Elfi von Dassanowsky

Elfi von Dassanowsky
Elfi von Dassanowsky
	Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Citizenship	Austrian; American;
Occupation(s)	Film producer, opera singer, pianist, educator
Years active	1942–2007

Elfriede "Elfi" von Dassanowsky (February 2, 1924 – October 2, 2007) was an Austrian-born singer, pianist, and film producer.

Early life

Elfi von Dassanowsky (also known as Elfi Dassanowsky or Elfriede Dassanowsky) was born Elfriede Maria Elisabeth Charlotte Dassanowsky in

UFA Studio in Berlin

offered her a film contract in late 1944, which she also declined.

Career

In 1946, von Dassanowsky made her opera debut as Susanna in

Allied High Command

.

Dassanowsky remains one of the few women in film history, and at age 22 one of the youngest, to co-found a film studio—Belvedere Film—the first new studio facility in postwar Vienna. With senior partners August Diglas and Emmerich Hanus, the studio created such German-language classics as Die Glücksmühle (The Mill of Happiness, 1946), Dr. Rosin (1949), and Märchen vom Glück (Kiss Me, Casanova, 1949), and gave Gunther Philipp and Nadja Tiller their first screen roles.

Dassanowsky starred in operas, operettas, theatrical dramas and comedies, helped initiate several theater groups, was announcer for Allied Forces Broadcasting and the BBC, toured West Germany in a one-woman-show and gave master classes in voice and piano.

During this period, Dassanowsky also modeled exclusively for famous Austrian painter Franz Xaver Wolf (1896 – 1990), whose work featuring her image is now in museum and private collections.

Through art director

Ignace Paderewski

piano technique, her musical pedagogy continued in the 1950s in Canada and New York, where she also married and had a son and daughter.

At this time Dassanowsky turned to design and created a prototype for woman's leather day coat, which is now in the collection of The Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (

Museum für angewandte Kunst Wien). She divorced in the late 1970s and although she never remarried, she was briefly linked with author and actor, Prince Heinrich Starhemberg

(aka Henry Gregor, 1934–1997) in the mid 1990s until his death.

In Hollywood in the 1960s, she resisted becoming a trendy Euro-starlet and preferred to remain behind the camera as a vocal coach for director/producer

naturalized citizen of the United States. A successful Los Angeles businesswoman, in 1999, she re-established Belvedere Film as a Los Angeles/Vienna-based production company with her son, Robert. She was executive producer of the award-winning dramatic short film, Semmelweis (2001), the spy-comedy, Wilson Chance (2005), and several works in progress at the time of her death, including the documentary Felix Austria! aka The Archduke and Herbert Hinkel (2013), and a screen adaptation (with her son) of the antiwar Austrian novel, Mars im Widder by Alexander Lernet-Holenia

.

Recognized internationally for her unique work as a pioneering woman in film production and as a multi-talent in postwar Austrian arts and culture, von Dassanowsky is the only Austrian woman to receive the Women's International Center's prestigious Living Legacy Award, and has been honored with the UNESCO Mozart Medal, the Decoration of Merit in Gold for Services to the Republic of Austria,^[1] the French Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, the Austrian Film Archive's Lifetime Achievement Medal, by the State of California and the cities of Vienna and Los Angeles, where von Dassanowsky lived since 1962. Additionally, she is reported to have been nominated for the honorary Right Livelihood Award in the late 1990s.

Death

While in

Zentralfriedhof

in Vienna on July 25, 2008.

Foundation and posthumous recognition

In November 2007, the planned establishment of the Elfi von Dassanowsky Foundation was announced in Vienna. It would continue the pioneering and creative spirit of the late artist by developing awards and grants for emerging women filmmakers. The first phase of this project was complete in late January 2009, when the Elfi von Dassanowsky Fund initiated its program of charitable contributions to non-profit organizations in the U.S. and Europe.

The Elfi von Dassanowsky Rose (a

tea-rose – floribunda hybrid) also known as the "Elfi" was created by Brad Jalbert of Canada in 2009. It was included in the Peggy Rockefeller Rose Garden at the New York Botanical Garden

in Spring 2013.

The first Elfi von Dassanowsky Prize for work by female filmmakers was presented to Norwegian artist Inger Lise Hansen for Parallax (2009) at the

Vienna Independent Shorts

Film Festival in June 2010.

A minor planet/asteroid,

4495 Dassanowsky, discovered in 1988 by Japanese astronomers Masaru Arai and Hiroshi Mori, was named in her honor in 2014.^[2]^[3]

She was named an Honorary Member of the Association of Austrian Film Producers (AAFP) posthumously in September 2018.[4]