Elfi von Dassanowsky(1924-2007)
- Producer
- Music Department
- Actress
A musical prodigy, von Dassanowsky was the youngest female to gain
admission to Vienna's Academy (now University) of Music and Performing
Arts to be trained as an opera singer and concert pianist. Already a
noted performer as a student, she taught
Curd Jürgens piano for one of his first
major roles in
Wen die Götter lieben (1942).
Offered a star film contract by UFA Berlin, she declined it and
association with the Nazi party. Her rise to opera stardom after her
debut in 1946 was followed by solo concerts for the Allied High
Command, concert tours through Central Europe, performances as stage
and film actress, work as announcer and performer for Forces
Broadcasting and the BBC, and her creation of theatrical groups in
Vienna. In 1946, she co-founded Belvedere Film in Vienna with director
Emmerich Hanus and producer August
Diglas. As one of the few women in cinema history to create a film
studio, von Dassanowsky was instrumental in the postwar rebirth of
Austrian film and is today regarded as a female cinema pioneer. Among
her studio's discoveries were European leading lady
Nadja Tiller, comic actor
Gunther Philipp and future international
star Oskar Werner. In 1951 she became an
administrator of Phoebus International Films in Hamburg and the first
female casting director in postwar Germany. In Hollywood from 1962, she
gave master classes in voice and piano, promoted Austrian culture and
cinema in the U.S. and was a renowned vocal trainer, particularly for
actors in productions by Otto Preminger.
She became a charter member of the Austrian American Film Association
in 1997 and reestablished Belvedere Film in Los Angeles and Vienna in
1999. The cultural foundation she planned before her death in 2007 was
established in 2009 as a fund for non-profit arts and educational
organizations. It also sponsors The Elfi von Dassanowsky Prize, a jury
award for female filmmakers presented annually by the Vienna
Independent Shorts Festival (VIS).