Celia Lovsky

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Celia Lovsky
One Step Beyond, episode Message from Clara, 1959
Born
Cäcilia Josefina Lvovsky

(1897-02-21)February 21, 1897
Vienna, Austria-Hungary
DiedOctober 12, 1979(1979-10-12) (aged 82)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Resting placeHollywood Forever Cemetery
OccupationActress
Years active1930–1974
Spouses
Heinrich Vinzenz Nowak
​
​
(m. 1919; div. 1929)​
​
​
(m. 1934; div. 1945)​

Celia Lovsky (born Cäcilia Josefina Lvovsky, February 21, 1897 – October 12, 1979) was an

Czech opera composer.[a] She studied theater, dance, and languages at the Austrian Royal Academy of Arts and Music.[2]: 32  She is best known to fans of Star Trek as the High Priestess T'Pau, and to fans of The Twilight Zone
as the aged daughter of an eternally youthful Hollywood actress.

Life and career

Lovsky married journalist Heinrich Vinzenz Nowak in 1919.[2]: 496  By 1925, they were apparently estranged and she was romantically involved with playwright Arthur Schnitzler.[2]: 32  She later moved to Berlin, where she acted in the surrealist plays Dream Theater and Dream Play by Karl Kraus.[2]: 39  There, in 1929, she met Peter Lorre, who had seen her in a production of Shakespeare's Othello near Vienna.[2]: 32  The couple traveled to Paris, London, and the United States. Lovsky was instrumental in bringing Lorre to the attention of Fritz Lang, leading eventually to Lorre's appearance in the film M (1931) directed by Lang.[2]: 37  They lived together for five years before their marriage, and stayed married until 1945, remaining close friends for the rest of Lorre's life.

After the couple settled in Santa Monica, California, Lorre had not wished Lovsky to work, believing he should be the breadwinner and she should remain at home. For the rest of Lorre's life, she was his publicist, manager, secretary, financial planner, nurse and confidant.[2]: 87  However, after their divorce, she started taking roles in American movies and television. She made a name for herself playing slightly exotic roles such as the deaf-mute mother of Lon Chaney in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) with James Cagney and as Apache Princess Saba in the 1955 film Foxfire starring Jane Russell and Jeff Chandler.

Kurt Kasznar and Celia Lovsky in The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954)

As she grew older, she was given dignified

Have Gun Will Travel titled "The Man Who Wouldn't Talk" (1958) (with Charles Bronson), Romany matriarchs, elderly Native American women such as in the Wagon Train episode "A Man Called Horse", expatriate Russian princesses, and a brief but memorable role as the widowed mother of Reinhard Schwimmer, one of the victims in the film The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967). Her final movie appearance was of the "Exchange Leader" in Soylent Green (1973). She delivers the final confirmation to Edward G. Robinson
's character Sol about Soylent Green's true ingredient.

She is particularly well-known for two of her television appearances: the

T'Pau, the Vulcan diplomat, judge, and philosopher who presides at Mr. Spock's wedding in the Star Trek episode "Amok Time
" (1967).

Partial filmography

Notes

  1. ^ The paperwork for her early 1930s application for US citizenship adjusted her surname and dropped the diacritic from her first name, resulting in Cacilia Josefina Lowenstein.[1]

References

  1. ^ a b "Petition for Naturalization". Immigration and Naturalization Service. United States Department of Justice. Retrieved October 7, 2015 – via Ancestry.com.
  2. ^
    ISBN 978-0-813-12360-8. Retrieved December 30, 2015 – via Google Books
    .

External links
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Celia_Lovsky&oldid=1211018224"