Trivia

She only appeared once in front of the camera for the production "Nacht der Premiere" (1914) at the side of Richard Grossmann and Eugenie Werner, but her private life was worthy of making a movie as well. She was married with the actor Alexander Girardi who was very jealous but also had every reasons for it. Helene Odilon finally managed together with her friend the psychiatrist Julius Wanger-Jauregg to admit Alexander Girardi into an insane asylum. Only thanks the help of the actress Katharina Schratt Alexander Girardi became rehabilitated later.

After a stroke in 1903 she was partially paralyzed and she suffered from depression. Thereupon some of her relatives induced that Helene Odilon was warded in order to protect her fortune. Odilon had to fight against this decision for several years. In 1916 she went blind and her environment utilized the situation and embezzled her fortune.

She became a successful stage actress and was very popular at that time. This even led to tours through England and the USA.

The actress Helene Odilon began her theater career in Chemnitz, later followed engagements in Berlin and Vienna.

Helene Odilon became pauperized and lived in a rest home - she was not even 60 years old. In 1925 she came to a hospice in Dresden and from 1928 she lived in the new opened Badener rest home where she died eleven years later.

Odilon was known for her comedic ingénue roles, and it was believed that she was more suited towards comedy in those roles. She was one of the few German actresses of the time to be successful in London.

In 1902, she was reported to be "currently the greatest actress in Germany".

A 1912 article from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch said that Odilon proposed to marry Budapest doctor Radwan-who hypnotized susceptible people including older women-while she was hypnotized by him. The article also stated that she was building a séance hall for him in Budapest.

Her first role in New York was in the play The Star, which was shown at the Irving Place Theatre. The Star was written by Herman Bahr, a well known dramatist from Vienna.

In the early 1890s, she traveled to the Volkstheater in Vienna to replace actress Adele Sandrock.

In 1903, the actress Adele Hartwig replaced her in the revival of the drama Nachtmar at the Volkstheater because Odilon had a stroke. Critics in Vienna were unimpressed by Hartwig's performance.

Odilon was named the "Bernhardt of Germany" and during her appearances in the United States, she was compared to Gabrielle Réjane.

Odilon was married to Alexander Girardi and she had an affair with a financier. Girardi discovered Odilon's chemise in the financier's bedroom and he threatened to murder both of them. After Odilon and the financier contacted the police and the officers did not arrest Girardi, the two of them attempted to have Girardi committed to an insane asylum. After Girardi discovered their plan, he received help from a former mistress of Franz Joseph I of Austria, Käthe Schratt. After Shratt helped Girardi, he had a hushed divorce with Odilon. After the divorce, Odilon married Baron Rakovsky. Sometime after she divorced Rakovsky, she married Herr Flesch, the man who rescued her from a sanitarium after she was declared insane after she had paralysis due to a stroke.

A 1922 article from the New York Herald stated that Odilon was in poverty and was almost blind. Odilon tried to earn money by selling postcard photographs in a Vienna tearoom so that she could buy a home. Despite not many of the guests remembering Odilon's career, she received donations which also included a basket of flowers that had banknotes at the bottom of it.

Her acting career began while she was the apprentice of German stage actor Ludwig Barnay.