Margot Walter, also known as Margot Landa (4 October 1903 in
Potsdam
Potsdam () is the capital and largest city of the Germany, German States of Germany, state of Brandenburg. It is part of the Berlin/Brandenburg Metropolitan Region. Potsdam sits on the Havel, River Havel, a tributary of the Elbe, downstream of B ...
, Germany – April 1994 in
Camden Town
Camden Town () is an area in the London Borough of Camden, around north-northwest of Charing Cross. Historically in Middlesex, it is identified in the London Plan as one of 34 major centres in Greater London.
Laid out as a residential distri ...
, London, England), was a German actress.
Life and career
Born in Potsdam near
Berlin
Berlin ( ; ) is the Capital of Germany, capital and largest city of Germany, by both area and List of cities in Germany by population, population. With 3.7 million inhabitants, it has the List of cities in the European Union by population withi ...
Walter became a regular member of the cast at the
Hamburg Stadttheater in 1923. After a season at the
Thalia Theater in Hamburg she moved to Berlin in 1925 after being contracted by the ''Deutsches Künstlertheater Berlin'' (German Artist Theatre Berlin), one of the several Berlin theatres run by successful Jewish
theatrical producer
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actors to present experiences of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The performers may communi ...
. Her usual characters were the
ingenue and the
soubrette
A soubrette is a female minor stock character in opera and theatre, often a pert lady's maid. By extension, the term can refer generally to any saucy or flirtatious young woman. The term arrived in English from Provençal via French, and means " ...
.
The following year (1926) her film career started when she was discovered by
Reinhold Schünzel
Reinhold Schünzel (7 November 1888 – 11 November 1954) was a German actor and director, active in both Germany and the United States. The son of a German father and a Jewish mother, he was born in St. Pauli, the poorest part of Hamburg. Despit ...
. Margot Walter played mainly happy-go-lucky teenage girls in comedies, romantic comedies and
farce
Farce is a comedy that seeks to entertain an audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. Farce is also characterized by heavy use of physical comedy, physical humor; the use of delibe ...
s which were constantly on an insignificant artistic level. Those were topics popular with the audience during the period of radical change from silent to sound movies. Margot Walter contracted leading and main supporting roles.
Married to Jewish silent movie star
Max Landa
Max Landa (; 24 April 1873 – 8 November 1933; born Max Landau) was a Russian-born Austrian silent film and stage actor.
Career
Landa attended the Handelsakademie (commercial academy) in Vienna and took classes with acting teacher in the same ...
, 30 years her elder, her career came to a sudden end in January 1933 when the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party ( or NSDAP), was a far-right politics, far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported the ideology of Nazism. Its precursor ...
took over the government in Germany. The couple went into exile where her husband committed suicide the same year. As Margot Landa the young widow settled down in England, where she had worked already in 1928. Her last film appearance was in the British production ''
Night Alone'' in 1938.
Warwick Ward, the producer of ''Night Alone'', knew her from Berlin where he had worked as an actor.
In spring 1994 Margot Landa died in Camden Town.
A different Margot Walter (born 1924) worked exclusively as stage actress, e.g. in
Ingolstadt
Ingolstadt (; Austro-Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian: ) is an Independent city#Germany, independent city on the Danube, in Upper Bavaria, with 142,308 inhabitants (as of 31 December 2023). Around half a million people live in the metropolitan ...
}, Germany in the 1950s.
Filmography
* 1926: ''
We'll Meet Again in the Heimat''
* 1927: ''
Babette Bomberling''
* 1927: ''
Always Be True and Faithful''
* 1928: ''
Endangered Girls''
* 1928: ''
Honeymoon
A honeymoon is a vacation taken by newlyweds after their wedding to celebrate their marriage. Today, honeymoons are often celebrated in destinations considered exotic or romantic. In a similar context, it may also refer to the phase in a couple ...
''
* 1928: ''
Ringing the Changes''
* 1929: Möblierte Zimmer
* 1929: ''
Do You Know That Little House on Lake Michigan?''
* 1929: ''
Ship of Girls''
* 1930: ''
The Copper''
* 1930: Bockfierfest
* 1930: 1000 Worte Deutsch
* 1931: ''
The True Jacob''
* 1931: ''
The Secret of the Red Cat''
* 1931: ''
Shooting Festival in Schilda''
* 1931: Schön ist die Manöverzeit
* 1931: ''
The Office Manager''
* 1931: ''
A Night at the Grand Hotel''
* 1931: Zu Befehl, Herr Unteroffizier
* 1932: ''
The Dancer of Sanssouci
''The Dancer of Sanssouci'' () is a 1932 German historical drama film directed by Frederic Zelnik and starring Otto Gebühr, Lil Dagover, and Rosa Valetti. Set at the court of Frederick the Great, the film is part of a group of Prussian films ...
''
* 1932: Spione im Savoy-Hotel
* 1932: ''
Thea Roland
''Thea Roland'' or ''The Adventure of Thea Roland'' (German: ''Das Abenteuer der Thea Roland'') is a 1932 German comedy film directed by Henry Koster and starring Lil Dagover, Hans Rehmann and Margarete Kupfer. The film marked the directorial deb ...
''
* 1933: ''
Two Good Comrades''
* 1938: ''
Night Alone''
Bibliography
*
Kay Weniger
Kay Weniger (born 1956) is an Austrian writer of books on media issues. He published an eight-volume encyclopaedia on international film people.
Biography
Weniger is the son of the German stage and film actress and the Austrian stage actor ...
: 'Es wird im Leben dir mehr genommen als gegeben …'. Lexikon der aus Deutschland und Österreich emigrierten Filmschaffenden 1933 bis 1945. Eine Gesamtübersicht. p. 526, ACABUS Verlag, Hamburg 2011,
External links
* —shows false birthplace and birth year
Photographs and literature��shows false birthplace and birth year
{{DEFAULTSORT:Walter, Margot
1903 births
1994 deaths
German film actresses
German silent film actresses
German stage actresses
Emigrants from Nazi Germany to the United Kingdom
20th-century German actresses
Actresses from Potsdam