LYA DE PUTTI

Lya De Putti (born Amalia Putti) was a Hungarian actress from the 1910s to the 1920s. She was born in Hungary in 1897, and at 16, she married Zoltan Szepessy and had two children with him. She started making German movies in 1918, and in 1922, she appeared in an F.W. Murnau movie, which made her a star. After her starring role in E.A. Dupont's "Variety" in 1925, Adolph Zukor hired her to come to the U.S. and work for Paramount, and she also starred in D.W. Griffith's "Sorrows of Satan" in 1927. The coming of sound ended her Hollywood career, and she attempted a comeback on Broadway, which also fizzled. In 1931, she swallowed a chicken bone and it was caught in her throat, and she was taken to a hospital, where it was removed, but complications resulted, and she died from pneumonia, and she was just 34 years old. She had divorced her husband Szepessy in 1918, and she had remarried Louis Jahnke in 1922, and she was still married to him when she died, but first husband Szepessy committed suicide right after her death.