The Sun And Her Stars: Salka Viertel and Hitler's Exiles in the Golden Age of Hollywood

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Rifkind makes a passionate case for rescuing her subject from anonymity…[She] has done an enormous service in spotlighting the life of Salka Viertel: not only by telling a story that deserves to be better known, but also by implicitly making the case for more such books. It was just one woman’s response to the events of her day—events that, clear as they may seem in hindsight, were as bewildering in their time as those in our time are to us.

When I first arrived at the DLAM and introduced myself to the archivists, one of them said to me, “We’re so glad you are here for Salka.Cari Beauchamp’s Without Lying Down: Frances Marion and the Power of Women in Hollywood ; Erin Hill’s Never Done: A History of Women’s Work in Media Production ; Evelyn Juers’s House of Exile: The Lives and Times of Heinrich Mann and Nelly Kroeger-Mann ; and Emily D. Rifkind sadly notes there were “Not nearly enough miracles” for those who desperately attempted to escape Nazism in the years before America’s entry into World War II. Hav­ing stud­ied the rise of fas­cism in Ger­many, Amer­i­can poli­cies on immi­gra­tion, and House Un-Amer­i­can Activ­i­ties Committee’s sur­veil­lance and intim­i­da­tion tech­niques, Rifkind learned of real­i­ties that Vier­tel could only sus­pect. A close con­fi­dante and fre­quent col­lab­o­ra­tor of Gre­ta Gar­bo, Sal­ka had fled Nazi Ger­many and quick­ly emerged as the keep­er of artis­tic and intel­lec­tu­al soci­ety in WWII-era Los Ange­les. Whether famous or not, though, all of them recognized that they could no longer live in a Europe under Nazi rule.

Charlie Chaplin pays her a brief compliment in his autobiography, and producer Gottfried Reinhardt states correctly in his that “the history of Hollywood, which is not yet written, is incomplete without an appreciation of Salka Viertel’s distinct talent for human relationships.The Viertels initially lived on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles, before renting a house at 165 Mabery Road in Santa Monica, California. Meanwhile, at her house in Santa Monica she opened her door on Sunday afternoons to scores of European émigrés who had fled from Hitler—such as Thomas Mann, Bertolt Brecht, and Arnold Schoenberg—along with every kind of Hollywood star, from Charlie Chaplin to Shelley Winters. The Viertels, members of the intelligentsia in Europe, moved to the United States in 1928 for a planned four-year stay. Once in California, these dispossessed giants of German culture gravitated to the parties hosted by the charismatic and flirtatious Salka Viertel. In the 1930s and 1940s, while fighting against National Socialism, she came to the aid of those trapped in Europe, [7] in part by helping to found the European Film Fund, [2] which brokered contracts with major Hollywood studios.

Her care­ful intro­duc­tions of new­com­ers to the more estab­lished, her old-world cakes and cof­fee — she fed phys­i­cal and spir­i­tu­al hungers. In her old age, when her fortune was gone, only a few family members and friends remained to feed and comfort her, and to remember her after her death. If you’ve already done that, your item hasn’t arrived, or it’s not as described, you can report that to Etsy by opening a case. She also appeared on screen in the German version of Garbo’s debut in her first full sound film of Eugene O’Neill’s Anna Christie, directed by Jacques Feyder which Garbo herself preferred to her the English version, also released in 1930, directed by Clarence Brown, Viertel playing the old prostitute role of Marthy (who Marie Dressler played in English version). Vertiel was denied a passport when Berthold was dying, the US government’s revenge on her for helping exiles who were under “suspicion” even though there was nothing in the Viertel’s extensive FBI files that implicated them in any criminal matter.In the documentation about the antifascist intellectuals who fled from Hitler’s Germany, I found a similar absence.

It would be individual efforts such as Salka Viertel’s, synchronized with organizations like Hollywood’s European Film Fund and Varian Fry’s Emergency Rescue Committee, that saved the lives of hundreds of refugees during the earlier stages of National Socialism’s twelve-year domination, and which then mobilized to help those refugees adapt to life in America. She was born in Central Europe and was a thriving actress in Germany before making her way to Southern California a few years before Hitler's rise to power. As witnesses to this story, we might ask again: what does it say about our values that we have chosen to dismiss so large and estimable a life as Salka Viertel’s?She soldiered on with dignity and artistic drive, writing her memoir and having it published, though it was largely ignored until after her death. Such vituperation may seem extreme toward a woman who titled her memoir The Kindness of Strangers and who is remembered, if at all, for inviting people to parties on Sunday afternoons.