Lilli Palmer

Lilli Palmer (born Lilli Marie Peiser on 24 May 1914 in Poznań, then part of the Kingdom of Prussia) was a German actress and writer whose career spanned over five decades across Europe and Hollywood. Raised in Berlin‑Charlottenburg after her family moved when she was four, she excelled as a junior table‑tennis champion before turning to the stage, performing in a Moulin Rouge operetta and later in London cabarets where British talent scouts discovered her. She signed with Gaumont and made her film debut in Crime Unlimited (1935), quickly becoming a fixture of British cinema throughout the 1930s and 1940s. In 1943 she married British actor Rex Harrison, and the couple moved to Hollywood in 1945 where she signed with Warner Brothers, appearing in films such as Cloak and Dagger (1946) and Body and Soul (1947). Their artistic partnership continued on stage in Broadway’s Bell, Book and Candle and in the film adaptation of The Four Poster (1952), earning her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress in 1953. After divorcing Harrison in 1956, she married Argentine actor Carlos Thompson in 1957 and returned to Germany, where she won multiple Deutscher Filmpreis awards for roles in The Story of Anastasia and Mädchen in Uniform. Her later Hollywood work included The Pleasure of His Company (1961) with Fred Astaire and Debbie Reynolds, The Counterfeit Traitor (1962), and a Golden Globe‑nominated turn in the miniseries Peter the Great (1986). Beyond acting she authored the memoir Change Lobsters and Dance (1975) and the novel The Red Raven (1978). Palmer died of abdominal cancer on 27 January 1986 in Los Angeles, aged 71, and is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale; a portion of her first husband’s ashes was scattered on her grave.