Another new discovery is a wonderful Hungarian actress Karády Katalin who was very popular during 1930s and 1940s, kind of Hungarian Marlene Dietrich.
I have discovered her completely by accident while browsing youtube some time ago and was intrigued enough to do some research about her yesterday, discovering to my biggest delight that she was quite interesting radio singer who was recording some smoky night club ballads not unlike Billie Holiday, Marlene or Edith Piaf - chanson Hungarian way - its interesting to discover her biography and to read between the lines: apparently she was big fashion icon in her time and famous as "femme fatale" because of her movie roles but of course nobody is born like "femme fatale" and behind her were poor childhood,abusive father and poverty - its only when she started to work with manager Zoltán Egyed who created artificial image of her as glamourous Hollywood-like star that audience loved and imitated. She had affair with notorious chief of secret service, István Ujszászy and apparently this was real love because when she heard that he was killed in a war she suffered nervous breakdown. Unfortunately for her, people really believed the movie propaganda and her screen image got her in trouble (she often played glamorous Mata Hari-like characters) because Gestapo arrested her in 1944. suspecting she might be a spy - if she was adored by audience, in prison she was just a woman alone without any help - tortured and brutally beaten there. Still,during the war she saved lots of jews, sold her jewelry to help them and even smuggled some kids in her house to take care of them until the end of war. So much about "famme fatale"!
After the war she was blacklisted by a new communist regime because of her earlier success and probably because of her association with Ujszászy. Katalin emigrated to Brazil and later New York where she opened a fashion shop and never returned to Hungary. If her own Hungarians were unkind to her,jewish community recognized her sacrifices and gave her a wonderful "Righteous among the Nations" medal that celebrates people who had risked their own lives to help Jews during Holocaust.
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