Early life

Skala was born Lilia Sofer in Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, Austria

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...

. Her mother, Katharina Skala, was Catholic

Catholic

The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

, and her father, Julius Sofer, was Jewish and worked as a manufacturers representative for the Waldes

Jindrich Waldes

Jindřich Waldes 2 July 1876 Nemyšl u Tábora – May 1941 Havana , leading industrialist, founder of Waldes Koh-i-noor Company, Czech patriot and art collector.-Life:...

 Koh-i-noor Company. In the late 1930s, she was forced to flee her Nazi-occupied homeland with her husband, Louis Erich Skala, and their two young sons. (Lilia and Erich adopted the non-Jewish sounding surname of Lilia's mother.) Skala and her husband managed to escape (at different times) from Austria to England, and eventually settled in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

.

Career

Lilia Skala appeared on countless television shows and serials from 1952 to 1985 (for example, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour in 1965), and as Grand Duchess Sophie kept company on Broadway with Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman was an American actress and singer. Known primarily for her powerful voice and roles in musical theatre, she has been called "the undisputed First Lady of the musical comedy stage." Among the many standards introduced by Merman in Broadway musicals are "I Got Rhythm", "Everything's...

 in Call Me Madam

Call Me Madam (film)

Call Me Madam is a 1953 musical film directed by Walter Lang, with songs by Irving Berlin, based on the stage musical of the same name.The film, with a screenplay by Arthur Sheekman, starred Ethel Merman, Donald O'Connor, Vera-Ellen, Billy DeWolfe, George Sanders, and Walter Slezak...

not too many years after toiling in a Queens zipper factory as a non-English-speaking refugee from Austria. The family later moved to Englewood, New Jersey

Englewood, New Jersey

Englewood is a city located in Bergen County, New Jersey. As of the 2010 United States Census, the city had a total population of 27,147.Englewood was incorporated as a city by an Act of the New Jersey Legislature on March 17, 1899, from portions of Ridgefield Township and the remaining portions of...

.

She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress

Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress

Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role is one of the Academy Awards of Merit presented annually by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to recognize an actress who has delivered an outstanding performance while working within the film industry. Since its inception, however, the...

 for her most famous role as the Mother Superior in Lilies of the Field opposite Oscar-winning Sidney Poitier

Sidney Poitier

Sir Sidney Poitier, KBE is a Bahamian American actor, film director, author, and diplomat.In 1963, Poitier became the first black person to win an Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in Lilies of the Field...

. Skala also appeared in Ship of Fools

Ship of Fools (film)

Ship of Fools is a 1965 film drama which tells the overlapping stories of several passengers aboard an ocean liner bound to Germany from Mexico in 1933...

, Deadly Hero, Charly

Charly

Charly is a 1968 American film directed by Ralph Nelson. The drama stars Cliff Robertson , Claire Bloom, Lilia Skala, Leon Janney and Dick Van Patten and tells the story of a mentally retarded bakery worker who is the subject of an experiment to increase human intelligence...

, Heartland

Heartland (film)

Heartland is a 1979 American film, directed by Richard Pearce, starring Rip Torn and Conchata Ferrell. The film is a stark depiction of early homestead life in the American West, and is based on a 1914 published reminiscence by Elinore Pruitt Stewart, titled Letters of a Woman Homesteader.Though...

, Eleanor and Franklin

Eleanor and Franklin

Eleanor and Franklin is a television movie released on January 11, 1976, starring Edward Herrmann as Franklin D. Roosevelt and Jane Alexander as Eleanor Roosevelt. It is the first part in a two-part biopic based on Joseph P. Lash's Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling biography with the same...

, Roseland

Roseland (film)

Roseland is a 1977 Merchant Ivory Productions' portmanteau film with a screenplay by Ruth Prawer Jhabvala. It was directed by James Ivory and produced by Ismail Merchant....

, Flashdance

Flashdance

Another song used in the film, "Maniac", was also nominated for an Academy Award. It was written by Michael Sembello and Dennis Matkosky, and was inspired by the 1980 horror film Maniac. The lyrics about a killer on the loose were rewritten so that it could be used in Flashdance...

and House of Games

House of Games

House of Games is David Mamet's 1987 film directorial debut. Mamet wrote the screenplay himself, from a story he devised with Jonathan Katz. The film's cast includes Lindsay Crouse, Joe Mantegna, Ricky Jay, and J. T. Walsh.-Plot:...

.

She died in Bay Shore, New York

Bay Shore, New York

Bay Shore is a hamlet and a census-designated place located in the Town of Islip, Suffolk County, New York, USA. It is situated on the south shore of Long Island, adjoining the Great South Bay. Bay Shore celebrated its 300th anniversary in 2008. The population of the CDP was 23,852 at the time of...

, of natural causes at age 98. Her life is the subject of an eponymous one-woman play Lilia! The play is written and performed by her granddaughter, Libby Skala.

External links