Lenya Family History & Genealogy

Lotte Lenya Biography Born October 18, 1898 in Vienna-Penzing, Austria-Hungary [now Austria] Died November 27, 1981 in New York City, New York, USA (cancer) Birth Name Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer Lotte Lenya was a Tony Award-winning and Academy award-nominated actress and singer who is best remembered for her supporting role as Rosa Klebb in the classic Bond film From Russia with Love (1963). She was born Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blaumauer on October 18, 1898, in Vienna, Austria (at that time Austro-Hungarian Empire), into a working class family. Young Lenya was fond of dancing. In 1914 she moved to Zurich, Switzerland. There she began using her stage name, Lotte Lenya. In Swizerland she studied classical dance, singing and acting and made her stage debut at the Schauspielhaus. In 1921 she moved to Berlin and blended in the city's cosmopolitan cultural milieu. In 1924 she met composer Kurt Weill, and they married in 1926. Lotte Lenya was the inspiration behind Weill's most popular hit 'Mack the Knife'. She performed in several productions of 'The Threepenny Opera', which became an important step in her acting career. In 1933, with the rise of Nazism in Germany, Lotte Lenya escaped from the country. At the same time, being stressed by the circumstances of life, she divorced from Kurt Weil, to be reunited with him two years later. In 1935 both emigrated to the United States and remarried in 1937. After Kurt Weill's death, she dedicated her efforts to keeping Weill's music played in numerous productions worldwide. In 1957 she won a Tony award for her role as Jenny, performed in English, in a Broadway production of 'The Threepenny Opera'. Lotte Lenya shot to international fame with her portrayal of Contessa Magda Terbilli-Gozales, Vivien Leigh's friend in The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961). The role brought Lenya an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress. She gained additional fame after she appeared as Rosa Klebb, former head of operations for SMERSH/KGB, and now a sadistic Spectre agent with poisonous knife in her shoe, in From Russia with Love (1963). She died of cancer on November 27, 1981, in New York. She is entombed with Kurt Weill in a mausoleum, in Mount Repose Cemetery, in Haverstraw, New York, USA. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Steve Shelokhonov She was in he film, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone, for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Then the role of Rosa Kleb in the film From Russia with Love, and the title role in Mutter Courage in Recklinghausen, She was Fräulein Schneider in Cabaret, the film The Appointment, and the Fortune Teller in a television production of Tennessee Williams' Camino Real. In 1969, she was honored by the West German government with the Order of Merit, First Class. In 1971 she appeared in a concert performance of Der Silbersee at the Holland Festival and played Mother Courage at the University of California/Irvine. Her last film appearance, as a masseuse in Semi-Tough with Burt Reynolds, is indicative of the creative and personal energy that characterized her life. She succumbed to cancer on 27 November 1981.