Ingrid Pitt, 1937-2010

[Aedh]

Not a 'new' news item, but new to me ... noted, the passing of Ingrid Pitt, a star of the Hammer Horror films of the 1960s and '70s. She had real-life drama offscreen as well. Born Ingoushka Petrov in 1937 in Poland, to a Jewish family, she survived Nazi concentration camps, and later, wanted by the Volkspolizei, staged a daring escape to the West. Shortly before her death last November, she completed narration of an animated film on what it was like to be a child during the Holocaust called "Beyond The Forest," with animation by 10-year-old artist Perry Chen. Her daughter, Steffanie Pitt-Blake, is also an actress. RIP ... one hopes. With one so experienced in the ways of the Un-Dead though, one never knows ...

[invisiblescientist]

Some Hammer films were very good. Peter Cushing was very talented as Dr Van Helsing in Hammer movies, and also as Baron Victor Frankenstein.

The "Dracula A.D. 1972" was very interesting, as the grandson of Van Helsing (the reincarnation of the original Van Helsing in 1972, in London) is fighting the reincarnation of Dracula. The film also portrays the decadent and hedonistic culture in London during the early 1970s, while both Dracula and Van Helsing somehow manage to fit in this environment. You can find the entire film at youtube.

[Aedh]

We are planning to add "The Horror Of Dracula" to our watch list. That is still one of my three or four favourite vampire movies.

[invisiblescientist]

Horror of Dracula was one of the original classics, in the traditional vampire movie sense.

But the last two installments of the Hammer Dracula series were far more unconventional. The last film is "Satanic Rites of Dracula" (where Dracula is finally annihilated forever), which is a mixture of horror-science-fiction and spy triller. In this movie Christopher Lee (Dracula) is involved in a James Bond style political conspiracy to destroy the world with a secret weapon, and Peter Cushing (Van Helsing) is trying to stop the scheme. Besides the police and Van Helsing, the British Intelligence is also involved. This 1974 film marks the transition of the traditional vampire movies to the realm of science-fiction.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Satanic_Rites_of_Dracula

And the movie that preceded this one was "Dracula AD 1972", which also has some "modern" flavor.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dracula_AD_1972

Of course, there is an ancient church rubble in "Dracula AD 1972" , similar to EQ:


And both of these two last Hammer Dracula movies can be found at youtube in their entirety.

[invisiblescientist]

Apr 15, 2011 8:57:36 GMT -5 Aedh said:

Not a 'new' news item, but new to me ... noted, the passing of Ingrid Pitt, a star of the Hammer Horror films of the 1960s and '70s. She had real-life drama offscreen as well. Born Ingoushka Petrov in 1937 in Poland, to a Jewish family, she survived Nazi concentration camps, and later, wanted by the Volkspolizei, staged a daring escape to the West. Shortly before her death last November, she completed narration of an animated film on what it was like to be a child during the Holocaust called "Beyond The Forest," with animation by 10-year-old artist Perry Chen. Her daughter, Steffanie Pitt-Blake, is also an actress. RIP ... one hopes. With one so experienced in the ways of the Un-Dead though, one never knows ...

Since Ingrid Pitt's mother was Jewish, according to the Orthodox Jewish laws she is considered Jewish. But according to Wikipedia, Ingrid Pitt's father is in reality a German of Russian (non-Jewish) descent:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingrid_Pitt

Curiously enough, the Nazi laws defined a Jew as any person who had more than 2 Jewish grandparents. Thus according to the Nazis, people like Ingrid Pitt who had only a Jewish mother and a father without Jewish ancestry, were not considered real Jews, but they were considered undesirables. For this reason, in many cases the half-Jewish "Mischling" people were not executed and they were given more lenient treatment instead. Thus having a non-Jewish father probably saved Ingrid Pitt's life.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischling

But these Nuremberg laws were not written in stone, and these rules were sometimes broken when high-ranking Nazis could use half-Jews to gain additional power. One of the most famous examples is what Hermann Goering did when he learned that one of his officers working for him (Erhard Milch) had a Jewish father. According to the Nuremberg Laws, Goering had no choice but to fire Erhard Milch even though he was considered only half-Jewish according to these laws, because only pure Aryans were allowed to work for the German government. However, Goering felt that Erhard Milch was extremely helpful in his efforts to organize the Luftwaffe, and the decided to introduce falsified evidence to save Milch: Hermann Goering spoke to the non-Jewish German mother of Milch and made her sign a document testifying that her son Erhard Milch was illegitimate and the she had conceived him due to an affair she had with an Aryan boyfriend while she was married to a Jew. As a result, Erhard Milch was not fired and he was allowed to work for the Luftwaffe. After this event, the pompous Hermann Goering boasted: "Wer Jude ist, bestimme ich" (I decide who is a Jew).
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erhard_Milch

[Aedh]

You are correct in this, of course, colleague. I did meditate whether or not to use the word "Jewish" baldly thus, and decided to proceed, on the grounds that a) Jews themselves would consider her and any siblings to be Jewish, and b) that Nazis would consider them to be, if not 100% Jewish, sufficiently tainted to be given special treatment. These considerations were balanced against the general trend in history to identify persons as either Jewish or not-Jewish, and to my opinion more people would consider her Jewish than not, given the premises above. I then attempted a final compromise by saying not that Petrov(a)/Pitt herself was "Jewish" but rather that she was born to such a family. Such are the vagaries of language.

[invisiblescientist]

Ingrid Pitt gave a very plausible explanation for her talent in horror movies: she was basically raised and brought up at a concentration camp, which she described as a "horror show". Here is a detailed obituary of Ingrid Pitt from The Guardian:

www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/nov/24/ingrid-pitt-obituary

EXCERPT:

She was born Ingoushka Petrov in Poland to a Jewish mother and a German father who was a scientist and refused to work on the Nazis' programme to develop rockets. Pitt was five when she and her mother were sent to the Stutthof concentration camp, where they remained for three years. "I think I first knew I wanted to act in the camp," she said. "I used to lie on the straw and try and believe I was somewhere else."

When they were taken into a forest to be shot, Pitt and her mother managed to escape and were rescued by partisans. They spent the last year of the war living rough with the partisans, before making their way to Berlin. "I was born into the biggest horror show of the century, the brutalities of the Nazi regime," said Pitt. "I think it's very amazing that I do horror films when I had this awful childhood. But maybe that's why I'm good at it."

It is worth noting that although the Stutthof concentration camp was intended especially for non-Jews, from the estimated 110,000 prisoners, 85,000 actually died due to slave labor, malnutrition and disease.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stutthof_concentration_camp

It is also interesting that Ingrid Pitt's father was a German scientist who refused to work on the Nazi rockets, because had he accepted the job, this would have probably saved his wife and daughter from the concentration camp. For example, General Karl Haushofer, who was instrumental in developing the theory of "Lebensraum" for Hitler, was married to a half-Jewish woman (they had two sons), but because he was very useful for the Nazis, not only his wife was not arrested, but his sons were still allowed to work in the German government despite the Nuremberg Laws that defined them as non-Aryans. Only after Karl Haushofer turned against the Nazis he and his wife were arrested and sent to a prison camp.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Karl_Haushofer

[Aedh]

Interesting!!

I have never been clear on this ... was the idea called "Lebenstraum" (= 'dream of living") or "Lebensraum" ("room for living")? I have seen it put both ways, and, in a way, both terms sort of work, conceptually.

[invisiblescientist]

Sorry about my spelling error. As you said, the correct spelling is Lebensraum ("raum" ="room"). I am just a nerd, and don't expect me to be as erudite as literary people like you.

But many thanks for bringing Ingrid Pitt to my attention. I did not know anything about this remarkable actress, and I had not realized that she also had a role in "Where Eagles Dare", which was one of my favorite movies even though there are historical inaccuracies in the film. Thanks for the info!

Here is the screen test of Ingrid Pitt before "Where Eagles Dare" (1968), where she is being prepared for this role, towards the end of this video.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKyw9O9SJ_E

And in the following video, Ingrid Pitt is actually acting exactly the previous informal preparation from the previous video, for her real role in this movie (with Richard Burton and Clint Eastwood.) Here Ingrid Pitt is the German double-agent who is obtaining secret information from Richard Burton:
www.youtube.com/watch?v=SijvYh0AyNY&feature=related

Apparently Ingrid Pitt is a Scorpio, which is difficult to ignore for poor Cancers like me.

[invisiblescientist]

I have almost finished the autobiography of Ingrid Pitt: "Darkness Before Dawn"

You can find this remarkable book at Amazon:
www.amazon.com/Ingrid-Pitt-Darkness-Before-Dawn/dp/1887664548

In this book it is revealed in much greater detail that the father of Ingrid Pitt was a very courageous German scientist who refused to work on Hitler's V-1 and V-2 rockets. He was given several chances to change his mind, but he stubbornly refused even though the Nazis made it known to him in no uncertain terms that his Jewish wife and daughter (Ingrid Pitt) would be kept in the Stutthof concentration camp which was not a five star hotel. Her father reasoned that if he accepted to work on the Hitler's rockets, this could kill thousands of people instead of just his family, and he made this painful decision. The father was imprisoned in a different concentration camp, but all three of them miraculously survived, and they were reunited after the war.

Since Ingrid Pitt was born in an environment where she was constantly reminded that she had nothing to lose, she became a real adventurer and risk taker, and this made her very original. ;D


Apparently Ingrid Pitt became her father's daughter: uncompromising and courageous.

But the book gives remarkably realistic and deep insights into the circumstances before, during and after World War II, and it can be very useful for making a movie about Ingrid Pitt and the situation during WW II, how she grew up and how she traveled all over the world. Cleric Jay might find this book very useful to make a movie about Ingrid Pitt. This would be very authentic!

[Aedh]

Fascinating, comrade!

And please don't worry about the "Lebenstraum" comment. I found that word to lead to interesting idea and in fact I'm doing something with it. Sometimes worthwhile discoveries are made unintentionally, such as with the invention of vulcanized rubber. (Though I'm told that the story of Mr. Goodyear is a legend.)