Nora Gregor: Movies & Box Office

Nora Gregor (born Eleonora Hermina Gregor on 3 February 1901 in Görz, then part of the Austrian Littoral of Austria‑Hungary) was an Austrian stage and film actress whose career spanned the silent era through the early sound period. She was the daughter of Austrian‑Jewish parents and grew up in a multilingual environment that later helped her work in German, French and even Hollywood productions. Gregor began appearing in films in the early 1920s and quickly became one of Austria’s most popular screen stars, performing also at the prestigious Burgtheater where her dramatic presence earned critical acclaim. In the late 1920s she traveled to Hollywood, where she starred in foreign‑language versions of American movies such as The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929) and His Glorious Night (1929), showcasing her linguistic versatility. Her personal life was equally dramatic: she married pianist Mitja Nikisch around 1925, a union that ended in divorce circa 1934, and later entered a long‑term relationship with Austrian national‑political figure Prince Ernst Rüdiger von Starhemberg, with whom she bore a son, Heinrich, in 1934. The couple married in Vienna on 2 December 1937, shortly after the prince’s previous marriage was annulled. Political turmoil forced the Starhembergs to flee Austria after the 1938 Anschluss; they crossed Switzerland into France, and eventually settled in Argentina in 1942 after a brief stay in France. During her exile in France, Gregor achieved her most celebrated cinematic role as Christine de la Chesnaye in Jean Renoir’s masterpiece La Règle du Jeu (1939), a performance that remains a touchstone of film history. Her final screen appearance came in the Chilean film La Fruta mordida (1945). Depressed by exile and financial hardship, she died in Viña del Mar, Chile, on 20 January 1949; while some sources suggest suicide, biographer Hans Kitzmüller argues the death was likely from natural causes. Gregor’s legacy endures through her contributions to European cinema and her unforgettable role in Renoir’s classic.