On this day in ...... 1981, Lotte Lenya (right) died from cancer in New York City, 83 years after she'd been born in Vienna, Austria, to working-class parents who'd named her Karoline Wilhelmine Charlotte Blamauer. After moving to Zurich as a teen-aged student, she took her 1st entertainment job and adopted the stage name that would stay with her for life. (photo credit) By 1921, Lenya was in Berlin, where eventually she created the role of Jenny Diver at the premiere performance of the play known in English as The Threepenny Opera, by Bertold Brecht and Lenya's husband, Kurt Weill. After World War II, which Lenya spent in Paris performing inter alia for the Voice of America, Lenya launched a Broadway and film career that included memorable turns as the Russian Colonel Rosa Klebb, a SPECTRE agent who battled James Bond.
(Prior November 27 posts are here, here, and here.)
