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

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Before long, she brought her sons to California, setting up household in a Tudor-style cottage on Mabery near the ocean in Santa Monica. VERDICT This is a study of a complex, openhearted woman who had a key role in saving the displaced while shaping mid-20th century Hollywood. to speak out against intolerance, censorship, political inquisitions, and the curtailing of human rights in the name of national security—all seeds of fascism in the United States that threatened to sprout as poisonously as they had in Germany: in the end, none of this has been deemed thus far to be worthy of our attention. Perhaps Berthold Viertel had it right when he wrote: “One does not wander without punishment under the palms.

Her guests included Bertolt Brecht, Charlie Chaplin, Aldous Huxley, Christopher Isherwood, and Thomas Mann.Rifkind does a wonderful job of telling the multifaceted and somewhat tragic life story of a brilliant woman. 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.

A year or two after her arrival, Viertel met Greta Garbo and became close friends, collaborators, and rumored lovers with the Swedish film star. Personalized advertising may be considered a “sale” or “sharing” of information under California and other state privacy laws, and you may have a right to opt out. She soldiered on with dignity and artistic drive, writing her memoir and having it published, though it was largely ignored until after her death.While both Salka and her husband Berthold, himself a once highly regarded director, were devoted to each other, neither was sexually faithful. Her siblings were the composer and pianist Eduard Steuermann; Rosa (1891–1972), married from 1922 until her death to the actor and director Josef Gielen; and Polish national football player Zygmunt Steuermann, who perished during the Holocaust.