Lucy Doraine (c.1926) Orig German Silent and 50 similar items

Vintage original 3.5 x 5.25 in. German postcard depicting the beautiful Hungarian-born silent film actress, LUCY DORAINE, who appeared in 24 films between 1918 and 1931 and was married to film director Michael Curtiz from 1918 to 1923. She is depicted in a publicity shot with bare shoulders and draped in a patterned wrap and wearing a pearl necklace. This postcard was signed in blue ink by Lucy Doraine in, we believe, 1926 (see additional details below). Printed by the renowned Ross-Verlag company of Berlin, Germany, this vintage original "country of origin" postcard is unused in very fine- condition with a small light crease on the bottom left corner and two parallel vertical indentations (which are not creases and look look embossed marks), one in the left border and on just inside the background area. There are no flaws to her beautiful signature. Provenance: Approximately 8 years ago, we purchased a collection of two albums of vintage original German postcards from a rare book dealer at an antiquarian book fair in Pasadena, California (see photos). Approximately half of the postcards were signed by the respective personalities and the ones that were dated by the actors are all dated "1926." We were informed by the dealer that these photographs came from a film collector in Germany who acquired the postcards at the time they were issued and then had them signed by the respective actors when he met them in person. We are now pleased to make these vintage original postcards available to other collectors. Ilona (Ilonka) Kovacs (AKA Lucy Doraine) began her youthful film career in her native Hungary, barely out of her teens. That career was initially guided by the veteran Hungarian director, Mihaly Kertesz (Michael Curtiz), who became her first husband. Given that "Kovacs" in Hungarian is about as ordinary as "Smith" in English, she soon replaced that commonplace surname with the one-of-a-kind, exotic-sounding screen name "Lucy Doraine". And off-screen she became "Mrs Mihaly Kertesz", the director's wife. Doraine and Kertesz-Curtiz worked closely together for about 5 years, beginning while they were still in Budapest and continuing after they left for Vienna (summer 1919), to escape the political and military turmoil swirling around in Hungary. That turmoil included a Socialist revolution, followed by a Communist revolution and, finally, a Fascist revolution (all in 1918-1919). Doraine's years of European film stardom continued up to 1927, both while she was still directed by Curtiz during their marriage (1918-23, at least 10 films together), and another few years after their divorce, when she was guided by German and Austrian directors like Basch and Eichberg. Her starring vehicles, post-Curtiz, bore spicy romantic titles like Her Husband's Wife, The Prince and the Ballerina, and Matrimonial Scandal. Doraine in a sense followed Curtiz's footsteps to Hollywood (although he had re-married twice), but her acting career in the US never caught fire, and she found herself playing supporting roles (directed by Frank Lloyd and William K. Howard) when she was only 30. Her last documented film acting was in the "parallel" German-language version (shot in the US) of The Trial of Mary Dugan (1931), and even speaking German (in which she was more fluent than English), she was cast in a supporting role. After that, Doraine evidently left the screen at age 33, but lived on in the US for many decades, until her death at the age of 91. Ross-Verlag in Berlin was a German publishing house specialized in photographs and photo postcards of artists. The owner of the company was Heinrich Ross (b. 10 August 1870; d. after 1954 as emigrant in the USA).