The Sun And Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler's Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood

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Viertel was a classical stage actress in her own right for 20 years in Germany during the Weimar era. Or the title of this review, which Rifkind uses to describe Viertel's last view of Berlin when she left: "Beware, o wanderer, the road is walking too," from a poem by Rilke, another Viertel acquaintance. Rifkind reports that Franz Werfel, though Jewish, “visited the Catholic shrine dedicated to Bernadette Soubiros and prayed for a miracle. Among the many who crossed Viertel’s path were playwright Bertolt Brecht, novelists Christopher Isherwood and Thomas Mann, and composer Arnold Schoenberg. Members of Salka Viertel’s own family were among those refugees, as were hundreds of her friends and many more strangers.

A close con­fi­dante and fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor of Gre­ta Gar­bo, Sal­ka had fled Nazi Ger­many and quick­ly emerged as the keep­er of artis­tic and intel­lec­tu­al soci­ety in WWII-era Los Ange­les. In less­er hands, this book could have been noth­ing more than a vehi­cle to name­drop, but native Ange­leno Rifkin unearths the larg­er, mov­ing sto­ry of how Sal­ka Vier­tel pro­vid­ed not just a famil­iar cul­tur­al base, but a true safe haven for fel­low Jew­ish immi­grants. To enable personalized advertising (like interest-based ads), we may share your data with our marketing and advertising partners using cookies and other technologies.As the Swedish actress negotiated a new contract giving her the choice of directors and scripts, she challenged the older actress to come up with dramatic ideas.

She was born in Central Europe and was a thriving actress in Germany before making her way to Southern California a few years before Hitler's rise to power. S. military intelligence officer and later wrote the screenplay for the 1951 award-winning film “Decision Before Dawn,” as well as “The African Queen” and other notable films. The questions Salka asked herself about one’s responsibility in the face of bigotry and exclusion are the same questions we’re asking today. Salka Viertel is an all but forgotten figure from Hollywood’s golden era, often portrayed as little more than a screenplay consultant to Greta Garbo.Well known to film scholars and classical music lovers, the Thalberg/Schoenberg impasse is one of the great when-worlds-collide moments in pop cultural and modernist history. Salka’s A-List guests, whether back in Berlin, Vienna and Prague or later at her Santa Monica home, weren’t just stars; they were superstars. In 1911 she played briefly under Max Reinhardt in Berlin, whereupon she followed an offer in 1913 to go to Vienna to work on the Neue Wiener Bühne. With over 6 million of the world’s best eBooks to choose from, Kobo offers you a whole world of reading. In Viertel's living room (the only one in town with comfortable armchairs, said one Hollywood insider), countless cinematic, theatrical, and musical partnerships were born.