Sascha Gura
German postcard. Ross Verlag, Berlin, 294/6. Photo Alex Binder. Helios Film.
Sascha Gura ( 1896-1946) was a German film and stage actress and singer, who was very active in German silent cinema around 1920.
Born in Munich as Eugenie Gura, the daughter of the singer and actor Hermann Gura and granddaughter of singer and actor Eugen Gura, Sascha Gura had her professional training at the Königliche Hochschule für Musik. Her career started as operetta singer during the First World War and from 1921 on she became successful at the Komischer Oper in Berlin. Gura became a film actress in 1919, debuting in Der Totentanz (Otto Rippert 1919), a Helios Film production, scripted by Fritz Lang. Gura played the lead of a dancer who kills men after seducing them by her dance. She is forced to do so by a disfigured doctor (Werner Krauss) who thus takes revenge on the world, until she meets a man she falls in love with.
For six years she performed in dark dramas and adventure stories, such In 1920 she went to Vienna to perform in two films by Heinz Hanus at Astoria-Film, Unter der Knute des Schicksals (Hanus 1920), and the adaptation Wie Satan starb (Hanus 1920). Next followed films by prolific directors such as Arsen von Cserepy, Richard Oswald, Johannes Guter, Fred Sauer, Harry Piel, and Willy Zeyn senior. Memorable was Gura’s part in F.W. Murnau’s - lost - horror film Die Bücklige und die Tanzerin/The Hunchback and the Dancer (Helios 1920), in which she played the female lead Gina, opposite John Gottowt. Carl Mayer’s script looks a bit like Der Totentanz: again, a disfigured man takes vengeance on the world. It also reminds Batman’s Poison Ivy though. A hunchback, who has become millionaire by finding diamonds in Java, also learns there about mortal venoms. When Berlin dancer Gina first falls for him and then goes back to the baron she already loved before, he makes her skin mortal to anyone who kisses her.
Gura’s last silent film part was the female lead in Die Handschrift des Inka (1925) by Gernot Bock-Stieber, with whom she had done various films before as well. In 1925 Gura quit acting in silent cinema, but returned for the Harry Piel film Bezwinger der 1000 Gefahren (1927). After two small parts in sound films, Trenck (Ernst Neubach/Heinz Paul 1932) and Grüss mir die Lore noch einmal (Carl Heinz Wolff 1934), the Jewish actress got into trouble with the Nazi regime and her career ended. Nothing is known about her further career. She did survive the war and the Holocaust, but in 1946 Sacha Gura died in Berlin because of cancer.
Sources: German Wikipedia, IMDB, www.filmportal.de
Sascha Gura
German postcard. Ross Verlag, Berlin, 294/6. Photo Alex Binder. Helios Film.
Sascha Gura ( 1896-1946) was a German film and stage actress and singer, who was very active in German silent cinema around 1920.
Born in Munich as Eugenie Gura, the daughter of the singer and actor Hermann Gura and granddaughter of singer and actor Eugen Gura, Sascha Gura had her professional training at the Königliche Hochschule für Musik. Her career started as operetta singer during the First World War and from 1921 on she became successful at the Komischer Oper in Berlin. Gura became a film actress in 1919, debuting in Der Totentanz (Otto Rippert 1919), a Helios Film production, scripted by Fritz Lang. Gura played the lead of a dancer who kills men after seducing them by her dance. She is forced to do so by a disfigured doctor (Werner Krauss) who thus takes revenge on the world, until she meets a man she falls in love with.
For six years she performed in dark dramas and adventure stories, such In 1920 she went to Vienna to perform in two films by Heinz Hanus at Astoria-Film, Unter der Knute des Schicksals (Hanus 1920), and the adaptation Wie Satan starb (Hanus 1920). Next followed films by prolific directors such as Arsen von Cserepy, Richard Oswald, Johannes Guter, Fred Sauer, Harry Piel, and Willy Zeyn senior. Memorable was Gura’s part in F.W. Murnau’s - lost - horror film Die Bücklige und die Tanzerin/The Hunchback and the Dancer (Helios 1920), in which she played the female lead Gina, opposite John Gottowt. Carl Mayer’s script looks a bit like Der Totentanz: again, a disfigured man takes vengeance on the world. It also reminds Batman’s Poison Ivy though. A hunchback, who has become millionaire by finding diamonds in Java, also learns there about mortal venoms. When Berlin dancer Gina first falls for him and then goes back to the baron she already loved before, he makes her skin mortal to anyone who kisses her.
Gura’s last silent film part was the female lead in Die Handschrift des Inka (1925) by Gernot Bock-Stieber, with whom she had done various films before as well. In 1925 Gura quit acting in silent cinema, but returned for the Harry Piel film Bezwinger der 1000 Gefahren (1927). After two small parts in sound films, Trenck (Ernst Neubach/Heinz Paul 1932) and Grüss mir die Lore noch einmal (Carl Heinz Wolff 1934), the Jewish actress got into trouble with the Nazi regime and her career ended. Nothing is known about her further career. She did survive the war and the Holocaust, but in 1946 Sacha Gura died in Berlin because of cancer.
Sources: German Wikipedia, IMDB, www.filmportal.de