term gilding covers a number of decorative techniques for applying fine gold leaf or powder to solid surfaces such as wood, stone, or metal to give a thin coating of gold. A gilded object is described as "gilt"...
Heinrich Hiebel, who moved his family to Frankfurt am Main when she and her sister were still young. They grew up in the old city
Altstadt (Frankfurt am Main)
Altstadt or old city is a district or Stadtteil of Frankfurt am Main, Germany, located on the northern Main bank. It is part of the Ortsbezirk Innenstadt I. It is surrounded by the Stadtteil of Innenstadt...
, near the Goethe House
Goethe House
The Goethe House in the old town of Frankfurt am Main was the family residence of the Goethe family, most notably Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, until 1795. Johann Wolfgang was himself born here in 1749 to his parents, Johann Caspar Goethe, a lawyer, and Katherine Elisabeth Textor, daughter of the...
. Henny's older sister, Anny, later trained as an opera singer. Henny trained as a dancer at the Frankfurt Opera Ballet; she first appeared on stage there at the age of 8 and later became a dancer in revue
Revue
A revue is a type of multi-act popular theatrical entertainment that combines music, dance and sketches. The revue has its roots in 19th century American popular entertainment and melodrama but grew into a substantial cultural presence of its own during its golden years from 1916 to 1932...
s.
In his autobiography, Géza von Cziffra
Géza von Cziffra
Géza von Cziffra was a Hungarian and Austrian film director and screenwriter.- Life :Cziffra was a Banat German in origin, born in 1900 in Arad in the Banat region, at that date in the Kingdom of Hungary, now in Romania....
says that he encountered her in the Chat Noir cabaret
Cabaret
Cabaret is a form, or place, of entertainment featuring comedy, song, dance, and theatre, distinguished mainly by the performance venue: a restaurant or nightclub with a stage for performances and the audience sitting at tables watching the performance, as introduced by a master of ceremonies or...
in Paris and brought her back to Berlin, where he introduced her to Frederic Zelnik
Frederic Zelnik
Frederic Zelnik was one of the most important producers-directors of the German silent cinema. He also appeared on screen as an actor.-Early life and career:...
and got her into films. He describes her as he saw her then:
And there I saw her dance for the first time: that woman possessed the most attractive body that I had set eyes upon in my not all that long life. The girl, here moving to and fro in the spotlight . . . had a boyish build: slim hips, practically just the suggestion of a bust. . . . She was a simple, nice, approachable girl, but she had as much interest in sex as Immanuel Kant. That's to say, none at all.
Géza von Cziffra's version of events is disputed. There are at least two other versions of how La Jana was discovered. According to contemporary reports, she was first discovered in Frankfurt, at the Weinklause cabaret, before going to Berlin to dance. Another story is that she was brought in at a day's notice to replace the ailing star of a revue in Dresden
Dresden
Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....
and later received engagements in Berlin as a result.
Around 1926, La Jana, still known as Henny Hiebel, became engaged
Engagement
An engagement or betrothal is a promise to marry, and also the period of time between proposal and marriage which may be lengthy or trivial. During this period, a couple is said to be betrothed, affianced, engaged to be married, or simply engaged...
to the actor Ulrich Bettac
Ulrich Bettac
Ulrich Bettac , born Ulrich Ewald Berthold Bettac, was a German-born Austrian actor and theatre director. He was especially well known for his work as a character actor at the Burgtheater in Vienna; he also had a fairly extensive film career.-Selected filmography:*Mysterious Shadows *1...
. That year she moved with him to Berlin; however, the engagement was called off a few years later.
She appeared as a dancer in revues in Berlin, Stockholm (1933) and London (1934/35) among other cities, performing in Herman Haller's An und Aus, Erik Charell
Erik Charell
Erich Karl Löwenberg , later known as Erik Charell, was a German actor and director. He was best known as a director of musical revues and operettas, especially at Großes Schauspielhaus in Berlin...
's Casanova and Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt
----Max Reinhardt was an Austrian theater and film director and actor.-Biography:...
's Die schöne Helena. In Casanova she was presented to the audience semi-naked on a silver platter. She became the talk of Berlin. Crown Prince Wilhelm became her lover and visited her regularly at her villa in Grunewald
Grunewald
Grunewald is a locality within the Berliner borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf. Famous for the homonymous forest, until 2001 administrative reform it was part of the former district of Wilmersdorf.-Geography:The locality is situated in the western side of the city and is separated from...
. There were also rumours of an affair between her and Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels
Paul Joseph Goebbels was a German politician and Reich Minister of Propaganda in Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945. As one of Adolf Hitler's closest associates and most devout followers, he was known for his zealous oratory and anti-Semitism...
. The impressario Charles B. Cochran
Charles B. Cochran
Sir Charles Blake Cochran , generally known as C. B. Cochran, was an English theatrical manager. He produced some of the most successful musical revues, musicals and plays of the 1920s and 1930s, becoming associated with Noel Coward and his works.-Biography:Cochran was born in Sussex and educated...
, in contrast, reports reading in a newspaper that "Hitler was seldom seen in public without La Jana". When Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Charles Spencer "Charlie" Chaplin, KBE was an English comic actor, film director and composer best known for his work during the silent film era. He became the most famous film star in the world before the end of World War I...
was in Berlin, they had an affair which he wrote up for the Women's Home Companion. But she is said to have been married to or at least living with the opera singer Michael Bohnen
Michael Bohnen
Franz Michael Bohnen was a German bass baritone opera singer and actor.-Life:Michael Bohnen was born in Cologne. He trained in opera singing at the Hochschule für Musik Köln and with a private tutor, making his debut in 1910 at the Stadttheater Düsseldorf. In 1912 he appeared at the Hoftheater...
.
With Cochran's Streamline, La Jana toured throughout England and Scotland in 1934. In this show, she played a Spanish dancer. After her return to Germany, Truxa (filmed in 1936, released in 1937
1937 in film
The year 1937 in film involved some significant events, including the Walt Disney production of the first full-length animated film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.- Events :*April 16 - Way Out West premieres in the US....
) made her a film star, and from then on she appeared in one or more films almost every year. She represented an exotic, not typically German type of womanhood. After she travelled to India with Richard Eichberg
Richard Eichberg
Richard Eichberg was an German film director and producer. He directed 87 films between 1915 and 1949. He also produced 77 films between 1915 and 1950.He was born in Berlin, Germany and died in Munich, Germany....
, millions admired her in the films she made there, Der Tiger von Eschnapur and Das indische Grabmal, which also featured Frits van Dongen
Frits van Dongen
Frits van Dongen is an architect from the Netherlands. He designed a canal-side municipal theatre for the city of Leeuwarden with his firm De Architecten Cie...
, Theo Lingen
Theo Lingen
Theo Lingen , born Franz Theodor Schmitz, was a German actor, director and screenwriter. He appeared in over 230 films between 1929 and 1978, and directed 21 films between 1936 and 1960.-Life and career:...
and Gisela Schlüter amongst others. In Menschen vom Variete and Es leuchten die Sterne
The Stars Shine (film)
The Stars Shine is a 1938 German musical revue directed by Hans H. Zerlett and written by Zerlett and Hans Hannes.-Synopsis:...
, she appeared with Hans Moser
Hans Moser
Hans Moser may refer to:*Hans Moser , Austrian actor*Hans Moser , German movie director*Hans Moser , Swiss Olympic rider*Hans Joachim Moser , German composer and musicologist...
and Grethe Weiser
Grethe Weiser
Grethe Weiser was a German actress.- Biography :Born in Hanover, she spent her childhood in Dresden. She escaped from her dominant and sometimes violent father by marrying a Jewish confectionery manufacturer in 1920. Her only child, a son, was born in 1922...
amongst others. She became the top dance and musical star in Nazi films.
In the winter of 1939/40, La Jana was engaged for a multi-city tour of Germany entertaining the troops, since her fame made her an assured draw. In February 1940, she fell ill with bilateral pneumonia
Pneumonia
Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung—especially affecting the microscopic air sacs —associated with fever, chest symptoms, and a lack of air space on a chest X-ray. Pneumonia is typically caused by an infection but there are a number of other causes...
, and she died on 13 March 1940 in Wilmersdorf
Wilmersdorf
Wilmersdorf is an inner city locality of Berlin, formerly a borough by itself but since Berlin's 2001 administrative reform a part of the new borough of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf.-History:...
. The premiere of her last film, Stern von Rio, took place a week later on 20 March at the Ufa-Palast am Zoo.
La Jana was buried in Waldfriedhof Dahlem
Waldfriedhof Dahlem
The Waldfriedhof Dahlem is a cemetery in Berlin, in the district of Steglitz-Zehlendorf on the edge of the Grunewald forest at Hüttenweg 47. Densely planted with conifers and designed between 1931 and 1933 after the plans of Albert Brodersen, it is one of Berlin's more recent cemeteries...
. The grave site had been cleared, but on 25 September 1990, the City of Berlin declared it an honorary grave
Ehrengrab
An Ehrengrab is a distinction granted by certain German, Swiss and Austrian cities to one of their citizens for extraordinary services or achievements in their lifetime. If there are no descendants or institutions to care for the gravesite, the communities or cities will take responsibility for...
and it is now marked by a simple stone with a bas relief plaque of her in profile. The stone had been kept at the Heimatmuseum in Steglitz
Steglitz
Steglitz is a locality of the Steglitz-Zehlendorf borough in the south-west of Berlin, the capital of Germany. The locality also includes the neighbourhood of Südende.-History:...
.
Stage name
According to contemporary reports, 'La Jana' was an IndiaIndia
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
n name meaning 'like a flower'. It is likely that it was actually made up. It is uncertain how she came to adopt it, although some sources say a director chose it for her. She appeared in 1924/25 as part of a two-woman act called 'The Charming Sisters'. Autographed cards exist in Sweden on which her name appears as 'Lary Jana'.
Silent films
- 1924/25 Wege zu Kraft und SchönheitWays to Strength and BeautyWays to strength and beauty is a 1925 Ufa-Kulturfilmabteilung of Weimar Germany directed by Nicholas Kaufmann and Wilhelm Prager.The action was an idealized, somewhat naive approximation to the health and beauty in conformity with nature...
(Germany) - 1924/26 Die Weiße Geisha (Sweden)
- 1926/27 Die Lady ohne Schleier (Sweden/Germany)
- 1927 En perfekt Gentleman (Sweden)
- 1927 Um seine Ehre (Sweden)
- 1927/28 Thérèse Raquin – Du sollst nicht ehebrechen (Germany)
- 1928 Der Biberpelz (Germany)
- 1928 Zwei rote Rosen (Germany)
- 1928 Der Ladenprinz (Germany)
- 1928 Gaunerliebchen (Germany)
- 1928 Ritter der Nacht (Germany)
- 1928 Der Herzensphotograph (Germany)
- 1929 Spanisches Intermezzo Germany)
- 1929 Meineid – Ein Paragraph der Menschen tötet (Germany)
- 1929 Der Lustige Witwer (Germany)
Sound films
- 1930 Die Warschauer Zitadelle (Germany)
- 1931 Der Schlemihl (Germany)
- 1934 Ich bin Du (Germany)
- 1937 Truxa (Germany)
- 1938 Der Tiger von Eschnapur (Germany)
- 1938 Das indische Grabmal (Germany)
- 1938 Es leuchten die SterneThe Stars Shine (film)The Stars Shine is a 1938 German musical revue directed by Hans H. Zerlett and written by Zerlett and Hans Hannes.-Synopsis:...
(Germany) - 1939 Menschen vom Varieté (Germany)
- 1940 Der Trichter Nr. 10 - Kurzfilm (Germany)
- 1940 Stern von Rio (Germany)
Revues
- 1924 An und Aus (Berlin)
- 1927/28 Alles aus Liebe (Vienna)
- 1928 Helene (Berlin)
- 1928 Casanova (Berlin)
- 1928–1933 Die drei Musketiere (Berlin)
- 1930–1932 Die schöne Helena (Berlin)
- 1930–1932 Hoffmanns Erzählungen (Berlin)
- 1933 Casanova (Stockholm)
- 1934–1935 Streamline (Berlin, London, followed by English and Scottish tour)
- 1935 A Kingdom For A Cow (London)
- 1937 Piccadilly (Berlin)
Sources
- Christa Bandmann. Es leuchten die Sterne. Aus der Glanzzeit des deutschen Films. Munich: Heyne, 1984. ISBN 3-45301-128-7 ((de icon))
- Helena Lehmann. La Jana. Eine Biografie. Self-published, Wiesbaden 2008. ISBN 978-3000200731
- Rolf Weiser. "La Jana gestorben". Filmwelt 29 March 1940.
External links
- La Jana at the German Dance Archive, Cologne
- La Jana at filmportal.de
- La Jana at the English and German Internet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie DatabaseInternet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
- La Jana pictures at Virtual History.com
- La Jana Memorial Page
- The La Jana Shrine