Nora Gregor

Nora Gregor (3 February 1901 – 20 January 1949) was a stage and film actress.

Biography

She was born Eleonora Hermina Gregor in Gorizia, a town which then belonged to Austria-Hungary but is now part of Italy, to Austrian Jewish parents.

Her first husband was Mitja Nikisch, a pianist and son of celebrated orchestral conductor Arthur Nikisch. They divorced circa 1934.

In the mid 1930s Gregor became the mistress of the married vice chancellor of Austria, the Austro-fascist, nationalist politician Prince Ernst Ruediger von Starhemberg, with whom she had a son, Heinrich (1934–1997). On 2 December 1937, five days after the prince's marriage to his first wife, the former Countess Marie-Elisabeth von Salm-Reifferscheidt-Raitz, was annulled, he and Gregor wed in Vienna.

In 1938, the Starhembergs emigrated to France through Switzerland, and her husband joined the Free French forces; cut off from their money and eighty family estates, they were supported for a period by Starhemberg's close friend Friedrich Mandl, the Austrian armaments magnate. In 1942, the Starhembergs moved to Argentina where they lived under humble circumstances. She was depressed by her South American exile and many sources claim her early death in Viña del Mar, Chile, was a suicide. However, her biographer Hans Kitzmüller calls a suicide unlikely and notes that her death was probably from natural causes.

Career

Gregor entered films in the early 1920s. She worked briefly in Hollywood during the early talkie era, appearing in the foreign-language versions of such films as The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929) and His Glorious Night (1929). She was considered to be one of Austria's most popular film stars during that time and she also appeared as a stage actress at the famous Burgtheater.

During her French exile, Gregor played her most famous screen role as Christine de la Chesnaye in Jean Renoir's 1939 film La Règle du Jeu. Her last appearance was in the 1945 Chilean film La Fruta mordida.

Filmography

• Wie Satan starb (1920)
• Gefesselt (1920)
• The Grinning Face (1921)
• Die Schauspielerin des Kaisers (1921)
• Die Trennende Brücke (1922)
• Die Tochter des Brigadiers (1922)
• Die Venus (1922)
• Irrlichter der Tiefe (1923)
• Die Kleine Sünde (1923)
• Mikaël (1924)
• Moderne Laster (1924)
• The Girl with a Patron (1925)
• The Man Who Sold Himself (1925)
• The Fiddler of Florence (1926)
• Eheskandal im Hause Fromont jun. und Risler sen. (1927)
• Olympia (1930)
• That's All That Matters (1931)
• Mordprozeß Mary Dugan (1931)
• Wir schalten um auf Hollywood (1931)
• But the Flesh Is Weak (1932)
• Abenteuer am Lido (1933)
• What Women Dream (1933)
• La règle du jeu (1939)
• La Fruta mordida (1945)

Names and Styles

• 1901-ca. 1920: Fraulein Eleanora Gregor
• ca. 1925-ca.1934: Frau Mitja Nikisch (privately), Fraulein Nora Gregor (professionally)
• ca. 1934-1937: Fraulein Nora Gregor (professionally)
• 1937-1949: Her Most Serene Highness Princess von Starhemberg (privately), Fraulein Nora Gregor (professionally)