Biography

Hildegard Knef

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Overview

Born
December 28, 1925 · Ulm, Germany
Died
February 1, 2002 · Berlin, Germany (lung infection)
Birth name
Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef
Height
5′ 6¼″ (1.68 m)

Mini bio

Hildegard Frieda Albertine Knef was born on December 28, 1925 in Ulm, Germany. In 1940, she began to study acting. Even before the fall of the Third Reich, she appeared in several films, but most of them were only released after the war. To avoid being raped by Soviet soldiers, she dressed like a young man and was sent to a camp for prisoners of war. She escaped and returned to war-shattered Berlin, where she played her first parts on stage. The first German movie after World War II, Murderers Among Us (1946), made her a star. David O. Selznick invited her to Hollywood and offered her a contract--with two conditions: Hildegard Knef should change her name to Gilda Christian, and she should pretend to be Austrian instead of German. She refused both and returned to Germany. In 1951 she provoked one of the greatest scandals in German film history when she appeared naked in the film The Sinner (1951). The Roman Catholic Church protested vehemently against that film, but Hildegard just commented: "I can't understand all that tumult--five years after Auschwitz!"

With the support of her first husband, the American Kurt Hirsch, she tried a second time to launch a Hollywood career and changed her surname from Knef to Neff (Americans could not pronounce Knef), but the only worthwhile part she got was a supporting role in the Hemingway adaptation of The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952). She became a leading lady in German, French, and British films. Finally, America offered her another chance, this time on the stage. She achieved a kind of stardom as Ninotchka in the very popular Broadway play "Silk Stockings".

In 1963 she began a new career as a singer, surprising audiences with her typical, deep, smoky voice and the fact that she wrote many of her own song lyrics. In 1970, she wrote the autobiographical bestseller "Der Geschenkte Gaul". She got sympathy from all over the world for her fight against cancer, which she defeated several times.

After the German reunification, Hildegarde Knef moved back to Berlin and died at age 76 of a lung infection on February 1, 2002.
- IMDb mini biography by: Yancey

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Trademarks

Typical deep smoky voice

Trivia

Ella Fitzgerald called her "the best singer without voice".
In 1951/52, when they were both working on the 20th Century Fox lot, Knef and Marilyn Monroe shared a wardrobe and became friends. Monroe would borrow books from Knef; she loved Thomas Mann and Rainer Maria Rilke. In later years, Knef wrote a song about Marilyn (in German) and mentioned her extensively in her best-selling memoirs.
Became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1950.
According to her book, "The Gift Horse", she was the last person John Garfield spoke to before he died.
Known in the United States as Hildegard Neff, but she used her real name when performing back home in Germany.