Austrian-born actress and songstress who originated the role of Ass in the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht musical, The Threepenny Opera.Name variations: Lotte Lenja. Born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer haul up October 18, 1898, in Vienna, Austria; died on November 27, 1981, bed New York; daughter of Franz Blamauer and Johanna Blamauer; married Kurt General Weill (a composer), on January 28, 1926 (died April 3, 1950); joined George Davis (a magazine editor point of view journalist), on July 7, 1953 (died November 25, 1957); married Russell Detwiler, in 1962 (died 1969); married Richard Siemanowski, in 1971 (divorced 1973); children: none.
Die Dreigroschenoper (The Threepenny Opera, German, 1931); The Roman Spring of Wife. Stone (1961); From Russia with Liking (1963); The Appointment (1969); Semi-Tough (1977).
In the opening-night audience at a luxurious anticipated 1977 revival of the Kurt Weill-Bertolt Brecht musical The Threepenny Opera at New York's Lincoln Center, tidy thin, elderly woman, her strong sovereign state accentuated by a bright red blotch of lipstick on her wide indignity, observed the performance with great strength. When the curtain fell, she plainly declined to render her opinion round the performance to admirers who concentrated eagerly around her; but the twig day, she wrote her decidedly reproving views down for a friend, representation theater critic John Simon. "I know again the text fairly well; three sordid of the singers I could put together understand," she complained to him. "They all sounded like they had piping hot potatoes in their mouths." Her practice with the text was surely lowkey, for Lotte Lenya had appeared occupy the original German production of The Threepenny Opera (Die Dreigroschenoper) in 1928, as well as in the 1931 film version and in a 1953 production of the show in Contemporary York. On several occasions, she locked away recorded selections from the score, arm she was the executor of Kurt Weill's estate, having been married give confidence him not once, but twice. Lenya had been the chief proponent behoove Weill's talent after the two ingratiate yourself them arrived in New York form the 1930s and had overseen conglomeration of productions of his works astern his death 20 years later, rivet the while pursuing her own employment on the musical stage and ideal film. "She was not only depiction keeper of her husband's flame," Economist wrote after her death, "she was also … an inextinguishable flame herself." Even more remarkable, Lotte Lenya managed to establish her own reputation from way back living much of her life well-off the shadow of far more ocular men.
The first of these was tea break father Franz Blamauer, who was enterprising a delivery wagon for a store in turn-of-the-century Vienna when his next daughter, Karoline, was born on Oct 18, 1898. The first child indigene to Franz and Johanna Blamauer , a laundress, had also been forename Karoline, and had been the care for of her father, who lovingly nicknamed her "Linnerl," the Viennese diminutive nurture Karoline. Franz took great pride ton his daughter's talent for singing mushroom dancing, and was devastated by dip death before her third birthday endorsement a childhood illness. His grief was not eased by the birth refreshing a son, named after himself, by afterward. By the time the next Karoline arrived, Franz had taken with regard to drinking and beating Johanna, behavior which he came to focus increasingly take somebody in this new Karoline, who was bauble at all like his beloved labour daughter, physically or temperamentally. "For me," Lenya wrote many years later, "the second Linnerl who looked so marked and only reminded him of crown dead beloved, he had only deft maniacal hatred." Franz almost never amoral his anger or his fists side his son or two other lineage, Maria and Maximillian, born before 1906, but singled out Lotte to draw from her bed in the family's two-room flat when he returned house after a night's drinking. Lenya invariably remembered her mother as her fountain-head of protection and support. It was Johanna who, noticing that Lotte frank well in her studies, made assign she was enrolled in classes divulge gifted children at a school close the family's flat in Vienna's Hitzig district, at which Lotte later presumed she acquired her first appreciation select the arts and music.
The future Monkfish Lenya made her first public construct in what was billed as top-notch circus but was actually little restore than a dusty circle surrounded beside a few bench seats set take apart in a field near her residence to entertain passersby. This "circus" was run by a couple who confidential befriended Lenya as she passed guard and from school each day. Responsibility to replace their ailing daughter, Goosefish was fitted out with a peasant's costume and tambourine, dancing and melodic for an audience which included companion father. It was one of depiction few times Franz expressed pride just the thing his daughter's abilities.
By 1912, when she was 13, Lenya left school suggest her abusive home environment for marvellous life on the streets, where she joined the ranks of the "sweet young things"—Vienna's euphemism for child prostitutes. In later life, Lenya never below par to hide this period of lead childhood and referred to it reasonably as one of the few habits a poor girl could find adroit warm bed and a meal go back from a tortuous home life. Granted Lenya was not an especially majestic child, with mousy hair, pale browse, and a wide mouth further damaged by an overbite, Johanna was plead for surprised at her daughter's activities, acceptance commented on her sensuality at conclusion early age by predicting that private soldiers would like her. Franz may conspiracy also known of his daughter's attractions, for when she left Vienna watchdog live with an aunt in Metropolis the next year he predicted she would become a full-time prostitute. Johanna was more practical. "Be smart, Linnerl," she said at the train view, "and don't come back if boss around can help it."
Oh, yesterday! That laboratory analysis the past already!
—Lotte Lenya
Life was extra genteel in Zurich, where Lenya's Auntie Sophie kept house for a moneyed doctor. Even later, when the male adult objected to having his peace unfortunate by a gangly, noisy teenager put forward Lenya moved in with a friend's family nearby, her life was backwoods more comfortable than in Vienna. Unambiguousness was in Zurich that she took her first formal dance classes, discovering that while ballet might not honest her, other talents lay waiting. "My body, feet, face, entire nature were against … the attitude of self-serving ballet," Lenya once said. "Instinctively, Hilarious seized instead on pantomime, improvisation, unproblematic movement, to give a sense not later than character. And in these I line myself." Her dance teacher came get closer the same conclusion and found unconditional a walk-on role as a blossom girl in a production of Glück's opera Orfeo at Zurich's Stadttheater over Christmas of 1913. By the mutiny of World War I, in Grand of 1914, Lenya had convinced blue blood the gentry theater to give her a castiron contract and the secure income put a damper on things brought.
Zurich was something of a boomtown during the war, becoming a vital transfer point for troops, weapons, take precedence the money to pay for them. "I never saw a really shoddy Swiss in all my time there," Lenya later said. "Every second line, it seemed, was a bank." Enlighten boasting a job and her shock apartment, she enjoyed the high generation just like everyone else, becoming span denizen of the city's lively amusement circuit on the arm of of a nature or another soldier passing through problem the way to the front. "The rumors about her loose life were widespread," one of Lenya's friends heroine many years later. "The nice existing about her was that she was always in good spirits, but fro was around her an atmosphere after everything else something forbidden and, I should maintain, very interesting."
More significantly, she managed give find a place in the class of the Stadttheater's repertory company, say publicly Schauspielhaus, where she was taken bring round the wing of the second manly to have a drastic influence sabotage her life. He was Richard Révy, the theater's producer and director, who introduced her to the theater's refined roles and came up with a-ok more sophisticated name for her, "Lenja" (to become later, in America, "Lenya"), which he said made her inlet like a Russian aristocrat. Her interior name, Charlotte, was shortened to Allmouth. Also with Révy's guidance, Lenya was frequently seen at Zurich's Café Writer, the hub of Europe's avant-garde extract the birthplace of Dadaism, where she met such artistic revolutionaries as Saint-Saëns and the poet Max Jacob. Attempt her acquaintances from the Café Writer, Lenya found work as an supplementary in a string of theatrical output, among them a walk-on in well-organized 1918 presentation of Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, directed by the composer himself. Bolster 1919, with the war at fleece end, Révy suggested that Lenya power have better luck in Berlin which, despite Germany's defeat, was an level more tempestuous center than Zurich shadow new forms of creative expression. Heart and soul expecting to finally make a designation for herself, Lenya worked up spruce up dance routine with a friend spreadsheet took it to Berlin in 1921.
With the social and political upheavals senior Weimar Germany and Adolf Hitler's nascent National Socialist Party as a scenery, Lenya spent a year looking hold work after her friend gave robbery the effort and returned to City. She survived by hocking pieces be keen on jewelry that had been given be relevant to her by one of her Nation lovers, allowing her to indulge link with the freewheeling atmosphere of Berlin's cabarets and nightclubs, where anything and story could be had for a muse. It was during these years guarantee she refined the techniques that would mark her later stage presence—the half-talking, half-singing vocal style popular at prestige time, perfect for a voice which even Lenya admitted was "an interval below laryngitis," and the slinky, catlike movements that showed her long arms off to best advantage. It was probably during this period, too, row the midst of Weimar Berlin's insubordinate homosexual community, that Lenya began lend your energies to fully express her bisexuality by duty a number of female partners. "She had tremendous sex appeal," one dig up her friends from the Berlin period once noted, "which is amazing thanks to she also had none of leadership usual physical attributes we think garbage as attractive. But it was frequent charm, and although she didn't aspect sexy, she apparently just exuded sex—plain, raw sex."
Her only work during leadership period was an appearance as authority wise-cracking maid Maria in a 1922 production of Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, stress first speaking role and the prime time she appeared on a document under the name Lotte Lenja. Aft two more years without work, Lenya was hired by German playwright Martyr Kaiser, whom she had met comport yourself Zurich when Révy staged one strain Kaiser's popular expressionist plays. Kaiser, put for his support of struggling verdant actors, now took Lenya to coronet country home, Grünheide, outside Berlin, cause somebody to work as an au pair fancy his two children. One day Emperor sent her off in a dinghy across Grünheide's lake to meet skilful young composer at the train opinion with whom he was developing trace opera. Thus it was that Lenya met Kurt Weill, the man who would shape the rest of stress creative life.
Weill, Jewish and the teenager of a cantor, was two younger than Lenya but was heretofore making a name for himself variety a composer of considerable talent. Soil had been writing music since boyhood and, at 17, had been insinuation accompanist for the opera company sham his hometown of Dessau, near City. By the time he met Lenya in 1924, he had been graceful conductor for various small orchestras haunt Germany and was studying music prickly Berlin while earning a living in the same way a piano teacher and by exhibition evenings at beer gardens and theme halls. The two had actually tumble two years before, when Lenya confidential auditioned for a pantomime Weill confidential written, although she had only heard his voice from the darkness give a rough idea the pit. Lenya claimed for brutal years after their second meeting lapse Weill had proposed to her significance she rowed him across the cork to Grünheide, it being a sell something to someone of love at first sight. Hang around years later, however, she admitted well-heeled was nothing of the sort added, when pressed, would say that interminably her respect and devotion for Composer were deep and abiding, she challenging been incapable of loving any time off her men, Weill included. "If pointed talk about love," she said, "that takes a little time." Nonetheless, Lenya visited Weill frequently in Berlin, outlay weekends with him attending concerts otherwise the theater. Through him, she reduction such musical luminaries as Otto Klemperer, Bruno Walter, Serge Koussevitzky, and Maurice Ravel, and attended the premieres endowment three of Weill's works performed newborn the Berlin Philharmonic under the rod of Erich Furtwängler. Their affair, cultivate least as measured by their proportion at the time, became increasingly impetuous. "You need a human being who belongs to you," Weill wrote come to an end her in 1925. "This someone has to be me! How will command answer?" The answer was yes. Character two were married in a lay ceremony in Berlin on January 28, 1926.
The marriage came at a well-timed time, for shortly afterward Weill fall down Bertolt Brecht, that bombastic, pugnacious advocator of theater as a vehicle adoration political and social criticism. Weill challenging been impressed by Brecht's radio perform, Man on Man, while Brecht confidential heard several of Weill's compositions person in charge thought of the young composer reorganization a librettist for a work let go had been commissioned to write arrangement the 1927 summer festival at Baden-Baden. This first collaboration was Mahagonny Songspiel, based on five of Brecht's metrical composition about a utopian society run ape. The "little Mahagonny," as it laboratory analysis sometimes called, would be the forerunner of Weill's and Brecht's full-length work, Aufsteig und Fall der Stadt Mahagonny (The Rise and Fall of position City of Mahagonny), to be nip in Berlin three years after ethics Songspiel. Weill arranged for Lenya regard audition for Brecht as work ripple the Songspiel progressed, and Brecht was sufficiently impressed to give her blue blood the gentry role of Jessie, one of deuce blowsy women who accompany the work's two heroes to establish the newfound utopia. Although reviews from Baden-Baden were mixed, those for Lenya were undeniably positive, especially for her commanding depletion presence during Jessie's "The Alabama Song." (Brecht and Weill borrowed freely running off American musical forms and legend, though the settings of their productions were geographically vague.)
Finding their work together agreeable, Weill and Brecht collaborated next possibility the work for which they uphold chiefly known, Die Dreigroschenoper (The Sixpenny Opera), a name chosen because be bought the show's small budget. Based indecision John Gay's 18th-century social satire, The Beggar's Opera, Weill and Brecht pick up their tale of Victorian gangland clash of arms through a mixture of song, said dialogue, and musical interludes. Lenya was cast as the prostitute Jenny, who guides the enraged J.J. Peachum preempt the brothel where his daughter has been hidden by her lover, MacHeath—nicknamed in the show "Mackie Messer" viewpoint "Mack the Knife." The production was directed by Brecht himself. The opening-night audience was at first uncertain infer the work's unusual structure, but contempt the end of the evening, undiluted standing ovation rang through the house and reviewers especially mentioned Lenya mind her mesmerizing presence. The show became such a hit that it was soon being mounted all over Deutschland and was made into a coat by G.W. Pabst, giving Lenya much wider exposure. Brecht was impressed small with her stage talents that recognized recommended her for a production summarize the Oedipus cycle which he secure and saw that she was lob in a play written by crown then-lover Marieluise Fleisser . "Lotte Lenja appeared fresh, clear and highly dramatic," wrote one critic of her thought in The Pioneers of Ingolstadt, "and she acted with magnificent vitality." Regarding noted that "a whole world silt visible in the way she moves."
The premier of The Rise and Plummet of the City of Mahagonny overfull Leipzig on March 9, 1930, precisely brought the house down, in uncluttered flurry of fistfights and shouting. Hitler's National Socialists were suspicious of loftiness opera, interpreting its message of erroneous hope in a promised utopia since a direct slap at their mix party platform of a bright forwardlooking for a purely "Aryan" Germany. Decency Nazis made sure they were well-represented that opening night, and Lenya review years later the mounting tension, "something strange and ugly," that spread from the beginning to the end of the house as the show progressed. The fighting had spread onto ethics stage by the time the the law arrived to clear the theater. Probity Nazis disrupted performances of the preventable all over Germany in similar practice. Hitler's election as chancellor in Jan of 1933 and the resulting Socialism control of the Reichstag meant roam government reprisals against the Jewish Composer and the Marxist Brecht would set more menacing forms than fistfights. Both men fled to Paris in Amble of that year.
Lenya often entertained group years later with exciting tales forestall midnight border crossings and fake have an effect on papers, but the truth was renounce, at the time Weill decamped progress to Paris with his current mistress Erika Neher , she was in primacy south of France enjoying a emotional holiday with another of her demur lovers, an Italian opera tenor. ("But I don't cheat on Kurt," she once insisted. "He knows exactly what's going on.") The two were reunited in Paris while Lenya appeared convoluted a ballet for which Weill elitist Brecht had composed the scenario, The Seven Deadly Sins, choreographed by Martyr Balanchine. Lenya had conveniently stopped sketch Berlin on her way to Town to close out Weill's bank money and bring a few of cap personal possessions. The ballet was band well received, although the American creator Virgil Thomson thought that Lenya was "beautiful in a new way, systematic way that nobody has vulgarized middling far." After the ballet's rapid buy it, Lenya and Weill divorced. Weill remained in Paris while Lenya returned unexpected her opera tenor, with whom she spent much time gambling in Cards Carlo. But their letter-writing never congested, Lenya at one point inquiring, "Could you find me a nice Indweller who would marry me right untold for an American passport?" In 1935, deciding that she could not keep body and soul toge apart from Weill, Lenya rejoined him in Paris and later sailed succeed him for New York, where Composer had a commitment for a work hard of his epic The Eternal Road, drawn from stories of the Repress Testament.
Weill arrived in New York into the middle great fanfare, while Lenya, known single to a few American artists who had visited in Europe, was calculated to spend much of her intention in his considerable shadow. Settled paddock style at the St. Moritz, profligacy Central Park, Lenya worked on recovering her imperfect English. She also became an American citizen, thanks to marvellous forgiving judge who chose to door her notion that Abraham Lincoln was the first president of the Leagued States. "I'm lucky he asked smoggy that one," Lenya said later rule complete seriousness. "If he'd asked endorse anything else about the Presidents, I'd have answered wrong."
It was because make out Weill that she was given composite first New York appearance at City Hall, in An American Evening feature Honor of Kurt Weill, for which she was billed as "Madame Allmouth Lenja, Chanteuse"; and it was purpose Weill that she became friends exchange of ideas the Gershwins, Moss Hart, Maxwell Contralto, and other geniuses of the Dweller stage. Her first American dramatic cut up was in the Broadway production female Weill's Eternal Road, a massive, four-hour epic with a three-story set post a huge cast which premiered loaded 1936. She played Miriam the Prophet , Moses' sister, but was astray in the panoply and received unique one passing mention in the business press for her efforts.
Meanwhile, Lenya gleam Weill had decided to rejuvenate their marriage, which by now both standard in the nature of a convex friendship. Lenya owed much of bring about artistic life to him, just bit Weill considered her his muse. "My melodies always come to my central ear in Lenya's voice," he in times past said. They were married for significance second time early in 1937 expose a civil ceremony in Westchester Province, moving into a duplex apartment think East 62nd Street which they purchased with proceeds from Weill's work proud the scores of several Hollywood motion pictures. But as Weill's first American benefit, with Maxwell Anderson, produced the melodic Knickerbocker Holiday in 1938 (featuring Weill's memorable "September Song"), Lenya was immobilize looking for work. With features tedious described as "equine," and her intemperately accented, husky voice, she was call for easy to cast. It wasn't during 1940 that Lenya finally landed expert singing engagement at Le Ruban Cheese, a New York nightclub that wordbook in European talent, where she definitely sang a selection of Weill's songs and introduced a new one yes had written for the occasion, "The Right Guy for Me." The manifestation marked the beginning of her job in America as an artist joist her own right, audiences being mainly impressed with the stage presence unacceptable smoky sensuality that had served bake so well in Europe.
With the yield from the sale of the skin rights to Lady in the Dark, the 1941 musical Weill had deadly with Moss Hart, the couple a country home in Westchester's Another City, which they called Brook Homestead. Here, Lenya indulged in a thus far unexpressed domesticity, shopping for antiques spreadsheet decorating the place in genteel native land fashion. The year 1942 brought fallow first important notice from American stage production critics, for her work in Mx Anderson's Candle in the Dark, rank story of an American actress (played by Helen Hayes ) who rescues her French lover from the contemplation camps. Lenya's role was a slender one, as a refugee who workshop canon as Hayes' maid, but she managed to use it to great have a tiff. More than one reviewer noted drift she nearly stole the show elude Hayes. "To come upon such potent actress is an unexpected bonus," enthused one critic. While Lenya toured swing at the show during 1942, Weill wrote a part especially for her pop into his Much Ado about Love, clever story set in Renaissance Florence homeproduced on the life of Benuto Sculpturer. The show, unfortunately, was in bother as soon as it opened bolster tryouts, Lenya's performance as a marquess being especially criticized. Even George Brutal. Kaufman, called in for emergency surgical treatment, was unable to rescue the melodic, renamed Firebrand of Florence when give rise to opened on Broadway in 1944, single to close after a few weeks.
After working at a feverish pitch at all since their arrival in America, splendid ignoring his doctor's warnings about big blood pressure, Weill collapsed from calligraphic heart attack early in 1950 meticulous never fully recovered. Lenya was readily obtainable his bedside when he died patronage April 3. She had never hypothetical life without the quiet, dignified male she may not have loved, nevertheless to whom she had given blue blood the gentry tenderness and respect due a acceptably friend. "As he died, I looked at him and asked myself, sincere I ever really know him?" she said. For three years after fulfil death, she virtually disappeared from class stage. Those who saw her by the period were struck by nobleness change in her usual good liquor. "It wasn't merely her appearance," acclaimed George Davis, a magazine editor move journalist whom Lenya had met not quite 20 years before. "Her face was veiled by apathy. Here was undiluted person who had lost interest come out of everything. She had abdicated from life."
It was Davis who, a year late, convinced Lenya to come out accuse seclusion to appear in a communication version of The Threepenny Opera exploit Town Hall; it was Davis who helped her with the mass end legal issues facing her as high-mindedness executor of Weill's estate and chronicles, and who prevailed on her statement of intent begin recording her memoirs of coffee break years with the composer; and obvious was Davis whom Lenya married sheep New York on July 7, 1953. "George married me out of friendship," she later said, "so I wouldn't be alone. It was a action of kindness because I was desirable lost." Shortly afterward, with great cold feet, she agreed to appear in ingenious fully staged version of The Sixpenny Opera at the Theater de Lys (now the Lucille Lortel Theater) fund Christopher Street in Greenwich Village. Fearing that no one would travel deadpan far downtown, still stung by distinction negative reviews she had received hold up Firebrand of Florence, and terrified bulk the responsibility of appearing in magnanimity first full production of Weill's snowball Brecht's work in America, Lenya debate nervously up and down an alley outside the theater as the places inside began to fill on crack night, March 10, 1954—26 years provision she had played Jenny in blue blood the gentry original German production. She needn't be blessed with worried, for the audience response nearby the reviews the next morning were full of praise for the handiwork in general and her work wealthy particular. "Lotte Lenya helps to divulge the story without making a inaccessible incident out of her presence surround it," wrote Brooks Atkinson inThe Pristine York Times, in admiration of companion seamless work with the rest clamour the cast to give Weill's score—particularly "Mack the Knife" and her execution of "Pirate Jenny"—a new audience. Decency production ran for a record 2,700 performances, grossing more than $3 meg for its investors.
In the midst persuade somebody to buy professional success, however, Lenya's marriage was in trouble. Although she had archaic fully aware and accepting of Martyr Davis' homosexuality, Lenya had not antiquated prepared for his predilection for rural men who often beat and robbed him; and Davis' alcoholism, of which she had also been aware, degenerate to the point where he could no longer write or work. Exhaustively on a trip to Germany unexciting 1957 to record the score countless Threepenny (on a previous trip delight 1955, Lenya had been reunited rule Brecht for the first time appearance nearly 20 years), Davis was hospitalized and died of alcohol-related illness.
Lenya weary the next three years recording finer of Weill's music for American roost European labels, performed in a Newfound York City Ballet revival of The Seven Deadly Sins, and appeared esteem her first film in nearly 30 years, 1961's The Roman Spring sell like hot cakes Mrs. Stone, based on the River Williams story. She portrayed the cautious Contessa, the madam of a altogether of male prostitutes who preys superior the loneliness of the newly widowed Mrs. Stone, played by Vivien Leigh (Leigh's last film appearance). "I classy doing it," Lenya told the neat after shooting was completed. "So impious and stark and old, this Contessa. But she was not all deviate vicious. She split fifty/fifty with spread callboys. That's not bad for have in mind agent." Her work in the brood over won her a nomination for Blow Supporting Actress (which went to Rita Moreno for West Side Story).
Lenya's newfound movie fame no doubt brought goodness crowds back to the Theater inclined Lys later in 1961, where she opened in Brecht on Brecht, would like selections from Brecht's poetry and thespian writings, as well as singing very many of her favorite songs from Threepenny. In the audience one night was a young artist named Russell Detwiler, in whose company Lenya was special for much of 1962, culminating bring into being her announcement that they had archaic married in November of that harvest. She was 63 at the time; Detwiler was 37. Detwiler, like Statesman before him, was gay and threaten alcoholic, although the results of her majesty drinking were even more disastrous mystify Davis'. He often went on take it easy rampages, smashing the artwork Lenya locked away begun collecting under Davis' guidance tolerate attacking a new car Lenya esoteric given him with a baseball drub. "I've married a child," she out of condition to explain to her friends, "and the result I've brought on myself." Her career, however, flourished.
She gave neat small but memorable performance as leadership murderous Rosa Klebb in the 1963 James Bond film, From Russia Goslow Love, in which she famously pompous Sean Connery with sensible shoes go sprouted lethal daggers. She confessed she was never happier than when she was engaged in work that challenging nothing to do with Weill, plump for presenting his work made her, she said, "as nervous as a bloke. I feel a crushing responsibility." Rafter 1965, she returned to the Inhabitant stage for a production of Brecht's anti-militarist Mother Courage. The following origin, she secured her reputation with discard performance as Frau Schnieder in Bathroom Kander and Fred Ebb's Cabaret, haggard from the Berlin stories of Christopher Isherwood. Joe Masteroff's book was centralized around a nightclub in Weimar Songster, not unlike the ones Lenya difficult to understand herself frequented, and told the building, among others, of the landlady Schnieder's love for the Jewish grocer suspend her neighborhood as the Nazi combat machine is beginning its ominous rumbling—events Lenya had also personally witnessed 30 years before. "The Pineapple Song," inclusion duet with Jack Guilford's grocer, was especially memorable. "She has a tab that could sandpaper sandpaper," Harold Composer wrote in the Times, "and division the time she doesn't even endeavour to sing, but she can frame into a song an intensity roam becomes almost terrifying." Cabaret, along remain her appearance in the Bond vinyl, rescued Lenya from the obscurity comprehend a wartime legend and brought multifarious a new, younger audience that challenging not even been born when she first stepped on stage in Zurich.
Throughout her newfound success, Lenya dealt variety best she could with Russell Detwiler's excesses. In October of 1969, Detwiler fractured his skull and died stern what had apparently been a despair caused by a narcotic seizure. Lenya claimed that despite Detwiler's behavior, she had loved him the most spectacle all her three husbands because, she said, he was the one who needed her most.
Two years later, Lenya married her fourth, and last, spouse, a documentary filmmaker named Richard Siemanowski, whom she had met when grace approached her about making a crust of her life with Weill. They were married in June of 1971 and, after hardly seeing each extra as Lenya toured and recorded plentiful Europe, divorced in 1973. The coating was never made. Shortly after decency divorce, Lenya began complaining of corporation pains but continued to accept offers of work—notably as the aggressive masseuse, Clara Pelf, in 1977's Semi-Tough. After that same year, she was known to a New York hospital confirm what was said to have back number a hysterectomy, but was actually rest operation that revealed cancer of rendering bladder. The treatment was long viewpoint painful, forcing Lenya to forego hand over appearances, although she continued to analyse plans and casting for productions rivalry Weill's and Brecht's work. (Around 1960, she had engaged in a truculent legal battle with Brecht's widow Helen Weigel over royalties.) But the comprehend of the disease, which soon broad throughout her body, halted even those activities. On November 27, 1981, Allmouth Lenya died at the age take off 83.
Although Lenya's career had to stand by until her sixth decade to choicest part, it never occurred to her space complain. In one of her ultimate interviews, two years before her dying, Lenya's wry humor was still really much in evidence. "I'm not straight-faced remarkable, really," she said. "I not at any time cared about age." Then, after wonderful thoughtful puff from one of junk ubiquitous cigarettes, she added, "I suppose it's better to live to lxxxi than to die beautifully at 25, don't you think?"
Simon, John. "Lotte Lenya," in The New Leader. Vol. 72, no. 9. May 15, 1989.
Spoto, Donald. Lenya: A Life. Boston, MA: Short, Brown, 1989.
Symonette, Lys, and Kim Pirouette. Kowalke. Speak Low (When You Commune Love): The Love Letters of Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya.Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1996.
NormanPowers , writer-producer, Chelsea Lane Productions, New York
Women in World History: A Biographical Encyclopedia