The story, based on real-life events, was first filmed by Rolf Thiele in 1958 (released in the U.S. as “Rosemary”), with Nadja Tiller as the Frankfurt femme whose love of fast cars and money led her to bed the great and the good before being murdered in 1957 in her apartment by a never-found assailant. Thiele’s hit B&W movie, made when the real subject’s body was still almost warm, had a socially satirical edge. Variety
Nadja Tiller: Austrian actress, born 1929, on screen for sixty years, 1949 – 2009.
Joi Lansing (1929 – 1972): born Joyce Renee Brown, credited as ‘Joy Loveland’ for her first screen appearance in The Counterfeiters (1948).
Susan Shaw: English actress born Patsy Sloots 29 August 1929, West Norwood UK; died 27 November 1978, age 49, Middlesex UK; cirrhosis of the liver.
Like many English actresses of the era, Shaw trained in the ‘charm school’ of British film studio the Rank Organisation, with prolific credits from 1946 onwards.
In 1958 her husband, British-based American Bonar Colleano, died in car accident. She stopped acting in 1963, gave her children over to grandparents to be raised and descended further into alcoholism and poverty. Her death went unnoticed in the media and the Rank company paid for her funeral.
Terry Moore: born Helen Luella Koford, 7 January 1929, known as Jan Ford and January Ford before taking Terry Moore as her name in 1948.
Audrey Hepburn: born Audrey Kathleen Ruston, 4 May 1929, Brussels Belgium, to Ella van Heemstra (Dutch) and Joseph Victor Anthony Ruston (Anglo-Austrian); died 20 January 1993, Tolochenaz Switzerland. In movies 1951 – 1989.
Gunvor Pontén: Miss Sweden 1962, star of Swedish film and television.
Susan Shaw (1929 – 1978): British actress on screen 1946 – 1963. After the death of her husband, American actor Bonar Colleano, in a car accident in 1958, became an alcoholic, dying of cirrhosis of the liver at age 49.
Grace Kelly (1929 – 1982): American beauty, appeared in 11 movies between 1951 and 1956, before retiring to be a European princess.
Audrey Hepburn: born in Belgium 1929, brought up in Britain, acted in Hollywood, died in Switzerland 1993, owned a pet deer named “Pippin”.
