LYA LYS

Lya Lys was a German actress from the 1920s to the 1940s. She was born in 1908 and her family moved to Paris when she was young, and she appeared in a French movie in 1929. MGM was making French language versions of their sound movies at this time, and they signed her to appear in some of them. During this time, she starred in "L'age d'or", the Salvador Dali movie! MGM put her in English language movies, but her thick accent kept her from succeeding. She had two quick marriages in 1931 and 1932. She had little success in the mid 1930s, and performed on the stage. She had a failed suicide attempt at this time. She went back to Paris, but left due to the rise of Nazism and returned to Hollywood, where she signed a Warner Bros. contract. She appeared in "Confessions of a Nazi Spy", "The Return of Doctor X", and "Murder in the Air", which was her last movie. She married for the third time, but that marriage also ended in divorce, and there were no more movie parts, and she filed for bankruptcy. But unlike many Hollywood stars with similar stories, she did not give up, and she became a nightclub singer and wrote a newspaper column. She married for the fourth time, and they retired to California. She passed away in 1986 at the age of 78.