Elissa Landi

[jondee56]

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0484748/

ELISSA LANDI - AKA: Mady Francis; Elizabeth Marie Christine Kuehnelt.

Born: 06th December 1904
Birth place: Venice, Italy
Death: Thu Oct 21 1948
Cause: Cancer
Nationality: Italian
Profession: novelist, actor

Family
FATHER: Richard Kuehnelt. Calvary officer. Served with the Austro Hungarian army; divorced from Landi's mother when she was young.
MOTHER: Caroline Franciska Marie Lorraine. Related by blood to Austrian emperor Franz Joseph; divorced from Landi's father and remarried to an Italian count.
STEP-FATHER: Carlo Jospeh Zarnardi-Landi. Engineer. Italian count; later adopted wife's two children.
BROTHER: Tonio Landi. Born in 1902; died in 1971.
DAUGHTER: Caroline Maude Thomas. Born on September 11, 1944.

HUSBAND: John Cecil Lawrence. Barrister. Married in London in 1928; divorced in 1937.
HUSBAND: Curtiss Kinsey Thomas. Actor. Married on August 28, 1943.

Mini bio:
Elissa Landi was an Italian born actress,rumoured to be a descendant of Emperor Franz Joseph of Austria. Born Elisabeth Marie Christine Kühnelt in Venice, Landi was raised in Austria and educated in England. Her first ambition was to be a writer, and she wrote her first novel at the age of twenty. She appeared in British, French, and German films before appearing in a Broadway production of "A Farewell to Arms".
She was signed to a contact by Fox Film Corporation in 1931 and played the heroine in Cecil B. De Mille's "The Sign of the Cross" (1932), but was overshadowed by Claudette Colbert who played the flashier role of the temptress Poppea. She also starred in the box office hit "The Count of Monte Cristo" (1934) with Robert Donat.

Her contract with Fox was abruptly cancelled in 1936 as a result of her refusal to accept a particular role and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer signed her. After a couple of romantic dramas she played the cousin of Myrna Loy in the popular "After the Thin Man" (1936).

After only two more films she retired, in 1943 when she became a naturalized U.S. citizen, dedicating herself to writing, producing six novels and a series of poems.

Elissa died from cancer in Kingston, New York, and was buried at Oak Hill Cemetery in Newburyport, Massachusetts.

Heres three of my own caps from "Sign Of The Cross".