Zarah Leander - Wann wirst du mich fragen (from "Gabriela")

After almost 7 years, Zarah Leander returned in front of the cameras as the star of the melodrama "Gabriela".
This was a big event with enormous press attention, even the very serious "Der Spiegel" ran an article about the extravagant black tiled bathroom in Zarah Leander's hotel suite...

Zarah Leander plays Gabriela Donat, whose real name is Helga Lorenzen. She has an affair with a musician (Carl Raddatz) and after a nasty divorce from her very rich and uncaring husband,she decides to kidnap her daughter and start a new life with her musician lover and becomes Gabriela, star of the cabaret with the same name. Her daughter is sent to live with her former nanny in the mountains.
Many years later her past catches up with her when her now grown up daughter (Vera Molnar) comes to live with her and starts asking questions...

What looked like a perfect Zarah melodrama on paper turned out less than perfect... Rolf Hansen, who showed great skill as the director of her last 3 movies at UFA declined to work on "Gabriela" as did Franz Weihmayr, her cinematographer at UFA. He later commented "Her face just wasn't the same anymore". (due to her heavy drinking, aggravated by her years of inactivity between 1943 and 1947). Badly lit in many scenes, unflattering hairstyles and wardrobe made her appear older than she really was...
Zarah Leander herself was not pleased with the result and came to dislike the movie intensely... Despite all this, "Gabriela" was a winner at the box office! It was the third most popular film of that year in Germany. It is remarkable that in her next movies, "Cuba Cabana" and "Ave Maria", Zarah Leander looked much better than she did in "Gabriela".

Michael Jary composed three songs for her "Es gibt keine Frau die nicht lügt", "Wenn der Herrgot will" (which she would sing during her concerts) and "Wann wirst du mich fragen?", a dramatic song she sings in a flashback sequence... It is not a very well known song but she delivers it perfectly...

All images and documents from personal collection

Category:

Music

Tags:

• Zarah
• Leander
• Gabriela
• 1950
• diva
• singer
• swedish
• melodrama
• UFA
• Real-Film
• Michael
• Jary
• Deutschland
• Sverige

[vonFalkenstein77]

@Grizzlyleven

So ist es!!

[Grizzlyleven]

Das ist wahres Kino,echte deutsche Filmkunst

Wunderbar

Frank Leven D-dorf