Bedia Muvahhit

Bedia Muvahhit, née Emine Bedia Şekip, (January 16, 1897 – January 20, 1994) was a Turkish stage and movie actress. She is remembered as one of the first Muslim movie actresses in Turkey debuting in 1923.

She was born on January 16, 1897 to Şekip Bey, a prosecutor from profession, and his wife Refika at Moda neighborhood of Kadıköy in Istanbul, Ottoman Empire. She began her primary education at Saint Antoine School on Büyükada, and went on at Kadıköy Terakki School for secondary education. Then, she studied at the French language high school Lycée Notre Dame de Sion Istanbul. She could speak French in additom to Greek as foreign language.

Bedia Muvahhit was employed in 1914 as a switchboard operator at the state-owned telephone company in Istanbul becoming one of the first Muslim women in the Ottoman Empire to work at the public service sector. Following a campaign of a newly established journal and an association for defending women's rights, the post administration decided to replace the telephone operators, who were in the beginning foreign language speaking girls from Christian or Jewish minorities with heavily accented Turkish.

In 1921, she began to work as a teacher for French language at the Erenköy Girls High School. During this time, she met stage actor Ahmet Refet Muvahhit, while she asked him for an autograph after a theatre play. The couple got married in 1923. From this marriage, Bedia Muvahhit had a son Şuayip Sina Arbel (1922-1991). In 1923, Bedia Muvahhit quit her teacher post, and devoted herself to an acting career. She successfully played in movies and on stage. However, her spouse Ahmet Muvahhit died in 1927.

She married in 1933 to Friedrich von Statzer (1906-1974), aka later Ferdi Statzer, an Austrian musician, who came in 1932 to Turkey, and was teaching classical piano at the Istanbul Municipal Conservatory and serving as a composer and classical pianist at the Istanbul Municipal Theatre (Ottoman Turkish: Darülbedayi‎), where she was acting on stage. Her second marriage lasted 18 years until 1951 when they divorced. Rıght after, she adopted her surname from the first marriage.

Bedia Muvahhit died on January 20, 1994 at the age of 97 in Istanbul University Hospital, where she was taken following a home accident. She was laid to rest at the Asiyan Cemetery.

In 1917, she made her entrance into Turkish (then known as Ottoman) film industry, by a minor role in the film Pençe.

In 1923, soon after her marriage to actor Ahmet Muvahhit, film director Muhsin Ertuğrul, a friend of both, was about to shoot a movie based on the novel Ateşten Gömlek (The Daughter of Smyrna) by Halide Edip Adıvar (1884-1964). The female playwright, a participant of the Turkish War of Independence (1919-1923) and a women's right activist, insisted on the lead role being featured by a Turkish Muslim woman. Bedia Muvahhit was chosen as actress to much surprise of herself. She featured in the movie with Neyyire Neyir (1902-1943), who was the only applying Muslim woman to the newspaper advertisement published for a role in this movie. So, Bedia Muvahhit became one of the first Turkish Muslim movie actresses.

Right after the filming of Ateşten Gömlek was finished, she took part in a theatre tour of Darülbedayi in Izmir along with her husband, actor Ahmet Muvahhit. Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk), who was that time also in the city, asked her husband that Bedia Muvahhit performs in the play he would watch, because also Turkish Muslim women have to get to the stage. She learnt in one day her role of "Saride" in the play Ceza Kanunu (Criminal Law), an adaption by Ahmet Nuri Sekizinci from the 1907 French play "Vingt jours à l'ombre" by Pierre Veber and Maurice Hennequin. On July 31, 1923, just one week after the signing of the Treaty of Lausanne, Bedia Muvahhit debuted on the stage before the new Turkey's leader, who congratulated her after the play. She performed then in more than 200 plays in municipal theatres.

After an acting career of more than fifty years, she retired in 1975 from the stage at the Istanbul Municipal Theatre.

• 1981 Atatürk Prize for Art
• 1987 State Actress of Turkey, for her contributions to the Turkish culture.
• 1988 International Istanbul Film Festival (Golden Tulip Prize)

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• "Bedia Muvahhit Theatre Award" is bestowed in her honor annually since 1995 by Istanbul Municipal Theatre and Union of Turkish Women to talented young stage actresses for their debut.
• Turkish Post issued a postage stamp depicting her portrait.

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