Daisy D'Ora, a German actress whose brief film career included a role in the 1929 Louise Brooks' film Pandora's Box, has died. D'Ora was 97 years old, and was considered one of the very last surviving German actresses from the silent era. It is also believed that D’Ora was until her death the oldest living Miss Universe contestant. In 1955, Time magazine described her as “one of the more curvesome ornaments of Germany's silver screen.”
D'Ora was born in 1913 in Potsdam, Germany and died in Munich on June 19, 2010.
D'Ora was a baroness named Daisy Baroness von Freyberg -Eisenberg. She came from impoverished nobility, and out of necessity, went to work as a teenager. According to some accounts, she had always longed to be a movie star. However, because work in show business was considered unseemly for a member of the upper class, she acquired a stage name.
D’Ora was discovered at the age of 15 by director G.W. Pabst, who noticed her in a cosmetics advertisement. Her role in Pandora's Box was her first film. She was only 16 years old when it debuted in Berlin in February, 1929.
Pandora’s Box is widely considered one of the great films of the silent era. In it, D’Ora plays Charlotte, the youthful fiancée of the respected and older Dr. Schon, played by Fritz Kortner. In one of the most famous scenes in the film, Charlotte together with Schon's son (played by Francis Lederer) discovers Dr. Schon and Lulu (played by Brooks) in a compromising position backstage.
Despite her renowned beauty, D’Ora appeared only in supporting roles in only a few more films in 1929 and 1930. In 1929, she appeared in Der Mann, der nicht liebt with Gustav Diessel (Jack the Ripper in Pandora’s Box) and in Es flüstert die Nacht (Hungarian Nights), with Lil Dagover. Her last film, in 1930, was Nur am Rhein, and starred Truus Van Aalten.
After the movies, she married a career diplomat, Oskar Schlitter. D’Ora’s uninhibited ways and outspoken comments often got her and her husband into trouble. According to the profile of D’Ora, "Just Daisy," published in Time magazine in 1955, at a formal reception at the German embassy in Madrid she greeted the ex-Kaiser's grandson, Prince Louis Ferdinand, with a whoop and a holler and a lusty "Hi there, Lulu!" Schlitter was quickly transferred to another post.
Other faux pas followed. In 1955, while her husband was stationed in Britain, the freewheeling D’Ora made headlines around the world when she referred to England as an “enemy country.” Schlitter was recalled and offered to resign. A spokesman claimed she meant to say “foreign country.” The British forgave the lovable Daisy.
Between her career in the movies and her life as the wife of a diplomat, D’Ora was also a model and beauty contestant. By chance, she had met the famous writer Erich Maria Remarque, who was judging a fashion show in which D’Ora participated at the luxurious Hotel Eden in Berlin.
The author of All Quiet on the Western Front persuaded her to take part in a beauty contest in Germany. She won, and as a result, was sent as “Miss Germany” to the United States for a Miss Universe contest held in Galveston, Texas. D’Ora, as Daisy Freyberg, placed fourth in 1931. She took home a $150.00 prize and her picture appeared in newspapers around e country. Screen beauty Dorothy Lamour was also among the semi-finalists that year.
D’Ora’s beauty was of such renown in Germany that a famous vocal group of the time, the Comedian Harmonists, even referenced her in a song. "Hello, what are you doing today, Daisy" can be found on the group’s greatest hits CD.
For more info: A little more about Daisy D’Ora can be found at its IMDb entry at http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0195855/ or at her German-language Wikipedia page at http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daisy_d%E2%80%99Ora
Thomas Gladysz is a longtime fan of Louise Brooks, so much so he founded the Louise Brooks Society, an internet-based archive and fan club devoted to the legendary silent film star. Gladysz has contributed to books on the actress, organized exhibits, appeared on television, and introduced her films around the country. Recently, he edited and wrote the introduction to the “Louise Brooks edition” of Margarete Bohme’s The Diary of a Lost Girl.
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