Lilli Palmer

Lilli Palmer was a German actress and writer born in Posen, Germany, one of three daughters of Alfred Peiser, a German Jewish surgeon, and Rose Lißmann, a German Jewish stage actress. Her family relocated to Berlin-Charlottenburg when she was four years old. She took her professional surname from an English actress she admired. As a young girl, she was a junior table tennis champion.

Palmer launched her performing career in France, where she appeared in an operetta at the Moulin Rouge, before moving to London. While working in cabarets there, she attracted the attention of British talent scouts and secured a contract with the Gaumont Film Company. Her screen debut came in Crime Unlimited in 1935, and she continued working in British films throughout the following decade. She married British actor Rex Harrison on January 25, 1943, and the couple traveled to Hollywood together in 1945. There she signed with Warner Brothers and appeared in notable productions including Cloak and Dagger in 1946 and Body and Soul in 1947. Harrison and Palmer had one son, Carey, born in 1944.

Palmer made her Broadway debut in 1949 and performed on Broadway through 1953, appearing in four productions during that period. She appeared in My Name Is Aquilon and starred in Venus Observed, The Love of Four Colonels, and Bell, Book and Candle. She and Harrison appeared together in Bell, Book and Candle in the early 1950s. The two also collaborated on the 1951 British melodrama The Long Dark Hall and later starred together in the film adaptation of The Four Poster in 1952, based on Jan de Hartog's Broadway play of the same name. Palmer won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress in 1953 for her performance in that film. She also hosted her own television series in 1951.

Following her divorce from Harrison in 1957, Palmer returned to Germany in 1954 and took on numerous film and television roles there. She won the Deutscher Filmpreis for Best Actress in 1957 for her portrayal of Anna Anderson in the German production known in the United Kingdom as Is Anna Anderson Anastasia? In 1958, she appeared opposite Romy Schneider in Mädchen in Uniform, a remake of the 1931 film of the same title. She starred alongside Fred Astaire and Debbie Reynolds in the 1961 comedy The Pleasure of His Company and opposite William Holden in the 1962 espionage thriller The Counterfeit Traitor. She also appeared with Robert Taylor in Disney's Miracle of the White Stallions in 1963, another production based on a true Second World War story. In 1969, she appeared in the Spanish horror film The House That Screamed. On television, she starred as Manouche Roget in the 1974 six-part series The Zoo Gang, alongside Brian Keith, John Mills, and Barry Morse, which centered on former underground freedom fighters from the Second World War.

Palmer received two Golden Globe Award nominations during her career: one for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for But Not for Me in 1959, and another for Best Supporting Actress in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film for the 1986 miniseries Peter the Great. She won the Deutscher Filmpreis three times in total, including a Gold award for Lifetime Achievement in 1978. Additional honors included the Goldene Kamera in 1972 and the Great Cross of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1974. She holds a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7013 Hollywood Boulevard.

Beyond acting, Palmer was also a published author. She released a memoir, Change Lobsters and Dance, in 1975, followed by a novel, The Red Raven, in 1978. Her first marriage to Harrison ended in 1957; she subsequently married Argentine actor Carlos Thompson that same year. Palmer died in Los Angeles from abdominal cancer in 1986 at the age of 71 and is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California.