Lyda Roberti

Lyda Roberti (born Lyda Pecjak, May 20, 1906; died March 13, 1938) was an American singer, stage actress, and film actress born in Warsaw, at that time part of Imperial Russia. Her father, surnamed Pecjak, was a German professional clown, and her mother was Polish. She had an elder brother, Robert, also born in Poland, and a younger sister, Manya.

Roberti's early life was shaped by constant movement and performance. As a child she worked in the circus, performing as a trapeze artist and bareback rider. Following the upheaval of the Communist revolution in 1917, the Pecjak family relocated to Shanghai, China, where Roberti earned income as a dancer at the Carlton café. She eventually saved enough money to travel to the United States, where she performed in vaudeville in San Francisco and Los Angeles before turning to the stage.

Her Broadway debut came in 1931 with the musical You Said It, which made her an immediate success with New York audiences. Historian Edward Jablonski attributed a significant part of her appeal to her Polish accent, noting that her pronunciation of certain consonants provoked sustained laughter from crowds. During her run in the show she acquired the nickname "Broadway's preferred Polish blonde." In 1933 she appeared in two additional Broadway musicals: the short-lived Pardon My English and the considerably more successful Roberta.

In 1932, Paramount Pictures signed Roberti, and she appeared that year in director Edward F. Cline's comedy film Million Dollar Legs, playing Mata Machree, a Mata Hari-type spy tasked with undermining the President of Klopstokia, portrayed by W.C. Fields. She continued working in films throughout the 1930s, with her accent and playful screen persona drawing consistent audience interest. In 1936, following the death of Thelma Todd, Roberti stepped into several film roles that had been intended for Todd.

On June 25, 1935, Roberti married aviator Bud Ernst in Yuma, Arizona. The couple separated approximately a year later but secretly reconciled in January 1937 and remained together until her death. Health problems, primarily cardiac in nature, affected Roberti for much of her life. In the spring of 1935 she underwent surgery related to her heart and appendix, and in 1936 an unnamed illness forced her to withdraw from the film Wives Never Know. A series of heart attacks in 1937 compelled her to reduce her professional workload.

On the night of March 13, 1938, Roberti suffered a severe heart attack. Dr. Myron Babcock administered heart stimulants without success, and she died at age 31 with Ernst at her side. Her friend and co-star Patsy Kelly, in an interview with Leonard Maltin for Film Fan Monthly, connected Roberti's fatal heart condition to the physical strain of her circus childhood, recalling that Roberti's father had placed her on bareback horses as a child and that the toll on her heart had gone undetected. Her funeral, held two days after her death, was attended by approximately 400 people, including many of her Hollywood colleagues. Roberti is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.