Ray Jones - Studio Portrait of Tala Birell AP1483
Hardly remembered today, this astonishingly beautiful woman passed through Hollywood in the 30s and 40s, and we are left with a few films and some gorgeous images. Measures 10 1/2" x 13 1/2".
Ray Jones was the first still photographer to win an Academy Award as head of Universal Studio’s still photography department during the Golden Age of Hollywood from the 1920s to the 1950s.
Natalie Bierl, known as Tala Birell (1907, Bucharest - Romania; 1958, Landsthul - Germany), nickname Talusha, was born to a German couple, the mother a Baroness of Polish descent, and the father a German businessman who was temporarily in Bucharest overseeing his company. During WWI she was in Berlin, and studying at a private school. 5' 6" tall and blonde, she had a brief film appearance in 1926, and then a stage career in Germany and Austria, substituting for a character that had been played by Marlene Dietrich. During WWII she became a "Second Garbo" in Hollywood, due to her sort of cold, glamorous beauty. She played in crime thrillers and early women-in-prison genre films, but various characters of hers were linked with the anti-Nazi war effort: a courageous Russian in China (1943), Madame Bouchard of the French Resistance in Till We Meet Again (1944), the Nazi Doctor Elise Bork in Jungle Queen (1945), and Yvette Aubert, the French adventurer and entertainer, in Women in the Night (1948), who plays along with an extreme Nazi unit in Shanghai until she saves the world from a weapon of mass destruction with the sacrifice of her life. Possibly during the production of this film, in mid-1948, Tala decided to return to Germany and take up residence with her mother who was by then living in Munich. In 1951 she was appointed by the Special Service Headquarters of the U.S. Army in Nuremberg to organize theatrical productions in Germany, France, and Austria for the G.I.s. stationed there. Her title was Field Entertainment Supervisor, and sometimes took part herself in shows at military clubs in Munich and Nuremberg, and Orléans (France). She later moved to Berlin with the title Command Entertainment Director and put on shows for U.S. troops and refugees from Eastern Europe. She retired in 1957 for health reasons, and died shortly after. She is buried in the family tomb, in Marquartstein, Bavaria, Germany.
