Nora Gregor

Nora Gregor
File:Nora Gregor.jpg Nora Gregor in 1932
Born	Eleonora Hermina Gregor (1901-02-03)3 February 1901 Gorizia, Austrian Littoral, Austria-Hungary (now in Italy)
Died	Viña del Mar, Chile Cause of death Suicide
Years active	1920–1945
Spouse(s)	Mitja Nikisch (ca. 1925 – ca. 1934) Ernst Ruediger, Prince von Starhemberg (1937–1949)

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.

Reportedly depressed since the beginning of her South American exile, Gregor committed suicide in Viña del Mar, Chile.

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).

Her most famous screen role was 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)
• Der Mann, der sich verkauft (1925)
• The Fiddler of Florence (1926)
• Eheskandal im Hause Fromont jun. und Risler sen. (1927)
• Olympia (1930)
• ...und das ist die Hauptsache!? (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)

External links

• Nora Gregor at the Internet Movie Database
• Photographs and literature
• Tribute website