INTERVIEW WITH LIDA BAAROVA AS AN OLD WOMAN FROM A FILM BY FILIP RENC

Pardubické letní kino is the YouTube poster.  The original information in Slovak so to paraphrase in English:

The film by Czech director Filip Renc was part of an open-air film screening at a festival.  Attending was actress Zdenka Prochazkova.  Lida along with actress Tatiana Pauhova were the two big stars of First Republic film studio.  Lida Baarova's romance with Adolph Hitler's right hand man Joseph Goebbels has a revival of interest.  The director Filip Renc did not attend but phoned from Italy to the cinema at the festival. 

HELL OF A TIME OR LIVING HELL? LIDA BAAROVA DENIED THE AFFAIR MANY OTHERS REMEMBER

THE GUARDIAN - OBITS 2000 : LIDA BAAROVA

Except: Like many of the Nazi elite, she and her German actor husband, Gustav Frohlich - with whom she had co-starred in her first German film Barcarole (1935) which had made her a household name - lived in a Berlin villa on the picturesque Wannsee, just three doors down from the Goebbels.  He ardently pursued her, entertaining her in his villa and labishing her with expensive gifts. When Frohlich, who had starred in Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis found out, legend has it hat he challenged him to a duel.  Another story was that Frohlich's friends found Goebbels at Baarova's flat and beat him up.

Frohlich was briefly detained in a concentration camp, but it was Goebbels wife, Magda, who went to Hitler about her husband's behavior.  Hitler was furious, refusing Goebbels permission to divorce Magda and marry Baarova.  Instead, he commanded Goebbels never to see his mistress again.  Baarova fled to her native Prague, abandoning a glittering career.

Historians tell it slightly differently through the head of the Berlin police, Hitler ordered her extradition and banned her films.....

DOOMED BEAUTY DOCUMENTARY FILM ON LIDA BAAROVA : WAS IT ALL FACT?

VARIETY in 2016 : REVIEW OF LIDA BAAROVA "DOOMED BEAUTY : DOCUMENTARY

Excerpt: It's merely one of many breathtaking moments when Baarova relates Kristallnacht, the notorious pogram against Jewish homes and businesses, to the fact that mere days before, Hitler had insisted Goebbels break up with her to avoid a scandal in the upper Nazi ranks.  As the images of broken windows and violent arrests play out on screen, Baarova waxes nostalgic in voiceover  Goebbels, she sighs, behaved "like a young man retchedly in love," inferring that hsi broken-heartedness contributed to the viciousness of the night.




RADIO CZECH : CZECH FILM WORLD ON DOOMED BEAUTY

Excerpt:  But the documentary film also recounts how Baarovas Czech nationality obviously grated on the Fuhrer.  He asked her why she didn't swap her Czech car for a German one or switch her Czech name to a German one.  Documentary filmmaker Trestikova has been reported as saying she believes Baarova had a relationship with Hitler as well but there is no proof for it....  In 1937 Baarova had the chance to escape from the increasingly obsessive and demanding relationship with Goebbels. Talent spotters from Hollywood;s Metro-Goldwyn 0- Mayer asked the 23 year old to take some screen tests in London. The result was anoffer of a seven year contract to make four films a year in the United State for wages that European stars could not even dream of.   The Czech actress asked for time to think about the offer, but finally declined it.  She said she finally understood that she was in love with Goebbels as well.

LIDA BAAROVA on THE HELL OF JOSEPH GOBBELS

TELEGRAPH : GOEBBEL'S SCREEN GODDESS DIES by Louise Potterton, 

Excerpt: "I've torn up all my pictures of us.  Thanks to him I fell into the depths of hell," she said.  Friends said the two had enjoyed a passionate relationship, although the former actress prevaricated until the last: "Yes, Goebbels fell in love with me but I didn't love him.    .... "I was afraid of him and what he would do because I kept turning down his offers, although he always behaved charmingly and was always very nice to me.  I remember he once gave me aq gold brace.et for Christmas.  Hitler made a huge fuss about it.  He called Goebbels in and told him to drop me and return to his wife and children.  I couldn't take the pressure and I returned to Prague.  Goebbels never tried to contact me again."

Note:  What is not known by me is how much Lida revised her Goebbel's story as the years went by. 

LIDA BAAROVA

Old video replaced with this one May 2021

THE NAZI IDEAL OF WOMANHOOD - BLOND - BLUE EYED - STRONG - GERMANIC

How did a Slav such as Ludmilla Babkova AKA Lida Baarova become one of the most popular visions of Nazi womanhood for a brief time in her life?  That is my question.

From the site AllThatsInteresting.com this poster is sourced from the New Think Tank and was used to encourage young woman to join the League of German Girls in the Hitler Youth.

The collection features "21 Vile Nazi Propaganda posters" and many reveal the hatred and dehmanization of Jewish people.  "These Nazi propaganda posters are repugnant in their message as they are impressive in their artistic craftsmanship."

LIDA BAAROVA - MISTRESS OF NAZI JOSEPH GOEBBELS WHO PAID THE PRICE FOR ASSOCIATING WITH NAZIS

LUDMILLA BABKOVA / LIDA BAAROVA 
(1914- 2000)


Image from World War II Gravestones

MISTRESS OF THE MONTH

When it comes to the Nazi's and the Holocaust it's easy with hindsight to condemn the women who became Mistresses to men who were Nazi's and to imagine they were (also) evil incarnate and deserving of horrible punishing fates.  It's easy to think that they were ruined since they were on the loosing side of World War II.

Lida Baarova, as Ludmilla Babkova was known as an actress, was Czech - Slavic. Lida had a difficult life overall especially because her career was harmed by her involvement with one of the Nazi's finest, but she was a successful actress - her talent and beauty were never doubted but her politics was - and she lived a very long time into the year 2000.  Her amazing filmography of over 60 films from 1931-1970 proves that she survived past her disastrous personal affairs and a honorable or dishonorable  (depending on whose side you were on back in the day) experience of being Nazi Joseph Goebbels's mistress.  In her later years she denied they had ever had sex but the affair was one to remember for many others.

You've heard of Joseph Goebbels and his wife Magda and their many children; he and his wife poisoned their children and then themselves in the very same bunker where Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun, his Mistress and last minute wife, would also kill themselves.

Joseph Goebbels' life certainly went into a surprising direction. Born into a Catholic family, he considered being a priest at one time but backed away from the church as his Naziism prevailed. He was a very intelligent man and earned a Masters degree and then a Ph.D.  Physically he wasn't much. He was also known for the deformity of a right foot that turned in and made him walk with a limp.  This was the kind of physical deformity that made so many others undesirable for the idealized perfection of the Nazi's who were excessively interested in genetics. He was a Reich Minister of Propaganda of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945 and held other positions in Germany working for the Nazi party and Adolf Hitler, considered by some to be his right hand man. He was a public speaker. He was a womanizer. He became anti-semitism personified.

What could he have been thinking when he invited a famous Czech actress to move to Germany and make films with a neo-German sensibility?


Actress  Tatiana Pahofova, a Slovak, acted as Lida in the fictive film.

I first heard about Lida over the New Year holiday.  I reveled in being entirely alone for a few days and I binged on Netflix.  I came across a film called The Devil's Mistress - Lida Baarova - which was quite dramatic and interesting but also condemning.  I wish the film had a different title ; it sounded to be a horror flick, a genre I don't watch. The film came out in 2016 and the set up is as as a interview or confession.  It became the prime reference point for this month's posts.  Then I started reading around the Internet and watching YouTube videos about Lida, who is portrayed in the film as without apology.  This month's posts will link to a number of articles and videos.

FIrst of all, as I watched this film, which is not a biography,  I felt an inner tension. The question I had was left unanswered by the film was "Did Lida make films in Germany to survive?" She was a Slavic person  - as Czech's are - and at the time lived in a country that was part of the Austrian empire.  As any Holocaust historian will tell you, the Jews were just the first ethnic group the Nazi's wanted to destroy. They hated Slavic people too.  Many Slavs were killed during the occupation of their countries. The Nazi's hated Catholics ; priests and nuns were rounded up. A Nazi had to prove there was no Jewish blood in him, though these days some genealogists say Hitler himself was probably part Jewish. Eva Braun, Hitler's mistress  (Mistress of the Month June 2010) had been mocked as "Ewa" - the Polish way of spelling and pronouncing Eva, when there were suspicions that she was a bit Slavic. The film doesn't suggest that Lida might have decided to do as Hitler wanted or Goebbels wanted so she herself could survive. In this film Lida Baarova is portrayed as having no guilt.

Born in 1914, Lida was only 20 and not aware of what was happening in Germany when she had her first emotional love affair with a man.  She had a serious relationship with a German, and fellow actor Gustav Frohlich, her costar in the Film Barcole in 1935. They lived a couple doors down from Goebbels according to one account. Astonishing for the time and place, they were not legally married.  As he was married, she was first a mistress to him.

In the film The Devil's Mistress she is portrayed as having a family who were supportive of her career.  She first wanted to be a ballerina.  Her mother was an opera singer.

There are very many accounts of Lida's life and it gets confusing to sort out, especially as her own memory may have been edited.  I will try to synthesize these accounts knowing that Lida was aware of how propaganda was supposed to work.

Hitler came to visit the studio in Austria and noticed her.

"Liduska" had an accent and was unable to pronounce unaccented German though she was expected to and studied the language but she was strikingly beautiful and - strangely - is supposed to have been the Nazi ideal of beauty - but in my opinion has the Slavic look of certain of my friends.  She moved to Berlin and began to make films for that audience - propaganda films.  It was considered a career move. Hollywood would have been a better move but it's said that she refused offers and lived to regret not becoming as big as Marlene Dietrich.  So though she was established as an actress her German film making made her unpopular in her own country as she was seen as working for the enemy.

Goebbels was at the time of their relationship the Nazi Party's Reich Minister of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda.  The relationship happened fast, from when they met in September of 1936 to August 1938.  She lived to regret it and her own country never forgave her.  Was she simply nieve?  Propelled by lust?

Magda Goebbels, the wife of Joseph, was considered a role model for German women as a wife and mother and she had a reputation to uphold. Knowing of the affair with Lida, she went to Hitler and told him she wanted the affair to end.  Since Goebbels was a womanizer, Lida was not the first or last threat to Magda's marriage. Perhaps the relationship between Lida and Joseph was the most intense and serious, the biggest threat to Magda's marriage to that point. Magda reportedly also had affairs.  As evidence for the seriousness of their relationship, Goebbels attempted to have Lida move in with him at his villa.

Hitler, who Lida says never liked the involvement she had with Goebbels, insisted that Goebbels break with Lida rather than leave his wife for her. He did and some reports suggest he considered suicide. That left Lida in a horrible place to be in; She ran home to Czechoslovakia, where she was hated, and again, maybe it's that Hitler banished her and her films, and then in 1943 went to Rome.  She worked on films with  Italian film directors Antonio de Sica and Federico Fellini.  But in 1945 American troops arrested her as a Gestapo spy.

Lida Baarova managed to marry again and again.  After the war, in 1947, she married Jan Kopecky and stayed married to him till they divorced in 1956.  In 1969 she married Kurt Lundvall, who died in 1972.  She had Parkinson's disease but lived until 2000, age 86.


Please note the following :

You may use the search feature embedded in this Google Blogger to locate other Nazi Mistresses within this blog.  June 2018 -  CO CV CHANEL - NAZI and SPY or SOCIETY WOMAN IN LOVE.  Nov 2017 the Mistresses of Shindler (of Schindler's List)

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